An interesting point - but in my experience, when white male Daily Mail reading Christians bleat on about how oppressed they are, then even when you point out how privileged Christianity is in this country, that doesn't stop them going on about it.
Sorry, I was referring to the OP's "those religious fundamentalists fighting and dieing for their beliefs", and the idea that such a thing (whether or not it happened) would be better than the UK system. That it's not how the US was founded makes the OP's statement even more ludicrous.
Public schools should be eliminated and replaced with a voucher system so kids can get a quality, Christian education.
Great, at least in a privatised school system, I could send my children to one where they can learn about socialism[*] and atheism, and not be subject to the stupid changes discussed in the article!
[*] Actually overall I favour capitalism to socialism, but the arguments you make are too funny.
I have news for you atheists, you will all be "under god" as you are burning in hell.
Yes, but at least I'll have a socialised fire service to put it out.
Like England is? Last I looked, they were a pretty secular, post-xian society
I agree that the OP is an idiot (substituting one set of religious rulers for another set is hardly an improvement), but note that we still have issues such as the bishops who get given seats in our House of Lords, or the legal requirement for Christian worship in all UK schools (including state schools - the only exception is Faith schools where they can teach myths of a different kind instead). Hell, I even have to pay £100 for insurance when buying a house, because of the medieval Chancel repair liabilities that the Church still has on thousands of properties.
It's interesting that despite the legal grip of Christianity on the state, compared with the US's separation of church and state, the UK has a far less religious population (both in terms of raw numbers, and also in terms of fundamentalist beliefs). But that doesn't mean the UK is a secular society - I still wish I wasn't under the rule of the Anglican church.
Though to get back to the earlier post - despite the UK still having state religion, I find it funny that at least we print Darwin on our bank notes:)
Or is this just successful Apple marketing to instill the idea that if a "Major Player" is first to press (Which the iPad wasn't by the way), all others become imitators?
Spot on. (And remember, when people are inevitably in years to come claiming that Apple "popularised" the tablet, we know that (a) it's false, and (b) it's the media who did the popularising.)
That's like saying that Apple invented the smart phone
Heh, don't give them ideas. I've seen people here seriously talking as if Apple having invented the smartphone. (And note that, like the Ipad, Apple weren't first to press here either - not by many years.)
or that MS invented the home computer
Indeed, it's funny how when a company actually is the most popular, the "it's okay to claim they invented or popularised it" doesn't work there.
Ah yes, it's the "Ipad is an appliance" trope, that's gaining popularity around here - where "appliance" is so very conveniently defined as "Doing what this Apple product can do, and not not including the things that it can't do."
But since when did an "appliance" need to run applications, surf the Internet, and you know, do exactly the same things as devices that we refer to as a computer? I wish I thought of these tactics back when I was an Amiga fan, and the platform was going tits up - "Oh, the fact that it can't run Flash and Java is an advantage. Oh, and the lack of a decent browser? Well, you see, it's an appliance, you don't need to do the same things that computer does." (See how I cunningly changed the definition of an appliance for the things that Apple can't do, to the things that the Amiga didn't do?)
You're right, it's nothing more than an appliance. It only does what it can do, but misses all the more useful things that computers do. Talking of "appliances", if Apple released a fridge, would Slashdot start covering those too?
The funny thing is that with the Iphone, there were no end of people saying how wonderful it was that their phone was now a computer (evidently completely oblivious to the fact that this was nothing new by 2007, or even, years before that).
Even there though, does being number 1 make that equivalence fair? I mean, can I say "Windows == Model T"? If I said that, there'd be no end of Apple fans crawling out the woodwork, to tell me how Apple did some particular random thing before Microsoft, even though it's Microsoft who dominated that market, whether we like it or not.
What's important, I ask of them - is it inventing it, or being popular? Apple fans love to say it's the former on the occasions that Apple do something first, but the latter in the occasions where Apple are popular. And in the occasions where neither is true (which is most occasions), they'll just go with the latter still, and merely claim that it will become popular (the Ipad), or claim it's number one even when it isn't (the Iphones).
