Even Microsoft's own DRM lends to this: It isn't tied to a single music store or mp3 player, and it isn't fixed in what it controls - companies protecting content can choose how restrictive it should be, resulting in open competition for consumers without fractured standards - if consumers don't like the restrictions placed on them by music store A, they can just go to music store B and get the same music, that will play on the same mp3 player, but with less restrictions.
Now you're falling for the "Microsoft is all about freedom" marketing blitz. Let me define it a little plainer, "Microsoft is all about keeping you running Windows."
Microsoft will let your music be as free as you like as long as they get a cut and you are running the approved OS.
MS RowBoat (TM) Will NOT come with a bailing bucket as previously speculated, however their new SpoonCare service will send users a new BailingSpoon (TM) update every month. Those who decide not to subscribe to SpoonCare will still be provided with a free monthly CorkPlug Update.
This article really pinpoints to me one of the best things of all about Apple switching to Intel, REAL OS COMPETITION. Now at last if Windows seems dog slow, you can't claim it's the Intel chip... or when the Finder seems the suckage, you KNOW it's the Finder and not the PPC chip running at a lower MHz. Once we start seeing these systems getting into people's hands and they notice a real difference between the two OS' on the same hardware you can bet they'll be whining about it and performance will definitely be a focus for both OS venders. In the past they could have been lax about it... thinking "But what can they compare it to?" but now if they can show that Quartz drawing is 3x slower than DirectX or vice versa, you can bet there will be performance updates in the near future. This is better for all of us.
P.S. Linux doesn't really count in this manner because it gets ignored as a "geek OS" and not really something anybody can run.
From what I've seen lately with people "brickifying" their iMacs... isn't it incredibly simple to do this with the latest EFI spec? As simple as dropping a rootme.efi file onto a hard drive and rebooting. Fortunately you have to use sudo to enable those EFI modules, won't be so pretty when Windows starts using it though.
Just out of curiosity's sake, I've always wondered what could be used to falsify the theory of evolution as well.
I know in the past it was largely taught that animals slowly evolved over millions of years at a fairly steady rate. Later as many fossils seemed to show a large variety of animals appearing at roughly the same time so then the more accepted theory of evolution changed to rapid spontaneous changes after long periods of stability.
Then others claimed various natural features that supposedly could never evolve that way, as far as I know those have been explained with possible evolutionary paths.
So then, seriously my question is... is there any way that evolution can now be falsified? Would there be any experiment at all that could change the scientific communities view on this? I'm not trying to look like some expert or say I know what's wrong with science or evolution... I'm just wondering a bit how the falsifiability argument works when pointed the other way. Isn't the theory of evolution a bit too nebulous to be falsified? Or does that argument not apply to it for some reason?
Hello. I know that what I'm about to claim is not in line with "standard" Christianity... but from your posts you show an open-mindedness and preference for logic in your beliefs, perhaps this will interest you.
I stated http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=174656 &cid=14527870earlier that in the scriptures the soul really means the person himself and not some immortal energy force living inside the body. If you take a look at those scriptures as well as Ezekiel 18:4 (It says soul in Hebrew, you'll have to check various translations to find it, I suggest the Sword Project) you'll see that at death a person simply ceases to exist. Or as Jesus explained they are "sleeping" in death. I'd be glad to explain more if you have any questions, for now I'll answer from my beliefs your three questions.
1. Birthdays are from a non-Christian background and were later assimilated, but the earlier Christians did not celebrate them. Expecting it to philosophically align with true Christian beliefs is expecting to much.
2. As I previously explained and as the Hebrews once believed, a person when dead is simply that... dead. Belief that people immediately go to Hell after death ignore the fact that death is payment for our sins and there is no further punishment. (Romans 6:7,23) As for the resurrection, John 5:28,29 is a good place to start... remember that if all are already in heaven or hell immediately following death the resurrection makes no sense. It is spoken of an event that WILL happen, not one that continues as people die.
