Probably for QC/QA reasons. I have a spare pair of glasses at home w/ Polycarbonate lenses, where the left lens has a lot of crazing and surface imperfections due to the anti-scratch coatings wearing off/out prematurely. A previous pair of lenses on the same frame did the same thing on the right lens. It could be the metal used in the frame (though it's not exactly kryptonite or anything), or it could've been in reaction to the environment I'd worn them in... dunno.
Even if only one of 100,000 who experienced this problem (a reasonable figure, I think - the optometrist in my case said it happened occasionally on glasses), it would still be a fairly large headache for Apple to keep ahead of.
Sometimes a company likes to promote the idea that they actually have a fan base (you know, to generate 'buzz', stomp bad opinions against them, etc etc). See also Microsoft (though they are hardly alone in this). Incidentally, political figures and ideologies have a good parallel in fanboys and astroturfing as well.
Trolls?
Sometimes it can be (at least in my case years ago, it used to be) great fun to go in and advocate for The Other Side (tm), just to see what folks would do with it. Sometimes it's done to simply incite a reaction (a digital equivalent of throwing a stink bomb into a football locker room @ high school, or the chess club meeting, if you prefer), but sometimes it can be done to get folks on all sides to stop and think. You can tell very fast, depending on advocacy and style, if the reactions are by blinkered unthinking fanboys, or if there's some actual insight and thought that folks have put into their decision to support something.
Both cases tend to make the whole thing not so clear-cut, and I think the author should have discussed those a bit more, as they are large factors IMHO.
I myself, as an American, view our current administration as a borderline dictatorship, and while I hear propaganda all the time about Chavez, I've never heard that position from somebody who lives there before.
1) The very fact that dissent is very much alive and well in the US is proof enough that no such thing is occurring here.
2) Talk to someone from Venezuela sometime... while there are not (yet) stories of such things, the fear is certainly there and credible.
I think the main reason the American revolution worked is that General Washington stepped down. I hope Chavez shows the same wisdom.
I like the comparison you took, but... it's missing something. While Washington refused to be installed as King (in spite of popular opinion that he should become royalty), Washington also worked within the system as president, and abided by it. He refused to use the infant US gov't as a plaything, as Chavez is doing now w/ his gov't (one example: taking over state oil companies and replacing their mgmt. and R&D personnel w/ political cronies).
But right now, what I see happening in Venezuela is that Chavez' government is doing good things for the country whereas the right-wing kleptocrats who preceded him did whatever we told them to.
I agree that his predecessors were asshats; there's no doubt about that. But, Chavez does things which make him look good on the surface, yet beneath it reeks of junta-like actions and power consolidation. Something eerily similar happened in mid-1930's Germany, if you want a parallel.
As long as you stay within the accepted limits of debate.
The "limits" usually involve impinging on others' rights (e.g. committing libel/slander for debate points is generally considered bad form).
Your views will be criticised as nonsensical and you won't be allowed on mainstream news channels (or if you are, you'll be "fox news"ed) - The 911 truth movement is an example.
No, your views can be criticized as nonsensical if those people (or private organizations) who hear your points believe them to be nonsensical. This has nothing to do with government edict or policy. Point is, you're still perfectly allowed to speak them w/o governmental interference.
There's also the "ability" of the government to single you out for tax audits if you're a political opponent.
Heh - I'm sorely tempted to mention a correlation between that statement and tinfoil, but... I have merely to use simple logic: If that's true, then how come the application of these dreaded IRS audits aren't consistently applied? After all, if the big evil government is so eager to 'silence' opponents, then we'd have certainly seen more than mere statistical coincidence, no?
So, it's not exactly a "free" society. You can even get jailed and tortured in this way. Here is an example.
Long on sensationalism, short on facts (such as the list of charges, the court papers, the jury verdict --you know a jury is involved, yes?-- things like that). Got anything that actually shows the whole story, and not just cherry-picked bits and pieces? After all, if there are so many systemic examples, surely one of them would be available that would lend better credibility than the ravings of a single individual.
