And when you replace those DVDs in 20 years with something even better, the photos will still be in 100% perfect condition. Try that with an actual print of the picture.
This guy's advice is not smart. Bascially he's saying "take your perfect copy that might die at some point and replace it with an imperfect copy that is guaranteed to deteriorate with age." Heck, I'll just laser print all my documents for backup as well. We all know there's no way they could possibly be lost then. We all know going analog is much safer than backing up and refreshing the data on new media periodically because all those prints of movies, music and documents from 75 years ago look and sound so damn good.
I'll take my chances with backing up and copying data periodically over my skills as a museum currator any day.
Everyone does have an opinion, but there are ways to diminish that opionions influence on the process.
There are current laws that prevent government employees and elected officials from leaving the government and then working with companies they've had influence over while they were part of the government.
Judges are expected to recuse themselves from cases where they have a significant interest.
Elected officials don't have to be (and shouldn't be) involved in vote counting/certifying/tabulating. We can hire parties who are known to not have expressed public political positions and who promise not to express public political opinions while engaged in the job and for a reasonable amount of time afterward. We can define that expression to include directly working for a polictical campaign. This wouldn't prevent them from having an opinion, but it would tend to reduce those who are beholden to any particular political machine.
It amazes me that people don't seem to care about the Katherin Harris situation. If a judge were in charge of the state Democratic campaign, there's no way in hell he'd be allowed to judge, say, a case involving rent due for the campaign headquarters. But no one seems to care that Harris, in charge of the state republican campaign, was able to certify a vote count where her party had a major interest. How can we look at the example of a judge and call it bias, yet look at her example and say she had no influence?
We can, and should, do much more to reduce that influance, and any other influence, whether Republican or Democrat, over our vote counting system.
and some even stated their intentions to do everything they could to give Bush the election. One life-long Republican supporter of one company pledged to support Bush and deliver Ohio to Bush. All of the sudden this taken as sometype of public admission that he was going to steal the election.
In the 2000 campaign the person who's job it was to certify the vote in Florida also happend to be the head of the Republican campaign in the state. I don't know, and I really don't care if major Democrat supporters certify the vote in other states. I don't know and don't care if it's currently legal (presumebly it is) for major partisans to certify votes. I don't care if Katherin Harris and the CEO of Seybol were and are completely fare people. I don't care whether Republicans _or_ Democrats feel that they can count votes in a completely unbiased manner.
All I really care about is that people responsible for counting and certifying the vote _should_ be non-partisan. And that _should_ be required by law. It _should_ be required that they neither campaign for, donate to, or publically state an opinion about any political party for the time that they sell machines/count votes/certify elections and for a reasonable period of time both before and after they do those things. This _should_ be part of the constitution.
Now why don't you all stop arguing about how things _are_ and start working toward making things as they _should_ be. Or maybe you can give me a damn good reason _why_ political activists foxs have any role whatsoever in guarding the hen houses that are our ballot boxes.
Whether it's real or not, I'm not sure anyone really knows or can prove one way or another yet. However, there have always been theories on a 'collective unconscious' or something similar - something like a giant radio channel on which the thoughts and actions of everyone everywhere is available.
A teenage friend of my daughter told me the other day about his desire to get free energy out of magnets. His theory was that since they're constantly pushing against each other, you can use that push to power a fan which would turn a wind turbine. He believed that the theory hadn't been adequately tested and he wanted to borrow some or the high-powered magnets I had gotten out of hard drives.
Naturaly I gave him the magnets (never squash initiative in a teenager if you can possibly help it), but they came with discussion of putting in as much energy as you get out, potential energy in a gravity well, etc.
He was a kid, the magnets were basically free. His "experiments" would cause no harm. I sat down and told him the truth before letting him proceed. If we're going to have this kind of relationship with full grown men, I'd prefer we did it with free magnets and an education program instead of 7.5 million bucks of our hard-earned tax dollars.
and I want a simple, no-surprises monthly bill that's not too high. Right now, the only way I can get that seems to be via land line.
When did that happen? Every wired phone service I've ever used had rate plans created by the same crazed hermits that bring you your airline fare and the bill was always a surprise if I made even one long-distance call. It didn't seem particularly low most of the time either.
Cell phones, on the other had, have these fixed rate plans that often have unlimited calling during very well defined windows (I use AT&T).
I've seen some crazy stuff in cell land but you're smoking crack if you think the land lines are any better.
***My phone is getting outdated and I cannot get a basic cellphone anymore.***
that argument is getting tired.. been hearing that for 2 years.
and during that whole time, just phone phones have been available and still are. fine, just buy a normal _lowest of low_ end phone.
or wouldn't you consider something like 1100 basic? vote with your wallet if you want.
Hell, with most basic cell phones the wallet doesn't even need to be involved. Most carriers will just give them to you. It the guy doesn't like a fancy phone he has, literally, nothing to complain about.
