I would agree normally, but I really can't now. I think piracy is a function of prices, but this is overlooked since it is such a new phenomena, and music and movie prices (ala **AA) are monopolistic, remember the price fixing brouhaha a couple years back. One consortium controls 90% of media released, and thus can set the price in a rather competition free market. With such artificially inflated price point ($21 for a DVD now?), quick and free become better and better options, the inconvenience of piracy starts to outweigh the convenience and legality of actually buying media.
Ideas such as iTMS I think are the wave of the future, make it cheap by completely removing physical distribution and manufacture. Cheap and easy, soon technology will allow this for video as well (when broadband penetration gets a little better than it is now, thats the only real buffer since memory and processing speed is cheap). I lie, the other buffer is the various **AAs, who would rather litigate than fix their business model, or charge the prices that the market actually demands.
I'm not an economist, mind, so I might be speaking from my ass.
On my old G4 iBook it really can't talk to anything,since there are no drivers for most Apple hardware, no Airport, no modem, the ethernet doesn't communicate with OS X, XP, or (as far as I can tell) with my ISP's content, meaning it pretty much is a black box. While it runs, without drivers it might as well not.
OT but does anyone know how to make an iBook a fully functioning Linux beast? Was Ubuntu the wrong choice for this project? I have heard of people here doing it successfully, but couldn't really find much information for myself.
Quick correction, MPAA, not the RIAA. It is easy to confuse your media giant defenders of.. er... themselves, I know.
I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with this, though. I do like it better than nasty DRM, but it seems... Underdone, and perhaps still a step in the wrong direction. I think the various **AAs should learn that the problem isn't piracy, but that piracy is the symptom of a larger underlying problem, that their business model is outdated and self-defeating (may I add draconian?), and their prices are unfair.
I haven't used Vista yet, but you can easily ignore IE and WMP, even though XP does have an odd habit of pointing new files to them from time to time, for seemingly arbitrary reasons. I haven't used IE of WMP on my XP box in years.
In XP (and perhaps Vista) BSODs are happily rare. I generally get a month of uptime, much more than I get from OSX (so many reboot patches for it), and rarely got a BSOD. Yes, 95-98 were bad, ME was just a crap-fest, but XP is actually a decent OS at core.
On Apple...
Finder DOES suck, I pray that 10.5 fixes it, but waiting for 5 revision to fix something that people have been bitching about is bad.
With software such as Onyx, you can speed up all the animations and such. Granted it is 3rd party software, but the ability is still there, with hidden files, ditto, there are third party solutions. OS X is terrible though in burying power-user preferences in terminal, or relying on 3rd party apps, this is both a bad thing, and a good thing though. I think their should just be a locked "advanced" preference pane though that would let people do things that power-users generally need or want.
Yes, the typical Apple fan is bad. ESPECIALLY the ones who have grown up on Macs, and never really used another OS. It means when something does break (which it inevitably does) they are completely clueless, I've seen people buy new Macs because they couldn't quite grasp the fact that they ruined the permissions on several core folders somehow, and the very term "CHMOD" sent them running, or reinstalling would kill them.
To be fair though, the "average" Windows user (meaning the one not on/.) is also a complete moron, who lets their machine get zombified, then screams about how his box "pwns" my Mac for the pure reason that "Macs are teh ghey".
Another Mac problem, right now, is a complete lock in. Their in house software, like Pages, is completely incompatible with anything else.
My universal OS Troll comment is "Use what works", I think every OS has some serious problems, and an array of benefits, and each user should select a feature profile that works for them and their tasks, and one where the problems are least likely to interfere with these tasks. People who have to troll something as idiotic as OS preference are obviously trying to justify their own investment in a computer, OS, either that or are somewhat unbalanced, thinking that something as insignificant as as OS choice really makes any difference in the grand scheme of things.
When? I haven't heard any refer to their computer as "hip", regardless the OS. But if we want to troll, lets at least troll fairly, Windows users call their boxes "1337", and Linux folk call their boxes "boxen", so there.
And yes, I've called my MacMini sexy before, and I called my XP box a whole large assortment of names, most of which aren't worth saying in polite company, but then again my iBook was just named "bitch", until I installed Ubuntu on it, now it is just Annie the Isolate, since it can't communicate with anything.
I'm not even really talking about SCOTUS, or a purely legal aspect of this philosophy, it also infects the other to branches of government. A lot of legislators legislate on how they see the constitution. As stated, in the short term this can lead to some bad consiquences, but averaged out over the long term I don't see it as a bad thing, and it hasn't been. I don't see this as just a liberal thing, either, EVERY party, no matter how insignificant can be heard sitting around arguing what this or that particular amendment means. Look at the gun control (2nd Amendment) argument, you have several interested parties with varying interpretations of the amendment, and to say that only liberals "interpret" it, and your side doesn't is rather fallacious. Hell SCOTUS exists for this purpose, to determine the constitutionality of legislation.
I agree though, SCOTUS scares me, it has a wee bit too much power, even if there is a legislative check on them. To be more clear, too much power concentrated into to few, unchanging, hands. Especially when none of these people are purely objective, since they were assigned by their president's partisan policies, and not by their judicial merit alone.
It seems that the American constitution HAS worked rather well in its 200+ year history, sure there are some small glitches from time to time, like McCarthy, and now. But on the whole it has worked, only one superfluous amendment (added, promptly deleted). The strength of it is that it is a living document, meaning its interpretations are supposed to change with the times, arguing about it is a good things. Imagine if it was fixed, the word has changed much in the last 200 years, including people, their values, and what they judge important.
