I could see it being possible that text-only books might also become relics or at least be looked upon as an unusual retro art form).
Sadly they already are by a large segment of the population. Whatever happens to books probably won't matter to a huge swash of the population, so I doubt that there will be much innovation in the long run.
Pardon me for continuing this discussion, but I find it rather interesting.
A Mac person is someone who can explain honestly, sincerely and succinctly why they would never consider using anything else. It has nothing to do with you or my opinion of your standing. It's not the same as being a fanboy, which is just cheerleading. A Mac person would rather not argue about the OS choice either, but we think Microsoft is inept. We find that funny and are compelled to laugh at it, which is exactly what we would do if they asked us to work for them.
I agree with your assessment of "fanbois." Though this all still boils down to the "for you" statement. Don't get me wrong, I loved my Mac, but after certain factors it stopped being... perhaps not useful... but enjoyable. I still recommend Macs to everyone I know who asks me advice in what computer to purchase, and I still miss OS X previous to the Intel switch. My favorite computer of all the years I've been computing is still my old G4 Powerbook, if its HDD didn't die (not Apple's fault), I would still be using it.
That said, Windows still isn't that bad. The comparison is slightly flawed, as well. I had the "same" PC from around 1992 until around 2003, though the components changed; not so much because of failure as incremental upgrade deals. Outside of the old Mac towers, this isn't what Apple was shooting for, so there is a bit of apples and oranges there. Some people actually like mucking around in their internals, it might not be necessary, but some people like it. Right now I'm maintaining a PC bought around the year 2000 (350ish MHZ, 320Mb of RAM) running XP, for example, it works fine, though (just like I assume your 1998 Mac does) it runs into hardware limitations from time to time.
Everything since XP has been stable. Granted the opening year of Vista was a bit bad (thanks to the 3rd party option), but not worse than OS 10.1 was. Win7 and Snow Leopard are comparable, and it just boils down to what you like.
Windows always makes me feel like the machine is in charge of what I can or can't do and what format I can do it in.
Even while I loved my Mac, I felt the same about it as you do Windows. I was in university, so there as some problems with formats. Hardware-wise most Macs have this too, as does OS X's lack of personalization features (Apple's way, or Stardock's way).
I can use Windows, but I don't "get" it; everything seems unnecessarily complicated. It always seems to get in the way of capturing creativity while you stop and try to figure out why your computer is not cooperating, whereas the Mac always seems to enable the creative process
I'm not arguing that you should switch to Windows; Windows requires some time to get things arraigned to your liking. As an analogy: you just got hired at a new job that supplies you with a workspace, it takes a bit of time to get it "just right". Linux is a bit worse in this (or better), where you have the whole damn office building to set up to your optimal environment (perhaps even the whole economy... at times). But some people like it that way, and would argue it makes their OS of choice more "powerful."
Apple, after a bit, pissed me off that I could optimize my environment, to my personal style. This, again, isn't an objective measure.
Sorry for the rambling style. I can't quite grasp quantifying the sentiment of "I completely agree with you, but your wrong", in a short, concise, statement.
Its like a math teacher I had in high school, who responded to someone asking why we needed to know this when all the math most of us need is balancing our checkbook and cooking; "I'm not teaching this class for all of you, I'm teaching this class for the one individual here who will get the spark of interest and change the world. Sadly you won't know if this is you until your older." All this needs to do is ignite the interests of 2-3% of the people who get them, to make a difference, if it happens then it is worth while.
Think of your topic of interest, the area of knowledge you love today (your on/., so I'm guessing your a nerd, and I'm guessing your obsessed with something boring and "knowledgy"), now think how you got interested, and how many people doing the same thing at the same time were bored and moved on to other things. This is the point.
Food and water are important, at least as far as short term survival goes. Education is MORE beneficial in the long term. That is the large problem with developing nations, you can feed them, and throw money at them until your blue in the face, and you never approach the long term problems that cause the problems.
As someone here on/. once said (sorry for the vague attribution, and general butchery, whoever you are); "give a man a fire and you keep him warm for the night; set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life".
I've actually used one of these; A tripod isn't strictly necessary. With the 50x lens combination (combining the 20x and 30x) I could see Jupiter's moons without the assistance of a tripod, though sighting it was a bit "odd" using the built in rifle sights. I couldn't test it on Saturn, thanks to bad weather and light pollution.
This was at my fathers, so I didn't have my usual $70 photography tripod around, but he had one that was around $14.99 at Fry's Electronics, which worked fine with the Galileoscope. You really don't need quality with this telescope, its pretty much an educational toy meant for children. Also, as stated, the main interest of this is the DUY aspects of installing your own lenses.
I have seen $70 reflectors with base mounts included that are higher than max 50x before (yes, cheap, and very simple), so getting a $50 tripod is a bit silly. The main joy of this is that it is a quick, easy, kit for learning. The design doesn't really lead to "quality" observations thanks to a ton of light leakage, and less than accurate plastic lenses. In a certain sense, it is inferior to cheap binoculars. But that isn't the point.
My Dad bought one of these for $20 for the Galileo anniversary, they only go up to around 50x (by combining the 30x and 20x lenses), so a tripod isn't really necessary being that these are about as powerful as cheap binoculars. The 50x combination, though, has a VERY small angle of view though, meaning it might necessitate a tripod, the 20x and 30x lenses, though, probably won't need one. Without using a tripod, I managed to observe 2 of Jupiter's moons, with a largish amount of light pollution, without the assistance of a tripod. So I don't see this as a problem. This isn't intended for "hardcore" astronomy, so it fits its purpose just fine.
