People buy Macs specifically because there is something different about them that makes them Macs, and it's not the white plastic cases. A Mac running Windows would no longer be a Mac, and there'd be far less reason to buy one.
They may not know what an Operating System is, or that it's the Operating System that's the main difference between a Mac and a Windows PC, but it's definitely the reason they're buying the machine.
But how do they know it's not different, or it's not a "Mac", if they don't know about the operating system? They don't. If it's branded a Mac, then it's a Mac. If it's marketed as being different, then it's different.
Macs didn't stop being Macs when they ditched MacOS and replaced it with what was basically Next. In fact, not only does the average user have no clue about the difference between classic MacOS and MacOS X, even amongst geeks, they are happy to embrace MacOS X as MacOS, to the extent that Macs today are still considerd an evolution of earlier Macs.
Whilst it's true that Apple couldn't rebrand Windows as "MacOS", they would still be able to brand the product as a whole as "a Mac". As you say, the average user has no clue about operating systems (and any clue they do have is usually simply "Does it have Windows?").
Whilst these are good points - remember, people were saying exactly the same sort of thing about the idea of Apple switching to x86, not too long ago.
Also, the majority of people don't care about what OS it is. They may be tempted to buy a Mac because of the reputation - it's still something different (x86 Macs aren't bog standard PCs), and allows them to build the reputation of being more stable (remember that most of Windows' stability issues come from dodgy drivers and poor hardware choices).
Don't get me wrong - I'd say a switch wasn't likely. But it doesn't strike me as implausible or ridiculous. Apple have a history of ditching seemingly important things when necessary - they already ditched "MacOS" and replaced it entirely once before, and more recently the switch to x86.
Unless you are already living off the grid, growing all your own food, and never traveling farther from your home than you can walk, you have no moral standing to criticize my choice of vehicles.
In addition, if someone can grow all their own food, they have the luxury of a decent amount of land. If everyone tried to do this, there may not be enough food to sustain the population in many developed countries. The current food system may not be the most efficient in terms of oil usage, but it is in terms of supporting a large population.
Perhaps we should add anyone who has children to the list of people to criticise?
Unless you are already living off the grid, growing all your own food, and never traveling farther from your home than you can walk, you have no moral standing to criticize my choice of vehicles.
I can see what you're saying, but at the same time, this is like chopping off your foot to fix a broken toe. If we're happy to live as the African - then we have nothing to worry about lack of oil in the first place.
But we're not - the solution to "how do we prevent returning to a pre-industrial society when oil runs out" is not "become a pre-industrial society" - that's clearly absurd!
So the point is, given that we desire to have certain things, what is the most efficient way of doing it? So if two people need a car, but one is unnecessarily less efficient, it is reasonable for the former to criticise the latter. But if they don't need cars, it's reasonable for a non-car owner such as myself to criticise them both - even though my energy consumption is still much higher than an African.
A reasonable answer to "how do we prevent returning to a pre-industrial society when oil runs out" is "that we should try to be more efficient". To suggest that there is no answer, and we should just give up as we're as bad as everyone else, helps no one.
assuming it is to begin with, which it is not: the human race survived for thousands of years prior to the advent of the combustion engine and discovery of the uses of crude oil
And for most people, their life was spent living in mud, working to provide food for themselves, and you can certainly forget about all sorts of luxuries. True, civilization survived - it's more accurate to state than any form of industrialised civilization is going to be difficult.
I agree with the other poster about population - even if you're happy with a pre-industrialised society, it's going to be a bumpy ride switching to one which can support only a fraction of the population.
they will demand alternative fuel vehicles. And companies will produce those instead, because there exists a profit to do so
Do decent alternatives exist? (Maybe they do - I'm just asking)
you missed the part about typing in an admin password. windows doesn't have that additional layer of security on it. You can unarchive and open it under any user account. It will infect the whole computer. with a mac, you can unarchive it and attempt to open it with any user account. but in the end, you can't actually open it without root access.
