The newspapers are losing their readers because the newspapers are abandoning their readers. Real journalism is dying at the newspapers.
Not here in Albany NY. The Times Union has done as much investigative journalism as anyone could hope for -- they even went to court to get information.
Nationally, the NY Times and other papers of similar weight remain bastions of actual reporting.
The traditional economy goes something like: I have something, which you want, and you have something which I want. We trade.
Yep. Works really great for bread and knives.
This non-concept of "economy of sharing" goes like: I have something, which you want, and I am morally obligated to give it to you, by virtue of the fact that I have it.
Nope.
I have something, which is of use to you. Giving it to you in no way deprives me of that thing. I am therefore going to give it to you, so that, when you have something in a like vein, you will give it to me.
This works fairly well for things like ideas, songs, and inventions. It doesn't work at all for bread and knives. It works especially well for bread and policemen, though.
The question is not "does this make sense." The question is, "are you selling a knife or an idea?"
So assuming MS indeed drops VB, what are they going to use for their macros now ?
I'd wager C++ or C#. Or, more likely, just any "dot-net" language. It's currently a pain to write C# code to automate Office, but if Office became "native.NET", there wouldn't be that problem.
I have often wondered why the recording industry, faced with increasing competition from other distribution technologies, has not concluded that "recording" no longer is a viable business today.
Because they're making a huge profit?
Because "new distribution technologies" is a thorn they faced before, and successfully got on the side of the law?
Because the current law has adopted to aid their business model?
Because, when you get right down to it, someone barely paying you for your work is better than someone NOT paying you for your work?
When I balance up the "equation", Americans do not have much to show for the almost 3,000 coalition lives lost so far.
We DON'T have a new tyranny. That's something.
Do we have a strong, stable ally? No. Are we going to do something about that? Yes. Will whatever comes out of the rubble respect the US military? Only if they don't want to fall as quickly as Saddam.
The technology is so expensive that they almost have no choice but to give away the consoles.
Wrong. Sony could very well have gone with a "real cost" figure for the PS3, and cut their liense feel and MSRP for games as well. They made a concious corporate descion to keep the same idea that got the PS and the PS2 out the door and into the mindset of everyone around. I doubt it'll work, as the PS3 isn't nearly as big a leap forward as either of its predecessors were.
The strategic win has to go to Nintendo even if they can't win overall sales.
Nintendo won the last generation on straight profit; they were simply a better investment in a business sense, unless you count the entire DVD universe as part of the PS2 picture.
In six months, I expect everyone who couldn't get one the day after launch but wanted one to have a Wii. In eighteen months, I expect virtually everyone who has an Xbox 360 to have a Wii, and a fair share of those with PS3s as well. By thirty months, I'll expect the Wii to be successful enough that a "Wii DS" or similar reconfiguration will all but repeat the Wii's sell-out performance.
In the same time frame, I'll expect the six-month out mark to include stories of how well the XBox360 works with Vista for media sharing, followed by a hack by Sony (and possibly NS) to do the same, albeit with a proprietary format or "special software" that will hinder both advances. Eighteen months will solve the production problems, and show price cuts due to R&D costs being largely paid off. By thirty months, we'll see a right-turn with the X-Box, possibly something as simple as a "computer attachment" to enable it to act as a terminal, and Sony will start hyping the PS4.
And in thirty months, someone on/. will be trolling because their favorite console didn't do as well as they thought it was going to.
How can a NIC decrease the latency in any noticable way?
By skipping the last jump. Instead of web -> card -> [CPU Tread for NIC] -> [CPU thread for game], it's web -> card -> [CPU thread for game].
How can a NIC decrease the latency in any noticable way?
By eliminating a bottleneck. If you are taxing your system, you'll notice the difference. If not, well, you won't really notice the ~3 hp you've lost in your car since you let the air filter get dirty, either.
