"Big claims require big proof. Why must free will exist on the quantum level? When did neuroscience determine that all aspects of the brain are 100% deterministic?"
There is no way to chain together a series of completely deterministic processes and arrive at a non-deterministic end product.
So either brains are deterministic (my particular belief), or there is some non-deterministic mechanism by which free will is enabled. Hence my conclusion that it must lie beyond the deterministic level. The first point on the scale where we have non-deterministic individual events is at the quantum level.
"The property they "stole" was imaginary, but the money they have to pay has to be real."
You know, the money spent developing those "imaginary" products was real too.
I'm not sure how you'd explain to the workers and companies who spent billions of dollars and millions of man hours creating software and entertainment products that are traded for free on Piratebay that the fruits of their labour are imaginary.
This stubborn, ongoing refusal to allow that digital works have a reality to them, and an intrinsic value, is self-serving and it's getting old and tired.
"Sure, the brain acts according to the laws of physics. Does the mind? What's the relationship between physical qualities (mass, charge, etc) and mental qualities (desire, fear, meaning)? If you can't translate these mental qualities into physical qualities, it doesn't make any sense to say that the mind obeys or disobeys the laws of physics."
I would suggest that the "mind" completely obeys the laws of deterministic physics, because it is the product of deterministic inputs and processes.
Not currently being able to draw lines from mass, charge, etc. to mental states does NOT imply non-determinism. It can be completely deterministic. You just have to completely understand the entire current state of the brain in order to "prove" it to be so.
It reminds me of meteorology. We can't make decent forecasts more than a few days out because the system is very complex. It is, however, deterministic. If we understood all the variables, and the complete current state, we could make perfectly accurate predictions.
"That's wrong. Just because determinism rules in physics above the microscopic level, that doesn't mean that determinism is also true at other, larger, levels. The determinism of classical physics would only entail determinism of psychology if psychological concepts were reducible to physical concepts, and the jury is still out on that."
If you want to expand the argument to the philosophical why don't we throw religion into it as well? Then we can really muddy up the waters. I read the article. I won't pretend I understand all of it right now - I'm sure it'll take more than a couple tries before I really get the gist of it. However, this strikes me as a philosophical mind exercise, and not particularly useful, or even applicable.
Until somebody points me at concrete evidence, I have to believe that psychology is a product of the physical brain. Anybody who has watched a parent descend into dementia in old age can testify to the fact that as the brain changes, so does the person, often completely.
But unless I've REALLY been out of the loop, can you tell me where there is evidence of a macroscopic event that doesn't behave deterministically? If there is one, I'd like to know. If there isn't, you cannot declare somebody wrong by pointing to a completely hypothetical case. You can only say that I might be wrong if this other thing turned out to be true.
"People put Free Will and Randomness in the same basket because they are both non-deterministic. But that's all there is in common. Free Will and Randomness are two completely different things. Random events at the quantum level inside your brain are no different than having randomly-firing electrodes implanted in your brain. It will make your brain's output unpredictable, but it does not constitute Free Will. Or are you suggesting that the Mind somehow controls these Random events at the quantum level?"
Not at all. I'm merely drawing a line in the sand, and stating, "Everything above this level leaves no room for free will in the classic sense, because determinism rules."
That type of free will bucks determinism. Therefore, if free will exists it must be rooted somewhere past the deterministic threshold.
For what it's worth I'm not defending the linking of free will to quantum events. I don't believe that. I'm just pointing out the point at which free will could begin to enter the picture - not the place where it actually does.
"How would free will be explained on the quantum level? Randomness or probability doesn't account for free will, either. Free will is simply magic of the mind, a sort of god-of-the-gaps for not knowing the complex web of the interaction between heredity and environment and the many antecedent events acting upon it."
I completely agree. What I'm saying is that "if" there is free will at all, the mechanism that enables it cannot be deterministic. As far as I can tell, it's only at the quantum level that an individual event is no longer tied to determinism.
But yes, I am of the opinion that free will, in the classic sense, doesn't actually exist.
