So because there are 5,250 bittorrent options available for WinXP, and only 50 for the Mac (one of which is all you'd ever need), the MS platform is somehow superior?
Kind of, yes;) Insightful and valid point you have: If you don't know where to get, say, pirated Office for Mac but do know where to get pirated Office for Windows, then Windows will probably "win out", even though it's a totally unfair "judgment"/decision, it remains a factor.
BTW I'm not a "Windows person", I just genuinely want to know because I really do (yes I admit to this illicit stuff) rip DVDs on my Mac system but always have to resort to Windows to shrink the damn thing, and I want to rather use the Mac to do so (and am too cheap to fork over a few bucks for it, especially since I also have a Windows machine so I can just as well use DVDShrink).
Why does the MacMini suddenly turn into a MacBook when he tries to return it?
He started with a Mini, then returned it and bought a MacBook. From the first page:
"As I got into the testing, it quickly became apparent that the Mac Mini was sluggish and underpowered. Everything kept coming back to the same cause - there was not enough memory in the machine. Since I didn't want my experiences with the hardware to taint my results evaluating the operating system, I returned the Mac Mini to the Apple Store after performing as many tests on it as possible. I then headed over to Fry's Electronics in Austin and left with an open-box MacBook"
I'm wondering what kind of tasks he's performing whereby 512MB was definitely far too little, because they definitely weren't ordinary everyday tasks representative of what the 'man on the street' does with his/her Mac. He's full of BS. I have an early model Mac Mini with only 256MB RAM and I have to be doing quite a lot before it even starts noticeably swopping, it's very smooth most of the time, and I do quite a lot of different things with it.
I'm definitely not a Mac 'fanboy' but the review seems undoubtedly slanted against Mac. He also claims:
... you'd think that it would know when 512MB of RAM isn't enough.... only one corporation with blood on its hands... we marvel at the fact that... it would conscionably sell a computer that it knew would not perform up to par and would be virtually unusable under any kind of duress.
"Virtually unusable" with 512MB RAM? I have one of the first Mac Minis with only a meagre 256MB RAM, and I use it all the time for many kinds of tasks and actually pretty seldom run into any performance problems. Yet with horrendously over-dramatized hyperbole he states Apple has "blood on its hands" for releasing a machine with "only" 512MB RAM?
Either he is a serious power-user with intensive day-to-day tasks (in which case his criticism has no relevance for the man on the street), or he is outright lying.
He also criticizes that its X support is not great. But Windows comes with all of absolutely no X support!? He also points out that if you want to do serious photo-editing you need to pay for Photoshop - gee, I didn't know the Windows version of Photoshop was free. And there is GIMP for Mac so he can't complain that its because Photoshop is the only option or something.
Either the reviewer is trolling for ad-views for his website, or he is a corporate shill for MS, or he is biased and using different sets of standards to evaluate the Mac vs. (one can only presume) Windows.
He mentions that he can't find any DVD shrinking software. He must have not looked very hard, as I know Mac the Ripper is just one of many free programs that do just that.
MacTheRipper is great but it doesn't shrink, it only rips. Handbrake is great for converting a DVD to a movie file. But neither does the same as DVDShrink on Windows: Convert a movie in DVD format that is too large to fit on one 4GB DVD (e.g. from a dual-layer DVD) to one ALSO in DVD format, but small enough to fit. Anyone know of a free equivalent for Mac? I know of a few but they do cost money, so also looking for a free one.
I tend to agree with this. The free market can probably solve this on its own; if parents REALLY object to what they regard as indecent programming then they should disallow their children from watching it. If the networks lose millions of viewers because viewers don't want to see that kind of content, then the networks or content producers will AUTOMATICALLY, by themselves, go back to "decent" programming as that will have higher viewership (or competing content producers would take over the gap in the market for decent programming).
Now if one suggests that this won't work because parents are too lazy to control what their children do, then one is admitting that one only wants the government to play a 100% pure nanny role here. It's not the government's job to raise your children.
I guess that's a kind of "let him without sin cast the first stone" viewpoint, but the problem is, if we all adopted this viewpoint, nobody could EVER criticise abhorrent behaviour. And that's not a logical way to proceed, so I say let's go back to criticising (others) wrong behaviour.