A password is an extra step, but it won't make a difference to most home users, compared with say all the "I LOVE YOU" Windows worms which people happily criticised Windows for, despite also needing user intervention. If a user is stupid or trusting enough to run a file he's been sent, then he'll happily type in his password to get what he wants.
any computer user should immediately suspect something when a jpg requires your system admin password (and I believe in this case it would require the sys admin username and password).
Any knowledgable computer user. Most people won't understand why sometimes a password is needed and sometimes it isn't. And a knowledgable computer user knows enough to be suspicious of files he receives anyway.
It's not about a free ID card. There is no mention in the base question of it being free.
Okay then, they are in favour when they are not told about the cost. And the same polls also give us the information later on that they aren't willing to pay much at all.
The objective of a poll is to establish what a person's existing opinion is, based on what they already know, not to guide them by selecting information that will push their answer one way or the other.
This is all basic polling theory. Either you don't know the basics, or you are disregarding them because the outcome of this particular poll is not the one you want.
The fact is that the polls show the public in favour of an ID card.
You appear to be ignoring basic polling theory: a poll which shows favour for "some form of ID card" is not evidence that they are in favour of the ID card being proposed here.
In general, a poll which finds someone's "base opinion", when they know nothing about the matter, is useless in terms of judging whether anyone agrees with your plans or not. Imagine - if I plan to build some new prisons where people will be locked up without trial, do you think it is reasonable to ask the "base question" of "Do you agree with prisons"? If someone did a further poll giving more information about the nature of the new prisons, would you quibble that and claim it is a "leading question"?
There is nothing leading about supplying factual information - on the contrary, it is leading to withhold information. That's basic polling theory. Trying to present the "base question" as a meaningful indicator of support for these cards is simply dishonest.
The polls I have seen have made it clear that there may be possible benefits such as benefit fraud and so on, but still show that people are unwilling to pay the cost. If you can show me a poll where people where still in favour, even when knowing full details about the card, then go ahead - so far, I've just seen the opposite.
There has not been a single poll that has had more people against the ID card than for it.
It's certainly also true that if you prefix the question with the cost, that will change the outcome of the question. But that is what's known as a leading question
It's a "leading question" to include important facts about the card in question?!
Polls about a free ID card are nothing to do with the ID card we are talking about here. If people are only shown to be in favour when information about the card is withheld from them, then that is the only thing here which is misleading.
Funny that you complain of government spin, when you are madly spinning yourself.
The facts speak for themselves - the MORI poll showed that only 20% at most are in favour of the card proposed by the Government. That they might be in favour of a hypothetical form "ID card" which is much cheaper is irrelevant.
Equally if you prefix the question with a statement of how much money will be saved through benefit fraud, and ID theft, you'll increase the percentage in favour, because that would be a leading question in the opposite direction.
Well, we can question how much people are informed as to potential benefits - but equally I can question how much they are informed as to risks (eg, civil liberties, increased ID theft). But that doesn't change the fact that the polls shows people against the ID card being talked about here. A potential risk or benefit which might come as a consequence isn't the same as known facts about the particular system being introduced.
At best, we should agree that all these polls are useless - you are the one who asserted that polls showed the public are in favour - now you are running around trying to say why polls may be misleading! You can't have it both ways.
Personally I don't buy any argument about it being too expensive because I believe the long run benefit that it will save the government, businesses and private individuals more money in fraud prevention than it costs.
That's your opinion, but you're in the minority - most people are not willing to fork out a load of money for an alledged saving later on. (After all - if it was really going to save money overall, why isn't it free? Why aren't we getting tax cuts to take one, even?)
And of course the British public according to the polling organisations. Every single poll going right back to the start of the debate has had the result of more people in favour than against. That's quite a lot of people then.
Sorry, this is just plain false.
Polls only show the public in favour of a vague concept of ID, which tells us nothing (I have no problem with an ID card in general - eg, I happily have a passport). But these same polls show that the public are not in favour of the details associated with Labour's ID card and database scheme.
In particular, only a minority are in favour of a card costing more than £25 (let alone the vast amount it will cost) - a MORI poll, promoted by the Government, showed only 20% in favour. Only half were willing to pay anything at all, and only 6% more than £50 (current estimates are that an ID card will increase the passport cost by about £50).
