So? Why would we expect any different? This has always been true, long before "web 2" or even the Internet. The number of people that will see or hear what most people will write or say is always fairly low, unless you're someone who is or becomes famous.
The Internet has made things better in this regard (I bet more people will still read this comment of mine, compared with if all I could do is say it to a person near me in real life; similarly it's an awful lot easier to transmit information between all of my friends, than before the Internet), but it can't work miracles.
If not many people read what he writes, that's his issue, not the medium's.
Hear hear. And let's not forget that "smart phone" is ill-defined anyway, and it's debatable that the Iphone falls into that category - can anyone give me a clear definition that includes the Iphone, but doesn't include most feature phones?
If we included all feature phones, not just those arbitrarily labelled as "smart phones", Nokia retain their dominant market share, but Apple's share is far lower.
So? Yes, it's not news that Apple are good at selling expensive products to a niche market, and making lots of money from it. Why is that an argument for saying the product is good for consumers?
I've got to laugh - arguments for Apple are commonly made from their point of view, that would be nonsensical if we heard them for other companies. Imagine: "But look how much profit Microsoft make - obviously their products must be better than everyone else!"
I liked Nokia, but the fact it took someone like Apple to shake up this industry shows how out of touch they really are.
Shake up the industry? What did they do exactly? And sure, I'm no fan of companies becoming dominant, so it's always healthy for newcomers to come around, but it's nonsense to pretend that a niche latecomer is the dominant platform, and it's also stupid when you're ignoring plenty of other players such as RIM.
In fact, the reverse is true. Even on so-called "dumb" phones, they can run apps and access the Internet, and people do this. The Iphone shouldn't even be considered a smart phone (give me a definition that includes the Iphone, but not most other phones?), it's only an arbitrary category, used by Apple to try to artificially inflate the Iphone's market share.
If you're comparing them in terms of handheld gaming devices, then you need to include devices like the Nintendo DS (I can't find Q3 2009 results, but at over 113 million sold as of September 2009, I believe that's more than the Iphone and Ipod Touch) and PSP (56 million as of August 2009).
So sure, Nokia aren't the best as a portable gaming platform, but Apple are still not the leaders in that market.
And let's not forget Apple has the bigger App Store... Nokia's App Store is nothing compared to the iTunes App Store
Who cares - that's only because of their locked down manner which forces all apps to go through the store. Why is that good from a developer point of view? It just means more competitors. If I want an app, I go to the website and download it. That's how it works for 99% or more of the computing world. Why would I as a developer prefer the method where I have to sell only on Apple's site, and only if Apple allow me?
I have a Nokia 5800, and I've never even needed to visit Nokia's store. I just download what I want, and it Just Works.
Development for Nokia's line of phones is much harder, because there's more than one screen size and a much wider range of capabilities.
Yes, the tired old one-model-versus-multiple-models argument. The prevalence of PC gaming and the demise of gaming on other computer platforms shows it doesn't really hold much strength. And anyway, the DS and PSP are single models, too.
and we know 30% of all money that goes through that goes straight to Apple.
Exactly. Extra expense for the consumer, that doesn't go to the developers.
I was a die hard Amiga user, went to Windows. Although I liked the idea of open source (after seeing what happens to a commercial platform when the company goes bust), I found Linux back then to have all the difficulties I hated about DOS, I'm afraid. And MacOS was a joke, not even worth considering - thankfully Apple themselves realised that and ditched it, but that was a few years later.
Windows 9x was still abysmal, but a kind of least worst. Since Windows 2000 though, I concede that Microsoft finally made a decent OS, and I've been on the NT line ever since.
It was a problem that plagued the post-Commodore Amiga, but note by the time cheap 24 bit displays were commonplace on PCs, Commodore had already gone bust. Had Commodore been around, there's no reason why bringing out a 24 bit graphics chipset would have been a problem (it was planned, named "AAA").
