Plus, you've got a little bit of Apple magic in your pocket
But that magic saps your vital life essences and transfers them to Steve Jobs. Sure, everything from the Apple II onwards did that in a small way, which is how he powered the Reality Disortion Field, but that power is now the only thing keeping him alive since he should be long dead from cancer. The energy harvested from iPod buyers was enough at first (and indeed, look at the zombified victims wearing the tell-tale white spirit-siphons, or as Apple calls them, "ear buds"), but with every passing day the energy he needs increases, and only young, fresh, frantically texting souls will do. This is why Apple released the iPhone (or as those of us in the know would have it, the "Atman Lamprey"): by creating a device that the user holds to the side of their head, transmission losses in the spirit siphons can be eliminated while increasing the pickup surface area.
Sounds absurd? Well mark my words, in a mere 60 or so years everyone who has bought an iPod or iPhone will either be dead or a shrivelled husk, while Jobs will be alive and well and still running Apple (with a different identity to avoid suspicion, of course). See if I'm wrong!
I'm not criticising the sentiment, but dying signifies the end of living long, by definition. And considering the lack of tangible evidence of the existence of a better place to prosper in and the origin of the phrase, it seems about as appropriate as giving someone a "welcome" mat when their house burns down.
Sorry, I should have qualified that statement with the word "technical". I suspect that Microsoft has enough technical expertise at it's disposal to do whatever it damn well likes and do it well, but its management clearly has the wrong priorities.
Microsoft has a history of taking the smart people and putting them below chains of management who make inept and disconnected choices, not making them leaders.
Yes, that's exactly my point: the two Steves have completely different approaches to management, and there are as many different management styles as managers. Apple may be well placed to continue down it's current path for the immediate future, but it remains to be seen whether any of the current management team are astute enough to respond to shifting demands in a way that satifies Apple's target demographic and can exert enough influence to bring the rest of the company along the same way Jobs has in the long term. In that regard it really does matter who the CEO is, contrary to actionbastard's assertion.
If they need a 'visionary', they can always find another crazy 'Steve', here [microsoft.com].
And yet Microsoft, with it's equivalent pool of talent and far greater resources, comes up with products like Vista and the Zune. Congratulations on so effectively negating your own argument.
According to TV, three persons of minor importance work late in warehouses:
1) Janitors: expendable, first to die in alien invasions, zombie infestations, etcetera, the "canary in the coal mine" for unusual events.
2) Accountants: semi-expendable, often targets for bizzare assassination plots because they know too much.
3) Henchmen guarding illegal operation/loot: highly expendable. Usually die at the hands of an action hero.
Since the guy survived he's not a janitor, and the absent tell-tale trail of destruction confirms he's not a henchman either. So he must be an accountant, which means this wasn't simply a random meteor hit but an assassination attempt disguised as a meteor, a feat only possible my an evil mastermind with greater plans afoot.
This could mean the end of the world as we know it! PANIC!!!
Perhaps the author meant, "Some members of Apple's senior management appear to believe..." ?
No, the author assumed that most people would read "Apple" as "members of Apple's senior management, hereafter known jointly as Apple", and not bother splitting semantic hairs.
I'd dispute that simply on the basis that a community contains a few people we love, fewer we hate (if you're well-adjusted), and a large number we don't have any real opinion of one way or the other (unless you live in a village small enough for everyone to know everyone else, but that isn't true for the vast majority of humanity). We group together in communities for protection and for economic advantage; love is found in our families first, then as our social circle grows we find other loves in friends, husbands, wives, [insert appropriate relationship here], who are all part of our community, but by no means all of it.
Everyone else we treat with a modicum of respect because it benefits us to live in a civil society. For example: the guy who delivers my newspaper is part of my community. I don't know his name, he doesn't know mine but we're polite to each other because (a) I want my newspaper intact, dry and not on the roof; (b) he wants to keep his job; and (c) being a jerk is too much effort for no gain. "Good morning" is just as easy to say as "fuck off", and you actually feel much better for saying it.