The problem is that the Government ignores the details and, like you, falsely claims support for the cards. Even the MORI poll was highly biased; they falsely concluded the public were in support, despite their own data, and they had misleading questions such as claiming the Government is merely "thinking" of making us pay, when this is in fact a certainty.
Why are you so against these cards? They're not actually that bad. It is just one of those issues where it is very easy and natural to take the "NO THEY ARE BAD!" view, but in fact it is not so terrible. The worst it will be is a waste of money.
That alone is a more than sufficient reason - we're talking billions here. You don't throw away that sort of money just because "it's not that bad", you need to have a very strong argument as to what good it will do.
As others have said, this is a big penalty - it's only "not compulsory" if you think it's okay for the Government to take away your right to a passport. Whilst I gather many Americans don't have a passport, Britain is a lot smaller - even just hopping across to Europe, we still need passports.
In addition, it is possible that the card would be needed for various public services.
So, they are in fact compulsory, it's just that the Government will punish you in less direct ways rather than prison.
I also hate the way this is being spun as a "compromise" (eg, http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4699188 .stm ) - politicians (especially Labour) don't know the meaning of the word. The Lords opposed having people put on the register automatically ( http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4699188 .stm - "But the Lords voted to ensure that entry on the register was only voluntary."), yet now they're falsely claiming that this is a "compromise" which satisfies that!
But few people have objections of a general form of "ID card", even if issued by the Government.
The big problems are (a) the cost (double the price of a current passport to an individual; billions of pounds overall), and (b) the centralised database.
This is the problem - the Government does polls asking if people are okay with a general form of "ID card", and then make the leap of logic by assuming this means they approve of Labour's scheme.
We already have a Government issued ID - it's called a passport.
Aside from the question of probabilities, there's also the question of why someone got a cat in the first place, if they're going to kick it out as soon as they choose to have a "higher priority". It's not like they're forced to have a pet in the first place.
If someone doesn't even have the responsibility to look after a cat - getting one one minute, and then changing their mind because they want something else - is this the sort of responsibilty that's good for taking on a child?
If you receive British TV to your PC now by way of a tuner card you need a license, so I don't see why getting programming solely through the Internet should be any different.
It's different because people would have to pay the tax even if they aren't downloading programmes through the Internet.
It stands to reason that PCs with TV cards which are receiving broadcast signals should count as a TV doing the same job. But this proposal would cover anyone with a PC, not matter what they use it for.
I bought an Amiga 1000 with 2 floppies and 512K of RAM. It was about $1600. This was not considered high-end, even when the Amiga was released.
Today, I can get a Dell for about $600 with more functionality.
Sorry, I just don't see where personal computer price have done anything but fall.
Yes, of course prices have fallen!
And, over 20 years, they've fallen to the extent that even by spending less money, you can get a better computer. However, you are wrong to claim that all computers are cheaper as well as better - clearly, I can still spend $1,600 on a computer if I so wish.
And so it is with Blu-ray versus DVDs (versus CDs) - the new products are much better than the previous, but they may come out at the same price as the earlier product. Just as your $600 Dell once cost $1600, and just as indeed you can now spend $1600 on a new computer if you want.
An Apple II was about $2000 when equipped with a floppy.
A high-end macintosh was about $9000 ( Mac IIfx in 1990, reference http://www.lowendmac.com/ii/iifx.shtml) Today, I don't think you can spend more than $3K on a mac, even if you put your mind to it.
Look at intel based laptop prices...they've fallen from about $2500-5000 10 years ago to about $1000 today.
But here, you're selectively picking certain machines, and I already admitted that a downward trend was true in the last 10 years.
Before then, I could pick up Amigas for under £300. And when the A1000 was selling for a lot, you could pick up 8 bits for very cheap also.
I bought an Amiga 500 15 years ago for £400, and slightly later than that, the Amiga 600 and 1200 were selling for under £300, yet computers since then have been selling at a price higher than that. And back in the 1980s, 8 bit computers were very cheap.