3. Yes many incorrectly assume that a soul exists independently of the fleshly body, but this ignores scientific facts such as brain damage and chemical imbalances. Once again, we ARE souls... as long as we are breathing (the root of the Hebrew word for soul is breath) we continue to live as souls, regardless of our mental capacities or functions being impaired.
Of course I've simplified things a little bit, I haven't discussed heaven at all nor people who can or have gone there. That's another subject, and as food for thought on that... consider that in Jesus' time no man had yet ascended into heaven. (John 3:13) If there were only a heaven and a fiery hell as destinations after death, then where would Moses, Noah and others await their resurrection? It becomes clear if one is willing to look into the Hebrew word "Sheol" which explains where they are resting. Hope this helps. Your background leads me to believe that you wouldn't be inclined to dogmatic prejudice against differing ideas, these beliefs have brought death for centuries. Fortunately people don't get burned at stakes for disagreeing with the religious beliefs of those in power anymore.:-)
Wow a religious question asked and lots of discussion ensues with no scriptures being used... typical.
I'll throw this one in as food for thought. I'd do more but I gotta split right now. From Ecclesiastes 9.
4 For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5 For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. 6 Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun. 7 Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. 8 Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment. 9 Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun. 10 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.
So are you SURE the soul is immortal and life continues after death? Actually a living person IS a soul Ge.2:7, Nu.6:6, etc... a "dead soul" is usually translated "dead body" or "dead person" depending on your bible. So we ARE souls, we do not HAVE souls. That's why you occasionally hear things like "5 souls perished in the accident". It's an archaic usage which points to the original meaning. In addition, animals also ARE souls Ge.1:20, 1:24, etc... the exercise is left to the reader to check the hebrew if their bible prefers to leave out the literal meaning instead of using the correct word "soul".
Remember that modern day religions very rarely follow the beliefs and practices of the originals... after all, that's why there's so many kinds of "Christianity". (Luke 18:8)
Actually didn't the Betamax decision give us the right to time-shift only? That was the sufficient non-infringing use of VCR's which allowed us to have them right? Keeping an archive copy for perpetual use was not a right given if I understand correctly. It seems the time-shifting argument has been abused to mean "If it was on TV it's mine forever"... but technically we have no such right do we? Anybody know if legally we can record shows and watch them more than once?
Here's the rest of the story. The hardware that goes into personal computers built by Dell, Lenovo, etc. is dirt cheap, and the profit margins are ultra-thin. Meanwhile the x86 Macs command a price premium because Apple builds them. If everyone could run the new Mac OS on an regular PC, who would want to buy the x86 Macs?
But the real story is the one that nobody seems to notice, for the last 15 years Microsoft has made all the profits that the computer resellers should have been making. Their large bulk is entirely made up of the razor-thin margins everybody else accepts for them. Bill Gates brags about brining the PC "ecosystem" to the world, cheap commodity computers that you can throw together and whip out of almost anything. What he doesn't mention is that he planned the whole thing back when Microsoft first sold DOS to IBM... we'll profit from everybody else's hard work. Everytime you see a hardware manufacturer go out of business, it's just a few hundred million MS got instead of them. The world was suckered in by them, if we had kept the old model of different companies making different operating systems the world could have been much nicer these days and the internet would definitely be more standardized. Imagine if MS hadn't killed BE... instead of Intel and MS ruling the desktop market for so long and forcing single threaded high-Megahurtz toaster oven computers on the world, we could have had BeOS 7 systems with Quad PPC chips with 4 cores on each by now. Imagine if Amiga could have stayed profitable... this whole stupid soap-opera episode of D'oh! Finally making the Pentium M could have been avoided. There's be a lot more nice OS' out there and some great hardware choices but... commodity won, and so did Bill. I really hope Apple can get people to think about quality once again.
ExpressCard/54 adapters for Firewire 800 already exist, an ExpressCard/34 version should come out soon once these laptops are shipping. ExpressCard has a 250MBps limit in each direction so theoretically you can get 500MBps if computer and device are both going full blast. Yes I did purposely capitalize that MBps... Firewire 800 has 800Mbps which would be 100MBps, which clearly gets it smoked by the new ExpressCard. Nice stuff, I'd never heard of it til today. What's the point in going with FW800 or even the newest FW1600 when they can already leap right past them and avoid a legacy connector.