... using race as a surrogate for poverty is inane. It reifies race as a characteristic that validly describes ones propensity for crime, poverty, and drug use
Is it really inane? A true "pure" scientist, uninfluenced by politically correct notions, will also be willing to accept that it is plausible that an alternate explanation for the levels of violent crime in certain races is genetic or at least partially genetic. This has never been disproven, and seems to be a scientifically valid hypothesis. It doesn't seem like a ridiculous to me either. There are societies that have even more poverty, for example, than African Americans, but have MUCH lower violent crime. This is a complex issue. To assume that it must be caused by factors like poverty and drug use is unscientific: these are merely alternative hypotheses that also should be tested separately. The truth may even be that BOTH of these hypotheses are true and contribute. We don't know, because nobody has (yet?) found a "propensity for violence" gene that is more predominant in some races. Eventually (and possibly within our lifetimes) we'll understand the human genome so well that this will be definitively proven one way or the other.
I agree with your point about surrogates, in general, but even so you have on some level still succumbed to the PC notion of simply assuming that all races must be genetically equally predisposed to violence or crime, which has never been proven or disproven and remains perfectly possible (races do differ genetically, after all, and propensity to violence isn't 100% 'environment' or cultural), so you cannot rule it out as "inane" just yet. A study finding a correlation between skin colour and violent crime should merely be regarded as a "starting point" to uncovering the deeper causes at work. It doesn't mean it's useless. Quite the opposite: If further studies show that factors like poverty can't adequately explain the differences in levels of such crime, then one MUST back out further and take a broader look at things.
Great now lets breed out anyone who doesn't have a long ring finger problem solved right?
In the context of my post, you've just done exactly what I pointed out people make the mistake of doing: Deduce causation from correlation. So for example the solution to the link between violent crime and skin colour isn't to "breed out anyone with a certain skin colour", it's to isolate the ACTUAL causation factors for those correlations and attack those (e.g. poverty etc.). For example see the NickGorton reply above yours. That's the whole point of my suggestion that doing these studies helps correct these problems.
In the context of ring fingers, I'm not sure there is a problem to be solved. Some people are more intelligent than others; stupidity has always been there, it's just the way things are. Unless you think stupidity is something that should be bred out. If you're into that sort of eugenics then you're better off just testing for IQ and selectively sterilising the left half of the Gaussian curve or something, why bother with indirect things like ring finger length when you can measure different types of intelligence more directly?
But what's the point of knowing there is a correlation between finger length and intelligence, you? The point is that we better learn to understand the development of human brains and bodies as they grow, e.g. the influence of various hormones and how they affect growth and so on. If you don't think that kind of knowledge might be useful, well, perhaps some more imagination is in order.
People complain about the welfare recipients because they're leeching from taxpayer money - i.e. yours and mine and everyone else's - while the trust fund babies who never produce anything are consuming nobody but their own money (not yours, not mine, not any taxpayer). That's the difference, not whether or not someone is productive. I could give a squat if someone is productive or not, provided they aren't taking my money.
Science is only concerned with the truth and doesn't care about your desire to be politically correct or not offend people. So for example there isn't a "supposed" correlation between skin colour and violent crime rates, there really is a definite, proven (mere) correlation between the two (note that says NOTHING about causation, although people tend to incorrectly infer as such). An obvious purpose for such studies is to help determine the causes for such correlations in our society, which helps us CORRECT THEM. Oh wait, I guess hiding the truth away works better.
Then "predict" is the wrong word, because it implies far too strongly that you can basically accurately infer one thing about someone based on finger lengths or ratios or whatever. This isn't true; the existence of a correlation (*on average*) doesn't say much at all about predictive power, the correlation could easily be so weak (and probably is) that your "predictions" would pan out only slightly better than chance.
The type of men women want to fsck and the type of men they want to "settle down with" tend to be two different types of men. The type of man who can provide the mansion with the pool is probably working damn hard, so is hardly ever around, and will almost certainly have far less (sexual) energy than her especially if she is not working but hanging around at home bored (with the pool guy conveniently nearby). A pool guy on the other hand will never make enough money to be the one she wants to "settle down with". Different needs... she 'settles for' the [possibly nice] guy with cash for financial security but still wants the hunky bad-boy's genes for her offspring and to have fun with. Some women will try to get the best of both worlds and hope not to get caught. Society pretends otherwise but woman also often have polygamy desires like men, they just exhibit them differently and more selectively. I wonder how many families would be broken up if everyone's children were suddenly forced to do paternity testing. Men, whether you're the pool guy or the rich guy, just make sure you know the score and are getting what you need out of the situation you're in. OTOH if you're happily hooked up with a decent woman, all the better.