There was a blip in the mid-90s when the PC became the dominant platform, but the price point machines were sold at was very high (probably because of high requirements for Windows, and lack of a decent graphics chipset in lower end machines), and since then the price point has fallen (mainly because PC performance has outstripped the increasing demands of Windows, and other software).
But looking long term, whilst the average price point has fluctuated for various reasons, there most certainly has not been a downward trend.
Sure, but isn't the trend for hi-tech stuff to go down? Computers, mp3 plahyers, satellite radios are going down in price.
They do go down. You'll be able to get a Blu-ray disc for the same price in real terms as a DVD used to cost, and both of those items have been dropping in price.
If you meant that price should go down and quality increase, then no, that has not been a trend in computers or anything else.
Indeed, this is a classic problem of mean averages being misleading. The "average" PC may well be free of spyware, with a minority of machines that are poorly maintained being infected with hundreds. A median average would probably be a better indicator...
It would be a nice feature, to be able to see all previous versions of a post/article (ala waybavk machine). Ohh well that would bloat the database to multiple of its size.
Wouldn't it just. It would indeed be most handy if one of the tabs along the top was "History", and clicking on that would give me a full history of the article. Perhaps they could even allow showing "diffs" between different versions; that would be even better...
The biggest problem Wikipedia has is topic bias. For some reason, it's database is full of every Trekkie / LoR / Anime fanboi dump that ever appeared on the Internet. When your encylopedia's entry for the Battle of Mordoor has more information than the entry for the Battle of the Bulge, it's time to start chopping topics.
But an online encyclopedia doesn't have restrictions on size that a paper encyclopedia has. You're free to ignore articles that are irrelevant to you, so their existence isn't a problem.
If I disagree with an edit, I "mod it down" by reverting or improving the edit.
A system where edits are stored would add unnecessary complexity - it's hard to see how this would work if say a later edit got modded up quicker than an earlier edit, meaning that the versions were now in conflict.
It would be difficult to work on articles which aren't watched by as many users, as perfectly reasonable edits may take ages to get noticed and modded up.
Whilst a lot of time is wasted by reverting vandalism, I suspect at least as much time would now be wasted having to review and mod everyone else's edits.
And lastly, Slashdot shows that whilst modding may be a good way to get rid of trolling/etc without resorting to censorship or appointed moderators, it doesn't work for judging how good or accurate a post is.
Well yes, it comes down to whether a trademark is famous or not, as in the obvious examples of Coca Cola and McDonalds.
But if BitTorrent counts as "famous" - if being famous amongst one arbitrary group of people means it's protected in all markets - that would surely make just about any trademark count - BitTorrent isn't famous, it's just well known amongst a particular niche group of geeks, and you could say that any trademark is "famous" amongst a particular group of people. E.g., "Fry's Electronics" would be "famous" amongst its customers, who might be confused if "Fry's Grocery" opened nearby; but that's clearly a misuse of the word "famous".
Now imagine the quality of infomation Wikipedia could scale to if it applied the same model the kernel uses; a number of mailing lists which host open discussion of each proposed change, and a group of knowledgable editors that accept revisions only only when the group agrees that they're factually correct.
It's an interesting idea for an encyclopedia - but it's not Wikipedia.
The point is that there is no reason whatsoever why Wikipedia as it works now should have to stop, in order for someone to try a very different way of working. If someone wants to try out your method, then they should go ahead and do so rather than complaining about Wikipedia. They're even free, I believe, to start off with the current Wikipedia content as a base rather than starting from scratch.
Indeed, it would be interesting to see which works out better in practice. People can talk endlessly about why Wikipedia shouldn't work "in theory", but that is meaningless when it ignores the end results. If you think you have a better system, rather than conjecturing about which is better in theory, go ahead and do it, and we'll see which is better.
And at the end of the day, we'd have two free encyclopedias, so everyone gains.
Slashdot Mirror
People buy Macs specifically because there is something different about them that makes them Macs, and it's not the white plastic cases. A Mac running Windows would no longer be a Mac, and there'd be far less reason to buy one.