That said, it does have a standard tripod mount, if you want to use it, as well. It also uses a rifle sight for aiming, which I found VERY amusing.
The most interesting bit of this telescope is the fact that you must assemble it yourself, allowing you to muck around with the various lenses, thus learning the proper placement for your optics. The "hands-on" aspect of this is probably more important that the actual use as a telescope. Believe it or not, it gave me the opportunity to spend around an hour teaching my dad basic principles of optics, without him getting too bored. I can imagine this would be even more useful as a teaching aid to the intended audience.
And with regard to the main point of your post, I hate to tell you, but in most of the better futures we could have, dead-tree books are eventually going to be "quaint collector's items", no matter what your personal opinion about is. And yes, this may take a generation, or two....
How is this going to happen? How will these futures be "better"? Better at what? Better for whom? No offense, but so far you haven't said anything. Are these "better futures" like the "better futures" of the past with ubiquitous personal robots, flying cars, and personal space travel, not to mention the various kitchens of the future?
I doubt books are dying any time soon, much less in "a generation or two". That is a bit like stating that "writing will die in a generation or two".
Otherwise, why would you have a Mac, Ubuntu and Windows? They all have their strengths and weaknesses. For other people, their preference is a reflection of their environment -- it's the only thing they've ever used, because that's what they use at work.
You, obviously, are correct in this. I wasn't stating, though, that having a preference was bad. Preferences, as you state, is completely normal. But, on the flip side, preferences doesn't say too much on their own, nor do they really state the overall quality (in an objective sense) of an object, or people with opposing preferences. I can say I prefer chocolate ice-cream, and you really can't argue, much make character judgments based on this. I cannot say "I like chocolate ice-cream, and everyone who likes vanilla is stupid".
This is what the OS flame war generally is. It boils down to "my choice is better". as opposed to "my choice is better, for me." The former is dressed up like an falsely objective statement, the latter is truthful.
The person I was replying too didn't say "I prefer Macs over Windows", they made a general statement of the quality of the OSs. This statement is an objective statement (okay-okay analogy), and not one of mere preferences. Being that they didn't want to actually back up their statement, I have a feeling that it comes down to; "I use x, therefore x is vastly superior to y". Personal cognitive dissonance doesn't make a fact.
I'm getting tired of being called an elitist just to deflect criticism. The computer realm seems almost as bad as the political one. Am I an elitist because I prefer a Les Paul over a Strat? Or a Harley over a Suzuki? Chevy Truck over a Dodge?
No. But you are one if you decide that your preference is the universally best one, and that not choosing as you do reflects negatively on the character of others. I didn't use the term to deflect criticism (I, like you, am sick of the term in the political arena). They didn't criticize (in any meaningful way) MS products, and I don't have any stake in them to be offended by such a statement. Nor did they really have anything meaningful to say about TFA. They just basically said "Apple products are far superior to MS products, and thus the people they poached will be dissatisfied". This statement has no content outside of saying "Microsoft sucks, Apple rules", which is trite and boring.
Any Apple employees Microsoft can steal aren't Mac people in the first place, so it's no great loss to the Genius Bar. That may sound elitist, but if you go to a Harley shop, you expect to find someone who knows something about Harleys -- and you don't expect him to show up riding a Vespa.
I just don't know what a "Mac person" is. I grew up using Windows, then decided I liked Macs better once OS X came out (OS 9 was pretty sad, technologically), so used them, almost exclusively, throughout college. After college I had some bad experiences related to the Intel switch, and a string of bad hardware, so I went back to Windows and PCs. So what am I? Am I a "Windows person", or a "Mac person"? My girlfriend has the same story, she used Macs for her entire life, up until recently when she started getting a bit disillusioned, is she a "Mac person"? While I currently use Windows and Linux more than OS X, I probably still know more about Apple products than most Geniuses. Using the term "person" makes it sound like this actually means something, like a trite choice like what OS you like best actually reflects on your personality. You might not mean it that way, but that is how it sounds.
Your correct, though I'm guessing digital distribution is still a bit cheaper than physical distribution. This might not be a great difference, but it still probably exists.
My second point still stands though. Your correct that most the money goes to "content" (a rare thing in many papers these days, I'm guessing most of my papers money goes to an AP subscription), but people will still expect it to be cheaper, so they really can't expect to hit the same distribution without lowering their costs.
I'd never pay the same amount for a digital album as a physical CD, nor would I pay the same amount for an eBook as a hardcover. This is conditioned into most of us.
They're just going to have to adjust to no longer having a captive audience, and having to do things to attract attention rather than ram shit down our throats. I can't see that as a bad thing.
Most news papers are already doing this, and this has contributed to their shrinking distribution. My local paper has shrunk their news sections constantly over the last 3 or so years, while expanding the "not relevant" sections constantly. My news paper now tells me that "Guam is a desirable tourist destination", but doesn't say much about anything happening in local or national news, outside of some biased political hit pieces. Global news is almost completely gone, unless we're currently at war with the country. The news stories they do have all have an AP byline, with very few stories being original or local. But they do spend a lot of attention on telling me what tile flooring is the rave this season. Needless to say I canceled my subscription (why get a news paper that doesn't have news?), as have most the people I know.