Since chemistry, electricity and matter at the level of cells, neurons, ganglia, etc. behave deterministically, if free will exists at all the root of it MUST be found at the quantum level.
I'm not, however, convinced that we have to discard determinism in this case. The article says that humans don't always make the most rational decisions, even when logic and reasoning point in one direction.
The thing is, no decision is made in a vaccuum. For an adult, each new decision carries the weight of millions of old decisions and their results as inputs. Who knows what combination of life experiences and consequences shape a new decision the most?
The rationality of the decision might be a smaller input than the fact that a similar decision in the past REALLY went wrong for some reason.
"The point is that it is always bad to subvert or exploit the voting process when it is made available."
So if junior high students from all over the country had banded together and submitted "Shitstained Underwear Storage Unit" as the name, NASA should have just accepted it?
Hardly. If the suggest name is not in keeping with how they want to present themselves, they SHOULD reject it. Colbert, for all his entertainment value, isn't somebody I'd name anything scientific after.
"Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough... but I mean where do you find a lot of people doing beatmatching and selling albums of it like they are the shit? Maybe I am kind of sheltered out here in Missouri and am only exposed to the good DJ albums, but I do a lot of internet searching for this stuff, and honestly, I don't find too much stuff that isn't creative. Maybe you should change the venues you look for good DJs in? Are you talking about stuff like Girl Talk [myspace.com]? I mean is that where wea re disagreeing? Also, live beatmatching at the club is super tight. Anyway, cheers mate. I certainly don't mind agreeing to disagree; I am seriously just curious."
Perhaps we just disagree on what qualifies as musicianship or creativity. I would suggest beatmatching doesn't make the cut for either.
Now if we're talking about people who write, record, produce and perform their own stuff, well, calling them DJ's strikes me as nearly derogatory. I've never heard of anybody referring to DJ Delerium, or DJ Fulber for that matter. Even BT considers himself a singer, songwriter, producer ahead of DJ.
Regardless, electronica is less than 5% of my musical world these days. 10 years ago it was different, but time marches on. Back then the vast majority of DJ's I saw just matched music done by other people. That makes them completely replaceable by software, and clearly neither creative nor musicianlike. Anybody can pick music. Many people can pick good music. Some people can spin it together. But to create it from scratch?
For that you need composers and musicians. You know, creative people.
"They're very much not exceptions my friend. Obviously, there are a ton of crappy DJs out there just like any other kind of performers. I posted some a couple posts up in this thread, but I mean I can even remember more now besides those: Kid Koala, Kut Master Kurt, Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Spooky, The X-Ecutioners, Nightmares on Wax, The BPA. Man if I had my iTunes with me I could probably type a whole screen of sick shit."
I should have been more specific. While they are exceptions, they clearly aren't the only ones. But they are vastly outnumbered by a sea of artistic nobodies who think that beat-matching the creations of others makes them musicians.
"Learn 'blah' to 'blah' play 'blah' an 'blah' instrument, 'blah' write 'blah' something, 'blah' film 'blah' your 'blah' own 'blah' original 'blah' movie. 'blah' Copy/paste 'blah' is 'blah' not 'blah' art.'blah' --- yes it is"
Let's play "spot the person with no significant artistic talent". Can I go first?
I have to say there's a great deal of creativity and talent involved in the performances of guys like DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist (Brain Freeze, for example), despite the fact that they work with prerecorded media. They're exceptions though.
The worst examples are on youtube. Sticking a bunch of clips from a tv show together and replacing the audio with some annoying song is technically, but barely, creative, and it's certainly not worth anything. Any iTard can do it.
"I currently enjoy: studying, music, computers, and women. For studying, I am in to biology, biochemistry, and chemistry. I see those fields as one continuum, not seperate areas of study. For music, I like Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, and a little Eminem. For computers, I prefer Macs for my own use, but if I have to help around the lab I can do with other platforms also. With women, I like to date any girls except asian girls. I am through dating them since a slut I was dating lied to me. Asian girls only like you for power and money. They only want to party and have fun while you work hard on weekends and make appointments while they sleep around. Don't talk to me on this board if you are an asian girl. I don't care what you have to say. I need to move on with new women. Blonds find me cute and very attractive, and they like me for my head not my wallet (like you asian girls). I don't know any black girls at the moment."