They may not know what an Operating System is, or that it's the Operating System that's the main difference between a Mac and a Windows PC, but it's definitely the reason they're buying the machine.
But how do they know it's not different, or it's not a "Mac", if they don't know about the operating system? They don't. If it's branded a Mac, then it's a Mac. If it's marketed as being different, then it's different.
Macs didn't stop being Macs when they ditched MacOS and replaced it with what was basically Next. In fact, not only does the average user have no clue about the difference between classic MacOS and MacOS X, even amongst geeks, they are happy to embrace MacOS X as MacOS, to the extent that Macs today are still considerd an evolution of earlier Macs.
Whilst it's true that Apple couldn't rebrand Windows as "MacOS", they would still be able to brand the product as a whole as "a Mac". As you say, the average user has no clue about operating systems (and any clue they do have is usually simply "Does it have Windows?").
Whilst these are good points - remember, people were saying exactly the same sort of thing about the idea of Apple switching to x86, not too long ago.
Also, the majority of people don't care about what OS it is. They may be tempted to buy a Mac because of the reputation - it's still something different (x86 Macs aren't bog standard PCs), and allows them to build the reputation of being more stable (remember that most of Windows' stability issues come from dodgy drivers and poor hardware choices).
Don't get me wrong - I'd say a switch wasn't likely. But it doesn't strike me as implausible or ridiculous. Apple have a history of ditching seemingly important things when necessary - they already ditched "MacOS" and replaced it entirely once before, and more recently the switch to x86.
Unless you are already living off the grid, growing all your own food, and never traveling farther from your home than you can walk, you have no moral standing to criticize my choice of vehicles.
In addition, if someone can grow all their own food, they have the luxury of a decent amount of land. If everyone tried to do this, there may not be enough food to sustain the population in many developed countries. The current food system may not be the most efficient in terms of oil usage, but it is in terms of supporting a large population.
Perhaps we should add anyone who has children to the list of people to criticise?
Unless you are already living off the grid, growing all your own food, and never traveling farther from your home than you can walk, you have no moral standing to criticize my choice of vehicles.
I can see what you're saying, but at the same time, this is like chopping off your foot to fix a broken toe. If we're happy to live as the African - then we have nothing to worry about lack of oil in the first place.
But we're not - the solution to "how do we prevent returning to a pre-industrial society when oil runs out" is not "become a pre-industrial society" - that's clearly absurd!
So the point is, given that we desire to have certain things, what is the most efficient way of doing it? So if two people need a car, but one is unnecessarily less efficient, it is reasonable for the former to criticise the latter. But if they don't need cars, it's reasonable for a non-car owner such as myself to criticise them both - even though my energy consumption is still much higher than an African.
A reasonable answer to "how do we prevent returning to a pre-industrial society when oil runs out" is "that we should try to be more efficient". To suggest that there is no answer, and we should just give up as we're as bad as everyone else, helps no one.
assuming it is to begin with, which it is not: the human race survived for thousands of years prior to the advent of the combustion engine and discovery of the uses of crude oil
And for most people, their life was spent living in mud, working to provide food for themselves, and you can certainly forget about all sorts of luxuries. True, civilization survived - it's more accurate to state than any form of industrialised civilization is going to be difficult.
I agree with the other poster about population - even if you're happy with a pre-industrialised society, it's going to be a bumpy ride switching to one which can support only a fraction of the population.
they will demand alternative fuel vehicles. And companies will produce those instead, because there exists a profit to do so
Do decent alternatives exist? (Maybe they do - I'm just asking)
you missed the part about typing in an admin password. windows doesn't have that additional layer of security on it. You can unarchive and open it under any user account. It will infect the whole computer. with a mac, you can unarchive it and attempt to open it with any user account. but in the end, you can't actually open it without root access.
A password is an extra step, but it won't make a difference to most home users, compared with say all the "I LOVE YOU" Windows worms which people happily criticised Windows for, despite also needing user intervention. If a user is stupid or trusting enough to run a file he's been sent, then he'll happily type in his password to get what he wants.
any computer user should immediately suspect something when a jpg requires your system admin password (and I believe in this case it would require the sys admin username and password).