And if you drop your subscription, they will call you 4 times a week at dinner time, offering a "free" subscription, which makes me LESS likely to ever pick it up again. Same story if you drop down to a weekend subscription.
Hell, it isn't even useful for the help-wanted, or classifieds anymore. The want ads have shrunk for a nice 10 pages, to one page, shared with classified and pets for sale. Half of these classified are for telemarketers for the PAPER! itself, the other half is for working in a kiosk selling subscriptions to the paper.
I don't think he was complaining about the concept of "all you can eat", but the price. An online news-"paper" subscription should cost far less than a physical subscription. Both because they chop out a ton of work to get it to your door, and because people expect to pay far less for a bunch of photons flowing from a monitor, than they would for an actual physical good.
The current offering from MS aren't bad, perhaps not quite as good as the offerings from Apple, but they are getting close. The only real difference in these stores is that Apple offers labeled hardware, and MS offers 3rd party hardware (PC wise). The software offerings are mixed, Win7 is about as good as OS X (pains me a bit to say that), the Zune is basically what Apple is pushing (limited storage space, lots of superfluous extras), without the benefit of iTMS and iTunes (which is sad), but hardware-wise about the same. Most of MS's 1st party software is much better than Apple's (sans iLife). All of the peripherals are the same, whether in an Apple or MS store.
What is the difference, besides the fact you like Apple and hate MS? Same hardware, different brands. Different OSs, same quality (good). Roughly the same quality non-OS software. Both mostly closed source and proprietary. Both giant, monolithic, corporations. So where is the basis for the "Lexus/Rambler" analogy? The only real difference, outside of roughly similar OSs, is one has an Apple logo, and the other has a... 3rd party logo.
No, before the flames come in, I'm not a MS "fanboi" (please add a fair amount of scathing derision to the term); I'm currently running a MacMini, an Ubuntu laptop, and a Windows box (currently Vista, but first in line for Win7, the first MS OS that I've actually liked), I spend roughly equal time on all of them, and like all of them roughly equally, and find all of them about equal in general stability and security (given proper know how, and lack of ignorance). I find both MS and Apple's business model to be equally sad, as well (imagine their places switched). I personally find any level of OS elitism to be a rather depressing sentiment on the behalf of the person expressing it. I see anyone who claims any OS is better as a blanket statement about of the same intellectual caliber as a girl I once know who had a Nike tattoo... No, this isn't a compliment.
So... I write a book under a contract to make x off of it, then sell the rights to y... I make x, y gains z (in perpetuity).
So someone builds a wall under contract to make x off of it, and y gets it. I make x, and y gains z in property value (as does everyone he sells the property to).
Where is the difference really? If someone claims to be an "artist" (a relative term), and says there is a copyright, we don't find this disturbing, but if someone doesn't make this "artist" claim, then their idea of perpetual profit is absurd.
I have no problem with a limited copyright (as dictated in our constitution), I have a problem with it lasting past someone life time. The author of whatnot made MONEY off selling their product, this money can be invested. I don't see the "right" in their heirs (who did absolutely nothing) making money off of a sold product. If I build a wall, and invest the proceeds into a fund for my children, this is fine, if I somehow decide they should be paid for this same wall forever, then this is dumb. They made the money once, why is making it forever okay? Sell your product and invest the proceeds, just like the rest of us.
, but has also take a great risk. The book may flop and he ends up with nothing. The book may also become a bestseller, and he ends up rich.
Or he can save the proceeds of his first book to finance writing the second. If he can't live off of this, he can have a job just like the rest of us. If his book makes money, then fine, he can save some of it, and use the rest to devote the rest of his time to not working and writing the second. This, oddly, is how artists lived throughout time, and still do for the most part.
I'm writing a book currently, so I demand people pay me to not work while I write it.
Either someone owns his property or he is simply borrowing it from the state.
And this is a false dichotomy. Who says that there cannot be resources that are not property? Personally I think a lot of ideas cannot be property. A lot of these ideas are considered property only because of government intervention, and not any property intrinsic in the idea itself. Sure, we both agree that you can own your car, but can you own an equation? I find the shade of gray seriously lacking in your statement (by the way, this shade of gray is owned by Pantone). Sure the State may muddle in this, but it still has nothing to do with intrinsic ownership, which some would argue is all that matters.
The former is the heart of capitalism. The latter is socialism.
As is this.
I am a socialist, but I also am a capitalist! How is this possible? I believe in a free market, but I also believe in regulation. How is this possible? These terms are not mutually exclusive. Markets, or more importantly the constructs that constitute them, are free until they cause harm to people, just like normal human individuals should be. No sane person would tell me that I'm some strange tyrant for claiming (like many people much smarter than I) that your rights end the second they infringe on someones else, but for some reason to apply this to greed we become "socialists". This is a nice fallacy.
Sure, we might disagree where the line can be drawn, but the very fact that there is a line is the larger point.
As a person who spent a rather long time slumming around in philosophy classes, most dealing with epistemology and philosophy of science, I learned the necessity of drawing three flavors of "truthiness" into things.
You have lower-case "truth", which is generally any subjective judgment that we individually hold true. This is weak, and generally non-justified. We can call it colloquial truth. Social.
Then you have capital "T" "truth", which is justified, observed, and probably actually True. This is the realm of science and facts, etc... Phenomenal.