I've used smart phones for years now and love 'em, but I'm certainly not going to shove them down anyone's throat. Maybe the guy just likes basic value and should be reading "Consumer Reports" instead of "news for nerds".
What?!?! I can't believe anyone would ask such a dumbass question! People stay with AOL because:
1. They like phone lines. Ethernet cables are bad and complicated, unlike phone-lines thate are simple and ubiquitus.
2. Broadband is TOO FAST! Have you seen those crazy kids with their suped-up thingmajigs just zooming by you at every web site? It's just plain scary.
3. Ads are comforting. I get advertisements on my TV so I deserve to get advertisements on my internet too. Why would I want a substandard internet that's not even good enough for advertising? Since I get AOL ads, AND the ads for the web sites I visit, my comfort level is at least doubled.
4. Credit card debit is the way to go. Why get a monthly bill and write a monthly check like you would for your phone service or cable service? That's so 20th century. I trust my ISP so I want them to just take my money.
5. You just can't use AIM without AOL service, can you?
6. Kids love it! Theres no danger or smut available from AOL and there never was. It's 100% safe and wholesome.
Actually the law you speak of was struck down by the courts. However, most people don't realize that current obscenity laws are extremly commonlplace and most of them would almost certainly make porn films with, say, fake 5-year-olds very illegal.
Why? Because the supreme court has determined that "community standards" prevail in obscenity trials. I think you'd have an extremely difficult time convincing any jury, anywhere that a portrayal of 5-year-olds haveing sex, fake as it may be, is not obscene.
People have been found guilty (recently) of obscenity for selling comic books depicting acts that the community judged to be obscene. If a comic is illegal under current law, then almost certainly a realistic computer portrayal of child porn has no chance of being legal.
BTW, the preceding is meant to be informative, not to place a moral value. That said, I need to point out that I engage in a virtual murder (via video games) and watch others engage in pretend murder (via movies) on a very regular basis. I find it quite interesting that the law makes no attempt to regulate Freddy Kruger as obscenity, but has no problem arresting people for selling just as fake depictions of rape. My personal opinion is that, as long as they're both fake, deplorable depictions of rape are moraly equivelent to deporable depictions of murder and should be judged so by the courts.
No, it's a fact. USPS.gov's main web site (which a friend of mine had the contract to administer) had a typical uptime of five hours per host.
This is definately a bummer for the USPS, but is hardly representative of Windows servers. The vast majority of servers we have only come down for patching and upgrades and some of them work damn hard and are on the public internet(our mail servers, for example). Our corporate web servers are not as high voume as the USPS, but they basically never go down unless it's planned.
We do reboot our Citrix servers every night, but that has more to do with the fact that they work more like workstations than servers and run just about any user app you can imagine. That said, we don't experience flaky behaviour with them during the day while in operation and they're very heavily used.
Now I have experienced many lock-ups in Linux. Netscape used to get me on a regular basis a few years ago, though now I just experience random usability issues. Sure, there are workarounds, and I know the kernel was still chugging away during those lock-ups, but that didn't stop it from being a pain in the ass. I'm definately not trying to ding Linux, I'm just saying that user-level environments and apps have a tendency to play havock that server-level apps tend to avoid.
Anyway, I encourage you to ask a broader subsection of Windows admins what their stability situation is. The USPS example is not what you can expect to find in the MS shops I've worked at.
I think the general response would be that they seem stable because you don't have any *nix servers running next to them for comparison. Virus vulnerabilities and patching issues are still instability, just going by a different name. Planned downtime is still downtime.
This is actually a good response. But I would caution that when a network admin says "unstable" a user thinks "flaky" rather than "there are periods of planned downtime." So do other network admins. If Windows servers have more planned downtime (likely) then that can be clarified and quantified just fine without putting it under the blanket of "unstable" where it will be assumed something else is meant.
Our Windows servers have about the same uptime as the Netware servers sitting right next to them (no, not Suse based), but actually have less unplanned downtime. I'm not trying to crack on Netware, or anyone else, but if the servers are up unless we take them down on purpose then that's certainly not something I'd call "unstable", especially if the users is going to hear "flaky".
I wish people would stop cracking on MS stability in the server realm. It's a myth. My experience with a shop full of Windows 2000 Server (mostly) and Windows Server 2003 is that stability is not a problem.
Please feel free to continue cracking on virus vulnerabilities, patching issues, lack of flexibility and even cost. But my experience is that people who crack on the stability of Win2K servers and above either don't use them or horribly misuse them. Real Win2k admins simply don't have an issue with stability.
You do realize that cats and all other domestic animals have been genetically engineered since before the ancient Egyptians?
Do you realize the rate of extinctions in the modern age? What makes you think your question is not connected to my question?