It's significantly different. One is treason, another is abandoning a lucrative private enterprise for crime, and the third is a resort of despiration for those with few prosepcts.
The morality, ethics, and legal response to each of these is different. You might as well claim that vehicular manslaughter and driving with a cell phone "aren't any different."
1: The measure of a chef is how good he can make ANY ingredients. If Emeril couldn't turn stale bread and barely-edible beef into a good meal, he wouldn't have a show.
2: Regarding your sig, the American left stands for liberty, community, and equality. It only seems like they're only negative because the Right doesn't give them any credit for their good ideas, so after the third or fourth co-opted idea they stopped offering any new ones until the next administration change.
So no, FLAC isn't "lossy" in the MP3/AAC/VQF/WMA sense, but it is PCM, which my original post clearly pointed out (I asked for "non-lossy non-PCM". FLAC is non-lossy but is PCM.
1: You mentioned an obscure distinction most of us don't know about. That isn't clear.
2: There isn't a real market for higher-than-CD quality music. Most target devices wouldn't be able to render a realistic difference in source quality.
Wrong -- banks don't trust the poor. If you don't have a steady income to the bank, they do obnoxious things like hold the check until it completely clears, or impose an arbitrary service fee that the not-poor not only barely notice, but actually don't have.
Check-cashing locations exist because the annoyance of banking as a poor American is greater than 10% of their wages. (Hint: if we wanted to give the poor the advantage of banking, we'd require that ALL employers offer direct deposit, even at a certain fee schedule.)
I just don't understand how spilling hot coffee on oneself is grounds for a lawsuit, but shredded fingers is not. Especially in America.
1: The coffee in question was about 10 degrees hotter than anywhere else as a matter of course, the woman asked for them to essentially pay for her second-or-third degree burn treatment first, and after that big trial, the award was reduced on appeal.
2: If you fingers actually do get shredded, tell your insurance company exactly what happened. They have a legal department that does nothing but file lawsuits to recoup their losses for paying claims. (By paying for the cost of the injury, they gain the right to sue to collect what they paid from the company that caused the injury)
3: This only works if you actually take reasonable action with the packaging. A beer bottle that shatters while drinking is the company's fault; your subsequent walking on the broken glass is not, especially if you tried to open the bottle with a handaxe.
As for the high end console wars, I don't think Wii should even be in contention. It's 360 vs PS3 and no one knows who will come out on the top. Even a suitable 360 bundle is about 500 bucks plus.
1: You have to really parse the market if you want to eliminate the Wii. There are two inter-related pools of decision-makers a console needs to convince to be a success: game buyers and game makers. The Wii has got the latter very well engaged, and it's price tag is going to do more than make a dent in the former. There has never been a solid market for a "high-end" console; if MS and Sony don't respond to the Wii and make it worth the consumer's dollars, they lose.
2: A "suitable" PS3 bundle floats around $700, before you even buy a second game. It's simply a far more expensive system, which only makes fiscal sense for someone who already has an HDTV and a collection of Blu-Ray discs. Sony doesn't waste any time denying that they're on top in the inverse price war with Microsoft, and neither should Sony fanboys.
As for Wii, I don't see myself playing overnight swinging around like a monkey. It's perfect as a second entertainment system, but for me to switch from PC to console for serious gaming... it's either 360 or PS3.
You don't have to swing with the Wii. You don't even have to stand up. As I see it, the controls aren't all that different than a mouse and keyboard -- ignoring for the moment that serious gamers have a retro nostalga, and the Wii is the only way to legally indulge.
A whole bunch of people think that Hillary is too polarizing to win moderate votes. Those people had some folk agree with them in 2000 -- New York had a Republican Governor, a famous Republican mayor, a bias against a "Carpetbagger", and more red upstate than some places in the South. She won, and did such a good job that her constituents elected her by landslide.
If Hillary runs for '08, her biggest problems will be Obama, McCain, and Gulliani, NOT herself. If the GOP is foolish enough to pick Gates, well, we'll have our first female President.