Then you have capital "truth" ("TRUTH") which is the actual, objective, and invariant truth. This is unobtainable, and probably has something to do with Kant's "things in themselves". Noumenal
A lot of people use the term "fact" in the first sense of the word. So sometimes it sadly becomes necessary to deliniate yourself from tom-foolery.
But I'm rather sick of hearing Democrats and their supporters condemning the people who show up at Town Hall meetings.
I'm a registered Democrat, and I have nothing against people showing up to town hall meetings, AS LONG AS THEY ARE CIVIL. If they show up just to scream and holler like insane morons, just to make a political point, then yes, I have something against them.
Though I do love them, in a sense, they are basically doing a VERY good job of discrediting themselves, and the whole Republican party. Though it makes me sad, since they also are discrediting valid criticisms of Obama's policies. I sometimes wish the Democrats had real opposition these days, and not just a bunch of lunatics screaming and holding up signs with Obama as Hitler, or screaming "SOCIALIST!", as if that was a thing that was bad in-itself. Personally I wish he WAS a socialist.
Of course displaying a lethal weapon is a threat. You're telling everyone around you that you're ready to kill them if they mess with you.
Not always. I have worn a pistol in public several times, with no intent to use it on people (as a matter of fact it is generally loaded with snake shot). Sometimes I forget to take it off after going to the boonies prospecting. Its just part of my gear, like nasty old boots, and crappy pants, and a rock hammer shoved in my pocket.
Obviously, though, these gun nuts (again as opposed to responsible gun owners) don't have that as an excuse. They just want to short circuit democracy because their flavor of moron wasn't elected.
Because unlike a nutter with a picture of Obama with a Hitler mustache (killing all chance of political discourse FTW), the person making a political statement with a gun can kill me.
Are you afraid your family might learn something about the 2nd Amendment?
In a sense, yes. I'm frightened they might get an intimate lesson in it.
I hate these loonies taking their guns to what used to be CIVIL discussions, sure, they have the RIGHT, but they obviously have no idea what RESPONSIBILITY is. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. These gun nuts (as opposed to normal gun owners) are just a symptom of the problem, our ability to sit down and discuss issues is completely, and totally dead. As is all of our belief in democracy, these people are generally people searching for a dictatorship, even if they won't admit it. Democracy is a right, until my fellow country men vote for someone who I don't like.
ut I don't try to hide it, or pretend otherwise. I can't say "real liberals support gun rights" when I can look around and see that the vast majority of people who call themselves liberals are, in fact, anti-gun. I just have to deal with it, and hopefully be honest about what I'm doing. It would be refreshing to see some of the same honesty from the other side of the aisle.
Welcome to the land of ideological nuance! I really am sick of the Borg-ish politics we have been having lately "I must vote for this because I am a Democrat, and our president is as well" or "I am against this because I am a Republican, but this was thought up by a Democrat", as if people with the opposite affiliation can never come up with a valid point, and people who stick the same letter in parenthesis as you are incapable of blind stupidity. You are not alone though, this is probably why registered Independents are the fastest growing group of voters.
Actually if anyone agrees 100% with a party line or political ideology (be it Democrat/libral, Republican conservative, or Libertarian) they are probably a complete moron, who has spent no time actually sitting around JUSTIFYING their opinions, and thus they really aren't even worth listening too. Sadly this means that 90% of our elected officials are complete asshats. But we knew this, didn't we?
But then again I'm a socialist leaning liberal, and a social libertarian. Basically regulate the shit out of industry, but leave real people the hell alone as long as they are not harming others.
"Indie" is a meaningless term now. Most "indie" bands are singed to major labels, and thus not "independent", it also is now a genre of music, and thus not "independent" in that sense either. There are, though, tons of independent labels for music of diverse types, that are not tied to the RIAA (or ASCAP, which is more up to the individuals taste, and completely different than the RIAA). Check out Tzadic, Ipecac, Neurot, The End, Drag City, or whatever small label suits your particular taste. Some of the individual artists might be members of ASCAP though, by their choice.
The "people" DID vote them in, each and everyone of them. Live with it, or vote and convince your fellow voters to vote for, someone else. I'm sick of people SCREAMING incoherently about their democratically elected government just because they, personally, didn't vote for this particular group of rats.
I really hate people bandying about the term "rights", when there is no definition of what they actually are. Yes, I've read my Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, but they don't quite explain it in any REAL way. As far as I can see rights are a social construct, pure and simple. Rights are whatever you can convince other people that they are. There is no objective, empirical, or truly naturalistic definition for the term "rights". If there was, we'd have to find a historically universal example. Unless we're going to claim that "rights" are purely "normative", and then we run into the problem that they are complete baseless and subjective again...
That and "the Declaration" is completely non-legally binding. The Declaration of Independence has no bearing on our government, and the rights, as an aside, dictated in it are purely over simplified conjecture. Unless, of course, we're going to accept "god given" rights, in which case me and my fellow atheists, and non-Christians, scoff at you.
Sorry for the hostile tone... The term "rights" just pisses me off, since it is such an empty phrase, unless we completely accept social construction, and then they can be easily reconstructed at whim.
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I could see it being possible that text-only books might also become relics or at least be looked upon as an unusual retro art form).
Sadly they already are by a large segment of the population. Whatever happens to books probably won't matter to a huge swash of the population, so I doubt that there will be much innovation in the long run.