"That sums it up."
Wow, he really didn't leave you anything to tear down, did he? I can't tell if his bio is serious, or if he really is that boneheaded.
Going back through his recent comments reveals he is, in fact, that boneheaded. Quoth he:
Basing all of your wealth on bananas might sound silly, but there are doubtlessly people who have made millions doing just that. Fruit, gold, and "trust" - they are all exactly the same in economic terms.
I want my airbags tested by an enthusiastic teenager, not some beaten down engineer with years of backbreaking experience. All they need is the desire to succeed, in order to do bridge building or aeronautical design. Surgery too.
Well, for the record, I'd like him to test the airbags that were tested by the enthusiastic teenagers insteda of the beaten-down engineers.
"The reason Apple (and every other server vendor) charges that much for drives is because that's what they want to do, and it's disingenuous for this guy to be spinning it as if Apple has something special in that regard."
It's like the whole world discovered the word "disingenous" at once. Why can't this guy be "gullible", or simply "wrong" about his conclusions?
It doesn't have to be deception. It can be poor judgment or bad research.
"Or, were you saying that the common user thinks it is easier to fsck around with MS's registry?"
The common user doesn't mess around with the registry. My extended family members have had windows machines for a decade or more, and collectively they have no idea the registry exists.
"Questioning a theory is far from wrong, but until there is substantial proof it should remain quietly in the upper echelons of academia, not taught to grade-school students."
"Please re-read my comment rather than railing on against a creationist philosophy i opposed"
When I read it I took it to mean that you believed the theory (creationism/ID assumed) should be questioned only by academia until substantial proof of evolution was accumulated, whereupon it could be taught to grade school students.
If I understand you right, now, you're saying that it's the questioning of the theory of evolution that should be keep out of the classroom until more evidence is available.
"Questioning a theory is far from wrong, but until there is substantial proof it should remain quietly in the upper echelons of academia, not taught to grade-school students."
If you're saying there is no proof, it's impossible to "prove" without a time machine. However, there's a tremendous amount of strong, dramatic evidence. Certainly there's far more evidence in favour of evolution than there is evidence supporting creationism/intelligent design. If that's not enough, we'll also have to take all other "theories" out of the classroom, starting with the theory of gravity. After all, we only have a large body of evidence that our model of gravity works.
What else are you willing to sacrifice in favour of trimming out all topics but the completely, irrevocably proven ones? Certainly the biology, chemistry and physics textbooks are completely laden with theories as opposed to proven facts.
Social studies, philosophy, and history have also got to go. They are the very definition of theoretical topics. Every article is written by somebody with a subjective viewpoint, and some events reported in the history books probably never happened.
I had an XBOX360, and I had a PS3. Sold both a while back when I realized I hadn't played a console game in over six months.
I don't have a vested interest in this article. I don't measure my self-worth by what strangers think of my choice in consoles. I don't give a damn about the RROD, or about the E74 error.
However, I hate stupid articles like this one.
Everything you need to know about the worth of this article is contained in this chart
Lovely, isn't it? And no, the numbers aren't "in thousands". They're talking about reports over the last year going from 3 per month to 15. That's not failures - that's "emails to joystiq.com". It's worse than useless.
Did the emails spike because owners are, in fact, seeing spiking numbers of failures? Did the spike occur because some other site mentioned it with a link to related materials on joystiq.com? Did the emails say if the failures occured this month, or if some people were reporting failures from a couple years ago?
Al Gore would most assuredly approve of that chart.
They point out that their "little study" isn't perfect, and that it's unscientific, but then they say, "as we interpret the data...". Of course that data is statistically insignificant and hopelessly flawed.
If you're going to start beating the drum on something like this you should get your shit together in advance. Otherwise you're going to look like an idiot.
That was my first trip to joystiq.com. Probably my last, too.
