I've heard this reason (lack of a low-end mini tower) several times and I still don't understand the reason for it, other than the geek factor.
Well, it's pretty simple, really: I want a non-glossy monitor and a fast hard drive. That rules out the iMac and Mini. Since I have to use OS X, it's either hackintosh or the overkill of a mac pro.
I also wouldn't mind a better video card and one PCI slot.
The cost of building a hackintosh plus cheap monitor isn't that much lower than buying an iMac, though, so it's giving me pause. The extra hassle of making things work means the savings aren't worth much in hourly wages. I may just buy a smaller iMac and attach a good monitor to it.
One thing I find rarely done is the realization that maybe they can never be truly objective...
In most North American mainstream media news, for the past 20 years, the idea of "objective" or "unbiased" reporting has been replaced by the proclamation of "balance" --- precisely because of the kind of criticism that you're levelling.
So what rock have you been hiding under? Objectivity hasn't been part of the ruse for a long time --- implicitly, perhaps, but not explicitly.
The current trick is to provide "balance" by reducing an issue to two opposing sides (when there are usually 8 or 19 sides etc.) and to cherrypick those viewpoints so as to narrow the debate in the desired direction. An example would be pitting the tree-sitting dreadlocked enviro against the nearly-laid-off logger, so as to make the loggers a victim and support the companies' viewpoints, when in fact there are a number of solutions and options on the table that go unreported.
Propaganda in North America doesn't tell you what to think, but it does tell you what to think about.
Terry Eagleton wrote that ideology is like halitosis... it's everyone else's problem.
More specifically, he defined it (loosely) as the particular pattern of beliefs that allow one to participate in one's own oppression.
This is so that one can make it a useful distinction from the other common uses of the word "ideology", which muddle it up with concepts like "worldview" or "prejudice"--- since when we're talking about vile political thought permeating everyday life, we fall back on "ideology" and the pickle that ideological thought relies on 'blind spots' in order to suppress the dissonance brought out by self-oppression.
As an example, I'd suggest the sad situation that Americans are completely unaware of having over 700 military bases on foreign soil, and an extensive geopolitical campaign involving economic foul play and trade strongarming, two overt foreign wars and multiple covert ops, all the while proclaiming patriotically the banner of democracy, and denying vehemently any accusations of empire.
Sociopolitical fear is a strategy to push the population to the political right.
The old saw about a conservative being a liberal who's been mugged holds true; all you have to do is mug their minds and they'll cave in.
It's a sleight of mind in risk assessment: the real risks are automobiles, heart disease (i.e. a botched food system), botched health care, botched education, natural disasters, and crime/poverty. Well, everyday accidents too, but that's just natural selection. Terrorism is about as much of a risk as wayward lightning strikes.
An increasing real risk in the world is war. Guess who is promoting this risk?
What I don't know is how these men sleep at night. How do they live with themselves? I don't know. Maybe they don't get it. Maybe they think it's all a game. Maybe they don't realize that other people aren't just sprites on a videogame screen. I've heard more than one psychology professor claim that psycho-and scoiopaths line our boardrooms. Maybe they're right.
I often wonder this too, then smack myself in the head with the clue stick... because while it feels unnatural when I mentally try to walk in those moccasins, I've seen it enough, both in family and work, to know something of how sociopathy works. The fact is that bullies are everywhere, in varying degrees. Many of them sleep at night through an elaborate system of denial, but some of them just feel good being cruel.
It helps to remember being young, and somewhat amoral, or at least fascinated by pain. If you've ever burned ants with a magnifier, or harassed the cat, you have an inkling---it's there in all of us, even the saints. It's an undeveloped sense of empathy.
Some of the suffering of others gets through, but inverted... it gives a kind of pleasure, the pleasure that comes from fascination, and there's the intellectual rush of pseudo-victory that pushes in on top of that.
Some of it's just plain stupid reptilian pecking order. We were supposed to grow out of it, but culture can only do so much.
On top of that, corporations are designed to be psychopaths: rights of an individual with no sense of collective responsibility. So, guess who's attracted to running them?
80. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of
(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
(b) a performerâ€(TM)s performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or
(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performerâ€(TM)s performance of a musical work, is embodied
onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performerâ€(TM)s performance or the sound recording.
Limitation (2) Subsection (1) does not apply if the act described in that subsection is done for the purpose of doing any of the following in relation to any of the things referred to in paragraphs (1)(a) to (c):
(a) selling or renting out, or by way of trade exposing or offering for sale or rental;
(b) distributing, whether or not for the purpose of trade;
(c) communicating to the public by telecommunication; or
(d) performing, or causing to be performed, in public.
Fair use Canada? Or fair use USA? And just for the hell of it. Please define the boundaries of this "fair use" so that others may not cross it.