As humans continue to "improve" our surroundings, the very surroundings have a tendency to crumble under the weight of the improvements. That is because we only select for the traights we want at the moment and not the traights that bennefit the ecosystem. Now that we have the capability of making far larger "improvements" much more quickly, we also have the capability to hasten the crumbling to such a rate that it will be difficult ot escape any collapse.
You seem to be confusing evolution with something sentient. Evolution doesn't have any plan at all.
Ah, but evolution does have a plan. The plan is: Whatever survives and reproduces gets to go to the next level.
The thing is, surviving and reproducing are far more complicated than many sentients happen to think. They think they can label traights "good" and "bad" willy-nilly and have a good chance of being right.
Humanity has figured out a lot of stuff, but there's a lot of other stuff we haven't figured out. Why do we think we know so much about living organisms that we're willing to risk every future generation on our best current guess?
In theory, poeple with severe allergies (or similar conditions) would be wiped out by natural selection, removing that from the gene pool. But our standards of life nowadays allow people to lead full lives that they wouldn't be able to otherwise.
Too true. In an answer to a previous post about nearsightedness I neglected to point out that glasses short-circuit quit a lot of selection that would otherwise be going on. I'm definately not suggesting we shoudl ban glasses. I wear glases and would be in real trouble if I didn't.
But that's not the same thing as "fixing" my "bad sight gene". One fix (the glasses) changes only me while the other "fix" changes a potentially huge number of my decendents. I would be denying the statistical possibility of a world-changing "defect" bennefiting mankind at some future point. No, I can't tell you how my bad eyes might bennefit mankind, but I can tell you that it's massively bone-chilling chutspah to think I know more about the subject then the collective work of millions of years of evolution.
You're trying to tell me that there's an evolutionary benefit to being nearsighted? After all look how many people are!
Yep, pretty much. There's even an evolutionary advantage to dieing.
Sometimes an advantage is a long term statistical advantage based on past compensation and possible future compensation for a long gone threat. Sometimes it's a group advantage so that one person's individual disadvantage is of bennefit to the group.
Think of nearsightedness. Would that help you do close in work? But you couldn't hunt very well, could you? Maybe your tribe-mate is far-sighted. He'd be a better hunter, but not too good at close-in work like sewing.
I'm not actualy saying this is the reason, but it's a plausible, possible reason for a very common "disadvantage." The fact that you immediatly called this "disadvantage" bad is the exact reason GE scares me. You, and so many like you, miss important big-picture issues while you mechanically select for your "advantages." When you do this, you risk our entire biosphere by picking the wrong ones.
What would happen if you selected for high metabolism so people wouldn't be so fat? Great for now, but what would happen if food were to become scarse again? You'd basically doom us all. I'm not saying this cat is the end of civilization, but the changes GE brings have the potential to be far more risky in the long run than most people realize.
An allergy, by definition, is an inappropriate immune reaction to a harmless substance. The only thing an allergic reaction is telling you is that your immune system screwed up. Again
Boy, couldn't disagree more. Evolution doesn't allow such things in they types of numbers we're experiencing. They symptom is almost certainly there for a reason, albeit a reason we may not now fathom.
That's the real problem with genetic engineering. We can only account for what we know or think we know. Evolution accounts for "everything". When you short circuit evolution on a biosphere level, which we're all too close to doing, you are playing with fire. I would hope that we'd understand that kind of fire before playing. Evidence suggests we do not.
Saying the functionality isn't there is not the same as saying it should be there. I'm not saying it _should_ be a video player. I'm just saying that, regardless of the reason, it's _not_ a video player, or even a very spectacular "photo player."
I'm also saying that since it's kind of mediocre at anything visual it should still be emphasizing the thing it's great at, music. If people expect it to be great a photos, I think they'll be disapointed. But if the buyer expects it to be great at music and, by the way, it has this cool color screen, then I think they'll be pretty satisfied.
Yes, the Archos lets you watch xvid/divx movies on it, but I'm willing to bet they don't include a DVD ripper. So this is a niche product where they assume the buyers know how to get xvid movies (or rip them themselves instead of sucking them via P2P).
Well done. You have a rock solid argument that may well be the exact reason for lack of this functionality. But that doesn't fix the fact that the functionality isn't there. I can give you a bunch of good reasons why a skateboard is better than a car (fresh air, exercise, fun, etc) but none of that hot air is gonna get someone to pay me more for my skateboard than a a good auto.
The fact is that this thing has a smallish screen that doesn't play video and isn't a very big improvement for photos over the screen built directly into your camera or camera phone. I'd get much better milage with a Palm or Pocket PC if I wanted to show photos, play games, or do almost anything else this color screen might help me do.
The real fact of the matter is this is just a nice music player with a good color screen instead of the old black and white one. Calling it a "photo player" does not and will not justify the extra $$$$. IMO they'd get more milage just calling it what it is.... a color iPod.