The constitution is the only thing America has going for it, and the only real hope it has.
Then how do you explain the past rash of corporations pressing charges on people for giving bad reviews of their products, meaningless NDAs (not for trade secrets), and even the RIAA copyright gestapo?
But then again, I don't view corporations as good or evil, like all other things this distinction lies in the application, and the people at the helm.
I've noticed that/. is pretty well polarized. The liberals generally brand anything corporate as "teh evil", while the huge libertarian group worship them as paving the way to some strange Ayn Randian utopia. In the middle is the view that they are just tools, like guns, blogs (in this case), or computers, they can be used, and the use dictates their value.
Yes, I used a strawman AND a hasty generalization in the above statement.
Ouch, just ouch. I always hated it when DMs did crap like that, its like they couldn't think of a better idea to harrass the party, or make a decent NPC, so they need to destroy a perfectly good character (hey, it happens, but it should be rare). Especially older characters, that you've invested huge amounts of time in. Thats one reason I loved our "round-robin" approach, once our main DM (the one with the books and the space, mainly) got the story rolling, we all got to contribute to the plot, and control things, so we had to be a bit careful with other peoples characters, since it could happen to ours tomorrow (hence the story above). One of the reasons for the story above, too, was to remove my character from play, it was a character I'd been playing for 3 odd years, and was getting a wee bit over powered (with the old martial arts rules, specialties, and nunchucks I could cough up something absurd like 12 attacks / round, which is a bit much even for me).
I really have hardly played since, my old group moved on, got jobs, etc.. And all the pick up groups I could find for any system were TERRIBLE. I did play awhile in college, which was amusing since the DM couldn't multi-task and often got himself over his head, like attack a party of 5 with 10 increasing waves of zombies, from 2 - 300. Oh the dicefest! He actually started taking people out of action, by making me, say, fall down an elevator shaft or 3 hours.
Which is the point. NEVER trust a salesman, especially if they are working directly for the company involved. Most employees in Apple Stores are pretty much cultist of the Mac, they can see no wrong with the platform (granted I met a couple, one of them even laughed at me r wanting to pay 300 to replace my iBooks dead HD, and told me to buy a $100 laptop drive and do it myself, he even gave me the link to instructions, calling the fee idiotic). If you buy a car, do you really buy the rhetoric they give? Of course not, it is guaranteed to be biased, and pretty damn far from the truth, your going research it yourself, especially if it is going to cost you a chunk of change, and your staking your livelihood on it.
Switching is overrated, you stick with what works for you.
Actually I am all about assigning blame where it lies. Apple has made some down right bad software decisions, and they deserve the blame for that. BUT they do not deserve blame for an early adopter being inconvenienced. Inconvenience and incompatibility is the price of being an early adapter, no matter what the platform. No one forces you to be an early adapter, mactel still doesn't offer much more in functionality over the PPC versions.
Granted I think they phased out traditional hardware to fast, meaning switchers and people with dead hardware ARE forced to use a new system that still isn't fully supported.
Partly, btw, this is just me. I don't think ignorance of flaws is an excuse, we're geeks, we research our tech, and we should damn well know what we're getting into. A quick Google search would have shown that his critical app sucked under rosetta, and that mactels have some deficiencies still. Hell the guy at the apple store told me my new mactel would run Photoshop better under rosetta ("longer boot, but the program seems to run faster once its running"), with no mention of Word becoming so unstable to be unusable, and the processor driven graphics slowing down to a chop when running a process, and using expose on multiple windows, that even a core duo could bog easier than a G4 or G5 at lower clock speeds. But, I figured there would be problems such as these. Caveat Emptor, and all.
I remember doing something like that back in highschool when we used to play Vampire, we alternated storytellers per game, so each player got to play and dm. We had one guy who would never try to kill himself as story teller, and really liked to power game, so the rest of us got together and decided to see if we could kill the whole party. Luckily it was my turn to dm. I had millions of rats attack, the powergamer decided to throw napalm on them, and forgot he did so, never igniting it. Everyone forgot about it. About half an hour later a big mean nosferatu popped up, and one of the characters decided to use balefire on him, and botched his roll, igniting all 3,000 rats. Meaning 1d10/round of aggravated damage per character. The whole party died, EXCEPT the power gamer. It was a pretty good laugh afterwards.
But when I used to play DnD we had a dm who REALLY loved insti-death, generally randomly. Every time characters got a wee bit strong (through gaming, not power gaming), he's make some random roll, inevitably leading to instant death.
"you trip on a small stone, fall and break your neck" "the flower you pick is actually the home of some long forgotten god, who is angered and eats your soul. Your dead. Reroll" "A giant hamster comes and devours you all"
To nit-pick its generally two. But then again much as changed, with Bliz North hemorrhaging, and the continual work in progress that is WoW on their plate.
Speaking towards the GP, Diablo 3 is probably not going to happen because of the aforementioned Bliz North hemorrhage, unless they delegate it to a completely new team, which I think is doubtful, since Bliz has traditionally had 2 teams, North and Main. Main is currently doing WoW content, and the remains of North (somewhat rebuilt) apparently have SC2 in the works, leaving Bliz full. I might be wrong, perhaps the people doing Ghost got redistributed to SC2, and North was completely scrapped. Who knows?