The Pentium was released in 1993, barely a year before Commodore went bust. The Video Toaster was released in 1990. So you're saying that Windows is so great, it can do what the Amiga was doing three years earlier.
Ever notice how the quality of CG in Babylon 5 dramatically increased after the first season? That's because they dumped their Amigas and Vidoe Toasters in favour of more powerful Pentium PCs.
Wait - *gasp* - you're telling me that as time passes, computer technology gets better? Wow, amazing! If they'd used faster Amigas, it would've got better too. The only reason they couldn't is because Commodore were then bust - so you're saying, Windows is so great, it can compete against platforms that are no longer produced? Amazing!
We had that on PC too, along with the 3D Studio, which is the product line that went on to be used for making films like Iron Man and Avatar.
Only years later. And last time I looked, those films were released recently - so you're saying Windows is so great, it can do better than a platform from 20 years ago? Brilliant!
The thing I love is DOS fanboys trying to use the success of the PC today to justify their purchase of a slow DOS based expensive 286 PC back in the 80s or early 90s. It's hiliarious. The irony is that the ways in which PCs are better today is only because they've added what we took for granted back then on the Amiga (e.g., GUIs, multitasking, coprocessors for graphics).
On top of that, the PCs and Windows of today have nothing in common with the machines of the 80s and early 90s (other than legacy crap that's an embarrassment to keep around). Just as "Macs" today have nothing in common with original Macs. And if Commodore were still around, you can bet that any "Amigas" would be running a different OS on different hardware too. So it's particularly nonsensical to try to use later hardware to justify a purchase 20 years ago, just based on a shared trademark.
Today, I use Windows because I consider it the best today. In the 1990s, I used the Amiga. Use the best tool for the job at the time - if you can only justify your purchasing decision based on what happens to the trademark 20 years down the line, you have a problem.
Here in Europe, the Amiga was the dominant home computer, end of story. The home market back then was far smaller than business, so in raw sales it didn't sell as many computers, but in the home market, it was the market leader. I'm sure there were fewer Amigas sold than all sorts of business equipment, whether it was fax machines, photocopiers or PCs, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a success.
Well then maybe you can explain why the Amiga didn't beat Windows to the punch with all of the apps.
What's that supposed to mean? What apps are you referring to? And let's not forget that in the era being discussed, "Windows" wasn't an OS, it was a complete joke of a GUI bolted on to a substandard single tasking command line operating system.
Nonsense. The Amiga went into decline only after Commodore went bust. How many commercial platforms would survive such a thing? Indeed, most would vanish immediately, where as the Amiga was used and supported commercially for almost up to a decade later, including bringing out new OS releases and a jump to new CPU family.
And the Amiga wasn't to blame for Commodore going bust either. The reasons are unclear - but the Amiga was selling plenty, and let's not forget that Commodore spent plenty of money on building PCs back then, too.
Are you seriously saying that's actually a religion?
Like others in this thread, you're conflating definitions. Yes, we may say that people can be "religious" in their approach to many things such as football, TV, or indeed not watching TV. But anyone who claimed that was someone's religion - in the sense of what we mean in this thread, e.g., Christianity - or say decided to put it on a form that asked their "religion", is either joking, or an idiot.
"Strong atheism" is the usual term, if we need to make that distinction.
Do we really need to though? If we're asking if someone believes in ghosts/unicorns/pixies, it's usually a simply Yes or No answer. You don't get long winded debates trying to divide people up into "No but I don't believe that they don't exist either" and "No and I believe they don't exist too", not to mention things like "I believe that it is X-amount probable that they don't exist"...
See, you conveniently ignored "a : a disbelief in the existence of deity", which is in fact listed before "b : the doctrine that there is no deity".
There are at least three definitions of atheism, of which a positive assertion is only one of them. There's lack of belief. You also missed a rejection of belief (sometimes referred to as explicit atheism). Sometimes terms like "disbelief" are used, which could refer to a range of these. (If you want references, see those given at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism.)