The biggest advantage of the phone over the pda for me is a size that's pocketable. That makes all the other stuff available whenever I need it instead of whenever I happened to have the PDA in my hand (for me personally? Not often enough). If you have the PDA on a belt clip, or it's always in your hand or in a purse you never put down, etc. then more power to ya. But all that power was useless to me when it was sitting at my desk while I was up the hall working with Bob on that project.
Now, the email is a nice little trick. I use AT&T and on the AT&T network you can get text messages (for free) by sending email to your phone number @mobile.att.net. Yahoo has a setting to automatically notify your phone for you and on my office Exchange system I just have a copy of all messages forwarded to that email address. Yes, it truncates everything after an insanely small number of characters, but I always get enough info to know if I should connect and get the whole message. Simple, seemless, free and always on.... without GPRS.
It's the apps that he's probably worried about, not the OS. I've never used a Linux PDA, but are the apps at the same level as those in Windows-based or PalmOS-based PDAs?
You're kidding, right? Apps on PDAs are pot-luck at best. No platform really has dominance, especially not the "Windows-based" ones. This has a lot to do with the fact that there are too many different processors, screens and interfaces making it difficult to design to a common platform in the same sense that Macs and PCs are common platforms.
Come to think of it, "Windows-based" PDAs suffer from many of the same disadvantages that Linux suffers from on the desktop(lack of standardization). I wonder if anyone will ever make a series of PDA or smart-phone platform standard enough to build up a decent base of apps. Trust me, just because it says Pocket PC, Palm or Symbian does not mean that app is going to work.
I don't know ANYONE who uses a pda... personally I don't think they're all that useful.
Can't seem to swing a dead cat in my office without knocking a PDA out of someones hand. They seem to like them a lot. I've personally tried several and given them all up in place of a Nokia series 60 smart phone (6620 now... used to have a 3650).
Advantage of the phone? It's always with me. I never seamed to have my PDA when I needed it the most, but since my cell phone is always in my pocket and connected to the net in some fashion or another (argue symantics all you want, but I'm always on the GSM network) I'm now always able to get the PDA data I need when I need it.
Mail? - automatically notified Calendar? - I always get my reminders Contacts? - are you kidding? You gotta have them in your phone anyway Notes? - voice, text and instant photo notes (very handy when you need to copy something quickly) Games or web on the john? - no one questions the phone since they never see it (try that with a newspapaper)
I think the real truth is Sharp saw the future and the future is everone having a PDA on their phone. If you notice, PDAs aren't really Personal Digital Assistants anymore... they're tiny computers (litterally with the OQO). The reall PDA market comes with cellular service.
Cherry OS would provide a good service for the the potential switcher.
If I was considering switching, I might feel much more comfortable blowing $150 than $1500 to see if a Mac would fit my needs. After I switched, I might like the idea of having a second "Mac" that my family and I could use.
More importantly though it answers the burning question in everyone's mind: Could Apple make a profit just selling the OS on PC hardware? If this product becomes popular then we'll know the answer.
Things are ONLY ever ethically wrong within the scope of an ethical system
You're right. Our American political ethical system is pretty clear on deception to the electorate in order to get votes. It's in the same category as cheating on your wife. It may not be illegal and you may high-five your buddy when he get's a particularly good looking gal on the side, but if you get caught it's considered "bad" (assuming it's not security related).
Just in case you think I might be wrong, I would urge you to play this mind game. Can you picture any politician debating that I'm wrong and that deceiving the electorate is actually neutral or good? Though not proof, the fact that no politician would openly support deception is pretty good evidence of it's ethical standing.
I'm not sure about morality, but it's definately ethically wrong. The guy is luring people to the web site under false pretense and showing them content they didn't set out to see. He's purposely misleading them with the name.
Regardless of what the law says, regardless of whether or not "other people are doing it" this is clearly unethical from a deception point of view. I know people have a tendency to overlook deception in campaigning (at least the deceptions perpetrated by their candidate) but that doesn't make it ethical.
In that sense, because the base of your arguement it wholely flawed, your conclusions are worthless, as they're based on an incorrect premise.
I know this is an old thread that should be dead, but I couldn't just let this go: Finding a chink in someone's armor does not make their armor useless. Realizing they don't have enough ammo doesn't make their guns non-deadly. A person can make a bunch of wrong turns and still end up in the right place.
My point about Saudi Arabia may have been mis-stated, but that doesn't make my conclusions worthless because there are plenty of other valid points to be made in my argument's support. Understanding that a person can make a mistake and still be fundementally right may not win you any arguments, but it will help to bring understanding between the parties of a discussion. You'll have to figure out for yourself whether winning arguments or bringing understanding is more important to you.
Slashdot Mirror
And when you replace those DVDs in 20 years with something even better, the photos will still be in 100% perfect condition. Try that with an actual print of the picture.