Actually, come to think of it, I have no idea how come religion (specifically, christianism) is so powerful in such a developped country as the USA...
1: Basic grammar compels you to actually call it "Christianity". Anything else is just, well, improper.
2: From a strictly agnostic standpoint, Christianity tells you that "it's Ok, do your best, the most powerful being there is likes you and will watch your back." This encourages risk, forgiveness of others, and contentment all at the same time -- three things that are vital to any modern middle-class economy. If we had all listened to the first pundits of the Age of Reason and abandoned religion wholesale, we'd likely still be a British Colony and still all live in a agrarian, feudal society.
(I'm skipping the necessary argument of "because it's true", because I presume we can just take that as argued to a standstil and get on to an actual discussion.)
Does anyone know if the Wii is having backward compatibility issues? I don't want to pick up a Gamecube, but I would like to play Resident Evil 4 (I don't have a PS2 either). If I remember correctly, the Wii is supposed to be backward compatible with the Gamecube.
Both the Wii and the Gamecube are powerPC chips. The Wii's backwards computability is enough that the GameCube distribution of Linux will run on the Wii in "Gamecube mode."
I highly doubt that Resident Evil 4, one of the best games for the 'cube, will fail to run.
. What I learned was true americans did not want the jobs, heck even I hated mine at the time. Another truth is many of the american employees were lazy, unproductive, had low self esteem and took little pride in their work.
That's because you paid them $6 an hour, in a job that has essentially no benefits and is only full time if they're willing to put everything else off and make that half-assed job a career.
There are fast food joints around here that have terrible service, and those that have great service. The ones that have great service aren't populated with spanish-speaking migrants (yes, we get illegals even in Upstate NY), they're staffed with English Speakers who are paid enough to make the job worth their while.
In fact, the fast-food place that's best known for its service is also the one that's best known for employee benefits. And the ones that can be ran by "managers" who hate their jobs are the ones with the worst customer service.
A person who followed Biblical laws to the letter (i.e. kill your disobedient children, kill homosexuals, kill nonbelievers, etc) would be headed straight for prison in a modern, secular society.
Funny. Even when Israel was an independant state, the Talmudic death penalty was rarely enforced. And as soon as Jesus of Nazareth started saying "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone", well, the modern sense of compassion and mercy became law.
(And I'd be interested to hear your quotes for any one of those things, btw -- I'm pretty sure that you had be worse than "abomination" to merit the death penalty, and that's all that homosexuality was classified as. No worse than a menstrating woman going to temple.)
How many of the Ten Commandments are actually laws in any modern society? Two, maybe three? God is only 25% correct?
1: "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." Democratic socieites prohibit the enforcement of a state religion, meaning that Christians are not forced to have any other gods. Plus, there are still several American communities where not going to church will get you ostracised.
2: "Do not take the name of the Lord in vain." Nope, no legal effect.
3: "Observe the sabbath and keep it holy": I just had a weekend, as did some 80% of my countrymen. Those of us who worked on that day chose to work it, and their employers have a legally-mandated fiscal incentive to give them at least one day in seven off.
4: "Honor thy father and thy mother": Elder law requires us to take care of our parents, either directly or through paying taxes. And parents have standing to file an array of cases relating to their children and grandchildren that ordinary folk have to fight tooth and nail for.
5: Murder. (Yep, all kinds of laws against that.)
6: No Adultury (It's a crime in NY, and either a crime or a cause for divorce elsewhere.)
7: Do not steal (Yep.)
8: Do not bear false witness (ever hear of perjury? Libel?)
9: "Do not covet your neighbor's wife" -- actually, more than a few states still have laws against interfering with someone's marriage.
10: Don't covet anything else (nope, no legal effect.)
So, on a modest view, 8/10 commandments are still legally enforced at least somewhere in America. If you want to be more strict, 6/10 are core principles of a modern democratic society. And either way you splice it, the other 2 or 4 are seen as "very good ideas."