Pardon me for continuing this discussion, but I find it rather interesting.
A Mac person is someone who can explain honestly, sincerely and succinctly why they would never consider using anything else. It has nothing to do with you or my opinion of your standing. It's not the same as being a fanboy, which is just cheerleading. A Mac person would rather not argue about the OS choice either, but we think Microsoft is inept. We find that funny and are compelled to laugh at it, which is exactly what we would do if they asked us to work for them.
I agree with your assessment of "fanbois." Though this all still boils down to the "for you" statement. Don't get me wrong, I loved my Mac, but after certain factors it stopped being... perhaps not useful... but enjoyable. I still recommend Macs to everyone I know who asks me advice in what computer to purchase, and I still miss OS X previous to the Intel switch. My favorite computer of all the years I've been computing is still my old G4 Powerbook, if its HDD didn't die (not Apple's fault), I would still be using it.
That said, Windows still isn't that bad. The comparison is slightly flawed, as well. I had the "same" PC from around 1992 until around 2003, though the components changed; not so much because of failure as incremental upgrade deals. Outside of the old Mac towers, this isn't what Apple was shooting for, so there is a bit of apples and oranges there. Some people actually like mucking around in their internals, it might not be necessary, but some people like it. Right now I'm maintaining a PC bought around the year 2000 (350ish MHZ, 320Mb of RAM) running XP, for example, it works fine, though (just like I assume your 1998 Mac does) it runs into hardware limitations from time to time.
Everything since XP has been stable. Granted the opening year of Vista was a bit bad (thanks to the 3rd party option), but not worse than OS 10.1 was. Win7 and Snow Leopard are comparable, and it just boils down to what you like.
Windows always makes me feel like the machine is in charge of what I can or can't do and what format I can do it in.
Even while I loved my Mac, I felt the same about it as you do Windows. I was in university, so there as some problems with formats. Hardware-wise most Macs have this too, as does OS X's lack of personalization features (Apple's way, or Stardock's way).
I can use Windows, but I don't "get" it; everything seems unnecessarily complicated. It always seems to get in the way of capturing creativity while you stop and try to figure out why your computer is not cooperating, whereas the Mac always seems to enable the creative process
I'm not arguing that you should switch to Windows; Windows requires some time to get things arraigned to your liking. As an analogy: you just got hired at a new job that supplies you with a workspace, it takes a bit of time to get it "just right". Linux is a bit worse in this (or better), where you have the whole damn office building to set up to your optimal environment (perhaps even the whole economy... at times). But some people like it that way, and would argue it makes their OS of choice more "powerful."
Apple, after a bit, pissed me off that I could optimize my environment, to my personal style. This, again, isn't an objective measure.
Sorry for the rambling style. I can't quite grasp quantifying the sentiment of "I completely agree with you, but your wrong", in a short, concise, statement.
Its like a math teacher I had in high school, who responded to someone asking why we needed to know this when all the math most of us need is balancing our checkbook and cooking; "I'm not teaching this class for all of you, I'm teaching this class for the one individual here who will get the spark of interest and change the world. Sadly you won't know if this is you until your older." All this needs to do is ignite the interests of 2-3% of the people who get them, to make a difference, if it happens then it is worth while.
Think of your topic of interest, the area of knowledge you love today (your on /., so I'm guessing your a nerd, and I'm guessing your obsessed with something boring and "knowledgy"), now think how you got interested, and how many people doing the same thing at the same time were bored and moved on to other things. This is the point.
Food and water are important, at least as far as short term survival goes. Education is MORE beneficial in the long term. That is the large problem with developing nations, you can feed them, and throw money at them until your blue in the face, and you never approach the long term problems that cause the problems.
As someone here on /. once said (sorry for the vague attribution, and general butchery, whoever you are); "give a man a fire and you keep him warm for the night; set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life".
I've actually used one of these; A tripod isn't strictly necessary. With the 50x lens combination (combining the 20x and 30x) I could see Jupiter's moons without the assistance of a tripod, though sighting it was a bit "odd" using the built in rifle sights. I couldn't test it on Saturn, thanks to bad weather and light pollution.
This was at my fathers, so I didn't have my usual $70 photography tripod around, but he had one that was around $14.99 at Fry's Electronics, which worked fine with the Galileoscope. You really don't need quality with this telescope, its pretty much an educational toy meant for children. Also, as stated, the main interest of this is the DUY aspects of installing your own lenses.
I have seen $70 reflectors with base mounts included that are higher than max 50x before (yes, cheap, and very simple), so getting a $50 tripod is a bit silly. The main joy of this is that it is a quick, easy, kit for learning. The design doesn't really lead to "quality" observations thanks to a ton of light leakage, and less than accurate plastic lenses. In a certain sense, it is inferior to cheap binoculars. But that isn't the point.
My Dad bought one of these for $20 for the Galileo anniversary, they only go up to around 50x (by combining the 30x and 20x lenses), so a tripod isn't really necessary being that these are about as powerful as cheap binoculars. The 50x combination, though, has a VERY small angle of view though, meaning it might necessitate a tripod, the 20x and 30x lenses, though, probably won't need one. Without using a tripod, I managed to observe 2 of Jupiter's moons, with a largish amount of light pollution, without the assistance of a tripod. So I don't see this as a problem. This isn't intended for "hardcore" astronomy, so it fits its purpose just fine.