Why does everything have to be a damn MMO... I'd rather have a nice, large, game world to enjoy on my own, or with a few select friends. I like my games as an escape from the mundane world of morons, and immature wankers, not to be another chance to have to put of with the most idiotic aspects of society. Granted I did make some friends through WoW, and did have some good times (been 6 months WoW-Sober), but the most part it was a tedious experience, both in the continual post-60 content, and the continual grinding to get there (the mere term STV still gives me nightmares), and then having to put up with idiot guilds and their politics, and doing the nightly large raid to the same 3-4 places over and over and over, with the same people, doing the same things, at the same times. The post-50 loss of character creativity ("ur a drood, HEEL!"), and ensuing clickfest. This was much worse on in PVP servers, but even sticking with RP (CC) got painful.
It got to the point where it wasn't even a game, it became a damn job. Meaning not fun.
Give me a good RTS, please. Something I can do in my free time, and actually enjoy. Hell give me a Diablo-like game, like nethack with pretty graphics, where my interactions with random wankers is optional, and my engagement in the game world is up to my schedule, and not some raiding guilds.
I'm an antisocial gamer, and PROUD! Seriously, Morrowind was more enjoyable on the whole than WoW. Sadly I can't play Oblivion, but i'm sure I would enjoy it more than WoW. It has the breadth and scope of a MMO, just without the idiots and grinding.
Give me StarCraft that is pretty much like Warcraft3, pretty, story driven, and most of all fun. Sadly I can't go install SC right now, damn mactel's lacking Classic support.
The really amusing thing in thsi debate is that if Google were to censor parts of Iraq/Afghanistan, we would have a big article in YRO screaming injustice, and how "information wants to be free", and how its time to buy tinfoil before big brother makes it illegal too. If Google doesn't censor it, they get called irresponsible to the Cause, and get blamed for supporting terrorists, freedom fighters, insurgents, the resistances, or whatever we're calling those Iraqi chaps these days.
It makes me almost feel bad for Google, their in a good "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Personally I hope they do nothing, and let this wash over. I don't see the need for the hubbub and FUD, there are plenty of other places with the same public data, and a smart "bad guy" will be able to pull of preliminary intelligence the old fashioned way any how. Better to let some risk exist, than start down the slippery slope.
I'm guessing you could use Illustrator on your old Mac(?) just fine, and knew that Adobe wasn't immediately releasing Mactel updates to their software, but had to by a mactel box because of why?
I even kept an old iBook sitting around for Photoshop, since I knew it would be buggy on the mactel's under Rosetta.
Rosetta just sucks, thats it, but I never expected too much of it by its very nature. Translation layers ALWAYS insert 6 billion bugs. For me both Office and PS tanked, but I was expecting something like that happening, so made sure to keep my old computer just in case.
To sum up, you only have you to blame of Illustrator.
A stout is a beer. I think that the American in you is confusing beer for the nasty pissy lagers they sell round these parts, and while pissy 50% rice lagers are beer, Guinness too is beer. There are better beers than Gunness, btw, try some Young's Double Chocolate Stout, it makes Guinness look like Budweiser. Well not quite, but still. Also support your local micro-brews, up in Flagstaff, Az there is a bar with the greatest stout known to man, I'm sure you can find something like it where you live.:)
Exactly! Basically teach science as science really is, and not how we currently handle it, where we teach it as a set of dogmatic facts until college. This would also fix the problem of people's eyes glazing over whenever they hear the phrase "scientists say..." I'm also okay with teaching evolution as it is, as long as it it isn't completely about teaching what is wrong with it, and how another view is better. Leave the problem open ended, like it is in real science, a theory still in the works (like most of them).
I'd watch out with the phrase "what the limits of science are", we might differ on several issues, but this one (oddly) I think we are on the same page. I think there are limits to what the current idea of science can open up, Mind, God, Self, Agency, etc.. And I've gotten into huge fights on this. While we can compromise on this, I don't think most people would. Since admitting that science isn't perfect somehow leads to "your a religious nut!", which is absurd. I'm not religious, if you couldn't tell, but I still there is room for it. And there will always be.
Might, just guessing, have something to do with increased geopolitical tension from climate change. Things such as water shortages, etc, which could lead to increased hostilities, especially since some of the areas effected the most are already shaky and unstable, like the Middle east. The middle east shares two rivers, and we all can see how stable they are, and this counts two potentially two nuclear powers, Israel and Iran.
I'm not forcing anything on anybody, except rationalism. Public schools should teach science, period. Its not society's job to teach your religious flavors to children, that is the parents job, if they are so willing. Teaching science and teaching religion are two different things, science is the capital that the whole world uses, religion is something that small communities use. I'm all for the ACLU's actions, btw, since the creationists are misusing the word "theory", their idea of the term is NOT the scientific idea of the term, the one that is actually applied to the concept of evolution. To label it "just a theory" is to be wrong, at least when your using theory in the christian science sense.
To be honest, I'm not against teaching the Christian creation myth in schools, I even wrote an article to that point, though no one would like the compromise.
In this case the community is wrong, and shouldn't be allowed to corrupt their, and other, children's learning with fallacious information. Should schools be allowed to teach children 2+2=5, or that the earth is flat and the universe revolves around it? The heliocentric solar system is just a theory, after all, as is Newtonian physics, relativity, continental drift, and just about anything else in science. Even the so-called scientific laws are just a subset of theories. By all means, tell them that certain fundamentalist sects of certain religions doubt that evolution exists, but do so in a cultural studies class next to the various creation myths of other world religions. Religion belongs in the home, not the school.
Again, I really don't care what you think, as long as it isn't inflicted on me or my children. No one has the right to inflict their religion on others, God arguments have no validity on those who don't believe in God, therefore it looses its cultural currency rather quickly, where logic and rationalism don't.