This is courtesy and mutual respect driven by pragmatism and "enlightened self-interest", not love. To claim that any of us love a complete stranger who happens to be in close geographic proximity merely devalues the word to the extent where we might as well say Marklar instead.
Other emotions mostly direct people to act for themselves.
Clearly you've never had a psycho ex-girlfriend. My point here is that an excess of almost any emotion can be destructive, even love. Possibly the only non-destructive emotion is sympathy, and sympathy requires understanding more than love (in fact, love determines how much sympathy we feel and for who; in that regard it is an unintentional limit, though I think it is entirely natural that we care about family and friends foremost).
Rules may be created to more or less force them to act in the interests of the community
Generally speaking, those rules reflect the standards of the majority, which means most of us don't so much consciously obey them as act by them naturally. Those who break the rules are the minority, so you're concocting a social theory based on the aberrent behaviour of a small fraction of the population. I should think the problem there is obvious.
but if long term stability is a concern, there is not much that is better than love.
As I've pointed out, it isn't possible to know everyone in an average modern community, let alone love them, so if you're talking about love of the community as an abstract you're talking about patriotism and it's ugly cousin nationalism. Judging by the number of wars in the last century that were driven by nationalistic fervour, I would argue that in the 20th century, that brand of love's triumphs over pragmatism cost in excess of 100,000,000 lives. Perhaps that's a twisted view (and definitely hyperbole), but no more twisted than crediting love with all that's good in the world.
No single way leads to balance; people aren't complete without both a heart and a brain, and being made of people, neither is society.
What's sad is male-oriented products, e.g. razor blades, with packaging touting their contribution to womyn's diseases like breast cancer.
My wife handles most of our shopping. They need to convince her which brand to buy, even if I'm the ultimate user.
Ever wondered why she buys the brand that supports research that will let her live much longer than you? It's a subtle message: buy your own damn razor blades or die.
Taxpayer dollars put to waste, as well as the time of those serving this sentence...[snip]...Community service to help deaf persons or any number of other things that would not be a complete waste
Problem 1: to do just about anything in a specialised field such as working with the deaf requires a certain amount of training, unlike, say, picking up garbage. So you have to take someone with those skills away from whatever else they're doing in order to train the miscreants.
Problem 2: anyone antisocial enough to wind up in court repeatedly for noise pollution is probably not going to participate in such a program willingly; they'd have to be very closely supervised to ensure they're actually doing something useful.
So your specific suggestion would be a complete waste of the offender's time, the trainer's time, the supervisor's time and very probably the deaf person's (people's) time too. That actually makes it a more expensive proposition than making the offender sit and listen to music they don't like for an hour (one baliff, one hour's pay), and it also has the disadvantage of being an abstract punishment which teaches them nothing about why their behaviour is objectionable.
That's not to say I disagree with you in principle, I'm just pointing out that the effectiveness and hidden costs of any punishment need to be taken into consideration, otherwise you can easily end up asking for what you're objecting to.
This is Slashdot; creatures with no chance of reproducing are par for the course here, I don't see why another one is so morally outrageous, especially one that's slimmer and less hairy than the average Linux hacker.
I don't care what kind of cosmic rays they've been exposed to, spiders wielding lubricant guns and hex wrenches are not scary. "Oh, look out, it's going to build some furniture and reduce wear on my bearings!"
Someone already tried genetically engineering one, and the result was a hideously deformed creature called Ron Jeremy. It's hairy enough, but the trunk is in the wrong place...
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't failing to duck the chair reduce intelligence, or at least cause amnesia? Oh, I see your point.
There are lots of smart people who deserve jobs at Microsoft.
Why, what did they do wrong?
Indeed, this would appear to be one huge conceive-up.
Keep in mind that you can be replaced with a turkey baster and a carton of Hagen-Daaz.
Wait, you mean that's not ice cream?!?
Girls? UGH. They give you cooties.
What are these "girls" of which you speak?