"As much as we all hate IE and Microsoft ain't nothing wrong with a little competition."
I wish people wouldn't make blanket statements like that. Personlly, I use IE for regular day-to-day browsing, and Opera for some features I like related to downloads. I have never - EVER - met a version of Firefox I could get along with. Last time I tried was four months ago, and it crashed regularly. It's the only app I have (or, rather, "had") that isn't stable.
On my linux partition I use Firefox, just because it comes preinstalled, and the only sites I visit are IT technology-related and straightforward.
I do development all day, from C++ on Solaris/SPARC to Java front/back. When I browse, I have very simple requirements - the web sites I go to should work. I don't give a damn about Acid tests, I don't care that IE is closed source, and I don't hate Microsoft.
I think I'm representative of a LOT of people, including many on Slashdot.
You've given him everything he needs to make the decision. It's no longer your problem.
You could make this to your hill to die on if you like, but it seems kind of pointless to me to risk your job so that some other guy can download two movies today instead of one today and one tomorrow.
For the past three seasons my DVR has picked up Ghost Whisperer on Friday nights. I would watch the first twenty minutes. That was just long enough for the ghost to be slightly interesting, and also long enough to see just how they were decking out her boobs that week. Since the last 45 minutes always involved a sappy trip from "boob-enhanced ghost story" to "Touched By An Angel" I would never actually watch a whole episode.
Sadly, this season I dropped Ghost Whisperer from my DVR. It's like the deliberatly dress her down now, instead of "up". No shrinkwrapped lingerie, no cleavage... they've lost the plot.
How do they expect boyfriends or husbands to get through an episode now? Take away the boobs and it's bad television.
Slashdot Mirror
"Big claims require big proof. Why must free will exist on the quantum level? When did neuroscience determine that all aspects of the brain are 100% deterministic?"
There is no way to chain together a series of completely deterministic processes and arrive at a non-deterministic end product.
So either brains are deterministic (my particular belief), or there is some non-deterministic mechanism by which free will is enabled. Hence my conclusion that it must lie beyond the deterministic level. The first point on the scale where we have non-deterministic individual events is at the quantum level.
"The property they "stole" was imaginary, but the money they have to pay has to be real."
You know, the money spent developing those "imaginary" products was real too. I'm not sure how you'd explain to the workers and companies who spent billions of dollars and millions of man hours creating software and entertainment products that are traded for free on Piratebay that the fruits of their labour are imaginary.
This stubborn, ongoing refusal to allow that digital works have a reality to them, and an intrinsic value, is self-serving and it's getting old and tired.
"Sure, the brain acts according to the laws of physics. Does the mind? What's the relationship between physical qualities (mass, charge, etc) and mental qualities (desire, fear, meaning)? If you can't translate these mental qualities into physical qualities, it doesn't make any sense to say that the mind obeys or disobeys the laws of physics."
I would suggest that the "mind" completely obeys the laws of deterministic physics, because it is the product of deterministic inputs and processes.
Not currently being able to draw lines from mass, charge, etc. to mental states does NOT imply non-determinism. It can be completely deterministic. You just have to completely understand the entire current state of the brain in order to "prove" it to be so.
It reminds me of meteorology. We can't make decent forecasts more than a few days out because the system is very complex. It is, however, deterministic. If we understood all the variables, and the complete current state, we could make perfectly accurate predictions.
"That's wrong. Just because determinism rules in physics above the microscopic level, that doesn't mean that determinism is also true at other, larger, levels. The determinism of classical physics would only entail determinism of psychology if psychological concepts were reducible to physical concepts, and the jury is still out on that."
If you want to expand the argument to the philosophical why don't we throw religion into it as well? Then we can really muddy up the waters. I read the article. I won't pretend I understand all of it right now - I'm sure it'll take more than a couple tries before I really get the gist of it. However, this strikes me as a philosophical mind exercise, and not particularly useful, or even applicable.
Until somebody points me at concrete evidence, I have to believe that psychology is a product of the physical brain. Anybody who has watched a parent descend into dementia in old age can testify to the fact that as the brain changes, so does the person, often completely.