We don't have a clear legal definition of fair use in Canada. In this situation of recorded audio we have "personal use" which is defined in the Copyright Act. It includes things like making a mix CD for the car or loaning a friend a CD so they can copy it (really!). For these privileges we pay a levy on blank media.
It used to be that word would pass around that you were a dodgy person, you wouldn't be given letters of introduction and so on.... Now of course the idea of community is a pathetic joke, because of modern lifestyles, travel and communications, so this down-side to abusing your moral responsibility to those around you (do unto others etc) is almost completely gone.
Well, some of us have to look in the mirror in the mornings and feel OK about it. I raise my kids with a strong conscience, and an aversion to being a jerk.
Ardrey's emphasis on aggression makes a point, but it's easy to forget that culture is the driver of human development, and is often devoted to managing aggression. Our skills of cooperation balanced against aggression is probably what did it for our strain of hominid, but that's just me guessing.
I like Cory Doctorow's plot device currency of Whuffie: a bankable kind of reputation index. It's one solution to the ephemera and anonymity of networked mobile modern life.
The "social contract" is the kind of crap philosophers come up with. It is just another old way of saying people should behave the way you think they should behave. It is an attempt to pretend that it is something more than just your personal whims that you are imposing on others.
You probably aren't a child-- maybe you aren't neurotypical-- but that's childish. Every moment of your social life is full of unspoken rules: grammar, spatial distance, propriety of all kinds, as well as the kindergarten rules: if you don't wash your hands after taking a dump you're an anus, etc.
We are hominids. Much of our non-verbal behaviour is a layover from the paleolithic--and you aren't supposed to talk about it during the everyday course of things (cf. "implicit"), or things go sideways.* Get over it.
* see any empirical, unphilosophical studies on interpersonal communication, especially Edward Hall, for more info.
Wow, that's the neatest deflection of responsibility I've ever seen in this debate. It's horse puckey, of course.:)The problem with your whole argument is that you're acting as if the end-users have some unwritten responsibility to share nicely, rather than simply being responsible for adhering to the terms of their contract with the ISP.
Capitalist fundamentalism leans in this direction: the explicit contract defines all. As with anything extremist, it overlooks many facts; in this case, that society operates smoothly because there are many implicit rules, or a social contract if you will, that people generally live with.
Take the simple example of waiting for the bus. I live in a region of the pacific rim where a british-established settler culture is in the process of being strongly influenced by asian immigration. Different rules apply, especially with respect to things like queuing up. There is a constant tension at a bus stop around the issue of queuing: cluster and push, or line up? Usually lining up prevails, as a fairness measure.
Personally, I self-regulate my torrent use (downloading opensuse right now) by setting limits on peers and bandwidth, as well as QoS on the router. This is because I share the line with the neighbours, and because it's fair. That said, we usually max out our isp's loose 60GB cap.
Society fails miserably when the implicit rules that regulate our behaviour are abused; then it needs regulating by an authority of some kind. It's a 'bad apple' kind of dilemma.
You are correct about the contract, and issues of advertising and corporate promises. However, I treat the internet as a utility and therefore a common resource. Individualism without personal responsibility is immature and just leads to the tragedy of the commons.
esp. when people who might have voted NDP vote Liberal because they're justifiably frightened of Harper and his Reform/Alliance/Conservative Party.
That's actually the Conservative Reform Alliance Party, or C.R.A.P. -- at least it was called that publicly for a whole day, until they caught on. No crap!
Being a Canadian and trying to keep stuff on this side of the border, I pretty much strictly use NCIX. While their prices aren't always the lowest, they often are, and their price matching is online, simple, and effective, so they basically are the lowest priced vendor. I agree that shipping is fast. When there are problems, they seem to be more professional at resolving them than other vendors, certainly no comparison to Tigerdirect!!
They have --usually-- decent product info through the forums on their website, and various incentives for volume buyers. They also have brick and mortar stores for the locals, which works for me at least. I've heard their US division is growing very quickly, and I'm not surprised. The main thing I like about them is their reliability and prices.
Let me ask this: How many environmental protection laws do you think the Sierra Club got passed versus how many that ELF or Greenpeace have?
The largest mass-arrest in recent Canadian history, the Clayoquot Blockade, was pretty successful. Mind you, it was supported on multiple fronts: mail-outs, lobbying, faxing, press releases, multiple NGO's and coalition-building, etc.
The point is that the commercial logging interests allied with government were using multiple fronts (legal, political, media, police, thugs, covert harassment, vandalism). This is a typical situation where you have political dominance and 1) people are upset by some kind of abuse and 2) those in economic/political power stand to gain a lot... nasty tactics show up on both sides, though the monopoly on violence claimed by the government is usually more dangerous (these days things quickly escalate into the discourse of 'terrorism', even if it's just windows being smashed).