Even if we accepted your cherry-picked (not Merriam Webster's) definitions, what does that make me? I don't assert God doesn't exist, but I also don't claim God is unknowable. So what label do I identifgy as? A "skeptic" is a useless term here, as that could apply to anything, not just God! (Even for MW's number 3 definition, it refers to certain religious principles, and not specifically God. Indeed, many people who are skeptics in this sense may still believe in God.)
Who said otherwise? But the terms are not mutually exclusive, either.
such an assertion is both unproven and unprovable. therefore, atheism is a religion
Really? So if I say unicorns don't exist, that's a religion too? You are conflating definitions - MW's 4 definition is the broader sense of the word, e.g., we might say that a football fanatic's devotion is "religious", but clearly this doesn't mean it's a religion in the sense of Christianity etc!
The rest of your post is just a load of straw men. Can you point to an atheist who actually has these views? Even famous atheists like Dawkins word their views with statements like "There is almost certainly no God".
But leaving aside your straw men, I have to laugh - you're a Christian, who are you to criticise people for having faith? I'm confused: do you believe faith is a good thing, or a bad thing?
In summary, your post is just the tired argument where a Christian tells atheists what they believe just so you can knock the straw man down; it uses citations from a quick Google that you evidently haven't read properly; and we end with the hypocrisy that you criticise people for something that actually applies to you.
The main thing that would dethrone netbooks would be an external bluetooth keyboard for a smartphone, and it's interesting to note that even the popular iPhone doesn't officially support one, though it can be done with a hack.
The (not quite so popular actually - I don't know what sales figures you were looking at) Iphone doesn't support it, but other smartphones do (my Nokia 5800, for example). So yes, they exist.
I agree that this setup could challenge the netbook, but there's still the point about screen size - we'd need the possibility of something like external larger screens. Also I like the idea that netbooks can run real "desktop" OSs, and therefore run all the same applications that my other computers run.
Are the portable media players a failure, because you can't shove a DVD into them also?
Much of the point of the netbook is to be portable, more so than a laptop. If people buy a portable device, and then complain they can't fit a DVD in it (and generally the very things that would make it as large as a laptop anyway), then that's their own stupidity.
play games that require > netbook spec hardware
This is more a case of needing technology to catch up. It's not unsurprising that smaller size means less power. It's still the case that desktops are better at playing games than laptops, nevermind netbooks, but laptops aren't as abysmal as they used to be at least. With continued minaturisation, perhaps in future it will be possible to buy netbooks with high end 3D hardware (though, at a price).
There might be two kinds of market (people who want a basic phone, and people who want a smart phone), but there isn't really a clear divide in the phones available. Even cheap phones like the RAZR do full Internet access and can run apps. There's a gradual continual change from the low end to the high end, adding more and more features as you go along.
It seems common to try to divide the market into "feature phones" and "smart phones", but there's not really any clear line you can draw, or any good definition of smart phone (other than the vaguely defined "a phone that's high end when it first comes out").
I don't understand the reason people try to do this - I mean, you can buy cheap PCs, and you can buy better expensive PCs, but no one would claim there are therefore two classes of PCs.
More than a burden of passing laws, policing them, and locking up productive members of society? Not to mention that taking away someone's liberty because they might be more of a burden is an appalling idea. Far better just to tax it, anyway.
The system is entirely inconsistent anyway: cannabis and ectasy get banned, whilst far more harmful drugs like alcohol are legal. McDonald's isn't banned, as the OP pointed out. Brainwashing children with religion is okay (indeed in some countries like the UK, a legal requirement). Things like porn get criminalised even for adults, despite no evidence of harm.
By "heavily sanctioned" you mean "not banned" (no one would have a problem with regulation - you can't count tobacco as a "banned" drug; it's legal!)
even with porn, consumption creates demand that will be fulfiled by pornographers
And how on earth is that bad? You still have to show that the porn is bad in the first place.
The basic reason that the Chinese do not allow porn is that they believe that it demeans women.