The lousy software that has bugs or lacks features or is too difficult to use makes us angry, so the Shrink / Emotional Paperclip pops up and makes everything better. Right.
"I can see that MS Office is frustrating you, would you like to download OpenOffice?"
Not likely.
More likely it'll tune how many ads pop up or show on a given webpage, if you don't mind they'll crank it up til you do, then back off just enough. Those who are patient will have more ads, those who are easily upset will have nice ad-free computers. Yeah right.
Okay, they notice you're stressed out and they'll deliver TARGETED ADS chosen to make you feel better.
No way this thing will fix software though, unless it's used in the QA process to find bad design and user frustration. Still can't fix software already made.
Hey guys, I'm deaf. Been wondering about this for a long time, is there any kind of open source voice recognition package I could pipe audio through and get some kind of recognizable text? Phonetic is fine, I'd just love to be able to get a rough idea of what's being said in things like this and of course ancient TV released on DVD's with no subtitles or captions arrrggghh! Hey put that in a Knoppix distro and you've got Deafix!
I just bought the Red and Stimpy DVD set which clearly states it's Close Captioned on every single piece of the package and yet there's NOTHING there. I get stuck with this kind of stuff all the time.
From the article... Over the past decade, however, the University of Tokyo's Akeno Giant Air Shower Array - 111 particle detectors spread out over 100 square kilometres - has detected several cosmic rays above the GZK limit. In theory, they can only have come from within our galaxy, avoiding an energy-sapping journey across the cosmos. However, astronomers can find no source for these cosmic rays in our galaxy. So what is going on?
Slashdot Mirror
Now you're falling for the "Microsoft is all about freedom" marketing blitz. Let me define it a little plainer, "Microsoft is all about keeping you running Windows."
Microsoft will let your music be as free as you like as long as they get a cut and you are running the approved OS.
They'd like to do more research, but ethical issues make it tough - even these subjects had to spend three hours being poked and prodded!
I don't know... sounds like something quite a few people would pay good money for.
MS RowBoat (TM) Will NOT come with a bailing bucket as previously speculated, however their new SpoonCare service will send users a new BailingSpoon (TM) update every month. Those who decide not to subscribe to SpoonCare will still be provided with a free monthly CorkPlug Update.
This article really pinpoints to me one of the best things of all about Apple switching to Intel, REAL OS COMPETITION. Now at last if Windows seems dog slow, you can't claim it's the Intel chip... or when the Finder seems the suckage, you KNOW it's the Finder and not the PPC chip running at a lower MHz. Once we start seeing these systems getting into people's hands and they notice a real difference between the two OS' on the same hardware you can bet they'll be whining about it and performance will definitely be a focus for both OS venders. In the past they could have been lax about it... thinking "But what can they compare it to?" but now if they can show that Quartz drawing is 3x slower than DirectX or vice versa, you can bet there will be performance updates in the near future. This is better for all of us.
P.S. Linux doesn't really count in this manner because it gets ignored as a "geek OS" and not really something anybody can run.
From what I've seen lately with people "brickifying" their iMacs... isn't it incredibly simple to do this with the latest EFI spec? As simple as dropping a rootme.efi file onto a hard drive and rebooting. Fortunately you have to use sudo to enable those EFI modules, won't be so pretty when Windows starts using it though.
until it pops.
Just out of curiosity's sake, I've always wondered what could be used to falsify the theory of evolution as well.
I know in the past it was largely taught that animals slowly evolved over millions of years at a fairly steady rate. Later as many fossils seemed to show a large variety of animals appearing at roughly the same time so then the more accepted theory of evolution changed to rapid spontaneous changes after long periods of stability.
Then others claimed various natural features that supposedly could never evolve that way, as far as I know those have been explained with possible evolutionary paths.
So then, seriously my question is... is there any way that evolution can now be falsified? Would there be any experiment at all that could change the scientific communities view on this? I'm not trying to look like some expert or say I know what's wrong with science or evolution... I'm just wondering a bit how the falsifiability argument works when pointed the other way. Isn't the theory of evolution a bit too nebulous to be falsified? Or does that argument not apply to it for some reason?