But unless I've REALLY been out of the loop, can you tell me where there is evidence of a macroscopic event that doesn't behave deterministically? If there is one, I'd like to know. If there isn't, you cannot declare somebody wrong by pointing to a completely hypothetical case. You can only say that I might be wrong if this other thing turned out to be true.
"People put Free Will and Randomness in the same basket because they are both non-deterministic. But that's all there is in common. Free Will and Randomness are two completely different things. Random events at the quantum level inside your brain are no different than having randomly-firing electrodes implanted in your brain. It will make your brain's output unpredictable, but it does not constitute Free Will. Or are you suggesting that the Mind somehow controls these Random events at the quantum level?"
Not at all. I'm merely drawing a line in the sand, and stating, "Everything above this level leaves no room for free will in the classic sense, because determinism rules."
That type of free will bucks determinism. Therefore, if free will exists it must be rooted somewhere past the deterministic threshold.
For what it's worth I'm not defending the linking of free will to quantum events. I don't believe that. I'm just pointing out the point at which free will could begin to enter the picture - not the place where it actually does.
"How would free will be explained on the quantum level? Randomness or probability doesn't account for free will, either. Free will is simply magic of the mind, a sort of god-of-the-gaps for not knowing the complex web of the interaction between heredity and environment and the many antecedent events acting upon it."
I completely agree. What I'm saying is that "if" there is free will at all, the mechanism that enables it cannot be deterministic. As far as I can tell, it's only at the quantum level that an individual event is no longer tied to determinism.
But yes, I am of the opinion that free will, in the classic sense, doesn't actually exist.
Since chemistry, electricity and matter at the level of cells, neurons, ganglia, etc. behave deterministically, if free will exists at all the root of it MUST be found at the quantum level.
I'm not, however, convinced that we have to discard determinism in this case. The article says that humans don't always make the most rational decisions, even when logic and reasoning point in one direction.
The thing is, no decision is made in a vaccuum. For an adult, each new decision carries the weight of millions of old decisions and their results as inputs. Who knows what combination of life experiences and consequences shape a new decision the most?
The rationality of the decision might be a smaller input than the fact that a similar decision in the past REALLY went wrong for some reason.
"The point is that it is always bad to subvert or exploit the voting process when it is made available."
So if junior high students from all over the country had banded together and submitted "Shitstained Underwear Storage Unit" as the name, NASA should have just accepted it?
Hardly. If the suggest name is not in keeping with how they want to present themselves, they SHOULD reject it. Colbert, for all his entertainment value, isn't somebody I'd name anything scientific after.
"These were depreciated in Exchange07, and I'm presuming that they're still depreciated...i>
Yeah, I hear MAPI and CDO lose 40% of their value the first time you use them. Never treat them as an investment.
"Maybe I just haven't looked hard enough... but I mean where do you find a lot of people doing beatmatching and selling albums of it like they are the shit? Maybe I am kind of sheltered out here in Missouri and am only exposed to the good DJ albums, but I do a lot of internet searching for this stuff, and honestly, I don't find too much stuff that isn't creative. Maybe you should change the venues you look for good DJs in? Are you talking about stuff like Girl Talk [myspace.com]? I mean is that where wea re disagreeing? Also, live beatmatching at the club is super tight. Anyway, cheers mate. I certainly don't mind agreeing to disagree; I am seriously just curious."
Perhaps we just disagree on what qualifies as musicianship or creativity. I would suggest beatmatching doesn't make the cut for either.
Now if we're talking about people who write, record, produce and perform their own stuff, well, calling them DJ's strikes me as nearly derogatory. I've never heard of anybody referring to DJ Delerium, or DJ Fulber for that matter. Even BT considers himself a singer, songwriter, producer ahead of DJ.
Regardless, electronica is less than 5% of my musical world these days. 10 years ago it was different, but time marches on. Back then the vast majority of DJ's I saw just matched music done by other people. That makes them completely replaceable by software, and clearly neither creative nor musicianlike. Anybody can pick music. Many people can pick good music. Some people can spin it together. But to create it from scratch?