Porn crackdowns in countries like the UK and US are made with exactly the same claim - "it demeans women". That still doesn't make it a valid argument for criminalising images of consenting adults. Why should China be any different?
Who are you talking to? I can't see left wing or communism in the summary of the article, apart from a reference to the Communist Party (which is perfectly factual and reasonable, and doesn't imply to me that this ban is related to communism in general).
No liberal or leftist government would attack the consumption of adult pornography. (Nor would they even care.)
Being left or right wing is independent of views or laws on pornography. Why should a country's economical state affect this? It would be wrong to say that left wing Governments are more likely to crack down on porn (did anyone say that?), but equally, I don't think you can claim that no left wing Government would do so.
Being liberal on the other hand is relevant, as by definition that is a term to do with supporting individual freedom.
It also reminds me of a common claim regarding criticism of porn crackdowns: "Why are you whining about porn; in China they have real censorship about political things, that's what real censorship is like", they cry. Stories like this show that different kinds of censorship - whether moral or political - are two sides of the same coin. They all have the same effect of ruining people's lives, over material that the state wants to banish.
I'm sorry, can you point me to when they held a referendum on this issue, and found out what the majority thought on the issue? AFAIK, they didn't. Indeed, that's the problem - they could have held a referendum to change the constitution, if they were really worried about that issue, but they didn't.
The only reason why the law exists is because the majority elected officials
Ah, the back pedaling - so it's not the majority, but the majority of elected officials.
Now if they were elected for those views, then they will be elected again, but if not, then they will be replaced and there will be an opportunity for the laws to be changed.
In most cases, people aren't elected for one given issue, because there are a vast range of different issues that people care about. If we have three candidates, each of which have at least one view that I disagree with, who exactly do I vote for to indicate my preferences on all issues?
I will not yell and scream and carry on that I disagree with it; I'll just respect the views of others and hope that majority will eventually see how this law cannot work in the modern world.
So you don't ever criticise any laws, no matter how mad they are, right? Do you post this to every Slashdot story about a stupid law? It's funny how this argument never applies to supporters of the law - before it was passed, they didn't say "Well blasphemy is legal, which is therefore what the majortity want, so therefore we should shut up and stop campaigning for a law"...
Note that cheap phones have had mp3 ability for years (e.g., I just checked Vodafone PAYG, and even their cheapest £20 phones can do mp3).
I agree about low end mp3 players - another advantage is battery life. I can listen to my Sansa for many hours, without me worrying about affecting my phone battery.
except perhaps for hard disk players with 100+ gigs of storage... The low end MP3 players will also exist,
Well wait a minute - from what I can tell, dedicated mp3 players are either hard disk based ones, or cheap low end flash devices. So if you're saying "dedicated mp3 players won't exist, except for hard disk and low end ones", that sounds to me that they will all still exist!
The mp3 players that aren't hard disk based, and aren't low end, these days are themselves becoming more general devices that play video, offer Wifi/Internet access and so on. Do you mean that these won't exist? Personally I can't see the point of these even now, anyway (if I wanted a device for playing video, I'd want far more than the typical 16-32GB offered by flash devices), but evidently they must be selling, and in future with increasing storage sizes, I can see them becoming more popular, not less.
Yes, although the question is whether all systems that could be affected will have been replaced by then. Personal computers will have long been replaced, but it's less clear with things like embedded systems.
Yes, thank you Captain Obvious. Is anyone claiming otherwise?
The issue isn't what the law is, it's what the law should be, as well as how companies should use the law. When there's a story about the use of the DMCA, do you go posting the text of the DMCA, saying "But that's the law!"? In yesterday's story, are you going to explain what the current copyright law is, and therefore those items won't be entering the public domain today?
Slashdot Mirror
So? Why would we expect any different? This has always been true, long before "web 2" or even the Internet. The number of people that will see or hear what most people will write or say is always fairly low, unless you're someone who is or becomes famous.