The fact that opponents of political power face thuggery and covert harassment, systemic discrimination, vilification in the media, etc. in addition to obvious crap like 'free speech zones' (hellooo Orwell!), means that anything less than a multiple-front response will be ineffective.
There's no question that without rag-tag protesters chaining themselves to trees and standing on sidewalks with signs, the Sierra Club wouldn't look so moderate or credible. Of course, the Sierra Clubs of the world can't affiliate themselves with the marginal groups, or directly acknowledge their contribution.
Political change is a kind of ecosystem. That's why it's so effective for the police to send in moles and saboteurs; they can mess up the edges of a strategy pretty easily, because protesters at the fringe are pretty unstable people often, so a few provocateurs can push things over the edge and shift the debate (cf. G8 Genoa, Quebec City 2007, etc.).
Complex political process, complex media dynamics = complex campaigns for change.
*Ahhh... We always wondered how you large-bags-of-mostly-water somehow infested the galaxy with little variance in your lumpy pale appearance other than crinkly foreheads.*
Very, very few of us "blacks" are 100% African anymore.
The genetics of african descended peoples in north america are as complicated as anywhere. There are many threads of native american / first nations people mixed in; there are the legacies of rape and other illicit liaisons due to slavery; there are many hidden love stories due to notions of miscegenation; there are adoptions and people who "pass."
My children bear all of these influences in their genes, plus my mongrel euro history. It is definitely easier for them to grow up this way in Canada than most places I've seen or heard of in the States.
I was involved in the documentation of a conference for Black youth with the theme of the African Diaspora. The canadian students who attended had a hugely diverse set of identities, that included being Black, Canadian, and ethnic (e.g. Somali, Jamaican, canadian descendants of the underground railroad, etc.). The American students didn't really grasp ethnicity separate from the idea of race: black, white, latino. Let's just say that while the african-american culture of the USA students was a defining point for everyone involved, the canadians tended to be more cosmopolitan and adaptable to difference, and seek out ways to get along. Obama's views on race seem... more 21st century than most Americans'.
I think that the USA's debate on race will take some further generations to clear up: the melting pot is a divisive strategy when combined with unresolved legacies of slavery. At least Obama's entry into the reek of presidential campaigning will crack the debate open somewhat.
Mac OSX is useless for multitasking, the global menu bar alone means that you can realistically only work on one app at a time.
What a strange comment! Switching apps is command-tab, and background tasks are usually well managed. The mac users I support usually have many apps open at once; the windows users tend to close applications to switch.
Plus its a pain to resize windows and I am yet to see a "tile windows Horizontally/Vertically" function like you get in windows (this is a great help when taking info from one program into another or when reading response messages in real-time as you make changes). lack of a task bar means I cant tell what programs I have open and if any of them require my attention (under Windows the task bar item flashes), under Mac OSX I need to alt tab or do that F11 thing to figure out what's open which takes my full attention away from what I am doing.
This just points out that you haven't learnt the basics of Mac OS. One keystroke to reveal all windows, or all windows in current app, or the desktop; the dock takes care of tracking running apps and notifications. If you haven't done the basics, you lack credibility. While I like Windows' resizing from any side, I constantly regret the lack of intelligent zooming or snap-to-content.
Mac OS X displays everything in icons with no text,
That's a troll, because it's false.
Most of the rest of your comments are inaccurate or inexperienced, as well, including the following:
If you have trouble doing that on windows I suggest you unplug your computer and return it to the store, IT is not for you. on a screen that size managing windows will be easy, its when you are working on a 19" is where it gets difficult (except when using multiple desktops, see the Linux point above). Every time I use OS X I get the impression it was never designed for anyone to do more than one thing at a time.
If you've ever tried to use a multi-windowed app like Premiere in Windows, and span multiple monitors, then you'll know that it is just hair-pullingly agonizing compared to similar apps on a Mac. It just doesn't work well on so many levels.
With many ways to switch and manage apps and windows, the paradigm of interleaved windows, and easy management of multiple monitors of various sizes, multitasking is as easy as linux, or better, and far better than windows. While there are many things that bug me about the Mac OS, including the Finder and the Dock, general multitasking is not one of them.
Honestly, it's sad that people can be so utterly ignorant of the realities of this world that they believe George Bush is the epitome of evil.
Well, see, that depends what lines you're reading between. If you believe the estimates of deaths in Iraq attributable to sanctions and war-crimes like bombing essential infrastructure, resulting in up to a million deaths, and the complete disruption of civil society, then yes, you're going to think that the guy's evil. Especially since Iraq is just one of the administration's gambits on the global stage; there are covert ops all over the place. Besides, is 100,000 dead, maimed, ruined, much better than a million?
It doesn't really matter that Clinton can be accused of similar outrages (at smaller scales, but the war-crimes cry rattles around in relation to his admin too). It's only an issue amongst those who believe in a two-party system; the problem is the government.
