If that scroll wheel clicks into place a little when you change positions, I could see 'touch-typing' with it. You'd just have to get used to the relative positions of the 'keys' via scroll wheel position. Not too terribly different from touch-typing on a keyboard, I would think.
But then, we don't know what the thing feels like yet, so we can't really make that call.
The point is that if Apple doesn't feel like selling out to AOL/TW, AOL/TW isn't really in a position to make them. Apple's shareholders aren't going to be in a big hurry to sell to AOL/TW either, knowing that Apple has a fat stack of cash ready and waiting.
hrm... a phone with a retractable headset would be nice, actually. Provided there was a catch so it didn't try to retract while you were wearing it, anyway.
For someone so enamoured of Communism, you seem not to have done much reading.
The first act in which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society - the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society - is at the same time its last independent act as a state. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then dies away of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production.
So saith Frederick Engels. In summary, you need a state to take the extant wealth from its owners and to transition to a classless society where the state concerns itself merely with administration of production.
So, the first step in true Communism is to take over the state. Even the Communist Manifesto acknowledges that this must be done through violent revolution, because the capitalists running the show have stacked the deck so heavily in their favor in the politcal arena.
But violent revolution doesn't result in you taking over the state... it results in the state being destroyed, and in need of rebuilding. Of course, this is just a transitional state, so it doesn't need to be anything too fancy. And it needs to be small and efficient, so it can be reduced to factory and farm management as rapidly as possible. And of course, only the leaders of the revolution are trustworthy enough to be given any power in this state.
So the second step in the development of a true Communist system is a dictatorship. It's supposed to be a benign dictatorship where the man in charge steps down as soon as the means of production are back in the people's hands, but as the entire world knows from experience that never happens.
The problem with true Communism, comrade, is that you never get past the second step.
Okay, it's certainly the most likely scenario that the CIA would bug this plane, but I can't help but wonder if it isn't too obvious?
The CIA isn't always the picture of subtlety, you know.
Besides isn't 20+ bugs a little overkill? With that many you're almost certain to get caught and the you'd have to really want the intelligence enough that you'd hope a few wouldn't get found.
We really want the intelligence. Boy howdy, do we ever want that intelligence. The repercussions of being caught are really relatively minor, compared with the potential benefits should the bugs go undiscovered for a while.
On the other hand, it's equally fair to wonder whether the US wants a diplomatic incident? But I have a hard time justifying that one in these times. Isn't terrorism a good enough evil for the 21st century?
Ooh, goody! Let's play conspiracy theory!
No, terrorism isn't a good enough evil, at least not for military budgets. The American people are only going to put up with that war for so long. It'll be handy for political use, but not for pushing money around long-term. What's needed is a good, solid cold war. You get the occasional flash points (Vietnam, Korea, Guam...) for political brownie points, and you get to pump money into military contractors at a sustained high rate. Not to mention other strategic industries like, say, energy production.
On the other hand, maybe the general feeling is that the Chinese can only afford to distance themselves from us so much right now, so it's a great time to mess with 'em a little and see what we can get away with.
... and Air Force One kicks my apartment's ass. My apartment is probably about average. Therefore, by the transitive property of ass-kicking and the associative property of silly comparisons, your point is moot.
China doesn't give Communism a bad name, Communism gives Communism a bad name. Can you name a single Communist nation that you would hold up as a shining beacon to the rest of the world?
Now, a certain degree of socialism, on the other hand... I'm down with that.
No, in a two-body system each body would have a weight relative to the other. There's no "shared weight". There just isn't, by definition of "weight" as a physical term. So yes, weight is a vector, but you always use it to describe the force acting upon one body due to another body, and the direction is always toward the other body. It's unidirectional, and the direction (within the system) is always the same. If you're measuring the weight of A on B, the direction is toward B. If you're measuring the weight of B on A, the direction is toward A. Only in a larger system do you care about the actual positions of A and B, and at that point you tend to stop talking about weight and start talking about attractions in mutual terms.
This is why, in terms of English, weight is treated as a scalar... because we always know which two bodies we're talking about, and which one's weight we're measuring relative to the other. In other words, if we're talking about the weight of some body on earth (and we usually are), we know that the weight is toward the earth so we can just leave that part out. Incidentally, we also know, roughly, the gravitational acceleration between the two bodies, so we tend to ignore that, too, and just treat weight as a measurement of mass... which it is, if you just go to the trouble of doing the simple math to throw away a constant and ignore an obvious direction.