The Internet has made things better in this regard (I bet more people will still read this comment of mine, compared with if all I could do is say it to a person near me in real life; similarly it's an awful lot easier to transmit information between all of my friends, than before the Internet), but it can't work miracles.
If not many people read what he writes, that's his issue, not the medium's.
Hear hear. And let's not forget that "smart phone" is ill-defined anyway, and it's debatable that the Iphone falls into that category - can anyone give me a clear definition that includes the Iphone, but doesn't include most feature phones?
If we included all feature phones, not just those arbitrarily labelled as "smart phones", Nokia retain their dominant market share, but Apple's share is far lower.
So? Yes, it's not news that Apple are good at selling expensive products to a niche market, and making lots of money from it. Why is that an argument for saying the product is good for consumers?
I've got to laugh - arguments for Apple are commonly made from their point of view, that would be nonsensical if we heard them for other companies. Imagine: "But look how much profit Microsoft make - obviously their products must be better than everyone else!"
I liked Nokia, but the fact it took someone like Apple to shake up this industry shows how out of touch they really are.
Shake up the industry? What did they do exactly? And sure, I'm no fan of companies becoming dominant, so it's always healthy for newcomers to come around, but it's nonsense to pretend that a niche latecomer is the dominant platform, and it's also stupid when you're ignoring plenty of other players such as RIM.
Nonsense. Where did you pull that from?
In fact, the reverse is true. Even on so-called "dumb" phones, they can run apps and access the Internet, and people do this. The Iphone shouldn't even be considered a smart phone (give me a definition that includes the Iphone, but not most other phones?), it's only an arbitrary category, used by Apple to try to artificially inflate the Iphone's market share.
If you're comparing them in terms of handheld gaming devices, then you need to include devices like the Nintendo DS (I can't find Q3 2009 results, but at over 113 million sold as of September 2009, I believe that's more than the Iphone and Ipod Touch) and PSP (56 million as of August 2009).
So sure, Nokia aren't the best as a portable gaming platform, but Apple are still not the leaders in that market.
And let's not forget Apple has the bigger App Store ... Nokia's App Store is nothing compared to the iTunes App Store
Who cares - that's only because of their locked down manner which forces all apps to go through the store. Why is that good from a developer point of view? It just means more competitors. If I want an app, I go to the website and download it. That's how it works for 99% or more of the computing world. Why would I as a developer prefer the method where I have to sell only on Apple's site, and only if Apple allow me?
I have a Nokia 5800, and I've never even needed to visit Nokia's store. I just download what I want, and it Just Works.
Development for Nokia's line of phones is much harder, because there's more than one screen size and a much wider range of capabilities.
Yes, the tired old one-model-versus-multiple-models argument. The prevalence of PC gaming and the demise of gaming on other computer platforms shows it doesn't really hold much strength. And anyway, the DS and PSP are single models, too.
and we know 30% of all money that goes through that goes straight to Apple.
Exactly. Extra expense for the consumer, that doesn't go to the developers.
I was a die hard Amiga user, went to Windows. Although I liked the idea of open source (after seeing what happens to a commercial platform when the company goes bust), I found Linux back then to have all the difficulties I hated about DOS, I'm afraid. And MacOS was a joke, not even worth considering - thankfully Apple themselves realised that and ditched it, but that was a few years later.
Windows 9x was still abysmal, but a kind of least worst. Since Windows 2000 though, I concede that Microsoft finally made a decent OS, and I've been on the NT line ever since.
It was a problem that plagued the post-Commodore Amiga, but note by the time cheap 24 bit displays were commonplace on PCs, Commodore had already gone bust. Had Commodore been around, there's no reason why bringing out a 24 bit graphics chipset would have been a problem (it was planned, named "AAA").
The Pentium was released in 1993, barely a year before Commodore went bust. The Video Toaster was released in 1990. So you're saying that Windows is so great, it can do what the Amiga was doing three years earlier.
Ever notice how the quality of CG in Babylon 5 dramatically increased after the first season? That's because they dumped their Amigas and Vidoe Toasters in favour of more powerful Pentium PCs.