Any knowledgable computer user. Most people won't understand why sometimes a password is needed and sometimes it isn't. And a knowledgable computer user knows enough to be suspicious of files he receives anyway.
It's not about a free ID card. There is no mention in the base question of it being free.
Okay then, they are in favour when they are not told about the cost. And the same polls also give us the information later on that they aren't willing to pay much at all.
The objective of a poll is to establish what a person's existing opinion is, based on what they already know, not to guide them by selecting information that will push their answer one way or the other.
This is all basic polling theory. Either you don't know the basics, or you are disregarding them because the outcome of this particular poll is not the one you want.
The fact is that the polls show the public in favour of an ID card.
You appear to be ignoring basic polling theory: a poll which shows favour for "some form of ID card" is not evidence that they are in favour of the ID card being proposed here.
In general, a poll which finds someone's "base opinion", when they know nothing about the matter, is useless in terms of judging whether anyone agrees with your plans or not. Imagine - if I plan to build some new prisons where people will be locked up without trial, do you think it is reasonable to ask the "base question" of "Do you agree with prisons"? If someone did a further poll giving more information about the nature of the new prisons, would you quibble that and claim it is a "leading question"?
There is nothing leading about supplying factual information - on the contrary, it is leading to withhold information. That's basic polling theory. Trying to present the "base question" as a meaningful indicator of support for these cards is simply dishonest.
The polls I have seen have made it clear that there may be possible benefits such as benefit fraud and so on, but still show that people are unwilling to pay the cost. If you can show me a poll where people where still in favour, even when knowing full details about the card, then go ahead - so far, I've just seen the opposite.
There has not been a single poll that has had more people against the ID card than for it.
It's certainly also true that if you prefix the question with the cost, that will change the outcome of the question. But that is what's known as a leading question
It's a "leading question" to include important facts about the card in question?!
Polls about a free ID card are nothing to do with the ID card we are talking about here. If people are only shown to be in favour when information about the card is withheld from them, then that is the only thing here which is misleading.
Funny that you complain of government spin, when you are madly spinning yourself.
The facts speak for themselves - the MORI poll showed that only 20% at most are in favour of the card proposed by the Government. That they might be in favour of a hypothetical form "ID card" which is much cheaper is irrelevant.
Equally if you prefix the question with a statement of how much money will be saved through benefit fraud, and ID theft, you'll increase the percentage in favour, because that would be a leading question in the opposite direction.
Well, we can question how much people are informed as to potential benefits - but equally I can question how much they are informed as to risks (eg, civil liberties, increased ID theft). But that doesn't change the fact that the polls shows people against the ID card being talked about here. A potential risk or benefit which might come as a consequence isn't the same as known facts about the particular system being introduced.
At best, we should agree that all these polls are useless - you are the one who asserted that polls showed the public are in favour - now you are running around trying to say why polls may be misleading! You can't have it both ways.
Personally I don't buy any argument about it being too expensive because I believe the long run benefit that it will save the government, businesses and private individuals more money in fraud prevention than it costs.
That's your opinion, but you're in the minority - most people are not willing to fork out a load of money for an alledged saving later on. (After all - if it was really going to save money overall, why isn't it free? Why aren't we getting tax cuts to take one, even?)
And of course the British public according to the polling organisations. Every single poll going right back to the start of the debate has had the result of more people in favour than against. That's quite a lot of people then.
Sorry, this is just plain false.
Polls only show the public in favour of a vague concept of ID, which tells us nothing (I have no problem with an ID card in general - eg, I happily have a passport). But these same polls show that the public are not in favour of the details associated with Labour's ID card and database scheme.
In particular, only a minority are in favour of a card costing more than £25 (let alone the vast amount it will cost) - a MORI poll, promoted by the Government, showed only 20% in favour. Only half were willing to pay anything at all, and only 6% more than £50 (current estimates are that an ID card will increase the passport cost by about £50).