Depending on what you say. Although not by "government mandate", there are other forces that can silence/control you in the United States.
I shall quote from the article you point to: " He had been offered lifelong tenure by the political science department of the Catholic DePaul University in Chicago, but faced with a bitter campaign against him, the university denied him the post."
No governmental mandate there. In fact, it shows that there was lots of free speech in action at that particular university. It is also worthwhile to note that the university is likely privately-funded, so there is a high likelihood that there is zero governmental involvement there.
You're not guaranteed to have a job in academia, you know.
I find it hard to believe that Americans oppose Chavez because he's a dictator and because he's supressing freedom in Venezuela.
Why?
He's not perfect but he's trying to free his country and South America from external control and so, the bottom line is that he's not "standing in line".
At risk of invoking Godwin's Law, there was a certain other national eader in history whose big premise and push was to free his people from external control as well (e.g. the then-ongoing punishments of the Versailles Treaty), and was very eager to give goodies to his people (e.g. the Volkswagen... which literally translates to "The Peoples' Vehicle").
...I recently finished reading a treatise on how mankind could slowly but surely adapt to living in outer space itself. Given enough time and tech, I suspect that we won't even need terrestrial extra-solar planets in order to move beyond our own solar system. As long as there are Kuiper-Belt objects and asteroids which contain the compounds we need to sustain and grow ourselves, waiting for us when we get there, we'll have everything we need.
The rest is a matter of supplying enough non-solar power and enough of the non-recyclable material for the trip.
I am curious, would the fanboys like you also praise satan for adopting FOSS/linux to control the fuel delivery and batch-processing of the new arrivals?
OSS is a form of freedom by its nature... any kind of freedom that is introduced in a dictatorship is a good thing.
I know why Americans hate him (ZOMG, Socialist Dictator, Low-Class Ethnicity), why do you hate him?
Because not everyone wants to live under what many consider to be a borderline dictatorship?
It's not as if you're allowed to oppose the guy if you're Venezuelan w/o repercussions. At least in North America and the EU, speaking out against political figures and government is not only legal, but gets you cred among ideologically like-minded people. You can still go to work the next day confident that you won't lose your job by government mandate. You can kick back in your house confident that someone won't kick in your door and drag you off to prison. In Venezuela, I suspect that such things ain't so guaranteed.
If there's more than one, you can license each binary under whatever license you want, with the libs under LGPL if it floats your boat.
OR... you can use Trolltech's licensing scheme (OSS projects get to use it free, commercial ones have to pay up licensing fees).
I like either GPL version, but if you're not too hung-up on using GPL, http://www.opensource.org/ has a whole array of open-source offically-sanctioned licensing - one of those may fit your needs better. (cue RMS fans w/ mod points stampeding in protest, but seriously; if it does the job, use it).
The beauty of this is, it's all up to you how you want to handle it.
Interestingly, studies have shown that the shift may actually be beneficial to the economies of first-world countries. It'll cost money to expand solar power, improve fuel efficiency, buy CFLs instead of incandescents, of course, but the actual spread of new industry in those fields should be beneficial to the economy as a whole.
Not to sound trite, but that seems dangerously close to the 'broken window' economic model, no? (especially if this whole climate thing turns out indeed to be well beyond Man's ability to control).
Otherwise, I do agree - this doesn't seem like a harmless pursuit. "Carbon Credits", taxation on basic (1st-world) needs (fuel, electricity, etc), seem rather to be means by which other select groups gain wealth at others' expense but with little to no productive input*... save this time there's a 'crisis' to justify the taking.
*(aside from the tech gained from sucking energy out of wind and sun, anyway)
* Non-US Citizens have never (as in, "ever") enjoyed the full protection of US law (save for illegal immigrants, but that's a whole other argument, as we're talking only ostensibly here).
BTW: No mention of other nations' citizenry and/or their humanity was made, so appeals to emotion based on a strawman argument doesn't wash. Deal.
* Proposed? Great - so what branch of government is DHS again, and when did they get to create/codify law?