That said, it does have a standard tripod mount, if you want to use it, as well. It also uses a rifle sight for aiming, which I found VERY amusing.
The most interesting bit of this telescope is the fact that you must assemble it yourself, allowing you to muck around with the various lenses, thus learning the proper placement for your optics. The "hands-on" aspect of this is probably more important that the actual use as a telescope. Believe it or not, it gave me the opportunity to spend around an hour teaching my dad basic principles of optics, without him getting too bored. I can imagine this would be even more useful as a teaching aid to the intended audience.
And with regard to the main point of your post, I hate to tell you, but in most of the better futures we could have, dead-tree books are eventually going to be "quaint collector's items", no matter what your personal opinion about is. And yes, this may take a generation, or two....
How is this going to happen? How will these futures be "better"? Better at what? Better for whom? No offense, but so far you haven't said anything. Are these "better futures" like the "better futures" of the past with ubiquitous personal robots, flying cars, and personal space travel, not to mention the various kitchens of the future?
I doubt books are dying any time soon, much less in "a generation or two". That is a bit like stating that "writing will die in a generation or two".
A Ziltoid reference, really?
Otherwise, why would you have a Mac, Ubuntu and Windows? They all have their strengths and weaknesses. For other people, their preference is a reflection of their environment -- it's the only thing they've ever used, because that's what they use at work.
You, obviously, are correct in this. I wasn't stating, though, that having a preference was bad. Preferences, as you state, is completely normal. But, on the flip side, preferences doesn't say too much on their own, nor do they really state the overall quality (in an objective sense) of an object, or people with opposing preferences. I can say I prefer chocolate ice-cream, and you really can't argue, much make character judgments based on this. I cannot say "I like chocolate ice-cream, and everyone who likes vanilla is stupid".
This is what the OS flame war generally is. It boils down to "my choice is better". as opposed to "my choice is better, for me." The former is dressed up like an falsely objective statement, the latter is truthful.
The person I was replying too didn't say "I prefer Macs over Windows", they made a general statement of the quality of the OSs. This statement is an objective statement (okay-okay analogy), and not one of mere preferences. Being that they didn't want to actually back up their statement, I have a feeling that it comes down to; "I use x, therefore x is vastly superior to y". Personal cognitive dissonance doesn't make a fact.
I'm getting tired of being called an elitist just to deflect criticism. The computer realm seems almost as bad as the political one. Am I an elitist because I prefer a Les Paul over a Strat? Or a Harley over a Suzuki? Chevy Truck over a Dodge?
No. But you are one if you decide that your preference is the universally best one, and that not choosing as you do reflects negatively on the character of others. I didn't use the term to deflect criticism (I, like you, am sick of the term in the political arena). They didn't criticize (in any meaningful way) MS products, and I don't have any stake in them to be offended by such a statement. Nor did they really have anything meaningful to say about TFA. They just basically said "Apple products are far superior to MS products, and thus the people they poached will be dissatisfied". This statement has no content outside of saying "Microsoft sucks, Apple rules", which is trite and boring.
Any Apple employees Microsoft can steal aren't Mac people in the first place, so it's no great loss to the Genius Bar. That may sound elitist, but if you go to a Harley shop, you expect to find someone who knows something about Harleys -- and you don't expect him to show up riding a Vespa.
I just don't know what a "Mac person" is. I grew up using Windows, then decided I liked Macs better once OS X came out (OS 9 was pretty sad, technologically), so used them, almost exclusively, throughout college. After college I had some bad experiences related to the Intel switch, and a string of bad hardware, so I went back to Windows and PCs. So what am I? Am I a "Windows person", or a "Mac person"? My girlfriend has the same story, she used Macs for her entire life, up until recently when she started getting a bit disillusioned, is she a "Mac person"? While I currently use Windows and Linux more than OS X, I probably still know more about Apple products than most Geniuses. Using the term "person" makes it sound like this actually means something, like a trite choice like what OS you like best actually reflects on your personality. You might not mean it that way, but that is how it sounds.
Your correct, though I'm guessing digital distribution is still a bit cheaper than physical distribution. This might not be a great difference, but it still probably exists.
My second point still stands though. Your correct that most the money goes to "content" (a rare thing in many papers these days, I'm guessing most of my papers money goes to an AP subscription), but people will still expect it to be cheaper, so they really can't expect to hit the same distribution without lowering their costs.
I'd never pay the same amount for a digital album as a physical CD, nor would I pay the same amount for an eBook as a hardcover. This is conditioned into most of us.
They're just going to have to adjust to no longer having a captive audience, and having to do things to attract attention rather than ram shit down our throats. I can't see that as a bad thing.
Most news papers are already doing this, and this has contributed to their shrinking distribution. My local paper has shrunk their news sections constantly over the last 3 or so years, while expanding the "not relevant" sections constantly. My news paper now tells me that "Guam is a desirable tourist destination", but doesn't say much about anything happening in local or national news, outside of some biased political hit pieces. Global news is almost completely gone, unless we're currently at war with the country. The news stories they do have all have an AP byline, with very few stories being original or local. But they do spend a lot of attention on telling me what tile flooring is the rave this season. Needless to say I canceled my subscription (why get a news paper that doesn't have news?), as have most the people I know.