Ah, the old fallacy that "secure" is a binary value, i.e. that something is either secure or not, and the false conclusion that all apps that aren't 100% secure are all equally insecure.
So you're saying that Indians are unable to progress mainly because we Westerners aren't providing them with decent role models? Why don't they have strong role models within their own communities? Or do they? Secondly, you're saying that we should provide them distinctly with role models of WESTERNISED Indians, thus in order to Westernise them? If all they can do, as you suggest, is mimic role models (what a horrible insult in itself - do you think they are on the level of apes with no free will or something), then isn't that destroying their culture? Honestly, every individual Indian is responsible for their own future. They are no longer really being oppressed. They are capable. End of story.
This leave me wondering with such a NON-news, what sort of propaganda is theUS trying to kick up
Perhaps it's just budget allocation time again for some 'cyber-defence' departments in the DoD. Of course they'll want to do some fearmongering, but not for any more sinister or broader purpose than to maximise their budget allocation. I'm always very cynical about these ongoing reports of supposed "cyber warfare". (I'm not doubting that countries like China and the US attempt to find ways to attack each other's networks, I mean, it's just normal to want to develop such techniques even if there is no desire to use them, but I think the potential for such attacks is extremely limited and blown way WAY out of proportion.)
In all seriousness, I was also wondering, but I think they're simply waiting for the right moment to buy the technology from another company that actually does it well and bundle it into Windows ("right moment" presumably means "after competitive pressures force them to" e.g. if Apple gets excellent speech recognition or something, as MS tends to avoid progressing faster than the market conditions call for). Then they'll market it in a way that gives the impression they pioneered this stuff. I think that's what Bill Gates really means (and aims to achieve) by continually telling the world that they are leading some amazing innovation and development in this area, e.g.:
2005: "Internet security is Microsoft's greatest challenge while developing mainstream technology to be able to talk to a computer is a frontier about to be crossed, company chairperson Bill Gates said here on Friday"
2001: "Gates said there was plenty of room for innovation in future versions of Office. He said computing holy grails like voice and handwriting recognition were just around the corner. 'The world of computing has frontiers that we're finally tackling,' Gates said."
Repeat this kind of thing enough and by the time they actually buy a decent product from another vendor, most people will likely just assume that yet again Microsoft led the way bringing this cool stuff to PCs.
Probably you would also have second-language English speakers with very poor English skills who would have misinterpreted the sentence, e.g. perhaps assumed it intended to help fix virus infections or something (especially given the literal interpretation would seem unlikely).
Even if it was true that "they" (as in "the entire scientific community by concensus") predicted global cooling "soon", it still wouldn't be a valid argument against global warming, because that's an inductive fallacy: "The last prediction was wrong, THEREFORE this prediction must also be wrong". The two are independent of one another. (In fact the majority of the members of the scientific community of 40 years ago are different to those today, so even "they" is a different "they".)
Apple 'underpromises and overdelivers', Microsoft 'overpromises and underdelivers', this is how it pretty much always has been. Microsoft as a general marketing strategy often announce 'hi-tech' vaporware supposedly in the pipeline that never comes about anyway. And it doesn't matter, they don't really mean it, it's just PR to get people talking and to brainwash people into associating 'Microsoft' with 'visionary hi-tech ideas' (even if they are old ideas or someone else's ideas, they have the money to parade them as their own). And most people just don't make the connection when years later all they really get from Microsoft is the same old watered down repackaged-1990s-technology crapware. It's just to make sure that whenever the masses hear about newish ideas, they hear about them in association with their brand name.
The point is that if everyone switches to linux because it is safer, and if the reason it is safer is that it's a smaller target, than the end result will be that the "truth" that linux is safer will end up as a thing of the past.
Even if that argument was true (it's obvious to anyone with a clue that it isn't, and is just FUD), it still doesn't suggest that you're 'better off with Windows anyway', as is implied - I mean, even if Linux someday became as insecure as Windows, how would you be 'worse off' than you are ALREADY ARE with Windows? It's a bit like saying "you should keep wallowing in shit, because if you move somewhere else you might also eventually end up wallowing in shit".