Wait - *gasp* - you're telling me that as time passes, computer technology gets better? Wow, amazing! If they'd used faster Amigas, it would've got better too. The only reason they couldn't is because Commodore were then bust - so you're saying, Windows is so great, it can compete against platforms that are no longer produced? Amazing!
We had that on PC too, along with the 3D Studio, which is the product line that went on to be used for making films like Iron Man and Avatar.
Only years later. And last time I looked, those films were released recently - so you're saying Windows is so great, it can do better than a platform from 20 years ago? Brilliant!
The thing I love is DOS fanboys trying to use the success of the PC today to justify their purchase of a slow DOS based expensive 286 PC back in the 80s or early 90s. It's hiliarious. The irony is that the ways in which PCs are better today is only because they've added what we took for granted back then on the Amiga (e.g., GUIs, multitasking, coprocessors for graphics).
On top of that, the PCs and Windows of today have nothing in common with the machines of the 80s and early 90s (other than legacy crap that's an embarrassment to keep around). Just as "Macs" today have nothing in common with original Macs. And if Commodore were still around, you can bet that any "Amigas" would be running a different OS on different hardware too. So it's particularly nonsensical to try to use later hardware to justify a purchase 20 years ago, just based on a shared trademark.
Today, I use Windows because I consider it the best today. In the 1990s, I used the Amiga. Use the best tool for the job at the time - if you can only justify your purchasing decision based on what happens to the trademark 20 years down the line, you have a problem.
Ah, have we unleashed an Atari ST fan?
Here in Europe, the Amiga was the dominant home computer, end of story. The home market back then was far smaller than business, so in raw sales it didn't sell as many computers, but in the home market, it was the market leader. I'm sure there were fewer Amigas sold than all sorts of business equipment, whether it was fax machines, photocopiers or PCs, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a success.
Well then maybe you can explain why the Amiga didn't beat Windows to the punch with all of the apps.
What's that supposed to mean? What apps are you referring to? And let's not forget that in the era being discussed, "Windows" wasn't an OS, it was a complete joke of a GUI bolted on to a substandard single tasking command line operating system.
Nonsense. The Amiga went into decline only after Commodore went bust. How many commercial platforms would survive such a thing? Indeed, most would vanish immediately, where as the Amiga was used and supported commercially for almost up to a decade later, including bringing out new OS releases and a jump to new CPU family.
And the Amiga wasn't to blame for Commodore going bust either. The reasons are unclear - but the Amiga was selling plenty, and let's not forget that Commodore spent plenty of money on building PCs back then, too.
Are you seriously saying that's actually a religion?
Like others in this thread, you're conflating definitions. Yes, we may say that people can be "religious" in their approach to many things such as football, TV, or indeed not watching TV. But anyone who claimed that was someone's religion - in the sense of what we mean in this thread, e.g., Christianity - or say decided to put it on a form that asked their "religion", is either joking, or an idiot.
I'm not sure if I'm missing your point - how does that change anything?
"Strong atheism" is the usual term, if we need to make that distinction.
Do we really need to though? If we're asking if someone believes in ghosts/unicorns/pixies, it's usually a simply Yes or No answer. You don't get long winded debates trying to divide people up into "No but I don't believe that they don't exist either" and "No and I believe they don't exist too", not to mention things like "I believe that it is X-amount probable that they don't exist"...
Ah, I wondered how long it would be before someone (a Christian) decided to tell atheists what they believe! Let's have a look at your own ref, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism :
See, you conveniently ignored "a : a disbelief in the existence of deity", which is in fact listed before "b : the doctrine that there is no deity".
There are at least three definitions of atheism, of which a positive assertion is only one of them. There's lack of belief. You also missed a rejection of belief (sometimes referred to as explicit atheism). Sometimes terms like "disbelief" are used, which could refer to a range of these. (If you want references, see those given at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism .)