One of the features of American Hegemony, besides denying any acknowlegement of its empire-ness (a patriot will tell you that's absurd), is that it denies its international legal responsibilities to such bodies as the World Court and various human rights conventions; that's a clue, hello! While american governments abuse their populations in significantly different degrees and manners from the chinese in order to maintain a functioning republic, the suffering of many people throughout various parts of the world are directly the result of Pax Americana at work (again, you can argue about degree and statistics--let the patriot apologists come forth).
I think it's sad that americans can be so utterly ignorant of the realities of their hegemony, that they believe their involvement on the world stage can't be called evil.
Funny, I don't remember our Innuit ancestors who discovered bronze working, iron, or eventually the scientific revolution. Oh wait. That's right. That was mostly meat-eaters.
Don't be a colossal bonehead, do a little research. The Inuit live in the Arctic, and traditionalists can survive on the ice, making things out of bones and gut and skin and snow and eating mammals and fish. They're at just about the pinnacle of paleolithic tech, and I'd like to see any of your grain-munchin' bath-averse bronze-waving ancestors last a season up there.
Even the best cop has to uphold unjust laws. Anyone who would put a person in jail for exercising their right to decide what they put into their bodies deserves all the crap they get. As long as vice laws exist, police are in the job of victimizing people, not protecting them.
Cops usually have the option to look the other way, and they exercise it quite a bit. Especially when applied to their brotherhood! But, also, in the streets and homes. There are 10,000 laws that can be brought to bear on any situation; essentially, the system is set up so that no matter how innocent you think you may be, you're likely in violation of some law.
A cop just can't enforce them all. They pick and choose, from the limited set of laws they are aware of. (This goes for most jurisdictions in North America, at least.)
With regards to vice, many cops around this part of the world (British Columbia) tend to not want to deal with minor crap like marijuana possession, or even growing a few plants casually. Sometimes they have to, though, such as when the black DEA helicopters show up with their IR scopes (no, really, it's a seasonal event in rural doubly-colonized BC).
Ok, so I just got a neighbor to switch to a Gnome Linux, and everything is working great. Then they walk into the Best Buy and look for the Linux software section... After that, they go home and try to find Sims2 for Gnome.
OK, then you did a lousy job getting them to switch, right?
If it's "easier" tell me the process for someone that just came home with a fresh Vista install that wants to run Halo 2 on it vs someone that just cleanly installed your version of choice.
If they want to run FP shooter games and they don't have a console, they aren't really a noob for long, as they'll have to invest some time learning. Outside of the discussion. They're going to run into problems sooner or later anyway, because they're asking more of their machines: they'll have to manage malware and security, permissions, different software install techniques.
I'm talking about serious noobs: seniors who want to surf and email, technophobes and clueless small business owners who aren't gamers. Gnome linux IS easier for them... even going to Best Buy is out of their range!
If you get a neighbour to switch, 1) warn them that it's a different set of software, and mostly free, 2) take 15 minutes to tell them how, you dope! Ubuntu, for instance: do I really need to explain it here? 3) If it isn't appropriate (yes, you have to ask them questions), don't get them to switch. Take responsibility when you give advice, even if you aren't providing professional support.
Linux certainly is not better than Windows in the "users want to use it" department, as Linux is still substantially more difficult to use.
As someone who's set up quite a few noobs on gnome-front-end systems, I have to respectfully disagree.
It's much easier for new users, because:
security is simpler (no stinking antivirus updates, scary notifications, etc.)
windows activation never gets in the way
updates are simpler
getting everyday applications and installing them vastly simpler (usually)
commands and interface is now consistent enough to be on par, or better, especially ubuntu et al.
networking is often simpler and more automatic
when the system goes wrong, they're equally adrift and needing tech support as they would be with Windows, and generally once running, fewer things go wrong.
Just the huge difference between getting and installing apps can be a clincher in this department, as I find new users (including some technophobic retirees) are better able to use synaptic than the thousand-click configure-options-confirm-reboot cycle security-paranoia people get on Windows.
It's just that everything about Apple's approach to marketing their products creeps me out and causes me to experience an anxious nausea whenever I come into contact with their products or with dedicated users of their products.
Dude!* is there ANY tech related marketing that doesn't creep you out? Pretty much all of the computer company ads (including print) I've seen make me nauseous, going back to Wang and Osborne (remember them?). I think that should be a prerequisite of getting a nerd card and the decoder ring.
What you do is you take their comments, and edit them, to make them say exactly the opposite of what they are saying. So, if they say
Rob Sucks!
You can edit it to say
Rob did a great job.
Or something like that. It's really frustrating for trolls to find that their comments become benign.
Come, come, in the arena of mind-games, that's just too mild and unsatisfying. We all have a touch of sociopathy to draw on, right?