You're right, the Earth does weigh 150lbs. on me, in physical terms. In English terms, that's an absurd image, as "weight" is generally assumed to be the property of a smaller object with reference to, say, a planet. So there I was debating English. But I still debate your contention that physical "weight" is bidirectional. It's just a measurement that can be taken from either side with the same result.:)
The thing you're ignoring is that 'weight' is a measure of gravitational force between two objects relative to one of the objects.
That's what makes it useful. The earth does not weight 150 lbs. on me, nor do the earth and I weigh 150 lbs. toward each other. I weigh 150 lbs. on earth.
Weight is by its nature unidirectional, and since the relative direction doesn't ever change, it can safely be treated as scalar. And is.
You know, that was my first thought when I read about WAP and WML and all the other weird contortions people are coming up with in the "net-enabled device" scene.
Come to think of it, I still don't get why the hell they don't just use gopher. The protocol is there, it's lightweight, and it's perfect for providing text-based menus to access text content.
Werd. I was all about gopher holes... made it all the way around the world through gopher holes one day, and was so stoked I just left the connection up for a while. All the way around the world!, I told my Mom. And it's a local call!
But the WWW included gopher. That's what I thought was so cool about the Web. You had all those protocols under one roof, with one uniform method of accessing them! telnet, gopher, ftp, the archie servers...
Funny how I use my web browser for http almost exclusively now.
But wow, when I fired up Mosaic for the first time and went to the Louvre's site... that was a real kick. "Look! You can view their collection on the Internet!" *clickclickclick*
No, you're normal. I'm a freak. I've watched my Sopranos First Season DVD set at least four times, and I've now seen most of the episodes on my Second Season set twice.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Doesn't say 'shall not be violated by the Government', see? So it protects you from search and seizure by anyone who doesn't have a warrant as described.
Hi. That protection against unreasonable search? Yeah, that's a privacy protection. It prevents other people from looking through your house, your stuff, and the things you have on you. What would you call that, if not a guarantee of privacy? What else would be the point?
It could be extremely disruptive for Borland to come into a software company and audit it, depending upon their thoroughness. And the license says you have to help them, which makes it even more disruptive.
Imagine your developers each spending an hour or two sitting on their hands while a Borland rep scopes out their machine, and five of your management staff actively engaged in the process. Meanwhile, the rest of your developers aren't getting much work done either, because they're too busy wondering what the hell is going on and when those guys are going to come around to their desk.
It could very easily cost you a day's worth of work from a wide range of employees. That is very expensive, especially in the software industry where deadlines tend to be tight to begin with.
This doesn't even take into account the fact that your internal records, your IP, etc would all be open to Borland's scrutiny.
This is not a minor quibble to be ignored, this is something that could potentially blow up in your face in a major way. It's well worth missing out on Kylix to avoid it.
Holy shit, that's a great t-shirt idea! Mind if I add it to my list of T-Shirt Ideas That May or May Not Come to Fruition, and May or May Not Profit Me in Some Way?
I don't know where you got this idea that I think ZDNet is making the whole thing up. I certainly never said anything to that effect.
My point is simple. Look at it the sequence of events:
ZDNet tosses a poll online.
Microsoft rigs the crap out of it.
Now, if you're ZDNet, what do you do? Do you pull the poll, admit that your polls are deeply flawed, and either fix the problem or cease doing them? Or do you toss up a headline that says "Microsoft rigged this poll, which means the topic is an important one, aren't we smart for hitting on it"?
The story ZDNet did on this poll deflects attention entirely from the question of the validity of their polls and thus, ZDNet's credibility as an information source. That is the very definition of 'spin'.
Look around you. There are a few people here saying "Well, online polls are crap anyway", but the overwhelming majority are talking about Microsoft's rigging the poll. The fact is, though, it was an ill-conceived, useless poll to begin with, as all ZDNet polls inherently are.
Microsoft clearly is at fault here, but the sidestepping by ZDNet is no less sleazy, in light of their supposed purpose.
The story here shouldn't be Microsoft, it should be ZDNet.