Again, I'm not arguing against RELIGION, if you have a faith, GO FOR IT. Rational Christians DO do good, and good, and good for them. Rational Hindus, Muslims, Sufis, Buddhists, etc... do good too, and more power to them as well. Its when the religion gets to the point where it is blind dogma to be inflicted upon others for "their own good" that it becomes problematic. Nowhere did I say "religion = bad", I said fervor and self-righteousness, and these terms don't even have to apply to religion, ANY fervor and self-righteousness is bad, when ideology replaces empathy and humanity. These epitomize fundamentalists, Christian and Islamic.
Yes, most scientists were religious. Copernicus was pious, but the church still tried to ban the truth. Giordano Bruno was even a monk, and yet burned for daring to speak the truth. Galileo was forced to repent scientific fact for God too, though thankfully he rebelled. If your religion can't adapt to the truth, then your religion is doomed, as it should be.
Never did I imply this. To each their own, as long as they mind their own damn business. They have as much right to inflict their religion on me, as I do on them. None. There is no problem with religion, even fundamental radical sects, as long as they don't try to inflict themselves on others, and sadly the fundies (of the various sects, be it Islam or Christianity) do just this. I don't buy into their version of goodness, and their dogma, so why on earth should I have to live by it? If they shut up, practiced their own beliefs, and minded their own business, I really wouldn't care.
Until they do this, everyone should realize how dangerous they are. Religious fervor, and self-righteousness has never led to a single good thing, only mass suffering, genocide, and other atrocities. Your religious beliefs are just that, YOURS. When some idiot tries to inflict that on me, or worse a country, or school, then it becomes EVERYONES business, and it should be stopped.
While not being a scientist of any sort, I'm an ardent student of the philosophy of science (and thus a science junky), I find it amazing what happens when science gets politicized. The amount of times I've had to clarify the science definition of the word "theory", as opposed to the colloquial form to people (not even religious fundamentalists, just general lay folk) is rather depressing, same thing with describing how science ACTUALLY works, outside of the version of method we're all taught (hopefully) in High School, who just doing the research does not make it fact, that their also is the idea of consensus and repeatability. Listening to the BODY of science, as opposed to a "scientist" is the only way to really judge. Damn you science people and your charisma!:)
But all politicized debates fall into this. Everyone has an agenda, a personal stake in being right, in winning. Truth becomes irrelevant, soundness falls by the wayside, all that matters is winning. From stem-cells, to evolution, to climate. Even the real science becomes questionable for the mass of noise, opinion, and propaganda. The main advice I give to people is never listen to someone who isn't dispassionate, if the reading is dry and boring (on controversial topics) then take it with a grain of salt. Yes, and of course, track the funding, what is the person's other interest, who's their master and whats their price.
I hate dogma, lord. Why don't we teach people to think for themselves anymore? Give them the tools to evaluate what is said? Critical thinking I think the ancients called it.
Okay, you had me until: Vicious morons like you are little but "Darwin rottweilers"
Way to blow a rational argument with your own ad hominem. If your post was a willing irony, I would be very happy, but I doubt it. You were using the same "yelling, hostile" tactics as you were rejecting. Unless I missed my philosophy/rhetoric class that told me calling people "morons" was a valid form of argument.
Yes, evolution potentially has problems. Yes, I generally believe in evolution, still, since it is the best theory we have (actually punctuated equilibrium, as endorsed by Gould, and not classic Darwinian evolution). The data fits some version of evolution, though, even if not the current one, and it does not fit creationism. This, on its own, discredits creationism, it doesn't get an equal say because it is invalid based on empirical evidence. People are still debating what flavor of evolution is true, so that debate is not closed, but some form of evolution DOES exist, and thus should be taught.
To say that we have no right to dictate that it is taught is bogus as well. We being society. These children will live in a communal culture, and thus the culture has a say in their actions and learning. You can still teach your children whatever you want at home, no one is stopping you. You can still send your children to some form of religious school, no one is stopping you. We're talking about PUBLIC school, meaning a PUBLIC curriculum, meaning you have to play by societies rules, if you don't like it the previous two options are open to you. What people like the subject of the article are guilty of is forcing their political and religious beliefs on others, when schools exist to teach FACT and not some arbitrary faith system. Don't like it, leave it.
Granted schools should teach the tools to find arguments and fallacies, so things aren't taken as gospel. But still we shouldn't teach every view point just because they are out there, we have a criteria for judging the validity of these view points, and it is called science and logic. And, as I said earlier, in this topic, science is based on consensus. Fringe views don't get represented for a good reason, their not accepted by science, and 99% of the time are crackpot idiocy. In that rare 1%, we revise the textbooks when it is accepted as good science.
There was a history professor at one of the schools I went to, who had something like 14 kids. His rational was that him and his wife both held multiple Ph'Ds, had IQs 200+, and were card carrying MENSAns, so they had the moral obligation to out breed the morons, infusing some good genes back in the pool.
While this line of thought does border on eugenics, it makes some sense, at least this couple will raise good humans, and not a bunch of uneducated, ignorant, fundies. Or so I hope.
The word "science" works like hypnosis on the average American, I've noticed. If you tack that word on ANYTHING, it becomes instantly credible. Its a sad statement, but the gimmick works. Just like the "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on television" ads, just the fact you know the person, and they whispered a magic word automatically makes them credible. Especially with science, since the very term makes the laypersons eyes glaze over.