This guy's advice is not smart. Bascially he's saying "take your perfect copy that might die at some point and replace it with an imperfect copy that is guaranteed to deteriorate with age." Heck, I'll just laser print all my documents for backup as well. We all know there's no way they could possibly be lost then. We all know going analog is much safer than backing up and refreshing the data on new media periodically because all those prints of movies, music and documents from 75 years ago look and sound so damn good.
I'll take my chances with backing up and copying data periodically over my skills as a museum currator any day.
TW
Everyone does have an opinion, but there are ways to diminish that opionions influence on the process.
There are current laws that prevent government employees and elected officials from leaving the government and then working with companies they've had influence over while they were part of the government.
Judges are expected to recuse themselves from cases where they have a significant interest.
Elected officials don't have to be (and shouldn't be) involved in vote counting/certifying/tabulating. We can hire parties who are known to not have expressed public political positions and who promise not to express public political opinions while engaged in the job and for a reasonable amount of time afterward. We can define that expression to include directly working for a polictical campaign. This wouldn't prevent them from having an opinion, but it would tend to reduce those who are beholden to any particular political machine.
It amazes me that people don't seem to care about the Katherin Harris situation. If a judge were in charge of the state Democratic campaign, there's no way in hell he'd be allowed to judge, say, a case involving rent due for the campaign headquarters. But no one seems to care that Harris, in charge of the state republican campaign, was able to certify a vote count where her party had a major interest. How can we look at the example of a judge and call it bias, yet look at her example and say she had no influence?
We can, and should, do much more to reduce that influance, and any other influence, whether Republican or Democrat, over our vote counting system.
TW
and some even stated their intentions to do everything they could to give Bush the election.
One life-long Republican supporter of one company pledged to support Bush and deliver Ohio to Bush. All of the sudden this taken as sometype of public admission that he was going to steal the election.
In the 2000 campaign the person who's job it was to certify the vote in Florida also happend to be the head of the Republican campaign in the state. I don't know, and I really don't care if major Democrat supporters certify the vote in other states. I don't know and don't care if it's currently legal (presumebly it is) for major partisans to certify votes. I don't care if Katherin Harris and the CEO of Seybol were and are completely fare people. I don't care whether Republicans _or_ Democrats feel that they can count votes in a completely unbiased manner.
All I really care about is that people responsible for counting and certifying the vote _should_ be non-partisan. And that _should_ be required by law. It _should_ be required that they neither campaign for, donate to, or publically state an opinion about any political party for the time that they sell machines/count votes/certify elections and for a reasonable period of time both before and after they do those things. This _should_ be part of the constitution.
Now why don't you all stop arguing about how things _are_ and start working toward making things as they _should_ be. Or maybe you can give me a damn good reason _why_ political activists foxs have any role whatsoever in guarding the hen houses that are our ballot boxes.
TW
Whether it's real or not, I'm not sure anyone really knows or can prove one way or another yet. However, there have always been theories on a 'collective unconscious' or something similar - something like a giant radio channel on which the thoughts and actions of everyone everywhere is available.
A teenage friend of my daughter told me the other day about his desire to get free energy out of magnets. His theory was that since they're constantly pushing against each other, you can use that push to power a fan which would turn a wind turbine. He believed that the theory hadn't been adequately tested and he wanted to borrow some or the high-powered magnets I had gotten out of hard drives.
Naturaly I gave him the magnets (never squash initiative in a teenager if you can possibly help it), but they came with discussion of putting in as much energy as you get out, potential energy in a gravity well, etc.
He was a kid, the magnets were basically free. His "experiments" would cause no harm. I sat down and told him the truth before letting him proceed. If we're going to have this kind of relationship with full grown men, I'd prefer we did it with free magnets and an education program instead of 7.5 million bucks of our hard-earned tax dollars.
TW
and I want a simple, no-surprises monthly bill that's not too high. Right now, the only way I can get that seems to be via land line.
When did that happen? Every wired phone service I've ever used had rate plans created by the same crazed hermits that bring you your airline fare and the bill was always a surprise if I made even one long-distance call. It didn't seem particularly low most of the time either.
Cell phones, on the other had, have these fixed rate plans that often have unlimited calling during very well defined windows (I use AT&T).
I've seen some crazy stuff in cell land but you're smoking crack if you think the land lines are any better.
TW
***My phone is getting outdated and I cannot get a basic cellphone anymore.***
that argument is getting tired.. been hearing that for 2 years.
and during that whole time, just phone phones have been available and still are. fine, just buy a normal _lowest of low_ end phone.
or wouldn't you consider something like 1100 basic? vote with your wallet if you want.
Hell, with most basic cell phones the wallet doesn't even need to be involved. Most carriers will just give them to you. It the guy doesn't like a fancy phone he has, literally, nothing to complain about.