The headline should have read: Microsoft Proves ZDNet Polls Meaningless, ZDNet Worthless As Information Resource.
Instead, they're spinning it so it sounds like their poll revealed something interesting and newsworthy, namely that web services are such a Big Deal that Microsoft is willing to rig polls to increase their market share. I call bullshit; the utter worthlessness of their polls was revealed, and strong doubt should be cast on the validity of any information that comes out of a publisher that doesn't immediately dismiss such poll results and either seriously alter or cease altogether their polling activity. ZDNet isn't doing this; they're sidestepping instead, and trying to save face by masquerading this as intrepid reporting that provides some new insight.
My bet is that if the sudden reversal wasn't so blatantly obvious to the readers, we would never have heard a peep from ZDNet.
Slashdot Mirror
If that scroll wheel clicks into place a little when you change positions, I could see 'touch-typing' with it. You'd just have to get used to the relative positions of the 'keys' via scroll wheel position. Not too terribly different from touch-typing on a keyboard, I would think.
But then, we don't know what the thing feels like yet, so we can't really make that call.
The point is that if Apple doesn't feel like selling out to AOL/TW, AOL/TW isn't really in a position to make them. Apple's shareholders aren't going to be in a big hurry to sell to AOL/TW either, knowing that Apple has a fat stack of cash ready and waiting.
AOL and what army? Apple is sitting on an imperial shitload of cash... they're not likely to get bought by anyone.
hrm... a phone with a retractable headset would be nice, actually. Provided there was a catch so it didn't try to retract while you were wearing it, anyway.
So saith Frederick Engels. In summary, you need a state to take the extant wealth from its owners and to transition to a classless society where the state concerns itself merely with administration of production.
So, the first step in true Communism is to take over the state. Even the Communist Manifesto acknowledges that this must be done through violent revolution, because the capitalists running the show have stacked the deck so heavily in their favor in the politcal arena.
But violent revolution doesn't result in you taking over the state... it results in the state being destroyed, and in need of rebuilding. Of course, this is just a transitional state, so it doesn't need to be anything too fancy. And it needs to be small and efficient, so it can be reduced to factory and farm management as rapidly as possible. And of course, only the leaders of the revolution are trustworthy enough to be given any power in this state.
So the second step in the development of a true Communist system is a dictatorship. It's supposed to be a benign dictatorship where the man in charge steps down as soon as the means of production are back in the people's hands, but as the entire world knows from experience that never happens.
The problem with true Communism, comrade, is that you never get past the second step.
The CIA isn't always the picture of subtlety, you know.
Besides isn't 20+ bugs a little overkill? With that many you're almost certain to get caught and the you'd have to really want the intelligence enough that you'd hope a few wouldn't get found.
We really want the intelligence. Boy howdy, do we ever want that intelligence. The repercussions of being caught are really relatively minor, compared with the potential benefits should the bugs go undiscovered for a while.
On the other hand, it's equally fair to wonder whether the US wants a diplomatic incident? But I have a hard time justifying that one in these times. Isn't terrorism a good enough evil for the 21st century?
Ooh, goody! Let's play conspiracy theory!
No, terrorism isn't a good enough evil, at least not for military budgets. The American people are only going to put up with that war for so long. It'll be handy for political use, but not for pushing money around long-term. What's needed is a good, solid cold war. You get the occasional flash points (Vietnam, Korea, Guam...) for political brownie points, and you get to pump money into military contractors at a sustained high rate. Not to mention other strategic industries like, say, energy production.
On the other hand, maybe the general feeling is that the Chinese can only afford to distance themselves from us so much right now, so it's a great time to mess with 'em a little and see what we can get away with.
China doesn't give Communism a bad name, Communism gives Communism a bad name. Can you name a single Communist nation that you would hold up as a shining beacon to the rest of the world?
Now, a certain degree of socialism, on the other hand... I'm down with that.
Ah, right on. Thanks... I'd never heard the term.
This is why, in terms of English, weight is treated as a scalar... because we always know which two bodies we're talking about, and which one's weight we're measuring relative to the other. In other words, if we're talking about the weight of some body on earth (and we usually are), we know that the weight is toward the earth so we can just leave that part out. Incidentally, we also know, roughly, the gravitational acceleration between the two bodies, so we tend to ignore that, too, and just treat weight as a measurement of mass... which it is, if you just go to the trouble of doing the simple math to throw away a constant and ignore an obvious direction.