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I would agree normally, but I really can't now. I think piracy is a function of prices, but this is overlooked since it is such a new phenomena, and music and movie prices (ala **AA) are monopolistic, remember the price fixing brouhaha a couple years back. One consortium controls 90% of media released, and thus can set the price in a rather competition free market. With such artificially inflated price point ($21 for a DVD now?), quick and free become better and better options, the inconvenience of piracy starts to outweigh the convenience and legality of actually buying media.
Ideas such as iTMS I think are the wave of the future, make it cheap by completely removing physical distribution and manufacture. Cheap and easy, soon technology will allow this for video as well (when broadband penetration gets a little better than it is now, thats the only real buffer since memory and processing speed is cheap). I lie, the other buffer is the various **AAs, who would rather litigate than fix their business model, or charge the prices that the market actually demands.
I'm not an economist, mind, so I might be speaking from my ass.
On my old G4 iBook it really can't talk to anything,since there are no drivers for most Apple hardware, no Airport, no modem, the ethernet doesn't communicate with OS X, XP, or (as far as I can tell) with my ISP's content, meaning it pretty much is a black box. While it runs, without drivers it might as well not.
OT but does anyone know how to make an iBook a fully functioning Linux beast? Was Ubuntu the wrong choice for this project? I have heard of people here doing it successfully, but couldn't really find much information for myself.
Quick correction, MPAA, not the RIAA. It is easy to confuse your media giant defenders of.. er... themselves, I know.
I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with this, though. I do like it better than nasty DRM, but it seems... Underdone, and perhaps still a step in the wrong direction. I think the various **AAs should learn that the problem isn't piracy, but that piracy is the symptom of a larger underlying problem, that their business model is outdated and self-defeating (may I add draconian?), and their prices are unfair.
A couple points:
/.) is also a complete moron, who lets their machine get zombified, then screams about how his box "pwns" my Mac for the pure reason that "Macs are teh ghey".
I haven't used Vista yet, but you can easily ignore IE and WMP, even though XP does have an odd habit of pointing new files to them from time to time, for seemingly arbitrary reasons. I haven't used IE of WMP on my XP box in years.
In XP (and perhaps Vista) BSODs are happily rare. I generally get a month of uptime, much more than I get from OSX (so many reboot patches for it), and rarely got a BSOD. Yes, 95-98 were bad, ME was just a crap-fest, but XP is actually a decent OS at core.
On Apple...
Finder DOES suck, I pray that 10.5 fixes it, but waiting for 5 revision to fix something that people have been bitching about is bad.
With software such as Onyx, you can speed up all the animations and such. Granted it is 3rd party software, but the ability is still there, with hidden files, ditto, there are third party solutions. OS X is terrible though in burying power-user preferences in terminal, or relying on 3rd party apps, this is both a bad thing, and a good thing though. I think their should just be a locked "advanced" preference pane though that would let people do things that power-users generally need or want.
Yes, the typical Apple fan is bad. ESPECIALLY the ones who have grown up on Macs, and never really used another OS. It means when something does break (which it inevitably does) they are completely clueless, I've seen people buy new Macs because they couldn't quite grasp the fact that they ruined the permissions on several core folders somehow, and the very term "CHMOD" sent them running, or reinstalling would kill them.
To be fair though, the "average" Windows user (meaning the one not on
Another Mac problem, right now, is a complete lock in. Their in house software, like Pages, is completely incompatible with anything else.
My universal OS Troll comment is "Use what works", I think every OS has some serious problems, and an array of benefits, and each user should select a feature profile that works for them and their tasks, and one where the problems are least likely to interfere with these tasks. People who have to troll something as idiotic as OS preference are obviously trying to justify their own investment in a computer, OS, either that or are somewhat unbalanced, thinking that something as insignificant as as OS choice really makes any difference in the grand scheme of things.
My 2c.
When? I haven't heard any refer to their computer as "hip", regardless the OS. But if we want to troll, lets at least troll fairly, Windows users call their boxes "1337", and Linux folk call their boxes "boxen", so there.
And yes, I've called my MacMini sexy before, and I called my XP box a whole large assortment of names, most of which aren't worth saying in polite company, but then again my iBook was just named "bitch", until I installed Ubuntu on it, now it is just Annie the Isolate, since it can't communicate with anything.
I'm not even really talking about SCOTUS, or a purely legal aspect of this philosophy, it also infects the other to branches of government. A lot of legislators legislate on how they see the constitution. As stated, in the short term this can lead to some bad consiquences, but averaged out over the long term I don't see it as a bad thing, and it hasn't been. I don't see this as just a liberal thing, either, EVERY party, no matter how insignificant can be heard sitting around arguing what this or that particular amendment means. Look at the gun control (2nd Amendment) argument, you have several interested parties with varying interpretations of the amendment, and to say that only liberals "interpret" it, and your side doesn't is rather fallacious. Hell SCOTUS exists for this purpose, to determine the constitutionality of legislation.
I agree though, SCOTUS scares me, it has a wee bit too much power, even if there is a legislative check on them. To be more clear, too much power concentrated into to few, unchanging, hands. Especially when none of these people are purely objective, since they were assigned by their president's partisan policies, and not by their judicial merit alone.
And the alternative is?
It seems that the American constitution HAS worked rather well in its 200+ year history, sure there are some small glitches from time to time, like McCarthy, and now. But on the whole it has worked, only one superfluous amendment (added, promptly deleted). The strength of it is that it is a living document, meaning its interpretations are supposed to change with the times, arguing about it is a good things. Imagine if it was fixed, the word has changed much in the last 200 years, including people, their values, and what they judge important.