* Newton didn't fake/fudge a portion of his data to stumble into something resembling a wanted result (google for 'global warming' 'hockey stick' and 'fraud' all together)
* Nations weren't jockeying for power and economic supremacy over the outcome of his experiments
* Newton wasn't running around trying to scare people into thinking that humanity would likely get wiped out if Motion and Gravity were defined
* Things like Motion, Energy, and Gravity are explainable by mathematics, have precise definitions, and don't rely on faulty/incomplete computer modelling to prove/disprove (yet - at least until someone invents an anti-gravity machine or finds a way to stop entropy, etc etc)
* Newton didn't have grant money riding on the outcome.
* Newton didn't have to worry about a career-killing blackballing if his outcomes didn't match the consensus opinion.
It mentions foreign travelers inbound to the US, not US citizens outbound elsewhere. US Citizens travelling abroad (or internally, or etc) are obviously not affected by this. Also, it's not as if we'd be the first to implement such a plan in either case.
So, err, maybe before you pick up more tomatoes to throw at the administration for this plan (which incidentally is not a member of Congress, as the TFA states as being the branch o' government pushing this change), maybe you folks would actually care to read what it is you're ranting against?
Almost not exactly... Tom's Hardware and CNET did a tweak where they replaced the CPU's in a dual Core Duo Mac w/ a pair of quad-cores... OSX saw all 8 of 'em and ran fairly well.
As something of a flag bearer for world Communism, Beijing has become a "second Rome for Marxism-Leninism"
A 'second Rome', or a 'Constantinople'?
I don't ask to be some semantical nazi or anything, but this phrase piqued my interest a bit... When Rome basically went splat and fell into the dark ages,
Constantinople was basically it. There are a lot of the same parallels, too - The Eastern Roman Empire wasn't nearly as outgoing, wan't nearly as -how do I put it- 'extroverted'? Also, Rome wasn't nearly as refined. The paralels are starting to pile up at this point.
China does do one thing different, though - it welcomes outsiders and uses as much as it can from them. It also exists in a far different geopolitical environment.
I also think that China's political system is (slowly) being changed over time, and could not survive for long if a hard enough adversity hit them - either politically or economically. Something on the order of the Great Depression (a global one, like in the early 1930's) would likely foment some very bad mojo in Beijing, and traditional tolerance by the masses aside, I don't think the Chinese gov't could withstand it w/o either collapsing or going back to the iron fist.
I guess that, while it is good that the West does see them as something to be reckoned with, I believe that the Chinese political system is an increasingly fragile one, but will hold up - as long as times are good.
How about Mac? it bundle with all the apps that come free. why don't you cry about it?
...perhaps because Apple keeps all of its apps and all of everyone else's apps locked into userland... equally. MSFT apparently makes exceptions for its own stuff, to the detriment of its competitors.
All state universities are state actors, which is the first step in any Constitutional analysis. The University of Louisville is a public, state-supported university, and therefore is a state actor.
Sure... they are actors, in those areas which are funded by said state. The U can't discriminate against applicants on race/religion/etc because that non-discrimination is a condition of accepting federal tuition grants and funding. This also extends to how students can and cannot be treated academically, sure.
BUT... now we get into extracurricular activities, none of which is funded by tax money. Otherwise, it would be like demanding that all government workers open their homes to the public because they happen to receive their income from taxpayer funds.
No, seriously; if Pokernews can't see the advantage in being first-to-the-punch, or have overpayed for the 'right' to spit out these numbers first, then they can complain to no one, really.
Then again, I'm not a jury, judge, lawyer, or any of that. I just find the whole thing kinda silly (sorta like when Jeep sued Hummer because the Hummers had seven slits in their vehicle's grille... just like the Jeeps do. Never mind that both grille types were built (IIRC) from some minor aspect of US Gov't design specs, or that no one in either customer camp really gives a flying frig about how many holes the front has...)
Not really - radio broadcasts of sports events do this all the time, with the commentator(s) describing the action as it progresses - and this act is considered a live broadcast event to do so.
Just because it's on the Internet doesn't exempt the act from its brethren on older tech, y'know?