Considering that I've been told by more than one Christian (true story here) that atheists do not have the capacity for morality
Morality is the belief that some things are inherently wrong and some other things are inherently good. Ethics is a system of right and wrong based on logic and reason.
Many Religions folk base their "morality" on "God said so." What, pray tell, does an Atheist base his morality on?
What a society - where [showing pictures of] killing untold thousands of people in far off lands is fine, but showing pictures of the human body is taboo.
Let's compare apples to apples, shall we? Because if you want to compare violence to sex, well, you can be an American pacifist, but not fucking your spouse is grounds for divorce.
The simple reason why violence is OK in media and sex is not is that all violence needs to be in the public eye. There's no reason that your neighbors or children need to know when or how often you fuck. But they DO need to know each and every time you kill someone, stab someone in the eye, or do any other act of violence.
If you really don't know enough to cast an intelligent vote, you should be eager to let your more informed neighbors make the decision." What do you think?
the only person who can make a truly ignorant vote is someone who does nto know anyone who can make an informed vote.
If you don't have teh time or incalnation, exercise on a smaller level the exact same choice you're making when you do go vote "intelligently." Pick someone you trust to make a descision you can't devote the proper time to, and grant them the weight of your voice.
Find a friend you trust on these issues, as them who THEY're voting for, and follow along.
Slashdot Mirror
The newspapers are losing their readers because the newspapers are abandoning their readers. Real journalism is dying at the newspapers.
Not here in Albany NY. The Times Union has done as much investigative journalism as anyone could hope for -- they even went to court to get information.
Nationally, the NY Times and other papers of similar weight remain bastions of actual reporting.
The traditional economy goes something like: I have something, which you want, and you have something which I want. We trade.
Yep. Works really great for bread and knives.
This non-concept of "economy of sharing" goes like: I have something, which you want, and I am morally obligated to give it to you, by virtue of the fact that I have it.
Nope.
I have something, which is of use to you. Giving it to you in no way deprives me of that thing. I am therefore going to give it to you, so that, when you have something in a like vein, you will give it to me.
This works fairly well for things like ideas, songs, and inventions. It doesn't work at all for bread and knives. It works especially well for bread and policemen, though.
The question is not "does this make sense." The question is, "are you selling a knife or an idea?"
So assuming MS indeed drops VB, what are they going to use for their macros now ?
.NET", there wouldn't be that problem.
I'd wager C++ or C#. Or, more likely, just any "dot-net" language. It's currently a pain to write C# code to automate Office, but if Office became "native
I have often wondered why the recording industry, faced with increasing competition from other distribution technologies, has not concluded that "recording" no longer is a viable business today.
Because they're making a huge profit?
Because "new distribution technologies" is a thorn they faced before, and successfully got on the side of the law?
Because the current law has adopted to aid their business model?
Because, when you get right down to it, someone barely paying you for your work is better than someone NOT paying you for your work?
When I balance up the "equation", Americans do not have much to show for the almost 3,000 coalition lives lost so far.
We DON'T have a new tyranny. That's something.
Do we have a strong, stable ally? No. Are we going to do something about that? Yes. Will whatever comes out of the rubble respect the US military? Only if they don't want to fall as quickly as Saddam.
The technology is so expensive that they almost have no choice but to give away the consoles.
/. will be trolling because their favorite console didn't do as well as they thought it was going to.
Wrong. Sony could very well have gone with a "real cost" figure for the PS3, and cut their liense feel and MSRP for games as well. They made a concious corporate descion to keep the same idea that got the PS and the PS2 out the door and into the mindset of everyone around. I doubt it'll work, as the PS3 isn't nearly as big a leap forward as either of its predecessors were.
The strategic win has to go to Nintendo even if they can't win overall sales.
Nintendo won the last generation on straight profit; they were simply a better investment in a business sense, unless you count the entire DVD universe as part of the PS2 picture.