> I also remember hearing about a study that says having a gun in that sort of situation is a Bad Thing(TM) because it changes your first instinct to be "draw weapon"
So having a gun on you automatically FORCES you to not only change your behaviour, but to change it in a particular way? Wow, I would've thought it would've left you with MORE options, not less. After all, you still have ALL options available to you that an unarmed person has, and more (e.g. "Duck & Cover/Run/Shoot from behind cover"). I didn't know guns exerted mind control.
Maybe it's a mental illness, maybe just perversion.
You can't make such a judgment by lumping all paedophiles together, because in reality it's far too broad. For example, if a 20-year old male feels attracted to a healthy, sexy physically developed 15-year old, I doubt that you can realistically say that that is a sign of mental illness or abnormality or perversion. Heck, it would be unnatural if he wasn't at least a little attracted. Most of us are regularly attracted to underage girls without even knowing it as they are often used as models for advertising, for example (e.g. Kate Moss was 'discovered' at age 14). You see a beautiful girl in a magazine, you seldom consider how old she might be, you just enjoy the view. On the other hand, a (say) 40-year old (or anyone) wanting to screw a pre-pubescent girl e.g. 10 year old, or ANYONE wanting to screw a toddler, that's a totally different thing we're talking about. That should probably be regarded as mentally abnormal. Yet these totally different things are thrown under the same banner.
I wonder how old this avatar representation was. Did it look like a 16-year old or a 9-year old? (No I haven't RTA)
I disagree on the accidents and depression, but admittedly hadn't considered the weather, as I live in 'sunny South Africa' where it's sunny nearly every day of the year and almost never snows. Of course different parts of the US have different climates, but if you lived where it rains most of the year or is too cold to cycle for half the year, then sure, it seems less practical.
Note you wouldn't "have to" cycle everywhere, because you would still have the OPTION of using your car. Just because you start cycling doesn't mean you have to stop using your car!?!?
Many people cycle in Europe even when it's rainy. They just wear raincoats, or on rainy days they take public transport instead. Oddly, they don't get depressed and kill themselves.
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So because there are 5,250 bittorrent options available for WinXP, and only 50 for the Mac (one of which is all you'd ever need), the MS platform is somehow superior?
Kind of, yes ;) Insightful and valid point you have: If you don't know where to get, say, pirated Office for Mac but do know where to get pirated Office for Windows, then Windows will probably "win out", even though it's a totally unfair "judgment"/decision, it remains a factor.
BTW I'm not a "Windows person", I just genuinely want to know because I really do (yes I admit to this illicit stuff) rip DVDs on my Mac system but always have to resort to Windows to shrink the damn thing, and I want to rather use the Mac to do so (and am too cheap to fork over a few bucks for it, especially since I also have a Windows machine so I can just as well use DVDShrink).
Why does the MacMini suddenly turn into a MacBook when he tries to return it?
He started with a Mini, then returned it and bought a MacBook. From the first page:
"As I got into the testing, it quickly became apparent that the Mac Mini was sluggish and underpowered. Everything kept coming back to the same cause - there was not enough memory in the machine. Since I didn't want my experiences with the hardware to taint my results evaluating the operating system, I returned the Mac Mini to the Apple Store after performing as many tests on it as possible. I then headed over to Fry's Electronics in Austin and left with an open-box MacBook"
I'm wondering what kind of tasks he's performing whereby 512MB was definitely far too little, because they definitely weren't ordinary everyday tasks representative of what the 'man on the street' does with his/her Mac. He's full of BS. I have an early model Mac Mini with only 256MB RAM and I have to be doing quite a lot before it even starts noticeably swopping, it's very smooth most of the time, and I do quite a lot of different things with it.
I'm definitely not a Mac 'fanboy' but the review seems undoubtedly slanted against Mac. He also claims:
"Virtually unusable" with 512MB RAM? I have one of the first Mac Minis with only a meagre 256MB RAM, and I use it all the time for many kinds of tasks and actually pretty seldom run into any performance problems. Yet with horrendously over-dramatized hyperbole he states Apple has "blood on its hands" for releasing a machine with "only" 512MB RAM?
Either he is a serious power-user with intensive day-to-day tasks (in which case his criticism has no relevance for the man on the street), or he is outright lying.