You're right, the Earth does weigh 150lbs. on me, in physical terms. In English terms, that's an absurd image, as "weight" is generally assumed to be the property of a smaller object with reference to, say, a planet. So there I was debating English. But I still debate your contention that physical "weight" is bidirectional. It's just a measurement that can be taken from either side with the same result. :)
That's what makes it useful. The earth does not weight 150 lbs. on me, nor do the earth and I weigh 150 lbs. toward each other. I weigh 150 lbs. on earth.
Weight is by its nature unidirectional, and since the relative direction doesn't ever change, it can safely be treated as scalar. And is.
Are those anything like, um, reflectors? Or mirrors, even?
Weight is too a vector. You weight X lbs, straight down. :)
My second favorite Work Word is "Weltanschauung", which is useful when you spend a lot of time telling people how it is.
Come to think of it, I still don't get why the hell they don't just use gopher. The protocol is there, it's lightweight, and it's perfect for providing text-based menus to access text content.
Oh, wait. These are phone companies...
But the WWW included gopher. That's what I thought was so cool about the Web. You had all those protocols under one roof, with one uniform method of accessing them! telnet, gopher, ftp, the archie servers...
Funny how I use my web browser for http almost exclusively now.
But wow, when I fired up Mosaic for the first time and went to the Louvre's site... that was a real kick. "Look! You can view their collection on the Internet!" *clickclickclick*
Then again, I have no TV service.
I imagine it runs on top of X...
See other thread.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Doesn't say 'shall not be violated by the Government', see? So it protects you from search and seizure by anyone who doesn't have a warrant as described.
Imagine your developers each spending an hour or two sitting on their hands while a Borland rep scopes out their machine, and five of your management staff actively engaged in the process. Meanwhile, the rest of your developers aren't getting much work done either, because they're too busy wondering what the hell is going on and when those guys are going to come around to their desk.
It could very easily cost you a day's worth of work from a wide range of employees. That is very expensive, especially in the software industry where deadlines tend to be tight to begin with.
This doesn't even take into account the fact that your internal records, your IP, etc would all be open to Borland's scrutiny.
This is not a minor quibble to be ignored, this is something that could potentially blow up in your face in a major way. It's well worth missing out on Kylix to avoid it.
Holy shit, that's a great t-shirt idea! Mind if I add it to my list of T-Shirt Ideas That May or May Not Come to Fruition, and May or May Not Profit Me in Some Way?
(I'd be happy to include an attribution)
My point is simple. Look at it the sequence of events:
Now, if you're ZDNet, what do you do? Do you pull the poll, admit that your polls are deeply flawed, and either fix the problem or cease doing them? Or do you toss up a headline that says "Microsoft rigged this poll, which means the topic is an important one, aren't we smart for hitting on it"?
The story ZDNet did on this poll deflects attention entirely from the question of the validity of their polls and thus, ZDNet's credibility as an information source. That is the very definition of 'spin'.
Look around you. There are a few people here saying "Well, online polls are crap anyway", but the overwhelming majority are talking about Microsoft's rigging the poll. The fact is, though, it was an ill-conceived, useless poll to begin with, as all ZDNet polls inherently are.
Microsoft clearly is at fault here, but the sidestepping by ZDNet is no less sleazy, in light of their supposed purpose.
Hi. How the hell is the above post a troll? Did I post it to the ZDNet Editors Fan Club message boards?
The headline should have read: Microsoft Proves ZDNet Polls Meaningless, ZDNet Worthless As Information Resource.
Instead, they're spinning it so it sounds like their poll revealed something interesting and newsworthy, namely that web services are such a Big Deal that Microsoft is willing to rig polls to increase their market share. I call bullshit; the utter worthlessness of their polls was revealed, and strong doubt should be cast on the validity of any information that comes out of a publisher that doesn't immediately dismiss such poll results and either seriously alter or cease altogether their polling activity. ZDNet isn't doing this; they're sidestepping instead, and trying to save face by masquerading this as intrepid reporting that provides some new insight.
My bet is that if the sudden reversal wasn't so blatantly obvious to the readers, we would never have heard a peep from ZDNet.