Even if we accepted your cherry-picked (not Merriam Webster's) definitions, what does that make me? I don't assert God doesn't exist, but I also don't claim God is unknowable. So what label do I identifgy as? A "skeptic" is a useless term here, as that could apply to anything, not just God! (Even for MW's number 3 definition, it refers to certain religious principles, and not specifically God. Indeed, many people who are skeptics in this sense may still believe in God.)
therefore, atheism != agnosticism && atheism != skepticism.
Who said otherwise? But the terms are not mutually exclusive, either.
such an assertion is both unproven and unprovable. therefore, atheism is a religion
Really? So if I say unicorns don't exist, that's a religion too? You are conflating definitions - MW's 4 definition is the broader sense of the word, e.g., we might say that a football fanatic's devotion is "religious", but clearly this doesn't mean it's a religion in the sense of Christianity etc!
The rest of your post is just a load of straw men. Can you point to an atheist who actually has these views? Even famous atheists like Dawkins word their views with statements like "There is almost certainly no God".
But leaving aside your straw men, I have to laugh - you're a Christian, who are you to criticise people for having faith? I'm confused: do you believe faith is a good thing, or a bad thing?
In summary, your post is just the tired argument where a Christian tells atheists what they believe just so you can knock the straw man down; it uses citations from a quick Google that you evidently haven't read properly; and we end with the hypocrisy that you criticise people for something that actually applies to you.
The main thing that would dethrone netbooks would be an external bluetooth keyboard for a smartphone, and it's interesting to note that even the popular iPhone doesn't officially support one, though it can be done with a hack.
The (not quite so popular actually - I don't know what sales figures you were looking at) Iphone doesn't support it, but other smartphones do (my Nokia 5800, for example). So yes, they exist.
I agree that this setup could challenge the netbook, but there's still the point about screen size - we'd need the possibility of something like external larger screens. Also I like the idea that netbooks can run real "desktop" OSs, and therefore run all the same applications that my other computers run.
Are the portable media players a failure, because you can't shove a DVD into them also?
Much of the point of the netbook is to be portable, more so than a laptop. If people buy a portable device, and then complain they can't fit a DVD in it (and generally the very things that would make it as large as a laptop anyway), then that's their own stupidity.
play games that require > netbook spec hardware
This is more a case of needing technology to catch up. It's not unsurprising that smaller size means less power. It's still the case that desktops are better at playing games than laptops, nevermind netbooks, but laptops aren't as abysmal as they used to be at least. With continued minaturisation, perhaps in future it will be possible to buy netbooks with high end 3D hardware (though, at a price).
There might be two kinds of market (people who want a basic phone, and people who want a smart phone), but there isn't really a clear divide in the phones available. Even cheap phones like the RAZR do full Internet access and can run apps. There's a gradual continual change from the low end to the high end, adding more and more features as you go along.
It seems common to try to divide the market into "feature phones" and "smart phones", but there's not really any clear line you can draw, or any good definition of smart phone (other than the vaguely defined "a phone that's high end when it first comes out").
I don't understand the reason people try to do this - I mean, you can buy cheap PCs, and you can buy better expensive PCs, but no one would claim there are therefore two classes of PCs.
More than a burden of passing laws, policing them, and locking up productive members of society? Not to mention that taking away someone's liberty because they might be more of a burden is an appalling idea. Far better just to tax it, anyway.
The system is entirely inconsistent anyway: cannabis and ectasy get banned, whilst far more harmful drugs like alcohol are legal. McDonald's isn't banned, as the OP pointed out. Brainwashing children with religion is okay (indeed in some countries like the UK, a legal requirement). Things like porn get criminalised even for adults, despite no evidence of harm.
By "heavily sanctioned" you mean "not banned" (no one would have a problem with regulation - you can't count tobacco as a "banned" drug; it's legal!)
even with porn, consumption creates demand that will be fulfiled by pornographers
And how on earth is that bad? You still have to show that the porn is bad in the first place.