Plus, you've got a little bit of Apple magic in your pocket
But that magic saps your vital life essences and transfers them to Steve Jobs. Sure, everything from the Apple II onwards did that in a small way, which is how he powered the Reality Disortion Field, but that power is now the only thing keeping him alive since he should be long dead from cancer. The energy harvested from iPod buyers was enough at first (and indeed, look at the zombified victims wearing the tell-tale white spirit-siphons, or as Apple calls them, "ear buds"), but with every passing day the energy he needs increases, and only young, fresh, frantically texting souls will do. This is why Apple released the iPhone (or as those of us in the know would have it, the "Atman Lamprey"): by creating a device that the user holds to the side of their head, transmission losses in the spirit siphons can be eliminated while increasing the pickup surface area.
Sounds absurd? Well mark my words, in a mere 60 or so years everyone who has bought an iPod or iPhone will either be dead or a shrivelled husk, while Jobs will be alive and well and still running Apple (with a different identity to avoid suspicion, of course). See if I'm wrong!
Oh, sorry, wrong kind of keyboard. Still true though, unless you're burying a mime and you need a small, flexible coffin.
May she live long and prosper in a better place.
I'm not criticising the sentiment, but dying signifies the end of living long, by definition. And considering the lack of tangible evidence of the existence of a better place to prosper in and the origin of the phrase, it seems about as appropriate as giving someone a "welcome" mat when their house burns down.
WHAT equivalent pool of talent?
Sorry, I should have qualified that statement with the word "technical". I suspect that Microsoft has enough technical expertise at it's disposal to do whatever it damn well likes and do it well, but its management clearly has the wrong priorities.
Microsoft has a history of taking the smart people and putting them below chains of management who make inept and disconnected choices, not making them leaders.
Yes, that's exactly my point: the two Steves have completely different approaches to management, and there are as many different management styles as managers. Apple may be well placed to continue down it's current path for the immediate future, but it remains to be seen whether any of the current management team are astute enough to respond to shifting demands in a way that satifies Apple's target demographic and can exert enough influence to bring the rest of the company along the same way Jobs has in the long term. In that regard it really does matter who the CEO is, contrary to actionbastard's assertion.
If they need a 'visionary', they can always find another crazy 'Steve', here [microsoft.com].
And yet Microsoft, with it's equivalent pool of talent and far greater resources, comes up with products like Vista and the Zune. Congratulations on so effectively negating your own argument.
I said evil mastermind; that rules out GWB.
According to TV, three persons of minor importance work late in warehouses:
1) Janitors: expendable, first to die in alien invasions, zombie infestations, etcetera, the "canary in the coal mine" for unusual events.
2) Accountants: semi-expendable, often targets for bizzare assassination plots because they know too much.
3) Henchmen guarding illegal operation/loot: highly expendable. Usually die at the hands of an action hero.
Since the guy survived he's not a janitor, and the absent tell-tale trail of destruction confirms he's not a henchman either. So he must be an accountant, which means this wasn't simply a random meteor hit but an assassination attempt disguised as a meteor, a feat only possible my an evil mastermind with greater plans afoot.
This could mean the end of the world as we know it! PANIC!!!
...even redesigning her to have a simulated orgasm. *Shudder*
1) Nope, not convincing
2) So it faithfully reproduces every aspect of a real wife? Except that it has an off switch*...
* /me is going to hell for that one
Pray does not exclusively refer to requests made to an invisible man in the sky.
Perhaps the author meant, "Some members of Apple's senior management appear to believe ..." ?
No, the author assumed that most people would read "Apple" as "members of Apple's senior management, hereafter known jointly as Apple", and not bother splitting semantic hairs.
Prototype.
So why do you guys still tell us about whatever Microsoft is doing?
Because it's not politically correct to point and laugh at slow kids.
Love is what keeps human communities together.
I'd dispute that simply on the basis that a community contains a few people we love, fewer we hate (if you're well-adjusted), and a large number we don't have any real opinion of one way or the other (unless you live in a village small enough for everyone to know everyone else, but that isn't true for the vast majority of humanity). We group together in communities for protection and for economic advantage; love is found in our families first, then as our social circle grows we find other loves in friends, husbands, wives, [insert appropriate relationship here], who are all part of our community, but by no means all of it.