He also criticizes that its X support is not great. But Windows comes with all of absolutely no X support!? He also points out that if you want to do serious photo-editing you need to pay for Photoshop - gee, I didn't know the Windows version of Photoshop was free. And there is GIMP for Mac so he can't complain that its because Photoshop is the only option or something.
Either the reviewer is trolling for ad-views for his website, or he is a corporate shill for MS, or he is biased and using different sets of standards to evaluate the Mac vs. (one can only presume) Windows.
He mentions that he can't find any DVD shrinking software. He must have not looked very hard, as I know Mac the Ripper is just one of many free programs that do just that.
MacTheRipper is great but it doesn't shrink, it only rips. Handbrake is great for converting a DVD to a movie file. But neither does the same as DVDShrink on Windows: Convert a movie in DVD format that is too large to fit on one 4GB DVD (e.g. from a dual-layer DVD) to one ALSO in DVD format, but small enough to fit. Anyone know of a free equivalent for Mac? I know of a few but they do cost money, so also looking for a free one.
I tend to agree with this. The free market can probably solve this on its own; if parents REALLY object to what they regard as indecent programming then they should disallow their children from watching it. If the networks lose millions of viewers because viewers don't want to see that kind of content, then the networks or content producers will AUTOMATICALLY, by themselves, go back to "decent" programming as that will have higher viewership (or competing content producers would take over the gap in the market for decent programming).
Now if one suggests that this won't work because parents are too lazy to control what their children do, then one is admitting that one only wants the government to play a 100% pure nanny role here. It's not the government's job to raise your children.
I guess that's a kind of "let him without sin cast the first stone" viewpoint, but the problem is, if we all adopted this viewpoint, nobody could EVER criticise abhorrent behaviour. And that's not a logical way to proceed, so I say let's go back to criticising (others) wrong behaviour.
... using race as a surrogate for poverty is inane. It reifies race as a characteristic that validly describes ones propensity for crime, poverty, and drug use
Is it really inane? A true "pure" scientist, uninfluenced by politically correct notions, will also be willing to accept that it is plausible that an alternate explanation for the levels of violent crime in certain races is genetic or at least partially genetic. This has never been disproven, and seems to be a scientifically valid hypothesis. It doesn't seem like a ridiculous to me either. There are societies that have even more poverty, for example, than African Americans, but have MUCH lower violent crime. This is a complex issue. To assume that it must be caused by factors like poverty and drug use is unscientific: these are merely alternative hypotheses that also should be tested separately. The truth may even be that BOTH of these hypotheses are true and contribute. We don't know, because nobody has (yet?) found a "propensity for violence" gene that is more predominant in some races. Eventually (and possibly within our lifetimes) we'll understand the human genome so well that this will be definitively proven one way or the other.
I agree with your point about surrogates, in general, but even so you have on some level still succumbed to the PC notion of simply assuming that all races must be genetically equally predisposed to violence or crime, which has never been proven or disproven and remains perfectly possible (races do differ genetically, after all, and propensity to violence isn't 100% 'environment' or cultural), so you cannot rule it out as "inane" just yet. A study finding a correlation between skin colour and violent crime should merely be regarded as a "starting point" to uncovering the deeper causes at work. It doesn't mean it's useless. Quite the opposite: If further studies show that factors like poverty can't adequately explain the differences in levels of such crime, then one MUST back out further and take a broader look at things.
Great now lets breed out anyone who doesn't have a long ring finger problem solved right?
In the context of my post, you've just done exactly what I pointed out people make the mistake of doing: Deduce causation from correlation. So for example the solution to the link between violent crime and skin colour isn't to "breed out anyone with a certain skin colour", it's to isolate the ACTUAL causation factors for those correlations and attack those (e.g. poverty etc.). For example see the NickGorton reply above yours. That's the whole point of my suggestion that doing these studies helps correct these problems.
In the context of ring fingers, I'm not sure there is a problem to be solved. Some people are more intelligent than others; stupidity has always been there, it's just the way things are. Unless you think stupidity is something that should be bred out. If you're into that sort of eugenics then you're better off just testing for IQ and selectively sterilising the left half of the Gaussian curve or something, why bother with indirect things like ring finger length when you can measure different types of intelligence more directly?