The constitution is the only thing America has going for it, and the only real hope it has.
Then how do you explain the past rash of corporations pressing charges on people for giving bad reviews of their products, meaningless NDAs (not for trade secrets), and even the RIAA copyright gestapo?
/. is pretty well polarized. The liberals generally brand anything corporate as "teh evil", while the huge libertarian group worship them as paving the way to some strange Ayn Randian utopia. In the middle is the view that they are just tools, like guns, blogs (in this case), or computers, they can be used, and the use dictates their value.
But then again, I don't view corporations as good or evil, like all other things this distinction lies in the application, and the people at the helm.
I've noticed that
Yes, I used a strawman AND a hasty generalization in the above statement.
Ouch, just ouch. I always hated it when DMs did crap like that, its like they couldn't think of a better idea to harrass the party, or make a decent NPC, so they need to destroy a perfectly good character (hey, it happens, but it should be rare). Especially older characters, that you've invested huge amounts of time in. Thats one reason I loved our "round-robin" approach, once our main DM (the one with the books and the space, mainly) got the story rolling, we all got to contribute to the plot, and control things, so we had to be a bit careful with other peoples characters, since it could happen to ours tomorrow (hence the story above). One of the reasons for the story above, too, was to remove my character from play, it was a character I'd been playing for 3 odd years, and was getting a wee bit over powered (with the old martial arts rules, specialties, and nunchucks I could cough up something absurd like 12 attacks / round, which is a bit much even for me).
I really have hardly played since, my old group moved on, got jobs, etc.. And all the pick up groups I could find for any system were TERRIBLE. I did play awhile in college, which was amusing since the DM couldn't multi-task and often got himself over his head, like attack a party of 5 with 10 increasing waves of zombies, from 2 - 300. Oh the dicefest! He actually started taking people out of action, by making me, say, fall down an elevator shaft or 3 hours.
But do you think Apple is going to tell him that?
Which is the point. NEVER trust a salesman, especially if they are working directly for the company involved. Most employees in Apple Stores are pretty much cultist of the Mac, they can see no wrong with the platform (granted I met a couple, one of them even laughed at me r wanting to pay 300 to replace my iBooks dead HD, and told me to buy a $100 laptop drive and do it myself, he even gave me the link to instructions, calling the fee idiotic). If you buy a car, do you really buy the rhetoric they give? Of course not, it is guaranteed to be biased, and pretty damn far from the truth, your going research it yourself, especially if it is going to cost you a chunk of change, and your staking your livelihood on it.
Switching is overrated, you stick with what works for you.
Actually I am all about assigning blame where it lies. Apple has made some down right bad software decisions, and they deserve the blame for that. BUT they do not deserve blame for an early adopter being inconvenienced. Inconvenience and incompatibility is the price of being an early adapter, no matter what the platform. No one forces you to be an early adapter, mactel still doesn't offer much more in functionality over the PPC versions.
Granted I think they phased out traditional hardware to fast, meaning switchers and people with dead hardware ARE forced to use a new system that still isn't fully supported.
Partly, btw, this is just me. I don't think ignorance of flaws is an excuse, we're geeks, we research our tech, and we should damn well know what we're getting into. A quick Google search would have shown that his critical app sucked under rosetta, and that mactels have some deficiencies still. Hell the guy at the apple store told me my new mactel would run Photoshop better under rosetta ("longer boot, but the program seems to run faster once its running"), with no mention of Word becoming so unstable to be unusable, and the processor driven graphics slowing down to a chop when running a process, and using expose on multiple windows, that even a core duo could bog easier than a G4 or G5 at lower clock speeds. But, I figured there would be problems such as these. Caveat Emptor, and all.
I remember doing something like that back in highschool when we used to play Vampire, we alternated storytellers per game, so each player got to play and dm. We had one guy who would never try to kill himself as story teller, and really liked to power game, so the rest of us got together and decided to see if we could kill the whole party. Luckily it was my turn to dm. I had millions of rats attack, the powergamer decided to throw napalm on them, and forgot he did so, never igniting it. Everyone forgot about it. About half an hour later a big mean nosferatu popped up, and one of the characters decided to use balefire on him, and botched his roll, igniting all 3,000 rats. Meaning 1d10/round of aggravated damage per character. The whole party died, EXCEPT the power gamer. It was a pretty good laugh afterwards.
But when I used to play DnD we had a dm who REALLY loved insti-death, generally randomly. Every time characters got a wee bit strong (through gaming, not power gaming), he's make some random roll, inevitably leading to instant death.
"you trip on a small stone, fall and break your neck"
"the flower you pick is actually the home of some long forgotten god, who is angered and eats your soul. Your dead. Reroll"
"A giant hamster comes and devours you all"
Prick.
To nit-pick its generally two. But then again much as changed, with Bliz North hemorrhaging, and the continual work in progress that is WoW on their plate.
Speaking towards the GP, Diablo 3 is probably not going to happen because of the aforementioned Bliz North hemorrhage, unless they delegate it to a completely new team, which I think is doubtful, since Bliz has traditionally had 2 teams, North and Main. Main is currently doing WoW content, and the remains of North (somewhat rebuilt) apparently have SC2 in the works, leaving Bliz full. I might be wrong, perhaps the people doing Ghost got redistributed to SC2, and North was completely scrapped. Who knows?