Creative typos utilizes the slime-tactic of plausible-deniability, with the ethical addition of humour. Try: "Rob ducks!" and other such nonsense. Create Dada art! Make the Troll into a Droll! and so your effort is bringing joy into the world, daisies from the mud.
Slashdot Mirror
I've heard this reason (lack of a low-end mini tower) several times and I still don't understand the reason for it, other than the geek factor.
Well, it's pretty simple, really: I want a non-glossy monitor and a fast hard drive. That rules out the iMac and Mini. Since I have to use OS X, it's either hackintosh or the overkill of a mac pro.
I also wouldn't mind a better video card and one PCI slot.
The cost of building a hackintosh plus cheap monitor isn't that much lower than buying an iMac, though, so it's giving me pause. The extra hassle of making things work means the savings aren't worth much in hourly wages. I may just buy a smaller iMac and attach a good monitor to it.
Non sequitor. You're referring to something quite different from the example I used. I wasn't talking about educated neocons.
Your assumptions about me are also off by quite a bit. Funny, I thought you were more observant; my point was about self-contradicting positions.
One thing I find rarely done is the realization that maybe they can never be truly objective...
In most North American mainstream media news, for the past 20 years, the idea of "objective" or "unbiased" reporting has been replaced by the proclamation of "balance" --- precisely because of the kind of criticism that you're levelling.
So what rock have you been hiding under? Objectivity hasn't been part of the ruse for a long time --- implicitly, perhaps, but not explicitly.
The current trick is to provide "balance" by reducing an issue to two opposing sides (when there are usually 8 or 19 sides etc.) and to cherrypick those viewpoints so as to narrow the debate in the desired direction. An example would be pitting the tree-sitting dreadlocked enviro against the nearly-laid-off logger, so as to make the loggers a victim and support the companies' viewpoints, when in fact there are a number of solutions and options on the table that go unreported.
Propaganda in North America doesn't tell you what to think, but it does tell you what to think about.
Terry Eagleton wrote that ideology is like halitosis... it's everyone else's problem.
More specifically, he defined it (loosely) as the particular pattern of beliefs that allow one to participate in one's own oppression.
This is so that one can make it a useful distinction from the other common uses of the word "ideology", which muddle it up with concepts like "worldview" or "prejudice"--- since when we're talking about vile political thought permeating everyday life, we fall back on "ideology" and the pickle that ideological thought relies on 'blind spots' in order to suppress the dissonance brought out by self-oppression.
As an example, I'd suggest the sad situation that Americans are completely unaware of having over 700 military bases on foreign soil, and an extensive geopolitical campaign involving economic foul play and trade strongarming, two overt foreign wars and multiple covert ops, all the while proclaiming patriotically the banner of democracy, and denying vehemently any accusations of empire.
Sociopolitical fear is a strategy to push the population to the political right.
The old saw about a conservative being a liberal who's been mugged holds true; all you have to do is mug their minds and they'll cave in.
It's a sleight of mind in risk assessment: the real risks are automobiles, heart disease (i.e. a botched food system), botched health care, botched education, natural disasters, and crime/poverty. Well, everyday accidents too, but that's just natural selection. Terrorism is about as much of a risk as wayward lightning strikes.
An increasing real risk in the world is war. Guess who is promoting this risk?
What I don't know is how these men sleep at night. How do they live with themselves? I don't know. Maybe they don't get it. Maybe they think it's all a game. Maybe they don't realize that other people aren't just sprites on a videogame screen. I've heard more than one psychology professor claim that psycho-and scoiopaths line our boardrooms. Maybe they're right.
I often wonder this too, then smack myself in the head with the clue stick... because while it feels unnatural when I mentally try to walk in those moccasins, I've seen it enough, both in family and work, to know something of how sociopathy works. The fact is that bullies are everywhere, in varying degrees. Many of them sleep at night through an elaborate system of denial, but some of them just feel good being cruel.
It helps to remember being young, and somewhat amoral, or at least fascinated by pain. If you've ever burned ants with a magnifier, or harassed the cat, you have an inkling---it's there in all of us, even the saints. It's an undeveloped sense of empathy.
Some of the suffering of others gets through, but inverted... it gives a kind of pleasure, the pleasure that comes from fascination, and there's the intellectual rush of pseudo-victory that pushes in on top of that.
Some of it's just plain stupid reptilian pecking order. We were supposed to grow out of it, but culture can only do so much.
On top of that, corporations are designed to be psychopaths: rights of an individual with no sense of collective responsibility. So, guess who's attracted to running them?
Right, thank you for being more specific.
Here is the section of the copyright act that deals with copying for private use:
Fair use Canada? Or fair use USA? And just for the hell of it. Please define the boundaries of this "fair use" so that others may not cross it.
