The difference isn't the hardware, it's the software. Comparing the iPad to a windows tablet is like comparing a car GPS to an iPhone because they both have similar hardware.
So, which ones of the stories are not newsworthy? Or do you not want to hear them simply because the word "Apple" appears in them, regardless of whether they're relevant?
Apple's announcement makes it clear that they are not selling more because they can't produce them fast enough. We won't know how many they can actually sell until they manage to fill the channels.
Look at your finger. Does it look like a mouse to you? No? Then why did all previous tablet computers assume that people wanted to use an operating system designed for a mouse with their fingers? Just because the iPad and some crappy Windows tablet are both flat doesn't meant they're the same thing.
Wine making is not subjective. Unless you think chemistry is subjective?
That's a bit of a non sequitur. Sure, wine making uses concepts from chemistry. However, that doesn't make it objective. That would be like saying "homeopathy is not subjective because pill manufacturers use ideas from chemistry to make their sugar pills". Or like saying "Scientology is objective because it includes and builds on certain scientific ideas."
The scientific method is quite clearly defined. Whenever we apply it to wine (e.g. when we do double-blind experiments), the result is that wine is entirely subjective.
I think the gun comparison is interesting. You can legally buy a gun, but you're not allowed to shoot people with it (usually). Likewise, it should be okay to buy an R4, and illegal to use it for piracy. And there actually are valid reasons for owning an R4.
Presumably, part of the idea is to discourage others from doing the same thing. If you have a fake diploma, chances are you know less about the topic than you say you do, so it's something that should be discouraged.
College degrees are way overrated. This is coming from someone with multiple degrees from MIT, Harvard, and Oxford.
Maybe you did something wrong. Personally, I learned a lot in school, and when studying. Including a ton of stuff I would not have learned if I had spent the same amount of time working, but which turned out to be a tremendous help when doing actual work (stuff that immediately comes to mind would be how to write an application in assembly and C, and how to write an operating system, which makes it easier to figure out what's going on when you're programming in a higher-level language; also, how to write a compiler, which includes useful things like writing parsers and state machines, which helps me write proper solutions to problems that I would otherwise have tried to implement using a bunch of regexes).
There's also the point that nothing stops you from working while you're studying, especially if you're studying something like comp sci. Lots of great companies came out of a student's side project.
They may spend an hour each day being acquainted with world affairs, but 90% of that news will have absolutely no effect on their lives other than to let them feel smug about being well informed. (...) If anything, I see this as a positive trend.
I don't, and I can't see how you could possibly say that. I think the problem here is your idea that people who know stuff are just smug know-it-alls. This anti-intellectual concept is misguided, as can be plainly seen in American politics, where the minority party is currently capable of pretty much stopping one branch of government from working, without anyone caring much about it. Why don't people care about it? Probably because the specific rules of who gets to filibuster, how exactly that works and what can be done about it is boring. It's much more interesting to read about the latest sex scandal.
The simple fact is that most of these things you think have no effect on people's lives actually do have an effect on their lives. And they are important things to know when you decide, say, who to vote for. These people are not smug, they are simply doing their part in the political system. They are informing themselves so they can make informed decisions when they're asked to.
He's not making any judgements about the games themselves, except that they don't seem to be making enough money to recoup their development costs. Which, if true, would be a problem regardless of the game content.
Without taking a risk on new franchises, you won't have established franchises you can milk in the future. Which is exactly how EA got into its current hole. They're doing the right thing now, even if it's not producing immediate profits for them.
I actually like the way EA has been taking. They're doing a lot more original, new IP and games than some years ago - last year notably Dead Space, Mirror's Edge, Dragon Age Origins.
This is correct. What Mitch Lasky does not seem to understand is that these new IPs don't have to be immediate monetary successes. They are investments in the future. To understand how that works, one only needs to look at EAs past. They got into the current situation by not starting enough new franchises. Eventually, yearly updates to established franchises were not enough for EA to sustain their business. Hence, EA is failing because they did not invest in new IPs in the past, not because they invest in them now.