Why does everything have to be a damn MMO... I'd rather have a nice, large, game world to enjoy on my own, or with a few select friends. I like my games as an escape from the mundane world of morons, and immature wankers, not to be another chance to have to put of with the most idiotic aspects of society. Granted I did make some friends through WoW, and did have some good times (been 6 months WoW-Sober), but the most part it was a tedious experience, both in the continual post-60 content, and the continual grinding to get there (the mere term STV still gives me nightmares), and then having to put up with idiot guilds and their politics, and doing the nightly large raid to the same 3-4 places over and over and over, with the same people, doing the same things, at the same times. The post-50 loss of character creativity ("ur a drood, HEEL!"), and ensuing clickfest. This was much worse on in PVP servers, but even sticking with RP (CC) got painful.
It got to the point where it wasn't even a game, it became a damn job. Meaning not fun.
Give me a good RTS, please. Something I can do in my free time, and actually enjoy. Hell give me a Diablo-like game, like nethack with pretty graphics, where my interactions with random wankers is optional, and my engagement in the game world is up to my schedule, and not some raiding guilds.
I'm an antisocial gamer, and PROUD! Seriously, Morrowind was more enjoyable on the whole than WoW. Sadly I can't play Oblivion, but i'm sure I would enjoy it more than WoW. It has the breadth and scope of a MMO, just without the idiots and grinding.
Give me StarCraft that is pretty much like Warcraft3, pretty, story driven, and most of all fun. Sadly I can't go install SC right now, damn mactel's lacking Classic support.
The really amusing thing in thsi debate is that if Google were to censor parts of Iraq/Afghanistan, we would have a big article in YRO screaming injustice, and how "information wants to be free", and how its time to buy tinfoil before big brother makes it illegal too. If Google doesn't censor it, they get called irresponsible to the Cause, and get blamed for supporting terrorists, freedom fighters, insurgents, the resistances, or whatever we're calling those Iraqi chaps these days.
It makes me almost feel bad for Google, their in a good "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Personally I hope they do nothing, and let this wash over. I don't see the need for the hubbub and FUD, there are plenty of other places with the same public data, and a smart "bad guy" will be able to pull of preliminary intelligence the old fashioned way any how. Better to let some risk exist, than start down the slippery slope.
My 2c.
I'm guessing you could use Illustrator on your old Mac(?) just fine, and knew that Adobe wasn't immediately releasing Mactel updates to their software, but had to by a mactel box because of why?
I even kept an old iBook sitting around for Photoshop, since I knew it would be buggy on the mactel's under Rosetta.
Rosetta just sucks, thats it, but I never expected too much of it by its very nature. Translation layers ALWAYS insert 6 billion bugs. For me both Office and PS tanked, but I was expecting something like that happening, so made sure to keep my old computer just in case.
To sum up, you only have you to blame of Illustrator.
A stout is a beer. I think that the American in you is confusing beer for the nasty pissy lagers they sell round these parts, and while pissy 50% rice lagers are beer, Guinness too is beer. There are better beers than Gunness, btw, try some Young's Double Chocolate Stout, it makes Guinness look like Budweiser. Well not quite, but still. Also support your local micro-brews, up in Flagstaff, Az there is a bar with the greatest stout known to man, I'm sure you can find something like it where you live. :)
Exactly! Basically teach science as science really is, and not how we currently handle it, where we teach it as a set of dogmatic facts until college. This would also fix the problem of people's eyes glazing over whenever they hear the phrase "scientists say..." I'm also okay with teaching evolution as it is, as long as it it isn't completely about teaching what is wrong with it, and how another view is better. Leave the problem open ended, like it is in real science, a theory still in the works (like most of them).
I'd watch out with the phrase "what the limits of science are", we might differ on several issues, but this one (oddly) I think we are on the same page. I think there are limits to what the current idea of science can open up, Mind, God, Self, Agency, etc.. And I've gotten into huge fights on this. While we can compromise on this, I don't think most people would. Since admitting that science isn't perfect somehow leads to "your a religious nut!", which is absurd. I'm not religious, if you couldn't tell, but I still there is room for it. And there will always be.
Might, just guessing, have something to do with increased geopolitical tension from climate change. Things such as water shortages, etc, which could lead to increased hostilities, especially since some of the areas effected the most are already shaky and unstable, like the Middle east. The middle east shares two rivers, and we all can see how stable they are, and this counts two potentially two nuclear powers, Israel and Iran.
Again I have no idea.
I'm not forcing anything on anybody, except rationalism. Public schools should teach science, period. Its not society's job to teach your religious flavors to children, that is the parents job, if they are so willing. Teaching science and teaching religion are two different things, science is the capital that the whole world uses, religion is something that small communities use. I'm all for the ACLU's actions, btw, since the creationists are misusing the word "theory", their idea of the term is NOT the scientific idea of the term, the one that is actually applied to the concept of evolution. To label it "just a theory" is to be wrong, at least when your using theory in the christian science sense.
To be honest, I'm not against teaching the Christian creation myth in schools, I even wrote an article to that point, though no one would like the compromise.
In this case the community is wrong, and shouldn't be allowed to corrupt their, and other, children's learning with fallacious information. Should schools be allowed to teach children 2+2=5, or that the earth is flat and the universe revolves around it? The heliocentric solar system is just a theory, after all, as is Newtonian physics, relativity, continental drift, and just about anything else in science. Even the so-called scientific laws are just a subset of theories. By all means, tell them that certain fundamentalist sects of certain religions doubt that evolution exists, but do so in a cultural studies class next to the various creation myths of other world religions. Religion belongs in the home, not the school.