And if you drop your subscription, they will call you 4 times a week at dinner time, offering a "free" subscription, which makes me LESS likely to ever pick it up again. Same story if you drop down to a weekend subscription.
Hell, it isn't even useful for the help-wanted, or classifieds anymore. The want ads have shrunk for a nice 10 pages, to one page, shared with classified and pets for sale. Half of these classified are for telemarketers for the PAPER! itself, the other half is for working in a kiosk selling subscriptions to the paper.
I don't think he was complaining about the concept of "all you can eat", but the price. An online news-"paper" subscription should cost far less than a physical subscription. Both because they chop out a ton of work to get it to your door, and because people expect to pay far less for a bunch of photons flowing from a monitor, than they would for an actual physical good.
Stop OS trolling,
The current offering from MS aren't bad, perhaps not quite as good as the offerings from Apple, but they are getting close. The only real difference in these stores is that Apple offers labeled hardware, and MS offers 3rd party hardware (PC wise). The software offerings are mixed, Win7 is about as good as OS X (pains me a bit to say that), the Zune is basically what Apple is pushing (limited storage space, lots of superfluous extras), without the benefit of iTMS and iTunes (which is sad), but hardware-wise about the same. Most of MS's 1st party software is much better than Apple's (sans iLife). All of the peripherals are the same, whether in an Apple or MS store.
What is the difference, besides the fact you like Apple and hate MS? Same hardware, different brands. Different OSs, same quality (good). Roughly the same quality non-OS software. Both mostly closed source and proprietary. Both giant, monolithic, corporations. So where is the basis for the "Lexus/Rambler" analogy? The only real difference, outside of roughly similar OSs, is one has an Apple logo, and the other has a... 3rd party logo.
No, before the flames come in, I'm not a MS "fanboi" (please add a fair amount of scathing derision to the term); I'm currently running a MacMini, an Ubuntu laptop, and a Windows box (currently Vista, but first in line for Win7, the first MS OS that I've actually liked), I spend roughly equal time on all of them, and like all of them roughly equally, and find all of them about equal in general stability and security (given proper know how, and lack of ignorance). I find both MS and Apple's business model to be equally sad, as well (imagine their places switched). I personally find any level of OS elitism to be a rather depressing sentiment on the behalf of the person expressing it. I see anyone who claims any OS is better as a blanket statement about of the same intellectual caliber as a girl I once know who had a Nike tattoo... No, this isn't a compliment.
I know you're being sarcastic, but you are absolutely right - Copyright is the great motivator of new creative content!
This is evident by the creator of Superman creating tons of new content, AS WE SPEAK!
So... I write a book under a contract to make x off of it, then sell the rights to y... I make x, y gains z (in perpetuity).
So someone builds a wall under contract to make x off of it, and y gets it. I make x, and y gains z in property value (as does everyone he sells the property to).
Where is the difference really? If someone claims to be an "artist" (a relative term), and says there is a copyright, we don't find this disturbing, but if someone doesn't make this "artist" claim, then their idea of perpetual profit is absurd.
I have no problem with a limited copyright (as dictated in our constitution), I have a problem with it lasting past someone life time. The author of whatnot made MONEY off selling their product, this money can be invested. I don't see the "right" in their heirs (who did absolutely nothing) making money off of a sold product. If I build a wall, and invest the proceeds into a fund for my children, this is fine, if I somehow decide they should be paid for this same wall forever, then this is dumb. They made the money once, why is making it forever okay? Sell your product and invest the proceeds, just like the rest of us.
, but has also take a great risk. The book may flop and he ends up with nothing. The book may also become a bestseller, and he ends up rich.
Or he can save the proceeds of his first book to finance writing the second. If he can't live off of this, he can have a job just like the rest of us. If his book makes money, then fine, he can save some of it, and use the rest to devote the rest of his time to not working and writing the second. This, oddly, is how artists lived throughout time, and still do for the most part.
I'm writing a book currently, so I demand people pay me to not work while I write it.
Either someone owns his property or he is simply borrowing it from the state.
And this is a false dichotomy. Who says that there cannot be resources that are not property? Personally I think a lot of ideas cannot be property. A lot of these ideas are considered property only because of government intervention, and not any property intrinsic in the idea itself. Sure, we both agree that you can own your car, but can you own an equation? I find the shade of gray seriously lacking in your statement (by the way, this shade of gray is owned by Pantone). Sure the State may muddle in this, but it still has nothing to do with intrinsic ownership, which some would argue is all that matters.
The former is the heart of capitalism. The latter is socialism.
As is this.
I am a socialist, but I also am a capitalist! How is this possible? I believe in a free market, but I also believe in regulation. How is this possible? These terms are not mutually exclusive. Markets, or more importantly the constructs that constitute them, are free until they cause harm to people, just like normal human individuals should be. No sane person would tell me that I'm some strange tyrant for claiming (like many people much smarter than I) that your rights end the second they infringe on someones else, but for some reason to apply this to greed we become "socialists". This is a nice fallacy.
Sure, we might disagree where the line can be drawn, but the very fact that there is a line is the larger point.
so you can a black level player?
In oil or spring water? I always liked my black level players canned in oil. The people who like them in red sauce are just weird.
As a person who spent a rather long time slumming around in philosophy classes, most dealing with epistemology and philosophy of science, I learned the necessity of drawing three flavors of "truthiness" into things.