I'm astounded at the leaps of logic you people jump through.
Firstly, just because Henry Ford deserves credit doesn't mean that Apple do. That's a non-sequitur.
But even then, your logic is "But this guy got the credit falsely too" - all that just means is two people have wrongly got the credit, it doesn't mean it's therefore okay to falsely give credit to Apple too!
iPad = Model T Every other pad (CrunchPad, DellPad, MS Pad, 50 no-name linux pads) = one-off market
Claiming that the Ipad will be a Model T is just absurd crystal balling. I'll gladly make a bet that it won't be - but the sad thing is that in years to come, people like you will still be convinced that it was.
And yes, let's just make things up, including over unreleased products. "The Ipad is just a no-name one-off product. The AmigaPad will be the new Model T". See? I can play that game too.
There are Internet tablets at a fraction of the price. There are similarly far more functional netbooks for a fraction of the price (that can run in Sleep mode to avoid booting or hybernation issues), that will also sit better on your coffee table (since the screen can be angled better, instead of lying flat).
Would you spend far more that you would on a computer for just a device that's only for "light browsing"?
Tablets will become popular in time, but when the price is lower than the current price of netbooks - preferably below £100, so they can become commonplace. No doubt people will falsely credit Apple with inventing the concept, but that doesn't mean the Islate or whatever it's called this week is going to have success, anymore than any other vaporware we might discuss.
But it'll take a lot to beat Apple
All they have to do is be cheaper, which won't be hard.
You could RTFA:) It contains several of the amendments that were passed.
To comment on a few:
Mr. Bradley... won approval for an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians were interned in the United States as well as the Japanese during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.
Yes, obviously that means it can't have been an issue of race...
In the field of sociology, another conservative member, Barbara Cargill, won passage of an amendment requiring the teaching of the importance of personal responsibility for life choices in a section on teen suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders.
The topic of sociology tends to blame society for everything, Ms. Cargill said.
Wow - are they going to stop blaming images, films, porn, rock music and computer games for these things too?
And the Ipad will also be only one of numerous devices, so how will that help Apple any better?
Surely the Linux world learned its lesson from the desktop wars, hasn't it?
What, you mean the desktop where Windows runs on the vast majority of computers, even though there are vast numbers (far more than 50) of different PCs to run on? And where the OS-and-hardware-from-one-company model remains a niche?
Perhaps we could compare to phones instead, you know, the market where Symbian runs on 250 million devices, Windows Mobile runs on 50 million - and Apple are where, remind me? (It's 42 million, for the curious.)
The troubles Linux has had on the desktop have bugger all to do with fragmentation of hardware, nor of companies selling that hardware.
There are already plenty of devices including phones and tablets that do that. The Ipad is still nothing new - at least, nothing that deserves such absurd amounts of hype and free publicity, even when it's still vaporware (how many years is it now since the Apple tablet rumours started?)
It's so easy to just make up claims, isn't it? I might as well say that everyone's going to buy the new Amiga.
The point you're missing is that it's only in the nerd/geek/tech world that Apple have any significant following. E.g., consider how the Iphone is loved here on Slashdot, but in the mobile market as a whole, Apple are one of the smallest players, with most people buying Nokia. Similarly, Macs are loved here, but most people use Windows. And given that you have to do things like jailbreaking to get functionality to work, I'm not sure that it's right to say it's for your non-geek grandmother.
Exactly. And, FFS, people should stop with the "clones" nonsense. These aren't Ipad clones. How can you clone something that isn't even released yet? They're no more clones than the Ipad itself is a clone of previous products.
It was annoying when people did this for Apple's Iphone, as if they invented phones (!), but now we have it when the product isn't even released.