I've used smart phones for years now and love 'em, but I'm certainly not going to shove them down anyone's throat. Maybe the guy just likes basic value and should be reading "Consumer Reports" instead of "news for nerds".
TW
Why do the remaining 20 million stay?
What?!?! I can't believe anyone would ask such a dumbass question! People stay with AOL because:
1. They like phone lines. Ethernet cables are bad and complicated, unlike phone-lines thate are simple and ubiquitus.
2. Broadband is TOO FAST! Have you seen those crazy kids with their suped-up thingmajigs just zooming by you at every web site? It's just plain scary.
3. Ads are comforting. I get advertisements on my TV so I deserve to get advertisements on my internet too. Why would I want a substandard internet that's not even good enough for advertising? Since I get AOL ads, AND the ads for the web sites I visit, my comfort level is at least doubled.
4. Credit card debit is the way to go. Why get a monthly bill and write a monthly check like you would for your phone service or cable service? That's so 20th century. I trust my ISP so I want them to just take my money.
5. You just can't use AIM without AOL service, can you?
6. Kids love it! Theres no danger or smut available from AOL and there never was. It's 100% safe and wholesome.
DUH!
Actually the law you speak of was struck down by the courts. However, most people don't realize that current obscenity laws are extremly commonlplace and most of them would almost certainly make porn films with, say, fake 5-year-olds very illegal.
Why? Because the supreme court has determined that "community standards" prevail in obscenity trials. I think you'd have an extremely difficult time convincing any jury, anywhere that a portrayal of 5-year-olds haveing sex, fake as it may be, is not obscene.
People have been found guilty (recently) of obscenity for selling comic books depicting acts that the community judged to be obscene. If a comic is illegal under current law, then almost certainly a realistic computer portrayal of child porn has no chance of being legal.
BTW, the preceding is meant to be informative, not to place a moral value. That said, I need to point out that I engage in a virtual murder (via video games) and watch others engage in pretend murder (via movies) on a very regular basis. I find it quite interesting that the law makes no attempt to regulate Freddy Kruger as obscenity, but has no problem arresting people for selling just as fake depictions of rape. My personal opinion is that, as long as they're both fake, deplorable depictions of rape are moraly equivelent to deporable depictions of murder and should be judged so by the courts.
TW
No, it's a fact. USPS.gov's main web site (which a friend of mine had the contract to administer) had a typical uptime of five hours per host.
This is definately a bummer for the USPS, but is hardly representative of Windows servers. The vast majority of servers we have only come down for patching and upgrades and some of them work damn hard and are on the public internet(our mail servers, for example). Our corporate web servers are not as high voume as the USPS, but they basically never go down unless it's planned.
We do reboot our Citrix servers every night, but that has more to do with the fact that they work more like workstations than servers and run just about any user app you can imagine. That said, we don't experience flaky behaviour with them during the day while in operation and they're very heavily used.
Now I have experienced many lock-ups in Linux. Netscape used to get me on a regular basis a few years ago, though now I just experience random usability issues. Sure, there are workarounds, and I know the kernel was still chugging away during those lock-ups, but that didn't stop it from being a pain in the ass. I'm definately not trying to ding Linux, I'm just saying that user-level environments and apps have a tendency to play havock that server-level apps tend to avoid.
Anyway, I encourage you to ask a broader subsection of Windows admins what their stability situation is. The USPS example is not what you can expect to find in the MS shops I've worked at.
TW
I think the general response would be that they seem stable because you don't have any *nix servers running next to them for comparison. Virus vulnerabilities and patching issues are still instability, just going by a different name. Planned downtime is still downtime.
This is actually a good response. But I would caution that when a network admin says "unstable" a user thinks "flaky" rather than "there are periods of planned downtime." So do other network admins. If Windows servers have more planned downtime (likely) then that can be clarified and quantified just fine without putting it under the blanket of "unstable" where it will be assumed something else is meant.
Our Windows servers have about the same uptime as the Netware servers sitting right next to them (no, not Suse based), but actually have less unplanned downtime. I'm not trying to crack on Netware, or anyone else, but if the servers are up unless we take them down on purpose then that's certainly not something I'd call "unstable", especially if the users is going to hear "flaky".
TW
I wish people would stop cracking on MS stability in the server realm. It's a myth. My experience with a shop full of Windows 2000 Server (mostly) and Windows Server 2003 is that stability is not a problem.
Please feel free to continue cracking on virus vulnerabilities, patching issues, lack of flexibility and even cost. But my experience is that people who crack on the stability of Win2K servers and above either don't use them or horribly misuse them. Real Win2k admins simply don't have an issue with stability.
TW
You do realize that cats and all other domestic animals have been genetically engineered since before the ancient Egyptians?
Do you realize the rate of extinctions in the modern age? What makes you think your question is not connected to my question?