We don't have a clear legal definition of fair use in Canada. In this situation of recorded audio we have "personal use" which is defined in the Copyright Act. It includes things like making a mix CD for the car or loaning a friend a CD so they can copy it (really!). For these privileges we pay a levy on blank media.
It used to be that word would pass around that you were a dodgy person, you wouldn't be given letters of introduction and so on. ... Now of course the idea of community is a pathetic joke, because of modern lifestyles, travel and communications, so this down-side to abusing your moral responsibility to those around you (do unto others etc) is almost completely gone.
Well, some of us have to look in the mirror in the mornings and feel OK about it. I raise my kids with a strong conscience, and an aversion to being a jerk.
Ardrey's emphasis on aggression makes a point, but it's easy to forget that culture is the driver of human development, and is often devoted to managing aggression. Our skills of cooperation balanced against aggression is probably what did it for our strain of hominid, but that's just me guessing.
I like Cory Doctorow's plot device currency of Whuffie: a bankable kind of reputation index. It's one solution to the ephemera and anonymity of networked mobile modern life.
The "social contract" is the kind of crap philosophers come up with. It is just another old way of saying people should behave the way you think they should behave. It is an attempt to pretend that it is something more than just your personal whims that you are imposing on others.
You probably aren't a child-- maybe you aren't neurotypical-- but that's childish. Every moment of your social life is full of unspoken rules: grammar, spatial distance, propriety of all kinds, as well as the kindergarten rules: if you don't wash your hands after taking a dump you're an anus, etc.
We are hominids. Much of our non-verbal behaviour is a layover from the paleolithic--and you aren't supposed to talk about it during the everyday course of things (cf. "implicit"), or things go sideways.* Get over it.
* see any empirical, unphilosophical studies on interpersonal communication, especially Edward Hall, for more info.
Wow, that's the neatest deflection of responsibility I've ever seen in this debate. It's horse puckey, of course. :)The problem with your whole argument is that you're acting as if the end-users have some unwritten responsibility to share nicely, rather than simply being responsible for adhering to the terms of their contract with the ISP.
Capitalist fundamentalism leans in this direction: the explicit contract defines all. As with anything extremist, it overlooks many facts; in this case, that society operates smoothly because there are many implicit rules, or a social contract if you will, that people generally live with.
Take the simple example of waiting for the bus. I live in a region of the pacific rim where a british-established settler culture is in the process of being strongly influenced by asian immigration. Different rules apply, especially with respect to things like queuing up. There is a constant tension at a bus stop around the issue of queuing: cluster and push, or line up? Usually lining up prevails, as a fairness measure.
Personally, I self-regulate my torrent use (downloading opensuse right now) by setting limits on peers and bandwidth, as well as QoS on the router. This is because I share the line with the neighbours, and because it's fair. That said, we usually max out our isp's loose 60GB cap.
Society fails miserably when the implicit rules that regulate our behaviour are abused; then it needs regulating by an authority of some kind. It's a 'bad apple' kind of dilemma.
You are correct about the contract, and issues of advertising and corporate promises. However, I treat the internet as a utility and therefore a common resource. Individualism without personal responsibility is immature and just leads to the tragedy of the commons.
esp. when people who might have voted NDP vote Liberal because they're justifiably frightened of Harper and his Reform/Alliance/Conservative Party.
That's actually the Conservative Reform Alliance Party, or C.R.A.P. -- at least it was called that publicly for a whole day, until they caught on. No crap!
Being a Canadian and trying to keep stuff on this side of the border, I pretty much strictly use NCIX. While their prices aren't always the lowest, they often are, and their price matching is online, simple, and effective, so they basically are the lowest priced vendor. I agree that shipping is fast. When there are problems, they seem to be more professional at resolving them than other vendors, certainly no comparison to Tigerdirect!!
They have --usually-- decent product info through the forums on their website, and various incentives for volume buyers. They also have brick and mortar stores for the locals, which works for me at least. I've heard their US division is growing very quickly, and I'm not surprised. The main thing I like about them is their reliability and prices.
Let me ask this: How many environmental protection laws do you think the Sierra Club got passed versus how many that ELF or Greenpeace have?
The largest mass-arrest in recent Canadian history, the Clayoquot Blockade, was pretty successful. Mind you, it was supported on multiple fronts: mail-outs, lobbying, faxing, press releases, multiple NGO's and coalition-building, etc.
The point is that the commercial logging interests allied with government were using multiple fronts (legal, political, media, police, thugs, covert harassment, vandalism). This is a typical situation where you have political dominance and 1) people are upset by some kind of abuse and 2) those in economic/political power stand to gain a lot... nasty tactics show up on both sides, though the monopoly on violence claimed by the government is usually more dangerous (these days things quickly escalate into the discourse of 'terrorism', even if it's just windows being smashed).