In six months, I expect everyone who couldn't get one the day after launch but wanted one to have a Wii. In eighteen months, I expect virtually everyone who has an Xbox 360 to have a Wii, and a fair share of those with PS3s as well. By thirty months, I'll expect the Wii to be successful enough that a "Wii DS" or similar reconfiguration will all but repeat the Wii's sell-out performance.
In the same time frame, I'll expect the six-month out mark to include stories of how well the XBox360 works with Vista for media sharing, followed by a hack by Sony (and possibly NS) to do the same, albeit with a proprietary format or "special software" that will hinder both advances. Eighteen months will solve the production problems, and show price cuts due to R&D costs being largely paid off. By thirty months, we'll see a right-turn with the X-Box, possibly something as simple as a "computer attachment" to enable it to act as a terminal, and Sony will start hyping the PS4.
And in thirty months, someone on
How can a NIC decrease the latency in any noticable way?
By skipping the last jump. Instead of web -> card -> [CPU Tread for NIC] -> [CPU thread for game], it's web -> card -> [CPU thread for game].
How can a NIC decrease the latency in any noticable way?
By eliminating a bottleneck. If you are taxing your system, you'll notice the difference. If not, well, you won't really notice the ~3 hp you've lost in your car since you let the air filter get dirty, either.
This isn't any different.
It's significantly different. One is treason, another is abandoning a lucrative private enterprise for crime, and the third is a resort of despiration for those with few prosepcts.
The morality, ethics, and legal response to each of these is different. You might as well claim that vehicular manslaughter and driving with a cell phone "aren't any different."
Sheesh.
1: The measure of a chef is how good he can make ANY ingredients. If Emeril couldn't turn stale bread and barely-edible beef into a good meal, he wouldn't have a show.
2: Regarding your sig, the American left stands for liberty, community, and equality. It only seems like they're only negative because the Right doesn't give them any credit for their good ideas, so after the third or fourth co-opted idea they stopped offering any new ones until the next administration change.
So no, FLAC isn't "lossy" in the MP3/AAC/VQF/WMA sense, but it is PCM, which my original post clearly pointed out (I asked for "non-lossy non-PCM". FLAC is non-lossy but is PCM.
1: You mentioned an obscure distinction most of us don't know about. That isn't clear.
2: There isn't a real market for higher-than-CD quality music. Most target devices wouldn't be able to render a realistic difference in source quality.
Poor don't trust banks
Wrong -- banks don't trust the poor. If you don't have a steady income to the bank, they do obnoxious things like hold the check until it completely clears, or impose an arbitrary service fee that the not-poor not only barely notice, but actually don't have.
Check-cashing locations exist because the annoyance of banking as a poor American is greater than 10% of their wages. (Hint: if we wanted to give the poor the advantage of banking, we'd require that ALL employers offer direct deposit, even at a certain fee schedule.)
I haven't heard of a single person who has picked up a game over 10 years old and spent a lot of time with, let alone 30 minutes.
You obviously have. Most of those MAME downloads are over 10 years old.
I just don't understand how spilling hot coffee on oneself is grounds for a lawsuit, but shredded fingers is not. Especially in America.
1: The coffee in question was about 10 degrees hotter than anywhere else as a matter of course, the woman asked for them to essentially pay for her second-or-third degree burn treatment first, and after that big trial, the award was reduced on appeal.
2: If you fingers actually do get shredded, tell your insurance company exactly what happened. They have a legal department that does nothing but file lawsuits to recoup their losses for paying claims. (By paying for the cost of the injury, they gain the right to sue to collect what they paid from the company that caused the injury)
3: This only works if you actually take reasonable action with the packaging. A beer bottle that shatters while drinking is the company's fault; your subsequent walking on the broken glass is not, especially if you tried to open the bottle with a handaxe.
psst... if you learn how to sharpen that knife, or pay someone else to do it, it'll last a lot longer than "every couple of years."