This isn't even about children - the widely publicised murder that was associated with this case, which is being used to force these new measures in, was of a 17 year old. In the UK, that's over the AOC. A big red button wouldn't have done anything.
That _is_ liberal. I think you're running into problems that both liberal and conservative are illdefined misused concepts, and can sometimes mean the same thing.
When I oppose authoritarian laws, I'm liberal in the sense of supporting freedom - but I'm not liberal in the sense of wanting change, as the point is I don't want change.
The definition is so broad that it covers at least 11 million employees (that's by the Government's own statistics - some estimates I've read place it closer to 14 million). And these days you also have to pay a load of money for the privilege of being checked.
The problem with public voting is in today's politics is that they're not accountable to 'their voting public'. They're accountable to the press.
Yes, this is a problem.
But your solution would just make it worse - a candidate could say "Vote for me, I'll give flags to orphans", or in general, say what the hell he likes, but once elected, vote how he likes, including completely opposite to what he claimed, and no one will have any idea.
A well run government often requires passing bills that voters would dislike for the good of the country (tax increases, spending cuts etc.).
Sounds like you're arguing for an unelected house. People would still blame the Government if they didn't like things, even if they didn't know how individual politicians voted.
The days when only so-called "smartphones" could run web browsers are long gone - for years, any normal phone can, so if we're talking about viewing Slashdot, that's the relevant market. And the Iphone is less than 5% of the phone market.
Yes, you get 25% if you artificially restrict the category to the Iphone and a few other models, but then you might as well say that the Iphone has 100% of the Iphone market. (Can you give me a definition of smartphone that includes the original Iphone, but doesn't include most "feature" phones?)
Slashdot Mirror
An interesting point - but in my experience, when white male Daily Mail reading Christians bleat on about how oppressed they are, then even when you point out how privileged Christianity is in this country, that doesn't stop them going on about it.
Sorry, I was referring to the OP's "those religious fundamentalists fighting and dieing for their beliefs", and the idea that such a thing (whether or not it happened) would be better than the UK system. That it's not how the US was founded makes the OP's statement even more ludicrous.
So tell that to all the idiots who whine about national healthcare, falsely calling it "socialism".
Public schools should be eliminated and replaced with a voucher system so kids can get a quality, Christian education.
Great, at least in a privatised school system, I could send my children to one where they can learn about socialism[*] and atheism, and not be subject to the stupid changes discussed in the article!
[*] Actually overall I favour capitalism to socialism, but the arguments you make are too funny.
I have news for you atheists, you will all be "under god" as you are burning in hell.
Yes, but at least I'll have a socialised fire service to put it out.
Indeed, and let's not forget the military - funny how the people who whine most about "socialism" seem to be all in favour of a socialised military...
Can you point me to where the OP suggests "cutting every mention of God out of your history books"? Thanks.
Like England is? Last I looked, they were a pretty secular, post-xian society
I agree that the OP is an idiot (substituting one set of religious rulers for another set is hardly an improvement), but note that we still have issues such as the bishops who get given seats in our House of Lords, or the legal requirement for Christian worship in all UK schools (including state schools - the only exception is Faith schools where they can teach myths of a different kind instead). Hell, I even have to pay £100 for insurance when buying a house, because of the medieval Chancel repair liabilities that the Church still has on thousands of properties.
It's interesting that despite the legal grip of Christianity on the state, compared with the US's separation of church and state, the UK has a far less religious population (both in terms of raw numbers, and also in terms of fundamentalist beliefs). But that doesn't mean the UK is a secular society - I still wish I wasn't under the rule of the Anglican church.
Though to get back to the earlier post - despite the UK still having state religion, I find it funny that at least we print Darwin on our bank notes :)
Or is this just successful Apple marketing to instill the idea that if a "Major Player" is first to press (Which the iPad wasn't by the way), all others become imitators?
Spot on. (And remember, when people are inevitably in years to come claiming that Apple "popularised" the tablet, we know that (a) it's false, and (b) it's the media who did the popularising.)