The fact that opponents of political power face thuggery and covert harassment, systemic discrimination, vilification in the media, etc. in addition to obvious crap like 'free speech zones' (hellooo Orwell!), means that anything less than a multiple-front response will be ineffective.
There's no question that without rag-tag protesters chaining themselves to trees and standing on sidewalks with signs, the Sierra Club wouldn't look so moderate or credible. Of course, the Sierra Clubs of the world can't affiliate themselves with the marginal groups, or directly acknowledge their contribution.
Political change is a kind of ecosystem. That's why it's so effective for the police to send in moles and saboteurs; they can mess up the edges of a strategy pretty easily, because protesters at the fringe are pretty unstable people often, so a few provocateurs can push things over the edge and shift the debate (cf. G8 Genoa, Quebec City 2007, etc.).
Complex political process, complex media dynamics = complex campaigns for change.
I blame Star Trek.
*Ahhh... We always wondered how you large-bags-of-mostly-water somehow infested the galaxy with little variance in your lumpy pale appearance other than crinkly foreheads.*
Your comment should not have been modded troll.
Thank you. It was a sincere comment based on 25 years experience working in multiple platforms; mod-trolls are on the loose.
Very, very few of us "blacks" are 100% African anymore.
The genetics of african descended peoples in north america are as complicated as anywhere. There are many threads of native american / first nations people mixed in; there are the legacies of rape and other illicit liaisons due to slavery; there are many hidden love stories due to notions of miscegenation; there are adoptions and people who "pass."
My children bear all of these influences in their genes, plus my mongrel euro history. It is definitely easier for them to grow up this way in Canada than most places I've seen or heard of in the States.
I was involved in the documentation of a conference for Black youth with the theme of the African Diaspora. The canadian students who attended had a hugely diverse set of identities, that included being Black, Canadian, and ethnic (e.g. Somali, Jamaican, canadian descendants of the underground railroad, etc.). The American students didn't really grasp ethnicity separate from the idea of race: black, white, latino. Let's just say that while the african-american culture of the USA students was a defining point for everyone involved, the canadians tended to be more cosmopolitan and adaptable to difference, and seek out ways to get along. Obama's views on race seem... more 21st century than most Americans'.
I think that the USA's debate on race will take some further generations to clear up: the melting pot is a divisive strategy when combined with unresolved legacies of slavery. At least Obama's entry into the reek of presidential campaigning will crack the debate open somewhat.
Mac OSX is useless for multitasking, the global menu bar alone means that you can realistically only work on one app at a time.
What a strange comment! Switching apps is command-tab, and background tasks are usually well managed. The mac users I support usually have many apps open at once; the windows users tend to close applications to switch.
Plus its a pain to resize windows and I am yet to see a "tile windows Horizontally/Vertically" function like you get in windows (this is a great help when taking info from one program into another or when reading response messages in real-time as you make changes). lack of a task bar means I cant tell what programs I have open and if any of them require my attention (under Windows the task bar item flashes), under Mac OSX I need to alt tab or do that F11 thing to figure out what's open which takes my full attention away from what I am doing.
This just points out that you haven't learnt the basics of Mac OS. One keystroke to reveal all windows, or all windows in current app, or the desktop; the dock takes care of tracking running apps and notifications. If you haven't done the basics, you lack credibility. While I like Windows' resizing from any side, I constantly regret the lack of intelligent zooming or snap-to-content.
Mac OS X displays everything in icons with no text,
That's a troll, because it's false.
Most of the rest of your comments are inaccurate or inexperienced, as well, including the following:
If you have trouble doing that on windows I suggest you unplug your computer and return it to the store, IT is not for you. on a screen that size managing windows will be easy, its when you are working on a 19" is where it gets difficult (except when using multiple desktops, see the Linux point above). Every time I use OS X I get the impression it was never designed for anyone to do more than one thing at a time.
If you've ever tried to use a multi-windowed app like Premiere in Windows, and span multiple monitors, then you'll know that it is just hair-pullingly agonizing compared to similar apps on a Mac. It just doesn't work well on so many levels.
With many ways to switch and manage apps and windows, the paradigm of interleaved windows, and easy management of multiple monitors of various sizes, multitasking is as easy as linux, or better, and far better than windows. While there are many things that bug me about the Mac OS, including the Finder and the Dock, general multitasking is not one of them.
Honestly, it's sad that people can be so utterly ignorant of the realities of this world that they believe George Bush is the epitome of evil.
Well, see, that depends what lines you're reading between. If you believe the estimates of deaths in Iraq attributable to sanctions and war-crimes like bombing essential infrastructure, resulting in up to a million deaths, and the complete disruption of civil society, then yes, you're going to think that the guy's evil. Especially since Iraq is just one of the administration's gambits on the global stage; there are covert ops all over the place. Besides, is 100,000 dead, maimed, ruined, much better than a million?