Activision is now going down that same path. They made a ton of money with risky, interesting new IPs such as Tony Hawk's and Guitar Hero. Now that they are on top, they're milking these franchises for all they're worth, but not investing in new, interesting franchises they can milk in the future - they're doing exactly what EA has been doing five years ago, and they will end up in the position EA is right now.
People like Mitch Lasky got EA into the position they're now. These people are the cause of EA's problem, not its solution. They need to shut their pie holes.
The risk here is that if somebody doesn't like what you're doing, they can prevent you from selling your product, so you've wasted all of your investment. One example of this are the various clones of The Settlers which were available on the iTunes store for a while. They can't be sold anymore.
Never mind that Wave is useless at this point; chicken and egg problem - nobody uses wave so nobody starts using it.
We're using Wave for planning and collaboration on a number of projects. It's pretty cool, and some of my friends have already basically abandonned e-mail in favour of Wave. You just need enough invites to get all of your friends on there (which works quite well if you have less than about 20 friends:-).
There's still room for error there though, and that is simply unacceptable based upon how we use our computers today.
Well, no. Computers can always be wrong. Repeat the calculation often enough, and you'll be better than your average PC. Besides, as RudeIota notes, sometimes the calculation is hard, but verifying the result is trivial (that is often the case in cryptography, for example). In those cases, you can just repeat the calculation until it's correct.
If pictures are conclusive proof, then W proves that white people are chimps as well.
Didn't blacks evolve BEFORE whites? Didn't whites evolve FROM blacks?
That's not how evolution works. All humans alive today have a common ancestor. Similarly, all humans alive today have evolved for the same period of time. In other words, today's white people did not evolve from today's black people.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference isn't the hardware, it's the software. Comparing the iPad to a windows tablet is like comparing a car GPS to an iPhone because they both have similar hardware.
So, which ones of the stories are not newsworthy? Or do you not want to hear them simply because the word "Apple" appears in them, regardless of whether they're relevant?
Apple's announcement makes it clear that they are not selling more because they can't produce them fast enough. We won't know how many they can actually sell until they manage to fill the channels.
Look at your finger. Does it look like a mouse to you? No? Then why did all previous tablet computers assume that people wanted to use an operating system designed for a mouse with their fingers? Just because the iPad and some crappy Windows tablet are both flat doesn't meant they're the same thing.
The release date for many European countries was well-known. Apple Switzerland had it in a huge banner taking over the whole site.
That's a bit of a non sequitur. Sure, wine making uses concepts from chemistry. However, that doesn't make it objective. That would be like saying "homeopathy is not subjective because pill manufacturers use ideas from chemistry to make their sugar pills". Or like saying "Scientology is objective because it includes and builds on certain scientific ideas."
The scientific method is quite clearly defined. Whenever we apply it to wine (e.g. when we do double-blind experiments), the result is that wine is entirely subjective.
+1 Funny :-)
The word used to describe things which look like science but are entirely subjective is typically "pseudo science", not "science" :-)
Your own experience is subjective. I've seen blind tests where professional wine testers were unable to taste the difference between white wine with red food coloring, and actual red wine. In another test, experts rated cheap wine highly, and expensive wine poorly when the labels were exchanged. Even the background colors influence how wine is evaluated. As far as I can tell, it's all bullshit.
I think the gun comparison is interesting. You can legally buy a gun, but you're not allowed to shoot people with it (usually). Likewise, it should be okay to buy an R4, and illegal to use it for piracy. And there actually are valid reasons for owning an R4.
Also, the unlocked rainbow levels are insane.
I did not think that certain levels in Super Mario Galaxy were particularly easy, to be honest.
Xing is a German site similar to LinkedIn. It's quite popular in Europe. Nothing to do with BSD, GNU or anything else along those lines.