Hello. I know that what I'm about to claim is not in line with "standard" Christianity... but from your posts you show an open-mindedness and preference for logic in your beliefs, perhaps this will interest you.
6 &cid=14527870earlier that in the scriptures the soul really means the person himself and not some immortal energy force living inside the body. If you take a look at those scriptures as well as Ezekiel 18:4 (It says soul in Hebrew, you'll have to check various translations to find it, I suggest the Sword Project) you'll see that at death a person simply ceases to exist. Or as Jesus explained they are "sleeping" in death. I'd be glad to explain more if you have any questions, for now I'll answer from my beliefs your three questions.
... remember that if all are already in heaven or hell immediately following death the resurrection makes no sense. It is spoken of an event that WILL happen, not one that continues as people die.
:-)
I stated http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=17465
1. Birthdays are from a non-Christian background and were later assimilated, but the earlier Christians did not celebrate them. Expecting it to philosophically align with true Christian beliefs is expecting to much.
2. As I previously explained and as the Hebrews once believed, a person when dead is simply that... dead. Belief that people immediately go to Hell after death ignore the fact that death is payment for our sins and there is no further punishment. (Romans 6:7,23) As for the resurrection, John 5:28,29 is a good place to start
3. Yes many incorrectly assume that a soul exists independently of the fleshly body, but this ignores scientific facts such as brain damage and chemical imbalances. Once again, we ARE souls... as long as we are breathing (the root of the Hebrew word for soul is breath) we continue to live as souls, regardless of our mental capacities or functions being impaired.
Of course I've simplified things a little bit, I haven't discussed heaven at all nor people who can or have gone there. That's another subject, and as food for thought on that... consider that in Jesus' time no man had yet ascended into heaven. (John 3:13) If there were only a heaven and a fiery hell as destinations after death, then where would Moses, Noah and others await their resurrection? It becomes clear if one is willing to look into the Hebrew word "Sheol" which explains where they are resting. Hope this helps. Your background leads me to believe that you wouldn't be inclined to dogmatic prejudice against differing ideas, these beliefs have brought death for centuries. Fortunately people don't get burned at stakes for disagreeing with the religious beliefs of those in power anymore.
Wow a religious question asked and lots of discussion ensues with no scriptures being used... typical.
I'll throw this one in as food for thought. I'd do more but I gotta split right now. From Ecclesiastes 9.
4 For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5 For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. 6 Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun. 7 Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works. 8 Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment. 9 Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun. 10 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.
So are you SURE the soul is immortal and life continues after death? Actually a living person IS a soul Ge.2:7, Nu.6:6, etc... a "dead soul" is usually translated "dead body" or "dead person" depending on your bible. So we ARE souls, we do not HAVE souls. That's why you occasionally hear things like "5 souls perished in the accident". It's an archaic usage which points to the original meaning. In addition, animals also ARE souls Ge.1:20, 1:24, etc... the exercise is left to the reader to check the hebrew if their bible prefers to leave out the literal meaning instead of using the correct word "soul".
Remember that modern day religions very rarely follow the beliefs and practices of the originals... after all, that's why there's so many kinds of "Christianity". (Luke 18:8)
Thanks for the new sig dude!
Actually didn't the Betamax decision give us the right to time-shift only? That was the sufficient non-infringing use of VCR's which allowed us to have them right? Keeping an archive copy for perpetual use was not a right given if I understand correctly. It seems the time-shifting argument has been abused to mean "If it was on TV it's mine forever"... but technically we have no such right do we? Anybody know if legally we can record shows and watch them more than once?
Here's the rest of the story. The hardware that goes into personal computers built by Dell, Lenovo, etc. is dirt cheap, and the profit margins are ultra-thin. Meanwhile the x86 Macs command a price premium because Apple builds them. If everyone could run the new Mac OS on an regular PC, who would want to buy the x86 Macs?