I like the angle you took, but it has way too many thickets in it:
So what research is the State paying for at this particular sports game, exactly?
There is a difference between State "supported" and state "owned". I get a huge tax deduction each year for the interest on my house mortgage, on energy-saving measures I perform on the home, my home office space, etc etc. In short, the State supports my housing in a small indirect way - same way the State (ditto) supports college sports programs in indirect ways. Does that now give any journalist/blogger the right to come into my house at whim and broadcast/blog on whatever occurs in it? If the dog doesn't get him (okay, okay - Dachshunds aren't exactly man-eaters), I'd certainly have more than the right to throw the schmuck off my property.
Unless stated otherwise in the grant paperwork as a condition of acceptance, money given to a college's labs doesn't automatically give the State the perfect right to dominate rules on the sports program.
Slashdot Mirror
Probably for QC/QA reasons. I have a spare pair of glasses at home w/ Polycarbonate lenses, where the left lens has a lot of crazing and surface imperfections due to the anti-scratch coatings wearing off/out prematurely. A previous pair of lenses on the same frame did the same thing on the right lens. It could be the metal used in the frame (though it's not exactly kryptonite or anything), or it could've been in reaction to the environment I'd worn them in... dunno.
Even if only one of 100,000 who experienced this problem (a reasonable figure, I think - the optometrist in my case said it happened occasionally on glasses), it would still be a fairly large headache for Apple to keep ahead of.
D'oh! You should've used a CAR analogy you insensitive clod!
Sometimes a company likes to promote the idea that they actually have a fan base (you know, to generate 'buzz', stomp bad opinions against them, etc etc). See also Microsoft (though they are hardly alone in this). Incidentally, political figures and ideologies have a good parallel in fanboys and astroturfing as well.
Trolls?
Sometimes it can be (at least in my case years ago, it used to be) great fun to go in and advocate for The Other Side (tm), just to see what folks would do with it. Sometimes it's done to simply incite a reaction (a digital equivalent of throwing a stink bomb into a football locker room @ high school, or the chess club meeting, if you prefer), but sometimes it can be done to get folks on all sides to stop and think. You can tell very fast, depending on advocacy and style, if the reactions are by blinkered unthinking fanboys, or if there's some actual insight and thought that folks have put into their decision to support something.
Both cases tend to make the whole thing not so clear-cut, and I think the author should have discussed those a bit more, as they are large factors IMHO.
1) The very fact that dissent is very much alive and well in the US is proof enough that no such thing is occurring here.
2) Talk to someone from Venezuela sometime... while there are not (yet) stories of such things, the fear is certainly there and credible.
I think the main reason the American revolution worked is that General Washington stepped down. I hope Chavez shows the same wisdom.I like the comparison you took, but... it's missing something. While Washington refused to be installed as King (in spite of popular opinion that he should become royalty), Washington also worked within the system as president, and abided by it. He refused to use the infant US gov't as a plaything, as Chavez is doing now w/ his gov't (one example: taking over state oil companies and replacing their mgmt. and R&D personnel w/ political cronies).
But right now, what I see happening in Venezuela is that Chavez' government is doing good things for the country whereas the right-wing kleptocrats who preceded him did whatever we told them to.I agree that his predecessors were asshats; there's no doubt about that. But, Chavez does things which make him look good on the surface, yet beneath it reeks of junta-like actions and power consolidation. Something eerily similar happened in mid-1930's Germany, if you want a parallel.
If you cannot gain it freely, then the GPL is being violated.
The "limits" usually involve impinging on others' rights (e.g. committing libel/slander for debate points is generally considered bad form).
Your views will be criticised as nonsensical and you won't be allowed on mainstream news channels (or if you are, you'll be "fox news"ed) - The 911 truth movement is an example.No, your views can be criticized as nonsensical if those people (or private organizations) who hear your points believe them to be nonsensical. This has nothing to do with government edict or policy. Point is, you're still perfectly allowed to speak them w/o governmental interference.