As for the high end console wars, I don't think Wii should even be in contention. It's 360 vs PS3 and no one knows who will come out on the top. Even a suitable 360 bundle is about 500 bucks plus.
1: You have to really parse the market if you want to eliminate the Wii. There are two inter-related pools of decision-makers a console needs to convince to be a success: game buyers and game makers. The Wii has got the latter very well engaged, and it's price tag is going to do more than make a dent in the former. There has never been a solid market for a "high-end" console; if MS and Sony don't respond to the Wii and make it worth the consumer's dollars, they lose.
2: A "suitable" PS3 bundle floats around $700, before you even buy a second game. It's simply a far more expensive system, which only makes fiscal sense for someone who already has an HDTV and a collection of Blu-Ray discs. Sony doesn't waste any time denying that they're on top in the inverse price war with Microsoft, and neither should Sony fanboys.
As for Wii, I don't see myself playing overnight swinging around like a monkey. It's perfect as a second entertainment system, but for me to switch from PC to console for serious gaming... it's either 360 or PS3.
You don't have to swing with the Wii. You don't even have to stand up. As I see it, the controls aren't all that different than a mouse and keyboard -- ignoring for the moment that serious gamers have a retro nostalga, and the Wii is the only way to legally indulge.
too many people don't like Hillary,'
A whole bunch of people think that Hillary is too polarizing to win moderate votes. Those people had some folk agree with them in 2000 -- New York had a Republican Governor, a famous Republican mayor, a bias against a "Carpetbagger", and more red upstate than some places in the South. She won, and did such a good job that her constituents elected her by landslide.
If Hillary runs for '08, her biggest problems will be Obama, McCain, and Gulliani, NOT herself. If the GOP is foolish enough to pick Gates, well, we'll have our first female President.
Actually, come to think of it, I have no idea how come religion (specifically, christianism) is so powerful in such a developped country as the USA...
1: Basic grammar compels you to actually call it "Christianity". Anything else is just, well, improper.
2: From a strictly agnostic standpoint, Christianity tells you that "it's Ok, do your best, the most powerful being there is likes you and will watch your back." This encourages risk, forgiveness of others, and contentment all at the same time -- three things that are vital to any modern middle-class economy. If we had all listened to the first pundits of the Age of Reason and abandoned religion wholesale, we'd likely still be a British Colony and still all live in a agrarian, feudal society.
(I'm skipping the necessary argument of "because it's true", because I presume we can just take that as argued to a standstil and get on to an actual discussion.)
Does anyone know if the Wii is having backward compatibility issues? I don't want to pick up a Gamecube, but I would like to play Resident Evil 4 (I don't have a PS2 either). If I remember correctly, the Wii is supposed to be backward compatible with the Gamecube.
Both the Wii and the Gamecube are powerPC chips. The Wii's backwards computability is enough that the GameCube distribution of Linux will run on the Wii in "Gamecube mode."
I highly doubt that Resident Evil 4, one of the best games for the 'cube, will fail to run.
. What I learned was true americans did not want the jobs, heck even I hated mine at the time. Another truth is many of the american employees were lazy, unproductive, had low self esteem and took little pride in their work.
That's because you paid them $6 an hour, in a job that has essentially no benefits and is only full time if they're willing to put everything else off and make that half-assed job a career.
There are fast food joints around here that have terrible service, and those that have great service. The ones that have great service aren't populated with spanish-speaking migrants (yes, we get illegals even in Upstate NY), they're staffed with English Speakers who are paid enough to make the job worth their while.
In fact, the fast-food place that's best known for its service is also the one that's best known for employee benefits. And the ones that can be ran by "managers" who hate their jobs are the ones with the worst customer service.
A person who followed Biblical laws to the letter (i.e. kill your disobedient children, kill homosexuals, kill nonbelievers, etc) would be headed straight for prison in a modern, secular society.