But what's the point of knowing there is a correlation between finger length and intelligence, you? The point is that we better learn to understand the development of human brains and bodies as they grow, e.g. the influence of various hormones and how they affect growth and so on. If you don't think that kind of knowledge might be useful, well, perhaps some more imagination is in order.
People complain about the welfare recipients because they're leeching from taxpayer money - i.e. yours and mine and everyone else's - while the trust fund babies who never produce anything are consuming nobody but their own money (not yours, not mine, not any taxpayer). That's the difference, not whether or not someone is productive. I could give a squat if someone is productive or not, provided they aren't taking my money.
Science is only concerned with the truth and doesn't care about your desire to be politically correct or not offend people. So for example there isn't a "supposed" correlation between skin colour and violent crime rates, there really is a definite, proven (mere) correlation between the two (note that says NOTHING about causation, although people tend to incorrectly infer as such). An obvious purpose for such studies is to help determine the causes for such correlations in our society, which helps us CORRECT THEM. Oh wait, I guess hiding the truth away works better.
Then "predict" is the wrong word, because it implies far too strongly that you can basically accurately infer one thing about someone based on finger lengths or ratios or whatever. This isn't true; the existence of a correlation (*on average*) doesn't say much at all about predictive power, the correlation could easily be so weak (and probably is) that your "predictions" would pan out only slightly better than chance.
Just to clarify, were you:
(A) being sarcastic
(B) being serious and really believe that
(C) trolling
The type of men women want to fsck and the type of men they want to "settle down with" tend to be two different types of men. The type of man who can provide the mansion with the pool is probably working damn hard, so is hardly ever around, and will almost certainly have far less (sexual) energy than her especially if she is not working but hanging around at home bored (with the pool guy conveniently nearby). A pool guy on the other hand will never make enough money to be the one she wants to "settle down with". Different needs ... she 'settles for' the [possibly nice] guy with cash for financial security but still wants the hunky bad-boy's genes for her offspring and to have fun with. Some women will try to get the best of both worlds and hope not to get caught. Society pretends otherwise but woman also often have polygamy desires like men, they just exhibit them differently and more selectively. I wonder how many families would be broken up if everyone's children were suddenly forced to do paternity testing. Men, whether you're the pool guy or the rich guy, just make sure you know the score and are getting what you need out of the situation you're in. OTOH if you're happily hooked up with a decent woman, all the better.
Ah, the old fallacy that "secure" is a binary value, i.e. that something is either secure or not, and the false conclusion that all apps that aren't 100% secure are all equally insecure.
So you're saying that Indians are unable to progress mainly because we Westerners aren't providing them with decent role models? Why don't they have strong role models within their own communities? Or do they? Secondly, you're saying that we should provide them distinctly with role models of WESTERNISED Indians, thus in order to Westernise them? If all they can do, as you suggest, is mimic role models (what a horrible insult in itself - do you think they are on the level of apes with no free will or something), then isn't that destroying their culture? Honestly, every individual Indian is responsible for their own future. They are no longer really being oppressed. They are capable. End of story.
Cellphone use? Electromagnetic radiation in microwave frequencies is quite a different thing to an electric field.
This leave me wondering with such a NON-news, what sort of propaganda is theUS trying to kick up
Perhaps it's just budget allocation time again for some 'cyber-defence' departments in the DoD. Of course they'll want to do some fearmongering, but not for any more sinister or broader purpose than to maximise their budget allocation. I'm always very cynical about these ongoing reports of supposed "cyber warfare". (I'm not doubting that countries like China and the US attempt to find ways to attack each other's networks, I mean, it's just normal to want to develop such techniques even if there is no desire to use them, but I think the potential for such attacks is extremely limited and blown way WAY out of proportion.)
In all seriousness, I was also wondering, but I think they're simply waiting for the right moment to buy the technology from another company that actually does it well and bundle it into Windows ("right moment" presumably means "after competitive pressures force them to" e.g. if Apple gets excellent speech recognition or something, as MS tends to avoid progressing faster than the market conditions call for). Then they'll market it in a way that gives the impression they pioneered this stuff. I think that's what Bill Gates really means (and aims to achieve) by continually telling the world that they are leading some amazing innovation and development in this area, e.g.:
2005: "Internet security is Microsoft's greatest challenge while developing mainstream technology to be able to talk to a computer is a frontier about to be crossed, company chairperson Bill Gates said here on Friday"
2001: "Gates said there was plenty of room for innovation in future versions of Office. He said computing holy grails like voice and handwriting recognition were just around the corner. 'The world of computing has frontiers that we're finally tackling,' Gates said."