That's like saying that Apple invented the smart phone
Heh, don't give them ideas. I've seen people here seriously talking as if Apple having invented the smartphone. (And note that, like the Ipad, Apple weren't first to press here either - not by many years.)
or that MS invented the home computer
Indeed, it's funny how when a company actually is the most popular, the "it's okay to claim they invented or popularised it" doesn't work there.
Ah yes, it's the "Ipad is an appliance" trope, that's gaining popularity around here - where "appliance" is so very conveniently defined as "Doing what this Apple product can do, and not not including the things that it can't do."
But since when did an "appliance" need to run applications, surf the Internet, and you know, do exactly the same things as devices that we refer to as a computer? I wish I thought of these tactics back when I was an Amiga fan, and the platform was going tits up - "Oh, the fact that it can't run Flash and Java is an advantage. Oh, and the lack of a decent browser? Well, you see, it's an appliance, you don't need to do the same things that computer does." (See how I cunningly changed the definition of an appliance for the things that Apple can't do, to the things that the Amiga didn't do?)
You're right, it's nothing more than an appliance. It only does what it can do, but misses all the more useful things that computers do. Talking of "appliances", if Apple released a fridge, would Slashdot start covering those too?
The funny thing is that with the Iphone, there were no end of people saying how wonderful it was that their phone was now a computer (evidently completely oblivious to the fact that this was nothing new by 2007, or even, years before that).
Even there though, does being number 1 make that equivalence fair? I mean, can I say "Windows == Model T"? If I said that, there'd be no end of Apple fans crawling out the woodwork, to tell me how Apple did some particular random thing before Microsoft, even though it's Microsoft who dominated that market, whether we like it or not.
What's important, I ask of them - is it inventing it, or being popular? Apple fans love to say it's the former on the occasions that Apple do something first, but the latter in the occasions where Apple are popular. And in the occasions where neither is true (which is most occasions), they'll just go with the latter still, and merely claim that it will become popular (the Ipad), or claim it's number one even when it isn't (the Iphones).
I'm astounded at the leaps of logic you people jump through.
Firstly, just because Henry Ford deserves credit doesn't mean that Apple do. That's a non-sequitur.
But even then, your logic is "But this guy got the credit falsely too" - all that just means is two people have wrongly got the credit, it doesn't mean it's therefore okay to falsely give credit to Apple too!
iPad = Model T
Every other pad (CrunchPad, DellPad, MS Pad, 50 no-name linux pads) = one-off market
Claiming that the Ipad will be a Model T is just absurd crystal balling. I'll gladly make a bet that it won't be - but the sad thing is that in years to come, people like you will still be convinced that it was.
And yes, let's just make things up, including over unreleased products. "The Ipad is just a no-name one-off product. The AmigaPad will be the new Model T". See? I can play that game too.
There are Internet tablets at a fraction of the price. There are similarly far more functional netbooks for a fraction of the price (that can run in Sleep mode to avoid booting or hybernation issues), that will also sit better on your coffee table (since the screen can be angled better, instead of lying flat).
Would you spend far more that you would on a computer for just a device that's only for "light browsing"?
Tablets will become popular in time, but when the price is lower than the current price of netbooks - preferably below £100, so they can become commonplace. No doubt people will falsely credit Apple with inventing the concept, but that doesn't mean the Islate or whatever it's called this week is going to have success, anymore than any other vaporware we might discuss.
But it'll take a lot to beat Apple
All they have to do is be cheaper, which won't be hard.
You could RTFA :) It contains several of the amendments that were passed.
To comment on a few:
Mr. Bradley ... won approval for an amendment stressing that Germans and Italians were interned in the United States as well as the Japanese during World War II, to counter the idea that the internment of Japanese was motivated by racism.
Yes, obviously that means it can't have been an issue of race...