Everyone else we treat with a modicum of respect because it benefits us to live in a civil society. For example: the guy who delivers my newspaper is part of my community. I don't know his name, he doesn't know mine but we're polite to each other because (a) I want my newspaper intact, dry and not on the roof; (b) he wants to keep his job; and (c) being a jerk is too much effort for no gain. "Good morning" is just as easy to say as "fuck off", and you actually feel much better for saying it.
This is courtesy and mutual respect driven by pragmatism and "enlightened self-interest", not love. To claim that any of us love a complete stranger who happens to be in close geographic proximity merely devalues the word to the extent where we might as well say Marklar instead.
Other emotions mostly direct people to act for themselves.
Clearly you've never had a psycho ex-girlfriend. My point here is that an excess of almost any emotion can be destructive, even love. Possibly the only non-destructive emotion is sympathy, and sympathy requires understanding more than love (in fact, love determines how much sympathy we feel and for who; in that regard it is an unintentional limit, though I think it is entirely natural that we care about family and friends foremost).
Rules may be created to more or less force them to act in the interests of the community
Generally speaking, those rules reflect the standards of the majority, which means most of us don't so much consciously obey them as act by them naturally. Those who break the rules are the minority, so you're concocting a social theory based on the aberrent behaviour of a small fraction of the population. I should think the problem there is obvious.
but if long term stability is a concern, there is not much that is better than love.
As I've pointed out, it isn't possible to know everyone in an average modern community, let alone love them, so if you're talking about love of the community as an abstract you're talking about patriotism and it's ugly cousin nationalism. Judging by the number of wars in the last century that were driven by nationalistic fervour, I would argue that in the 20th century, that brand of love's triumphs over pragmatism cost in excess of 100,000,000 lives. Perhaps that's a twisted view (and definitely hyperbole), but no more twisted than crediting love with all that's good in the world.
No single way leads to balance; people aren't complete without both a heart and a brain, and being made of people, neither is society.
My wife handles most of our shopping. They need to convince her which brand to buy, even if I'm the ultimate user.
Ever wondered why she buys the brand that supports research that will let her live much longer than you? It's a subtle message: buy your own damn razor blades or die.
Taxpayer dollars put to waste, as well as the time of those serving this sentence...[snip]...Community service to help deaf persons or any number of other things that would not be a complete waste
Problem 1: to do just about anything in a specialised field such as working with the deaf requires a certain amount of training, unlike, say, picking up garbage. So you have to take someone with those skills away from whatever else they're doing in order to train the miscreants.
Problem 2: anyone antisocial enough to wind up in court repeatedly for noise pollution is probably not going to participate in such a program willingly; they'd have to be very closely supervised to ensure they're actually doing something useful.
So your specific suggestion would be a complete waste of the offender's time, the trainer's time, the supervisor's time and very probably the deaf person's (people's) time too. That actually makes it a more expensive proposition than making the offender sit and listen to music they don't like for an hour (one baliff, one hour's pay), and it also has the disadvantage of being an abstract punishment which teaches them nothing about why their behaviour is objectionable.
That's not to say I disagree with you in principle, I'm just pointing out that the effectiveness and hidden costs of any punishment need to be taken into consideration, otherwise you can easily end up asking for what you're objecting to.
Sounds like the annual Sydney Mardi Gras, only with fewer hairy legs. Still not frightening.
This is Slashdot; creatures with no chance of reproducing are par for the course here, I don't see why another one is so morally outrageous, especially one that's slimmer and less hairy than the average Linux hacker.
I don't care what kind of cosmic rays they've been exposed to, spiders wielding lubricant guns and hex wrenches are not scary. "Oh, look out, it's going to build some furniture and reduce wear on my bearings!"
Sounds like a logical place to get genetic material, if not a particularly salubrious one.
Someone already tried genetically engineering one, and the result was a hideously deformed creature called Ron Jeremy. It's hairy enough, but the trunk is in the wrong place...