The basic reason that the Chinese do not allow porn is that they believe that it demeans women.
Porn crackdowns in countries like the UK and US are made with exactly the same claim - "it demeans women". That still doesn't make it a valid argument for criminalising images of consenting adults. Why should China be any different?
Who are you talking to? I can't see left wing or communism in the summary of the article, apart from a reference to the Communist Party (which is perfectly factual and reasonable, and doesn't imply to me that this ban is related to communism in general).
No liberal or leftist government would attack the consumption of adult pornography. (Nor would they even care.)
Being left or right wing is independent of views or laws on pornography. Why should a country's economical state affect this? It would be wrong to say that left wing Governments are more likely to crack down on porn (did anyone say that?), but equally, I don't think you can claim that no left wing Government would do so.
Being liberal on the other hand is relevant, as by definition that is a term to do with supporting individual freedom.
Indeed. And here in the UK, we've had a year of possession of so-called "extreme" porn being criminalised, which is already being used for as ludicrous cases as joke Photoshopped images of someone having sex with a tiger.
It also reminds me of a common claim regarding criticism of porn crackdowns: "Why are you whining about porn; in China they have real censorship about political things, that's what real censorship is like", they cry. Stories like this show that different kinds of censorship - whether moral or political - are two sides of the same coin. They all have the same effect of ruining people's lives, over material that the state wants to banish.
I'm sorry, can you point me to when they held a referendum on this issue, and found out what the majority thought on the issue? AFAIK, they didn't. Indeed, that's the problem - they could have held a referendum to change the constitution, if they were really worried about that issue, but they didn't.
The only reason why the law exists is because the majority elected officials
Ah, the back pedaling - so it's not the majority, but the majority of elected officials.
Now if they were elected for those views, then they will be elected again, but if not, then they will be replaced and there will be an opportunity for the laws to be changed.
In most cases, people aren't elected for one given issue, because there are a vast range of different issues that people care about. If we have three candidates, each of which have at least one view that I disagree with, who exactly do I vote for to indicate my preferences on all issues?
I will not yell and scream and carry on that I disagree with it; I'll just respect the views of others and hope that majority will eventually see how this law cannot work in the modern world.
So you don't ever criticise any laws, no matter how mad they are, right? Do you post this to every Slashdot story about a stupid law? It's funny how this argument never applies to supporters of the law - before it was passed, they didn't say "Well blasphemy is legal, which is therefore what the majortity want, so therefore we should shut up and stop campaigning for a law"...
Note that cheap phones have had mp3 ability for years (e.g., I just checked Vodafone PAYG, and even their cheapest £20 phones can do mp3).
I agree about low end mp3 players - another advantage is battery life. I can listen to my Sansa for many hours, without me worrying about affecting my phone battery.
except perhaps for hard disk players with 100+ gigs of storage ... The low end MP3 players will also exist,
Well wait a minute - from what I can tell, dedicated mp3 players are either hard disk based ones, or cheap low end flash devices. So if you're saying "dedicated mp3 players won't exist, except for hard disk and low end ones", that sounds to me that they will all still exist!
The mp3 players that aren't hard disk based, and aren't low end, these days are themselves becoming more general devices that play video, offer Wifi/Internet access and so on. Do you mean that these won't exist? Personally I can't see the point of these even now, anyway (if I wanted a device for playing video, I'd want far more than the typical 16-32GB offered by flash devices), but evidently they must be selling, and in future with increasing storage sizes, I can see them becoming more popular, not less.
Yes, although the question is whether all systems that could be affected will have been replaced by then. Personal computers will have long been replaced, but it's less clear with things like embedded systems.
Yes, thank you Captain Obvious. Is anyone claiming otherwise?
The issue isn't what the law is, it's what the law should be, as well as how companies should use the law. When there's a story about the use of the DMCA, do you go posting the text of the DMCA, saying "But that's the law!"? In yesterday's story, are you going to explain what the current copyright law is, and therefore those items won't be entering the public domain today?