There's also the "ability" of the government to single you out for tax audits if you're a political opponent.Heh - I'm sorely tempted to mention a correlation between that statement and tinfoil, but... I have merely to use simple logic: If that's true, then how come the application of these dreaded IRS audits aren't consistently applied? After all, if the big evil government is so eager to 'silence' opponents, then we'd have certainly seen more than mere statistical coincidence, no?
So, it's not exactly a "free" society. You can even get jailed and tortured in this way. Here is an example.Long on sensationalism, short on facts (such as the list of charges, the court papers, the jury verdict --you know a jury is involved, yes?-- things like that). Got anything that actually shows the whole story, and not just cherry-picked bits and pieces? After all, if there are so many systemic examples, surely one of them would be available that would lend better credibility than the ravings of a single individual.
Depending on what you say. Although not by "government mandate", there are other forces that can silence/control you in the United States.I shall quote from the article you point to: " He had been offered lifelong tenure by the political science department of the Catholic DePaul University in Chicago, but faced with a bitter campaign against him, the university denied him the post."
No governmental mandate there. In fact, it shows that there was lots of free speech in action at that particular university. It is also worthwhile to note that the university is likely privately-funded, so there is a high likelihood that there is zero governmental involvement there.
You're not guaranteed to have a job in academia, you know.
I find it hard to believe that Americans oppose Chavez because he's a dictator and because he's supressing freedom in Venezuela.Why?
He's not perfect but he's trying to free his country and South America from external control and so, the bottom line is that he's not "standing in line".At risk of invoking Godwin's Law, there was a certain other national eader in history whose big premise and push was to free his people from external control as well (e.g. the then-ongoing punishments of the Versailles Treaty), and was very eager to give goodies to his people (e.g. the Volkswagen... which literally translates to "The Peoples' Vehicle").
Road to Hell { Good Intentions, etc.
The rest is a matter of supplying enough non-solar power and enough of the non-recyclable material for the trip.
OSS is a form of freedom by its nature... any kind of freedom that is introduced in a dictatorship is a good thing.
... So why do you hate him?I know why Americans hate him (ZOMG, Socialist Dictator, Low-Class Ethnicity), why do you hate him?
Because not everyone wants to live under what many consider to be a borderline dictatorship?
It's not as if you're allowed to oppose the guy if you're Venezuelan w/o repercussions. At least in North America and the EU, speaking out against political figures and government is not only legal, but gets you cred among ideologically like-minded people. You can still go to work the next day confident that you won't lose your job by government mandate. You can kick back in your house confident that someone won't kick in your door and drag you off to prison. In Venezuela, I suspect that such things ain't so guaranteed.
OR... you can use Trolltech's licensing scheme (OSS projects get to use it free, commercial ones have to pay up licensing fees).
I like either GPL version, but if you're not too hung-up on using GPL, http://www.opensource.org/ has a whole array of open-source offically-sanctioned licensing - one of those may fit your needs better. (cue RMS fans w/ mod points stampeding in protest, but seriously; if it does the job, use it).
The beauty of this is, it's all up to you how you want to handle it.
Not to sound trite, but that seems dangerously close to the 'broken window' economic model, no? (especially if this whole climate thing turns out indeed to be well beyond Man's ability to control).
Otherwise, I do agree - this doesn't seem like a harmless pursuit. "Carbon Credits", taxation on basic (1st-world) needs (fuel, electricity, etc), seem rather to be means by which other select groups gain wealth at others' expense but with little to no productive input*... save this time there's a 'crisis' to justify the taking.
*(aside from the tech gained from sucking energy out of wind and sun, anyway)
Pity that...
Some already do. *shrug*
BTW: No mention of other nations' citizenry and/or their humanity was made, so appeals to emotion based on a strawman argument doesn't wash. Deal.
* Proposed? Great - so what branch of government is DHS again, and when did they get to create/codify law?