For that you need composers and musicians. You know, creative people.
"They're very much not exceptions my friend. Obviously, there are a ton of crappy DJs out there just like any other kind of performers. I posted some a couple posts up in this thread, but I mean I can even remember more now besides those: Kid Koala, Kut Master Kurt, Afrika Bambaataa, DJ Spooky, The X-Ecutioners, Nightmares on Wax, The BPA. Man if I had my iTunes with me I could probably type a whole screen of sick shit."
I should have been more specific. While they are exceptions, they clearly aren't the only ones. But they are vastly outnumbered by a sea of artistic nobodies who think that beat-matching the creations of others makes them musicians.
"Learn 'blah' to 'blah' play 'blah' an 'blah' instrument, 'blah' write 'blah' something, 'blah' film 'blah' your 'blah' own 'blah' original 'blah' movie. 'blah' Copy/paste 'blah' is 'blah' not 'blah' art.'blah' --- yes it is"
Let's play "spot the person with no significant artistic talent". Can I go first?
I have to say there's a great deal of creativity and talent involved in the performances of guys like DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist (Brain Freeze, for example), despite the fact that they work with prerecorded media. They're exceptions though.
The worst examples are on youtube. Sticking a bunch of clips from a tv show together and replacing the audio with some annoying song is technically, but barely, creative, and it's certainly not worth anything. Any iTard can do it.
"I currently enjoy: studying, music, computers, and women. For studying, I am in to biology, biochemistry, and chemistry. I see those fields as one continuum, not seperate areas of study. For music, I like Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, and a little Eminem. For computers, I prefer Macs for my own use, but if I have to help around the lab I can do with other platforms also. With women, I like to date any girls except asian girls. I am through dating them since a slut I was dating lied to me. Asian girls only like you for power and money. They only want to party and have fun while you work hard on weekends and make appointments while they sleep around. Don't talk to me on this board if you are an asian girl. I don't care what you have to say. I need to move on with new women. Blonds find me cute and very attractive, and they like me for my head not my wallet (like you asian girls). I don't know any black girls at the moment."
"That sums it up."
Wow, he really didn't leave you anything to tear down, did he? I can't tell if his bio is serious, or if he really is that boneheaded.
Going back through his recent comments reveals he is, in fact, that boneheaded. Quoth he:
Basing all of your wealth on bananas might sound silly, but there are doubtlessly people who have made millions doing just that. Fruit, gold, and "trust" - they are all exactly the same in economic terms.
I want my airbags tested by an enthusiastic teenager, not some beaten down engineer with years of backbreaking experience. All they need is the desire to succeed, in order to do bridge building or aeronautical design. Surgery too.
Well, for the record, I'd like him to test the airbags that were tested by the enthusiastic teenagers insteda of the beaten-down engineers.
I spelled it wrong not once, but twice.
I do know how to spell it, even if I don't demonstrate it here.
"The reason Apple (and every other server vendor) charges that much for drives is because that's what they want to do, and it's disingenuous for this guy to be spinning it as if Apple has something special in that regard."
It's like the whole world discovered the word "disingenous" at once. Why can't this guy be "gullible", or simply "wrong" about his conclusions?
It doesn't have to be deception. It can be poor judgment or bad research.
"Or, were you saying that the common user thinks it is easier to fsck around with MS's registry?"
The common user doesn't mess around with the registry. My extended family members have had windows machines for a decade or more, and collectively they have no idea the registry exists.
"Questioning a theory is far from wrong, but until there is substantial proof it should remain quietly in the upper echelons of academia, not taught to grade-school students."
"Please re-read my comment rather than railing on against a creationist philosophy i opposed"
When I read it I took it to mean that you believed the theory (creationism/ID assumed) should be questioned only by academia until substantial proof of evolution was accumulated, whereupon it could be taught to grade school students.
If I understand you right, now, you're saying that it's the questioning of the theory of evolution that should be keep out of the classroom until more evidence is available.