As humans continue to "improve" our surroundings, the very surroundings have a tendency to crumble under the weight of the improvements. That is because we only select for the traights we want at the moment and not the traights that bennefit the ecosystem. Now that we have the capability of making far larger "improvements" much more quickly, we also have the capability to hasten the crumbling to such a rate that it will be difficult ot escape any collapse.
TW
You seem to be confusing evolution with something sentient. Evolution doesn't have any plan at all.
Ah, but evolution does have a plan. The plan is: Whatever survives and reproduces gets to go to the next level.
The thing is, surviving and reproducing are far more complicated than many sentients happen to think. They think they can label traights "good" and "bad" willy-nilly and have a good chance of being right.
Humanity has figured out a lot of stuff, but there's a lot of other stuff we haven't figured out. Why do we think we know so much about living organisms that we're willing to risk every future generation on our best current guess?
TW
In theory, poeple with severe allergies (or similar conditions) would be wiped out by natural selection, removing that from the gene pool. But our standards of life nowadays allow people to lead full lives that they wouldn't be able to otherwise.
Too true. In an answer to a previous post about nearsightedness I neglected to point out that glasses short-circuit quit a lot of selection that would otherwise be going on. I'm definately not suggesting we shoudl ban glasses. I wear glases and would be in real trouble if I didn't.
But that's not the same thing as "fixing" my "bad sight gene". One fix (the glasses) changes only me while the other "fix" changes a potentially huge number of my decendents. I would be denying the statistical possibility of a world-changing "defect" bennefiting mankind at some future point. No, I can't tell you how my bad eyes might bennefit mankind, but I can tell you that it's massively bone-chilling chutspah to think I know more about the subject then the collective work of millions of years of evolution.
TW
You're trying to tell me that there's an evolutionary benefit to being nearsighted? After all look how many people are!
Yep, pretty much. There's even an evolutionary advantage to dieing.
Sometimes an advantage is a long term statistical advantage based on past compensation and possible future compensation for a long gone threat. Sometimes it's a group advantage so that one person's individual disadvantage is of bennefit to the group.
Think of nearsightedness. Would that help you do close in work? But you couldn't hunt very well, could you? Maybe your tribe-mate is far-sighted. He'd be a better hunter, but not too good at close-in work like sewing.
I'm not actualy saying this is the reason, but it's a plausible, possible reason for a very common "disadvantage." The fact that you immediatly called this "disadvantage" bad is the exact reason GE scares me. You, and so many like you, miss important big-picture issues while you mechanically select for your "advantages." When you do this, you risk our entire biosphere by picking the wrong ones.
What would happen if you selected for high metabolism so people wouldn't be so fat? Great for now, but what would happen if food were to become scarse again? You'd basically doom us all. I'm not saying this cat is the end of civilization, but the changes GE brings have the potential to be far more risky in the long run than most people realize.
TW
An allergy, by definition, is an inappropriate immune reaction to a harmless substance. The only thing an allergic reaction is telling you is that your immune system screwed up. Again
Boy, couldn't disagree more. Evolution doesn't allow such things in they types of numbers we're experiencing. They symptom is almost certainly there for a reason, albeit a reason we may not now fathom.
That's the real problem with genetic engineering. We can only account for what we know or think we know. Evolution accounts for "everything". When you short circuit evolution on a biosphere level, which we're all too close to doing, you are playing with fire. I would hope that we'd understand that kind of fire before playing. Evidence suggests we do not.
TW
Saying the functionality isn't there is not the same as saying it should be there. I'm not saying it _should_ be a video player. I'm just saying that, regardless of the reason, it's _not_ a video player, or even a very spectacular "photo player."
I'm also saying that since it's kind of mediocre at anything visual it should still be emphasizing the thing it's great at, music. If people expect it to be great a photos, I think they'll be disapointed. But if the buyer expects it to be great at music and, by the way, it has this cool color screen, then I think they'll be pretty satisfied.
TW
Yes, the Archos lets you watch xvid/divx movies on it, but I'm willing to bet they don't include a DVD ripper. So this is a niche product where they assume the buyers know how to get xvid movies (or rip them themselves instead of sucking them via P2P).
Well done. You have a rock solid argument that may well be the exact reason for lack of this functionality. But that doesn't fix the fact that the functionality isn't there. I can give you a bunch of good reasons why a skateboard is better than a car (fresh air, exercise, fun, etc) but none of that hot air is gonna get someone to pay me more for my skateboard than a a good auto.
The fact is that this thing has a smallish screen that doesn't play video and isn't a very big improvement for photos over the screen built directly into your camera or camera phone. I'd get much better milage with a Palm or Pocket PC if I wanted to show photos, play games, or do almost anything else this color screen might help me do.
The real fact of the matter is this is just a nice music player with a good color screen instead of the old black and white one. Calling it a "photo player" does not and will not justify the extra $$$$. IMO they'd get more milage just calling it what it is.... a color iPod.