Repeat this kind of thing enough and by the time they actually buy a decent product from another vendor, most people will likely just assume that yet again Microsoft led the way bringing this cool stuff to PCs.
Probably you would also have second-language English speakers with very poor English skills who would have misinterpreted the sentence, e.g. perhaps assumed it intended to help fix virus infections or something (especially given the literal interpretation would seem unlikely).
Even if it was true that "they" (as in "the entire scientific community by concensus") predicted global cooling "soon", it still wouldn't be a valid argument against global warming, because that's an inductive fallacy: "The last prediction was wrong, THEREFORE this prediction must also be wrong". The two are independent of one another. (In fact the majority of the members of the scientific community of 40 years ago are different to those today, so even "they" is a different "they".)
Apple 'underpromises and overdelivers', Microsoft 'overpromises and underdelivers', this is how it pretty much always has been. Microsoft as a general marketing strategy often announce 'hi-tech' vaporware supposedly in the pipeline that never comes about anyway. And it doesn't matter, they don't really mean it, it's just PR to get people talking and to brainwash people into associating 'Microsoft' with 'visionary hi-tech ideas' (even if they are old ideas or someone else's ideas, they have the money to parade them as their own). And most people just don't make the connection when years later all they really get from Microsoft is the same old watered down repackaged-1990s-technology crapware. It's just to make sure that whenever the masses hear about newish ideas, they hear about them in association with their brand name.
The point is that if everyone switches to linux because it is safer, and if the reason it is safer is that it's a smaller target, than the end result will be that the "truth" that linux is safer will end up as a thing of the past.
Even if that argument was true (it's obvious to anyone with a clue that it isn't, and is just FUD), it still doesn't suggest that you're 'better off with Windows anyway', as is implied - I mean, even if Linux someday became as insecure as Windows, how would you be 'worse off' than you are ALREADY ARE with Windows? It's a bit like saying "you should keep wallowing in shit, because if you move somewhere else you might also eventually end up wallowing in shit".
> I also remember hearing about a study that says having a gun in that sort of situation is a Bad Thing(TM) because it changes your first instinct to be "draw weapon"
So having a gun on you automatically FORCES you to not only change your behaviour, but to change it in a particular way? Wow, I would've thought it would've left you with MORE options, not less. After all, you still have ALL options available to you that an unarmed person has, and more (e.g. "Duck & Cover/Run/Shoot from behind cover"). I didn't know guns exerted mind control.
Maybe it's a mental illness, maybe just perversion.
You can't make such a judgment by lumping all paedophiles together, because in reality it's far too broad. For example, if a 20-year old male feels attracted to a healthy, sexy physically developed 15-year old, I doubt that you can realistically say that that is a sign of mental illness or abnormality or perversion. Heck, it would be unnatural if he wasn't at least a little attracted. Most of us are regularly attracted to underage girls without even knowing it as they are often used as models for advertising, for example (e.g. Kate Moss was 'discovered' at age 14). You see a beautiful girl in a magazine, you seldom consider how old she might be, you just enjoy the view. On the other hand, a (say) 40-year old (or anyone) wanting to screw a pre-pubescent girl e.g. 10 year old, or ANYONE wanting to screw a toddler, that's a totally different thing we're talking about. That should probably be regarded as mentally abnormal. Yet these totally different things are thrown under the same banner.
I wonder how old this avatar representation was. Did it look like a 16-year old or a 9-year old? (No I haven't RTA)
I disagree on the accidents and depression, but admittedly hadn't considered the weather, as I live in 'sunny South Africa' where it's sunny nearly every day of the year and almost never snows. Of course different parts of the US have different climates, but if you lived where it rains most of the year or is too cold to cycle for half the year, then sure, it seems less practical.
Note you wouldn't "have to" cycle everywhere, because you would still have the OPTION of using your car. Just because you start cycling doesn't mean you have to stop using your car!?!?
Many people cycle in Europe even when it's rainy. They just wear raincoats, or on rainy days they take public transport instead. Oddly, they don't get depressed and kill themselves.