Your original statement was ambiguous to me.
"Questioning a theory is far from wrong, but until there is substantial proof it should remain quietly in the upper echelons of academia, not taught to grade-school students."
If you're saying there is no proof, it's impossible to "prove" without a time machine. However, there's a tremendous amount of strong, dramatic evidence. Certainly there's far more evidence in favour of evolution than there is evidence supporting creationism/intelligent design. If that's not enough, we'll also have to take all other "theories" out of the classroom, starting with the theory of gravity. After all, we only have a large body of evidence that our model of gravity works.
What else are you willing to sacrifice in favour of trimming out all topics but the completely, irrevocably proven ones? Certainly the biology, chemistry and physics textbooks are completely laden with theories as opposed to proven facts.
Social studies, philosophy, and history have also got to go. They are the very definition of theoretical topics. Every article is written by somebody with a subjective viewpoint, and some events reported in the history books probably never happened.
I had an XBOX360, and I had a PS3. Sold both a while back when I realized I hadn't played a console game in over six months.
I don't have a vested interest in this article. I don't measure my self-worth by what strangers think of my choice in consoles. I don't give a damn about the RROD, or about the E74 error.
However, I hate stupid articles like this one.
Everything you need to know about the worth of this article is contained in this chart
Lovely, isn't it? And no, the numbers aren't "in thousands". They're talking about reports over the last year going from 3 per month to 15. That's not failures - that's "emails to joystiq.com". It's worse than useless.
Did the emails spike because owners are, in fact, seeing spiking numbers of failures? Did the spike occur because some other site mentioned it with a link to related materials on joystiq.com? Did the emails say if the failures occured this month, or if some people were reporting failures from a couple years ago?
Al Gore would most assuredly approve of that chart.
They point out that their "little study" isn't perfect, and that it's unscientific, but then they say, "as we interpret the data...". Of course that data is statistically insignificant and hopelessly flawed.
If you're going to start beating the drum on something like this you should get your shit together in advance. Otherwise you're going to look like an idiot.
That was my first trip to joystiq.com. Probably my last, too.
"As much as we all hate IE and Microsoft ain't nothing wrong with a little competition."
I wish people wouldn't make blanket statements like that. Personlly, I use IE for regular day-to-day browsing, and Opera for some features I like related to downloads. I have never - EVER - met a version of Firefox I could get along with. Last time I tried was four months ago, and it crashed regularly. It's the only app I have (or, rather, "had") that isn't stable.
On my linux partition I use Firefox, just because it comes preinstalled, and the only sites I visit are IT technology-related and straightforward.
I do development all day, from C++ on Solaris/SPARC to Java front/back. When I browse, I have very simple requirements - the web sites I go to should work. I don't give a damn about Acid tests, I don't care that IE is closed source, and I don't hate Microsoft.
I think I'm representative of a LOT of people, including many on Slashdot.
Mac: "please...kill me now."
How about...
Mac: "please... kill yourself now."
You've given him everything he needs to make the decision. It's no longer your problem.
You could make this to your hill to die on if you like, but it seems kind of pointless to me to risk your job so that some other guy can download two movies today instead of one today and one tomorrow.
It's like the deliberatly dress her down now, instead of "up".
If I find spelling mistakes within 60 seconds of posting I should be allowed to do an edit.
Of course I could proofread better, but I'd rather blame slashdot.
For the past three seasons my DVR has picked up Ghost Whisperer on Friday nights. I would watch the first twenty minutes. That was just long enough for the ghost to be slightly interesting, and also long enough to see just how they were decking out her boobs that week. Since the last 45 minutes always involved a sappy trip from "boob-enhanced ghost story" to "Touched By An Angel" I would never actually watch a whole episode.
Sadly, this season I dropped Ghost Whisperer from my DVR. It's like the deliberatly dress her down now, instead of "up". No shrinkwrapped lingerie, no cleavage... they've lost the plot.
How do they expect boyfriends or husbands to get through an episode now? Take away the boobs and it's bad television.