The biggest advantage of the phone over the pda for me is a size that's pocketable. That makes all the other stuff available whenever I need it instead of whenever I happened to have the PDA in my hand (for me personally? Not often enough). If you have the PDA on a belt clip, or it's always in your hand or in a purse you never put down, etc. then more power to ya. But all that power was useless to me when it was sitting at my desk while I was up the hall working with Bob on that project.
Now, the email is a nice little trick. I use AT&T and on the AT&T network you can get text messages (for free) by sending email to your phone number @mobile.att.net. Yahoo has a setting to automatically notify your phone for you and on my office Exchange system I just have a copy of all messages forwarded to that email address. Yes, it truncates everything after an insanely small number of characters, but I always get enough info to know if I should connect and get the whole message. Simple, seemless, free and always on.... without GPRS.
TW
It's the apps that he's probably worried about, not the OS. I've never used a Linux PDA, but are the apps at the same level as those in Windows-based or PalmOS-based PDAs?
You're kidding, right? Apps on PDAs are pot-luck at best. No platform really has dominance, especially not the "Windows-based" ones. This has a lot to do with the fact that there are too many different processors, screens and interfaces making it difficult to design to a common platform in the same sense that Macs and PCs are common platforms.
Come to think of it, "Windows-based" PDAs suffer from many of the same disadvantages that Linux suffers from on the desktop(lack of standardization). I wonder if anyone will ever make a series of PDA or smart-phone platform standard enough to build up a decent base of apps. Trust me, just because it says Pocket PC, Palm or Symbian does not mean that app is going to work.
TW
I don't know ANYONE who uses a pda... personally I don't think they're all that useful.
Can't seem to swing a dead cat in my office without knocking a PDA out of someones hand. They seem to like them a lot. I've personally tried several and given them all up in place of a Nokia series 60 smart phone (6620 now... used to have a 3650).
Advantage of the phone? It's always with me. I never seamed to have my PDA when I needed it the most, but since my cell phone is always in my pocket and connected to the net in some fashion or another (argue symantics all you want, but I'm always on the GSM network) I'm now always able to get the PDA data I need when I need it.
Mail? - automatically notified
Calendar? - I always get my reminders
Contacts? - are you kidding? You gotta have them in your phone anyway
Notes? - voice, text and instant photo notes (very handy when you need to copy something quickly)
Games or web on the john? - no one questions the phone since they never see it (try that with a newspapaper)
I think the real truth is Sharp saw the future and the future is everone having a PDA on their phone. If you notice, PDAs aren't really Personal Digital Assistants anymore... they're tiny computers (litterally with the OQO). The reall PDA market comes with cellular service.
TW
Cherry OS would provide a good service for the the potential switcher.
If I was considering switching, I might feel much more comfortable blowing $150 than $1500 to see if a Mac would fit my needs. After I switched, I might like the idea of having a second "Mac" that my family and I could use.
More importantly though it answers the burning question in everyone's mind: Could Apple make a profit just selling the OS on PC hardware? If this product becomes popular then we'll know the answer.
TW
Things are ONLY ever ethically wrong within the scope of an ethical system
You're right. Our American political ethical system is pretty clear on deception to the electorate in order to get votes. It's in the same category as cheating on your wife. It may not be illegal and you may high-five your buddy when he get's a particularly good looking gal on the side, but if you get caught it's considered "bad" (assuming it's not security related).
Just in case you think I might be wrong, I would urge you to play this mind game. Can you picture any politician debating that I'm wrong and that deceiving the electorate is actually neutral or good? Though not proof, the fact that no politician would openly support deception is pretty good evidence of it's ethical standing.
TW
I'm not sure about morality, but it's definately ethically wrong. The guy is luring people to the web site under false pretense and showing them content they didn't set out to see. He's purposely misleading them with the name.
Regardless of what the law says, regardless of whether or not "other people are doing it" this is clearly unethical from a deception point of view. I know people have a tendency to overlook deception in campaigning (at least the deceptions perpetrated by their candidate) but that doesn't make it ethical.
TW
In that sense, because the base of your arguement it wholely flawed, your conclusions are worthless, as they're based on an incorrect premise.
I know this is an old thread that should be dead, but I couldn't just let this go: Finding a chink in someone's armor does not make their armor useless. Realizing they don't have enough ammo doesn't make their guns non-deadly. A person can make a bunch of wrong turns and still end up in the right place.
My point about Saudi Arabia may have been mis-stated, but that doesn't make my conclusions worthless because there are plenty of other valid points to be made in my argument's support. Understanding that a person can make a mistake and still be fundementally right may not win you any arguments, but it will help to bring understanding between the parties of a discussion. You'll have to figure out for yourself whether winning arguments or bringing understanding is more important to you.
TW