Again, I really don't care what you think, as long as it isn't inflicted on me or my children. No one has the right to inflict their religion on others, God arguments have no validity on those who don't believe in God, therefore it looses its cultural currency rather quickly, where logic and rationalism don't.
Again, I'm not arguing against RELIGION, if you have a faith, GO FOR IT. Rational Christians DO do good, and good, and good for them. Rational Hindus, Muslims, Sufis, Buddhists, etc... do good too, and more power to them as well. Its when the religion gets to the point where it is blind dogma to be inflicted upon others for "their own good" that it becomes problematic. Nowhere did I say "religion = bad", I said fervor and self-righteousness, and these terms don't even have to apply to religion, ANY fervor and self-righteousness is bad, when ideology replaces empathy and humanity. These epitomize fundamentalists, Christian and Islamic.
Yes, most scientists were religious. Copernicus was pious, but the church still tried to ban the truth. Giordano Bruno was even a monk, and yet burned for daring to speak the truth. Galileo was forced to repent scientific fact for God too, though thankfully he rebelled. If your religion can't adapt to the truth, then your religion is doomed, as it should be.
Never did I imply this. To each their own, as long as they mind their own damn business. They have as much right to inflict their religion on me, as I do on them. None. There is no problem with religion, even fundamental radical sects, as long as they don't try to inflict themselves on others, and sadly the fundies (of the various sects, be it Islam or Christianity) do just this. I don't buy into their version of goodness, and their dogma, so why on earth should I have to live by it? If they shut up, practiced their own beliefs, and minded their own business, I really wouldn't care.
Until they do this, everyone should realize how dangerous they are. Religious fervor, and self-righteousness has never led to a single good thing, only mass suffering, genocide, and other atrocities. Your religious beliefs are just that, YOURS. When some idiot tries to inflict that on me, or worse a country, or school, then it becomes EVERYONES business, and it should be stopped.
While not being a scientist of any sort, I'm an ardent student of the philosophy of science (and thus a science junky), I find it amazing what happens when science gets politicized. The amount of times I've had to clarify the science definition of the word "theory", as opposed to the colloquial form to people (not even religious fundamentalists, just general lay folk) is rather depressing, same thing with describing how science ACTUALLY works, outside of the version of method we're all taught (hopefully) in High School, who just doing the research does not make it fact, that their also is the idea of consensus and repeatability. Listening to the BODY of science, as opposed to a "scientist" is the only way to really judge. Damn you science people and your charisma! :)
But all politicized debates fall into this. Everyone has an agenda, a personal stake in being right, in winning. Truth becomes irrelevant, soundness falls by the wayside, all that matters is winning. From stem-cells, to evolution, to climate. Even the real science becomes questionable for the mass of noise, opinion, and propaganda. The main advice I give to people is never listen to someone who isn't dispassionate, if the reading is dry and boring (on controversial topics) then take it with a grain of salt. Yes, and of course, track the funding, what is the person's other interest, who's their master and whats their price.
I hate dogma, lord. Why don't we teach people to think for themselves anymore? Give them the tools to evaluate what is said? Critical thinking I think the ancients called it.
Okay, you had me until: Vicious morons like you are little but "Darwin rottweilers"
Way to blow a rational argument with your own ad hominem. If your post was a willing irony, I would be very happy, but I doubt it. You were using the same "yelling, hostile" tactics as you were rejecting. Unless I missed my philosophy/rhetoric class that told me calling people "morons" was a valid form of argument.
Yes, evolution potentially has problems. Yes, I generally believe in evolution, still, since it is the best theory we have (actually punctuated equilibrium, as endorsed by Gould, and not classic Darwinian evolution). The data fits some version of evolution, though, even if not the current one, and it does not fit creationism. This, on its own, discredits creationism, it doesn't get an equal say because it is invalid based on empirical evidence. People are still debating what flavor of evolution is true, so that debate is not closed, but some form of evolution DOES exist, and thus should be taught.
To say that we have no right to dictate that it is taught is bogus as well. We being society. These children will live in a communal culture, and thus the culture has a say in their actions and learning. You can still teach your children whatever you want at home, no one is stopping you. You can still send your children to some form of religious school, no one is stopping you. We're talking about PUBLIC school, meaning a PUBLIC curriculum, meaning you have to play by societies rules, if you don't like it the previous two options are open to you. What people like the subject of the article are guilty of is forcing their political and religious beliefs on others, when schools exist to teach FACT and not some arbitrary faith system. Don't like it, leave it.
Granted schools should teach the tools to find arguments and fallacies, so things aren't taken as gospel. But still we shouldn't teach every view point just because they are out there, we have a criteria for judging the validity of these view points, and it is called science and logic. And, as I said earlier, in this topic, science is based on consensus. Fringe views don't get represented for a good reason, their not accepted by science, and 99% of the time are crackpot idiocy. In that rare 1%, we revise the textbooks when it is accepted as good science.
There was a history professor at one of the schools I went to, who had something like 14 kids. His rational was that him and his wife both held multiple Ph'Ds, had IQs 200+, and were card carrying MENSAns, so they had the moral obligation to out breed the morons, infusing some good genes back in the pool.
While this line of thought does border on eugenics, it makes some sense, at least this couple will raise good humans, and not a bunch of uneducated, ignorant, fundies. Or so I hope.
The word "science" works like hypnosis on the average American, I've noticed. If you tack that word on ANYTHING, it becomes instantly credible. Its a sad statement, but the gimmick works. Just like the "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on television" ads, just the fact you know the person, and they whispered a magic word automatically makes them credible. Especially with science, since the very term makes the laypersons eyes glaze over.