It doesn't really matter that Clinton can be accused of similar outrages (at smaller scales, but the war-crimes cry rattles around in relation to his admin too). It's only an issue amongst those who believe in a two-party system; the problem is the government.
One of the features of American Hegemony, besides denying any acknowlegement of its empire-ness (a patriot will tell you that's absurd), is that it denies its international legal responsibilities to such bodies as the World Court and various human rights conventions; that's a clue, hello! While american governments abuse their populations in significantly different degrees and manners from the chinese in order to maintain a functioning republic, the suffering of many people throughout various parts of the world are directly the result of Pax Americana at work (again, you can argue about degree and statistics--let the patriot apologists come forth).
I think it's sad that americans can be so utterly ignorant of the realities of their hegemony, that they believe their involvement on the world stage can't be called evil.
Funny, I don't remember our Innuit ancestors who discovered bronze working, iron, or eventually the scientific revolution. Oh wait. That's right. That was mostly meat-eaters.
Don't be a colossal bonehead, do a little research. The Inuit live in the Arctic, and traditionalists can survive on the ice, making things out of bones and gut and skin and snow and eating mammals and fish. They're at just about the pinnacle of paleolithic tech, and I'd like to see any of your grain-munchin' bath-averse bronze-waving ancestors last a season up there.
Even the best cop has to uphold unjust laws. Anyone who would put a person in jail for exercising their right to decide what they put into their bodies deserves all the crap they get. As long as vice laws exist, police are in the job of victimizing people, not protecting them.
Cops usually have the option to look the other way, and they exercise it quite a bit. Especially when applied to their brotherhood! But, also, in the streets and homes. There are 10,000 laws that can be brought to bear on any situation; essentially, the system is set up so that no matter how innocent you think you may be, you're likely in violation of some law.
A cop just can't enforce them all. They pick and choose, from the limited set of laws they are aware of. (This goes for most jurisdictions in North America, at least.)
With regards to vice, many cops around this part of the world (British Columbia) tend to not want to deal with minor crap like marijuana possession, or even growing a few plants casually. Sometimes they have to, though, such as when the black DEA helicopters show up with their IR scopes (no, really, it's a seasonal event in rural doubly-colonized BC).
Ok, so I just got a neighbor to switch to a Gnome Linux, and everything is working great. Then they walk into the Best Buy and look for the Linux software section... After that, they go home and try to find Sims2 for Gnome.
OK, then you did a lousy job getting them to switch, right?
If it's "easier" tell me the process for someone that just came home with a fresh Vista install that wants to run Halo 2 on it vs someone that just cleanly installed your version of choice.
If they want to run FP shooter games and they don't have a console, they aren't really a noob for long, as they'll have to invest some time learning. Outside of the discussion. They're going to run into problems sooner or later anyway, because they're asking more of their machines: they'll have to manage malware and security, permissions, different software install techniques.
I'm talking about serious noobs: seniors who want to surf and email, technophobes and clueless small business owners who aren't gamers. Gnome linux IS easier for them... even going to Best Buy is out of their range!
If you get a neighbour to switch, 1) warn them that it's a different set of software, and mostly free, 2) take 15 minutes to tell them how, you dope! Ubuntu, for instance: do I really need to explain it here? 3) If it isn't appropriate (yes, you have to ask them questions), don't get them to switch. Take responsibility when you give advice, even if you aren't providing professional support.
Linux certainly is not better than Windows in the "users want to use it" department, as Linux is still substantially more difficult to use.
As someone who's set up quite a few noobs on gnome-front-end systems, I have to respectfully disagree.
It's much easier for new users, because:
Just the huge difference between getting and installing apps can be a clincher in this department, as I find new users (including some technophobic retirees) are better able to use synaptic than the thousand-click configure-options-confirm-reboot cycle security-paranoia people get on Windows.
It's just that everything about Apple's approach to marketing their products creeps me out and causes me to experience an anxious nausea whenever I come into contact with their products or with dedicated users of their products.
Dude!* is there ANY tech related marketing that doesn't creep you out? Pretty much all of the computer company ads (including print) I've seen make me nauseous, going back to Wang and Osborne (remember them?). I think that should be a prerequisite of getting a nerd card and the decoder ring.
(*apologies to Dell fanatics... oh wait)
What you do is you take their comments, and edit them, to make them say exactly the opposite of what they are saying. So, if they say
Rob Sucks!
You can edit it to say
Rob did a great job.
Or something like that. It's really frustrating for trolls to find that their comments become benign.
Come, come, in the arena of mind-games, that's just too mild and unsatisfying. We all have a touch of sociopathy to draw on, right?
Creative typos utilizes the slime-tactic of plausible-deniability, with the ethical addition of humour. Try: "Rob ducks!" and other such nonsense. Create Dada art! Make the Troll into a Droll! and so your effort is bringing joy into the world, daisies from the mud.