Presumably, part of the idea is to discourage others from doing the same thing. If you have a fake diploma, chances are you know less about the topic than you say you do, so it's something that should be discouraged.
College degrees are way overrated. This is coming from someone with multiple degrees from MIT, Harvard, and Oxford.
Maybe you did something wrong. Personally, I learned a lot in school, and when studying. Including a ton of stuff I would not have learned if I had spent the same amount of time working, but which turned out to be a tremendous help when doing actual work (stuff that immediately comes to mind would be how to write an application in assembly and C, and how to write an operating system, which makes it easier to figure out what's going on when you're programming in a higher-level language; also, how to write a compiler, which includes useful things like writing parsers and state machines, which helps me write proper solutions to problems that I would otherwise have tried to implement using a bunch of regexes).
There's also the point that nothing stops you from working while you're studying, especially if you're studying something like comp sci. Lots of great companies came out of a student's side project.
I don't, and I can't see how you could possibly say that. I think the problem here is your idea that people who know stuff are just smug know-it-alls. This anti-intellectual concept is misguided, as can be plainly seen in American politics, where the minority party is currently capable of pretty much stopping one branch of government from working, without anyone caring much about it. Why don't people care about it? Probably because the specific rules of who gets to filibuster, how exactly that works and what can be done about it is boring. It's much more interesting to read about the latest sex scandal.
The simple fact is that most of these things you think have no effect on people's lives actually do have an effect on their lives. And they are important things to know when you decide, say, who to vote for. These people are not smug, they are simply doing their part in the political system. They are informing themselves so they can make informed decisions when they're asked to.
The article doesn't say that realism is the only relevant factor.
The answer is that you should do user testing.
Without taking a risk on new franchises, you won't have established franchises you can milk in the future. Which is exactly how EA got into its current hole. They're doing the right thing now, even if it's not producing immediate profits for them.
This is correct. What Mitch Lasky does not seem to understand is that these new IPs don't have to be immediate monetary successes. They are investments in the future. To understand how that works, one only needs to look at EAs past. They got into the current situation by not starting enough new franchises. Eventually, yearly updates to established franchises were not enough for EA to sustain their business. Hence, EA is failing because they did not invest in new IPs in the past, not because they invest in them now.
Activision is now going down that same path. They made a ton of money with risky, interesting new IPs such as Tony Hawk's and Guitar Hero. Now that they are on top, they're milking these franchises for all they're worth, but not investing in new, interesting franchises they can milk in the future - they're doing exactly what EA has been doing five years ago, and they will end up in the position EA is right now.
People like Mitch Lasky got EA into the position they're now. These people are the cause of EA's problem, not its solution. They need to shut their pie holes.
The risk here is that if somebody doesn't like what you're doing, they can prevent you from selling your product, so you've wasted all of your investment. One example of this are the various clones of The Settlers which were available on the iTunes store for a while. They can't be sold anymore.
I guess that proves that evolution always results in the same end product.
We're using Wave for planning and collaboration on a number of projects. It's pretty cool, and some of my friends have already basically abandonned e-mail in favour of Wave. You just need enough invites to get all of your friends on there (which works quite well if you have less than about 20 friends :-).
There's still room for error there though, and that is simply unacceptable based upon how we use our computers today.
Well, no. Computers can always be wrong. Repeat the calculation often enough, and you'll be better than your average PC. Besides, as RudeIota notes, sometimes the calculation is hard, but verifying the result is trivial (that is often the case in cryptography, for example). In those cases, you can just repeat the calculation until it's correct.
She sure looks like a chimp in this picture:
If pictures are conclusive proof, then W proves that white people are chimps as well.
Didn't blacks evolve BEFORE whites? Didn't whites evolve FROM blacks?
That's not how evolution works. All humans alive today have a common ancestor. Similarly, all humans alive today have evolved for the same period of time. In other words, today's white people did not evolve from today's black people.