* Nations weren't jockeying for power and economic supremacy over the outcome of his experiments
* Newton wasn't running around trying to scare people into thinking that humanity would likely get wiped out if Motion and Gravity were defined
* Things like Motion, Energy, and Gravity are explainable by mathematics, have precise definitions, and don't rely on faulty/incomplete computer modelling to prove/disprove (yet - at least until someone invents an anti-gravity machine or finds a way to stop entropy, etc etc)
* Newton didn't have grant money riding on the outcome.
* Newton didn't have to worry about a career-killing blackballing if his outcomes didn't match the consensus opinion.
* Al Gore wasn't born yet
* The UN didn't exist yet.
'zat help any?
So, err, maybe before you pick up more tomatoes to throw at the administration for this plan (which incidentally is not a member of Congress, as the TFA states as being the branch o' government pushing this change), maybe you folks would actually care to read what it is you're ranting against?
Just a thought...
Info here: http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/0,1000000193,39284700,0 0.htm
There's also lots of info (much of it from Apple itself) saying flat-out that Apple will prolly have an 8-core rig pretty soon (relatively):
http://www.macintouch.com/reviews/macpro/r eveals-8-core-mac-pro/
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/31484/135/
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/03/12/apple-store-error-
HTH a bit... (and yeah, I'd kinda like to have one too)
A 'second Rome', or a 'Constantinople'?
I don't ask to be some semantical nazi or anything, but this phrase piqued my interest a bit... When Rome basically went splat and fell into the dark ages, Constantinople was basically it. There are a lot of the same parallels, too - The Eastern Roman Empire wasn't nearly as outgoing, wan't nearly as -how do I put it- 'extroverted'? Also, Rome wasn't nearly as refined. The paralels are starting to pile up at this point.
China does do one thing different, though - it welcomes outsiders and uses as much as it can from them. It also exists in a far different geopolitical environment.
I also think that China's political system is (slowly) being changed over time, and could not survive for long if a hard enough adversity hit them - either politically or economically. Something on the order of the Great Depression (a global one, like in the early 1930's) would likely foment some very bad mojo in Beijing, and traditional tolerance by the masses aside, I don't think the Chinese gov't could withstand it w/o either collapsing or going back to the iron fist.
I guess that, while it is good that the West does see them as something to be reckoned with, I believe that the Chinese political system is an increasingly fragile one, but will hold up - as long as times are good.
Brilliant!
Help any?
Sure... they are actors, in those areas which are funded by said state. The U can't discriminate against applicants on race/religion/etc because that non-discrimination is a condition of accepting federal tuition grants and funding. This also extends to how students can and cannot be treated academically, sure.
BUT... now we get into extracurricular activities, none of which is funded by tax money. Otherwise, it would be like demanding that all government workers open their homes to the public because they happen to receive their income from taxpayer funds.
There has to be a separation somewhere...
No, seriously; if Pokernews can't see the advantage in being first-to-the-punch, or have overpayed for the 'right' to spit out these numbers first, then they can complain to no one, really.
Then again, I'm not a jury, judge, lawyer, or any of that. I just find the whole thing kinda silly (sorta like when Jeep sued Hummer because the Hummers had seven slits in their vehicle's grille... just like the Jeeps do. Never mind that both grille types were built (IIRC) from some minor aspect of US Gov't design specs, or that no one in either customer camp really gives a flying frig about how many holes the front has...)
Just because it's on the Internet doesn't exempt the act from its brethren on older tech, y'know?
I like the angle you took, but it has way too many thickets in it:
So what research is the State paying for at this particular sports game, exactly?
There is a difference between State "supported" and state "owned". I get a huge tax deduction each year for the interest on my house mortgage, on energy-saving measures I perform on the home, my home office space, etc etc. In short, the State supports my housing in a small indirect way - same way the State (ditto) supports college sports programs in indirect ways. Does that now give any journalist/blogger the right to come into my house at whim and broadcast/blog on whatever occurs in it? If the dog doesn't get him (okay, okay - Dachshunds aren't exactly man-eaters), I'd certainly have more than the right to throw the schmuck off my property.
Unless stated otherwise in the grant paperwork as a condition of acceptance, money given to a college's labs doesn't automatically give the State the perfect right to dominate rules on the sports program.