The problem is that the Government ignores the details and, like you, falsely claims support for the cards. Even the MORI poll was highly biased; they falsely concluded the public were in support, despite their own data, and they had misleading questions such as claiming the Government is merely "thinking" of making us pay, when this is in fact a certainty.
Why are you so against these cards? They're not actually that bad. It is just one of those issues where it is very easy and natural to take the "NO THEY ARE BAD!" view, but in fact it is not so terrible. The worst it will be is a waste of money.
That alone is a more than sufficient reason - we're talking billions here. You don't throw away that sort of money just because "it's not that bad", you need to have a very strong argument as to what good it will do.
As others have said, this is a big penalty - it's only "not compulsory" if you think it's okay for the Government to take away your right to a passport. Whilst I gather many Americans don't have a passport, Britain is a lot smaller - even just hopping across to Europe, we still need passports.
8 .stm ) - politicians (especially Labour) don't know the meaning of the word. The Lords opposed having people put on the register automatically ( http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4699188 .stm - "But the Lords voted to ensure that entry on the register was only voluntary."), yet now they're falsely claiming that this is a "compromise" which satisfies that!
In addition, it is possible that the card would be needed for various public services.
So, they are in fact compulsory, it's just that the Government will punish you in less direct ways rather than prison.
I also hate the way this is being spun as a "compromise" (eg, http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/469918
But few people have objections of a general form of "ID card", even if issued by the Government.
The big problems are (a) the cost (double the price of a current passport to an individual; billions of pounds overall), and (b) the centralised database.
This is the problem - the Government does polls asking if people are okay with a general form of "ID card", and then make the leap of logic by assuming this means they approve of Labour's scheme.
We already have a Government issued ID - it's called a passport.
Aside from the question of probabilities, there's also the question of why someone got a cat in the first place, if they're going to kick it out as soon as they choose to have a "higher priority". It's not like they're forced to have a pet in the first place.
If someone doesn't even have the responsibility to look after a cat - getting one one minute, and then changing their mind because they want something else - is this the sort of responsibilty that's good for taking on a child?
If you receive British TV to your PC now by way of a tuner card you need a license, so I don't see why getting programming solely through the Internet should be any different.
It's different because people would have to pay the tax even if they aren't downloading programmes through the Internet.
It stands to reason that PCs with TV cards which are receiving broadcast signals should count as a TV doing the same job. But this proposal would cover anyone with a PC, not matter what they use it for.
I bought an Amiga 1000 with 2 floppies and 512K of RAM. It was about $1600. This was not considered high-end, even when the Amiga was released.
Today, I can get a Dell for about $600 with more functionality.
Sorry, I just don't see where personal computer price have done anything but fall.
Yes, of course prices have fallen!
And, over 20 years, they've fallen to the extent that even by spending less money, you can get a better computer. However, you are wrong to claim that all computers are cheaper as well as better - clearly, I can still spend $1,600 on a computer if I so wish.
And so it is with Blu-ray versus DVDs (versus CDs) - the new products are much better than the previous, but they may come out at the same price as the earlier product. Just as your $600 Dell once cost $1600, and just as indeed you can now spend $1600 on a new computer if you want.
An Apple II was about $2000 when equipped with a floppy.
A high-end macintosh was about $9000 ( Mac IIfx in 1990, reference http://www.lowendmac.com/ii/iifx.shtml) Today, I don't think you can spend more than $3K on a mac, even if you put your mind to it.
Look at intel based laptop prices...they've fallen from about $2500-5000 10 years ago to about $1000 today.
But here, you're selectively picking certain machines, and I already admitted that a downward trend was true in the last 10 years.
Before then, I could pick up Amigas for under £300. And when the A1000 was selling for a lot, you could pick up 8 bits for very cheap also.
No they haven't - not computers anyway.
I bought an Amiga 500 15 years ago for £400, and slightly later than that, the Amiga 600 and 1200 were selling for under £300, yet computers since then have been selling at a price higher than that. And back in the 1980s, 8 bit computers were very cheap.