But the real story is the one that nobody seems to notice, for the last 15 years Microsoft has made all the profits that the computer resellers should have been making. Their large bulk is entirely made up of the razor-thin margins everybody else accepts for them. Bill Gates brags about brining the PC "ecosystem" to the world, cheap commodity computers that you can throw together and whip out of almost anything. What he doesn't mention is that he planned the whole thing back when Microsoft first sold DOS to IBM... we'll profit from everybody else's hard work. Everytime you see a hardware manufacturer go out of business, it's just a few hundred million MS got instead of them. The world was suckered in by them, if we had kept the old model of different companies making different operating systems the world could have been much nicer these days and the internet would definitely be more standardized. Imagine if MS hadn't killed BE... instead of Intel and MS ruling the desktop market for so long and forcing single threaded high-Megahurtz toaster oven computers on the world, we could have had BeOS 7 systems with Quad PPC chips with 4 cores on each by now. Imagine if Amiga could have stayed profitable... this whole stupid soap-opera episode of D'oh! Finally making the Pentium M could have been avoided. There's be a lot more nice OS' out there and some great hardware choices but... commodity won, and so did Bill. I really hope Apple can get people to think about quality once again.
BMW owners found less likely to siphon gas than Ford owners.
I don't want other people knowing that my most listened to album is Tom Dooley and Other Hits by The Kingston Trio.
Your secret's safe with us!
Heh... and here I was thinking the link would explain the Flying Spaghetti Monsterism explanation of Black Holes.
ExpressCard/54 adapters for Firewire 800 already exist, an ExpressCard/34 version should come out soon once these laptops are shipping. ExpressCard has a 250MBps limit in each direction so theoretically you can get 500MBps if computer and device are both going full blast. Yes I did purposely capitalize that MBps... Firewire 800 has 800Mbps which would be 100MBps, which clearly gets it smoked by the new ExpressCard. Nice stuff, I'd never heard of it til today. What's the point in going with FW800 or even the newest FW1600 when they can already leap right past them and avoid a legacy connector.
The lousy software that has bugs or lacks features or is too difficult to use makes us angry, so the Shrink / Emotional Paperclip pops up and makes everything better. Right.
"I can see that MS Office is frustrating you, would you like to download OpenOffice?"
Not likely.
More likely it'll tune how many ads pop up or show on a given webpage, if you don't mind they'll crank it up til you do, then back off just enough. Those who are patient will have more ads, those who are easily upset will have nice ad-free computers. Yeah right.
Okay, they notice you're stressed out and they'll deliver TARGETED ADS chosen to make you feel better.
No way this thing will fix software though, unless it's used in the QA process to find bad design and user frustration. Still can't fix software already made.
Will we allow iTunes downloads? Ummm... We'll TRY!
Whatever. They just don't want to pay full consumer prices for 3 CDs worth of music and Apple won't give them a discount.
They had the balls to name it DASHBOARD.
Yet another way Nintendo is like Apple.
I smell a DMCA violation here. Prepare for takedown. <Buzzes lawyers>
Hrrmmm... actually I just tried them out on my laptop and the CC works fine. Guess my TV decoder is starting to conk out on me.
Hey guys, I'm deaf. Been wondering about this for a long time, is there any kind of open source voice recognition package I could pipe audio through and get some kind of recognizable text? Phonetic is fine, I'd just love to be able to get a rough idea of what's being said in things like this and of course ancient TV released on DVD's with no subtitles or captions arrrggghh! Hey put that in a Knoppix distro and you've got Deafix!
I just bought the Red and Stimpy DVD set which clearly states it's Close Captioned on every single piece of the package and yet there's NOTHING there. I get stuck with this kind of stuff all the time.
From the article...
Over the past decade, however, the University of Tokyo's Akeno Giant Air Shower Array - 111 particle detectors spread out over 100 square kilometres - has detected several cosmic rays above the GZK limit. In theory, they can only have come from within our galaxy, avoiding an energy-sapping journey across the cosmos. However, astronomers can find no source for these cosmic rays in our galaxy. So what is going on?
Bird droppings.
Hey THANKS! I feel a lot better already. :D