In the field of sociology, another conservative member, Barbara Cargill, won passage of an amendment requiring the teaching of the importance of personal responsibility for life choices in a section on teen suicide, dating violence, sexuality, drug use and eating disorders.
The topic of sociology tends to blame society for everything, Ms. Cargill said.
Wow - are they going to stop blaming images, films, porn, rock music and computer games for these things too?
And the Ipad will also be only one of numerous devices, so how will that help Apple any better?
Surely the Linux world learned its lesson from the desktop wars, hasn't it?
What, you mean the desktop where Windows runs on the vast majority of computers, even though there are vast numbers (far more than 50) of different PCs to run on? And where the OS-and-hardware-from-one-company model remains a niche?
Perhaps we could compare to phones instead, you know, the market where Symbian runs on 250 million devices, Windows Mobile runs on 50 million - and Apple are where, remind me? (It's 42 million, for the curious.)
The troubles Linux has had on the desktop have bugger all to do with fragmentation of hardware, nor of companies selling that hardware.
There are already plenty of devices including phones and tablets that do that. The Ipad is still nothing new - at least, nothing that deserves such absurd amounts of hype and free publicity, even when it's still vaporware (how many years is it now since the Apple tablet rumours started?)
I'll answer by asking the question of whether apples or oranges are heavier. Also, that's a non-sequitur.
It's so easy to just make up claims, isn't it? I might as well say that everyone's going to buy the new Amiga.
The point you're missing is that it's only in the nerd/geek/tech world that Apple have any significant following. E.g., consider how the Iphone is loved here on Slashdot, but in the mobile market as a whole, Apple are one of the smallest players, with most people buying Nokia. Similarly, Macs are loved here, but most people use Windows. And given that you have to do things like jailbreaking to get functionality to work, I'm not sure that it's right to say it's for your non-geek grandmother.
Exactly. And, FFS, people should stop with the "clones" nonsense. These aren't Ipad clones. How can you clone something that isn't even released yet? They're no more clones than the Ipad itself is a clone of previous products.
It was annoying when people did this for Apple's Iphone, as if they invented phones (!), but now we have it when the product isn't even released.
This isn't even about children - the widely publicised murder that was associated with this case, which is being used to force these new measures in, was of a 17 year old. In the UK, that's over the AOC. A big red button wouldn't have done anything.
That _is_ liberal. I think you're running into problems that both liberal and conservative are illdefined misused concepts, and can sometimes mean the same thing.
When I oppose authoritarian laws, I'm liberal in the sense of supporting freedom - but I'm not liberal in the sense of wanting change, as the point is I don't want change.
The definition is so broad that it covers at least 11 million employees (that's by the Government's own statistics - some estimates I've read place it closer to 14 million). And these days you also have to pay a load of money for the privilege of being checked.
...whilst she also supported a recent UK law criminalising possession of adult material that she didn't like.
If they make enough out-of-line decisions that you no longer trust them
And how exactly do we know if they've done this, if votes are hidden, as the OP suggested?
The problem with public voting is in today's politics is that they're not accountable to 'their voting public'. They're accountable to the press.
Yes, this is a problem.
But your solution would just make it worse - a candidate could say "Vote for me, I'll give flags to orphans", or in general, say what the hell he likes, but once elected, vote how he likes, including completely opposite to what he claimed, and no one will have any idea.
A well run government often requires passing bills that voters would dislike for the good of the country (tax increases, spending cuts etc.).
Sounds like you're arguing for an unelected house. People would still blame the Government if they didn't like things, even if they didn't know how individual politicians voted.
The days when only so-called "smartphones" could run web browsers are long gone - for years, any normal phone can, so if we're talking about viewing Slashdot, that's the relevant market. And the Iphone is less than 5% of the phone market.
Yes, you get 25% if you artificially restrict the category to the Iphone and a few other models, but then you might as well say that the Iphone has 100% of the Iphone market. (Can you give me a definition of smartphone that includes the original Iphone, but doesn't include most "feature" phones?)