You have lower-case "truth", which is generally any subjective judgment that we individually hold true. This is weak, and generally non-justified. We can call it colloquial truth. Social.
Then you have capital "T" "truth", which is justified, observed, and probably actually True. This is the realm of science and facts, etc... Phenomenal.
Then you have capital "truth" ("TRUTH") which is the actual, objective, and invariant truth. This is unobtainable, and probably has something to do with Kant's "things in themselves". Noumenal
A lot of people use the term "fact" in the first sense of the word. So sometimes it sadly becomes necessary to deliniate yourself from tom-foolery.
But I'm rather sick of hearing Democrats and their supporters condemning the people who show up at Town Hall meetings.
I'm a registered Democrat, and I have nothing against people showing up to town hall meetings, AS LONG AS THEY ARE CIVIL. If they show up just to scream and holler like insane morons, just to make a political point, then yes, I have something against them.
Though I do love them, in a sense, they are basically doing a VERY good job of discrediting themselves, and the whole Republican party. Though it makes me sad, since they also are discrediting valid criticisms of Obama's policies. I sometimes wish the Democrats had real opposition these days, and not just a bunch of lunatics screaming and holding up signs with Obama as Hitler, or screaming "SOCIALIST!", as if that was a thing that was bad in-itself. Personally I wish he WAS a socialist.
Of course displaying a lethal weapon is a threat. You're telling everyone around you that you're ready to kill them if they mess with you.
Not always. I have worn a pistol in public several times, with no intent to use it on people (as a matter of fact it is generally loaded with snake shot). Sometimes I forget to take it off after going to the boonies prospecting. Its just part of my gear, like nasty old boots, and crappy pants, and a rock hammer shoved in my pocket.
Obviously, though, these gun nuts (again as opposed to responsible gun owners) don't have that as an excuse. They just want to short circuit democracy because their flavor of moron wasn't elected.
Because unlike a nutter with a picture of Obama with a Hitler mustache (killing all chance of political discourse FTW), the person making a political statement with a gun can kill me.
Are you afraid your family might learn something about the 2nd Amendment?
In a sense, yes. I'm frightened they might get an intimate lesson in it.
I hate these loonies taking their guns to what used to be CIVIL discussions, sure, they have the RIGHT, but they obviously have no idea what RESPONSIBILITY is. Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. These gun nuts (as opposed to normal gun owners) are just a symptom of the problem, our ability to sit down and discuss issues is completely, and totally dead. As is all of our belief in democracy, these people are generally people searching for a dictatorship, even if they won't admit it. Democracy is a right, until my fellow country men vote for someone who I don't like.
ut I don't try to hide it, or pretend otherwise. I can't say "real liberals support gun rights" when I can look around and see that the vast majority of people who call themselves liberals are, in fact, anti-gun. I just have to deal with it, and hopefully be honest about what I'm doing. It would be refreshing to see some of the same honesty from the other side of the aisle.
Welcome to the land of ideological nuance! I really am sick of the Borg-ish politics we have been having lately "I must vote for this because I am a Democrat, and our president is as well" or "I am against this because I am a Republican, but this was thought up by a Democrat", as if people with the opposite affiliation can never come up with a valid point, and people who stick the same letter in parenthesis as you are incapable of blind stupidity. You are not alone though, this is probably why registered Independents are the fastest growing group of voters.
Actually if anyone agrees 100% with a party line or political ideology (be it Democrat/libral, Republican conservative, or Libertarian) they are probably a complete moron, who has spent no time actually sitting around JUSTIFYING their opinions, and thus they really aren't even worth listening too. Sadly this means that 90% of our elected officials are complete asshats. But we knew this, didn't we?
But then again I'm a socialist leaning liberal, and a social libertarian. Basically regulate the shit out of industry, but leave real people the hell alone as long as they are not harming others.
"Indie" is a meaningless term now. Most "indie" bands are singed to major labels, and thus not "independent", it also is now a genre of music, and thus not "independent" in that sense either. There are, though, tons of independent labels for music of diverse types, that are not tied to the RIAA (or ASCAP, which is more up to the individuals taste, and completely different than the RIAA). Check out Tzadic, Ipecac, Neurot, The End, Drag City, or whatever small label suits your particular taste. Some of the individual artists might be members of ASCAP though, by their choice.
The "people" DID vote them in, each and everyone of them. Live with it, or vote and convince your fellow voters to vote for, someone else. I'm sick of people SCREAMING incoherently about their democratically elected government just because they, personally, didn't vote for this particular group of rats.
What the hell is a right, natural or civil?
I really hate people bandying about the term "rights", when there is no definition of what they actually are. Yes, I've read my Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, but they don't quite explain it in any REAL way. As far as I can see rights are a social construct, pure and simple. Rights are whatever you can convince other people that they are. There is no objective, empirical, or truly naturalistic definition for the term "rights". If there was, we'd have to find a historically universal example. Unless we're going to claim that "rights" are purely "normative", and then we run into the problem that they are complete baseless and subjective again...
That and "the Declaration" is completely non-legally binding. The Declaration of Independence has no bearing on our government, and the rights, as an aside, dictated in it are purely over simplified conjecture. Unless, of course, we're going to accept "god given" rights, in which case me and my fellow atheists, and non-Christians, scoff at you.
Sorry for the hostile tone... The term "rights" just pisses me off, since it is such an empty phrase, unless we completely accept social construction, and then they can be easily reconstructed at whim.