Funny. Even when Israel was an independant state, the Talmudic death penalty was rarely enforced. And as soon as Jesus of Nazareth started saying "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone", well, the modern sense of compassion and mercy became law.
(And I'd be interested to hear your quotes for any one of those things, btw -- I'm pretty sure that you had be worse than "abomination" to merit the death penalty, and that's all that homosexuality was classified as. No worse than a menstrating woman going to temple.)
How many of the Ten Commandments are actually laws in any modern society? Two, maybe three? God is only 25% correct?
Taking the Roman Catholic Version:
1: "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." Democratic socieites prohibit the enforcement of a state religion, meaning that Christians are not forced to have any other gods. Plus, there are still several American communities where not going to church will get you ostracised.
2: "Do not take the name of the Lord in vain." Nope, no legal effect.
3: "Observe the sabbath and keep it holy": I just had a weekend, as did some 80% of my countrymen. Those of us who worked on that day chose to work it, and their employers have a legally-mandated fiscal incentive to give them at least one day in seven off.
4: "Honor thy father and thy mother": Elder law requires us to take care of our parents, either directly or through paying taxes. And parents have standing to file an array of cases relating to their children and grandchildren that ordinary folk have to fight tooth and nail for.
5: Murder. (Yep, all kinds of laws against that.)
6: No Adultury (It's a crime in NY, and either a crime or a cause for divorce elsewhere.)
7: Do not steal (Yep.)
8: Do not bear false witness (ever hear of perjury? Libel?)
9: "Do not covet your neighbor's wife" -- actually, more than a few states still have laws against interfering with someone's marriage.
10: Don't covet anything else (nope, no legal effect.)
So, on a modest view, 8/10 commandments are still legally enforced at least somewhere in America. If you want to be more strict, 6/10 are core principles of a modern democratic society. And either way you splice it, the other 2 or 4 are seen as "very good ideas."
Considering that I've been told by more than one Christian (true story here) that atheists do not have the capacity for morality
Morality is the belief that some things are inherently wrong and some other things are inherently good. Ethics is a system of right and wrong based on logic and reason.
Many Religions folk base their "morality" on "God said so." What, pray tell, does an Atheist base his morality on?
What a society - where [showing pictures of] killing untold thousands of people in far off lands is fine, but showing pictures of the human body is taboo.
Let's compare apples to apples, shall we? Because if you want to compare violence to sex, well, you can be an American pacifist, but not fucking your spouse is grounds for divorce.
The simple reason why violence is OK in media and sex is not is that all violence needs to be in the public eye. There's no reason that your neighbors or children need to know when or how often you fuck. But they DO need to know each and every time you kill someone, stab someone in the eye, or do any other act of violence.
but I was under the impression that the deal worked something like this:
It did. Past tense. Today, Dell offers an entire frigging line of Linux PCs!. As does HP.
The fact that you don't see them on the shelves at Wally World is simply the nature of Linux.
Vista appears to have not one single feature that I can't get on XP with minimal trouble.
It has more than a few. Off the top of my head:
* "Windows key" searching. (The new start menu as a whole is a distinct improvement, but the "search" bar takes the cake.)
* Backup to DVD or CD.
* User Account Control, and the related security model.
* New "sleep" mode -- suspend then hibernate
* Windows Sidebar
* Windows "meeting space."
The reason not to get Vista is "The new features don't justfiy the cost", not "there's nothing new."
If you really don't know enough to cast an intelligent vote, you should be eager to let your more informed neighbors make the decision." What do you think?
the only person who can make a truly ignorant vote is someone who does nto know anyone who can make an informed vote.
If you don't have teh time or incalnation, exercise on a smaller level the exact same choice you're making when you do go vote "intelligently." Pick someone you trust to make a descision you can't devote the proper time to, and grant them the weight of your voice.
Find a friend you trust on these issues, as them who THEY're voting for, and follow along.