There was a blip in the mid-90s when the PC became the dominant platform, but the price point machines were sold at was very high (probably because of high requirements for Windows, and lack of a decent graphics chipset in lower end machines), and since then the price point has fallen (mainly because PC performance has outstripped the increasing demands of Windows, and other software).
But looking long term, whilst the average price point has fluctuated for various reasons, there most certainly has not been a downward trend.
Sure, but isn't the trend for hi-tech stuff to go down? Computers, mp3 plahyers, satellite radios are going down in price.
They do go down. You'll be able to get a Blu-ray disc for the same price in real terms as a DVD used to cost, and both of those items have been dropping in price.
If you meant that price should go down and quality increase, then no, that has not been a trend in computers or anything else.
Indeed, this is a classic problem of mean averages being misleading. The "average" PC may well be free of spyware, with a minority of machines that are poorly maintained being infected with hundreds. A median average would probably be a better indicator...
"I presume that if they did not want people to edit, they wouldn't allow you to edit."
Perhaps someone should throw a brick through his window. I presume that if he didn't want people to do that, he wouldn't have allowed them to do it...
It would be a nice feature, to be able to see all previous versions of a post/article (ala waybavk machine). Ohh well that would bloat the database to multiple of its size.
Wouldn't it just. It would indeed be most handy if one of the tabs along the top was "History", and clicking on that would give me a full history of the article. Perhaps they could even allow showing "diffs" between different versions; that would be even better...
The biggest problem Wikipedia has is topic bias. For some reason, it's database is full of every Trekkie / LoR / Anime fanboi dump that ever appeared on the Internet. When your encylopedia's entry for the Battle of Mordoor has more information than the entry for the Battle of the Bulge, it's time to start chopping topics.
But an online encyclopedia doesn't have restrictions on size that a paper encyclopedia has. You're free to ignore articles that are irrelevant to you, so their existence isn't a problem.
If I disagree with an edit, I "mod it down" by reverting or improving the edit.
A system where edits are stored would add unnecessary complexity - it's hard to see how this would work if say a later edit got modded up quicker than an earlier edit, meaning that the versions were now in conflict.
It would be difficult to work on articles which aren't watched by as many users, as perfectly reasonable edits may take ages to get noticed and modded up.
Whilst a lot of time is wasted by reverting vandalism, I suspect at least as much time would now be wasted having to review and mod everyone else's edits.
And lastly, Slashdot shows that whilst modding may be a good way to get rid of trolling/etc without resorting to censorship or appointed moderators, it doesn't work for judging how good or accurate a post is.
Well yes, it comes down to whether a trademark is famous or not, as in the obvious examples of Coca Cola and McDonalds.
But if BitTorrent counts as "famous" - if being famous amongst one arbitrary group of people means it's protected in all markets - that would surely make just about any trademark count - BitTorrent isn't famous, it's just well known amongst a particular niche group of geeks, and you could say that any trademark is "famous" amongst a particular group of people. E.g., "Fry's Electronics" would be "famous" amongst its customers, who might be confused if "Fry's Grocery" opened nearby; but that's clearly a misuse of the word "famous".
But they were both gas station stores, even if they were located in different places.
Can you provide an example where someone successfully sued in a completely different market, when they weren't a well known brand like Coca Cola?
Now imagine the quality of infomation Wikipedia could scale to if it applied the same model the kernel uses; a number of mailing lists which host open discussion of each proposed change, and a group of knowledgable editors that accept revisions only only when the group agrees that they're factually correct.
It's an interesting idea for an encyclopedia - but it's not Wikipedia.
The point is that there is no reason whatsoever why Wikipedia as it works now should have to stop, in order for someone to try a very different way of working. If someone wants to try out your method, then they should go ahead and do so rather than complaining about Wikipedia. They're even free, I believe, to start off with the current Wikipedia content as a base rather than starting from scratch.
Indeed, it would be interesting to see which works out better in practice. People can talk endlessly about why Wikipedia shouldn't work "in theory", but that is meaningless when it ignores the end results. If you think you have a better system, rather than conjecturing about which is better in theory, go ahead and do it, and we'll see which is better.
And at the end of the day, we'd have two free encyclopedias, so everyone gains.