Your analogy is broken. Perhaps a car analogy would work better next time. Your 1000 dollar Honda does less than my 500 Yugo, but it does have a really nice paint job, so... yeah... that's something.
I get that that's the stock response, but I think it's a copout. A netbook is in fact the nearest comparable device to the iPad that is currently common in the user space, and the fact that pretty much any comparable netbook crushes the iPad in performance and price is fact, regardless of the weak protestations that that's not what they're trying to do.
For the money I'd still rather have a Kindle. The people calling it a Kindle killer don't understand the things that make e-Ink awesome. They think the fact that it's a monochrome screen with no backlight is a drawback instead of its key advantage. Because surely more colors has to be better? Right?
It does less than a similarly equipped laptop, and for only twice the price! As a bonus for your money, you get no USB expansion ports, and can even only run one app at a time! Apple's innovation is staggering.
I'm not sure I buy that. You can buy a jig at a reasonable price (50 bucks on sale) to cut dovetail joints. You can get hardwood boards if you want, and they cut the same (usually better, in my experience) than the cheap stuff. It's not like using dovetail joints and higher quality lumber is something no amateur would ever think of. Heirloom quality is still just marketing speak.
Get some first hand experience with carpentry and build yourself one. It's not difficult. Borrow some tools from friends and family if you need to, or possibly neighbors. Tell your friend you have a sheet of MDF or something and that you need to make some cuts with a table saw, and would he mind if you came over and used it for 15 minutes. Treat it as an excuse to socialize. Borrow your father-in-law's miter saw and pay him back with a case of beer. You'll get a lot more than 8500 dollars worth of enjoyment out of the process, for a very small fraction of the price, and you'll still get your geek table. And you'll get a good story out of it. The thing may not turn out perfect. You might have a drawer that sticks or something, but big fucking deal. What's their target audience? Millionaire gamers? Good luck with that.
This is just a parliamentary tactic the Democrats are using to ram this unpopular legislation down the throats of ordinary, hard-working Americans. They're trying to pass this bill in the dead of night, under the old bridge down town, dressed as hobos and reeking of urine. Write your Congressman, radio your Precinct Boss, phone your local librarian. We need all hands on deck to kill this bill and show the Washington fatcats that we're not going to stand for this. I don't care if it's just to buy toilet paper, but getting a bill through our Congress should take a supermajority, the way God intended! Email Barack Hussein Obama and tell him you don't want socialist aviation!
If I were going to go full Yau, I would claim that I discovered this article on the New Yorker's website, and that I am incensed because it is clearly an idea that I came up with first, and if you don't believe me just ask all of my Chinese friends.
I can't take credit for finding this. Another Slashdotter was kind enough to link it the last time Perelman came up, but I found this to be very enlightening and illustrative of Perelman's personality as well as the whole Yau controversy. It's an article from the New Yorker co-written by Sylvia Nasar, who wrote the biography of John Nash, A Beautiful Mind. It contains what was at the time the only interview with Grigori Perelman, but I'm not sure if that's still true.
Look, if you're going to use the Quadratic Formula to complete the proof, we all might as well pack up and go home. It's like the cheat code for all these binomial questions
TLC has taught me that God wants me to crank out children until my wife has complications and dies in childbirth, because the 18 kids I already have aren't enough.
In some cases it is atheism with a philosophical bent. Deism is a pretty broad philosophy, and plays pretty loose with what God is or can be. There is a branch of Deism called Pandeism that says that "God" is part of its creation-- that is, that God is "in" the fabric of its creation. You could construe this to mean that "God" is equivalent to Natural Law. This sort of goes to the other extreme and deifies science, but it would mesh with the core of Deism; that God as a First Cause does not exist as a separate entity, and that its influence on creation can only be divined through reason and rational processes.
This is why people like Richard Dawkins regard Deism as being practicably identical to Atheism, and that Deism eventually leads to Atheism. If you are willing to cede that The Creative Force is not a discrete entity who gives a shit about things like prayer or worship, and that Creation can only be understood by reason and science, then Atheists and Deists are in agreement, and whether you call The Creative Force "God," or "Natural Law," you are talking about the same thing, but Atheists just choose not to deify it, because that's kind of silly, since it does not care about worship, insofar as a natural force can even have intelligence or care about anything.
"Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's lectures. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist."
Source? Benjamin Franklin in his own autobiography.
Insofar as other founding fathers were "Christian," it was a sort of namby pamby, liberal, philosophical Christianity more concerned with helping your fellow man and being a good person than the crap religionists cry about today. The Christianity of the Founding Fathers would be barely recognizable as religion today.
These guys were all products of the Enlightenment, more influenced by people like Hume, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Spinoza, Adam Smith, and Montesquieu. These were, almost without exception, deists or atheists. It is impossible to discuss the faith and philosophy of the founding fathers without understanding the prevailing attitudes of the time. You're interpreting history through a modern lens, assuming things had the same connotations then that they do now. "The general principles of Christianity" is a pretty broad statement that actually refers to a lot of very good things, just like "the general principles of Islam," but if someone said today that we should have a government centered around "the general principles of Christianity," they are going to be an evangelical shill advancing a very different cause, trying to use the founding fathers as cover for their bigotry.
You must be new here. Car analogies can only be used on Slashdot when they are totally flawed for explaining the topic at hand. Your apt, informative car analogy is a violation of Slashdot's cultural mores.
I understand all that, and still fail to see why Fermi's Paradox somehow proves that there's no intelligent life in the universe, especially given that relativistic speeds are theoretically unobtainable, so it would surely take a very long time indeed for us to ever make contact. Fermi's Paradox gives people who already believe something a sense of smug superiority, and people who disagree one more thing to ignore. It does not and cannot prove anything, because it does not seek to prove something. Fermi's Paradox is not verifiable, which means it is unscientific.
It's taken us this long to be here. Who's to say there's not another intelligent species out there who is just now coming into space travel, but is already depressed because the Xorblat Paradox says searching for alien life is probably a waste of time. The Fermi Paradox is still incredibly short-sighted. It's very hard to draw meaningful conclusions from negative evidence, otherwise we'd have put this whole "God" thing to rest a long time ago.
Slashdot Mirror
You seriously think the iPad is that fundamentally different than a netbook? It's a gigantic iPhone without the phone.
Your analogy is broken. Perhaps a car analogy would work better next time. Your 1000 dollar Honda does less than my 500 Yugo, but it does have a really nice paint job, so... yeah... that's something.
I get that that's the stock response, but I think it's a copout. A netbook is in fact the nearest comparable device to the iPad that is currently common in the user space, and the fact that pretty much any comparable netbook crushes the iPad in performance and price is fact, regardless of the weak protestations that that's not what they're trying to do.
For the money I'd still rather have a Kindle. The people calling it a Kindle killer don't understand the things that make e-Ink awesome. They think the fact that it's a monochrome screen with no backlight is a drawback instead of its key advantage. Because surely more colors has to be better? Right?
It does less than a similarly equipped laptop, and for only twice the price! As a bonus for your money, you get no USB expansion ports, and can even only run one app at a time! Apple's innovation is staggering.
And also: Jennifer Government, by Max Berry.
I guess I found their target audience. Or their marketing department.
I'm not sure I buy that. You can buy a jig at a reasonable price (50 bucks on sale) to cut dovetail joints. You can get hardwood boards if you want, and they cut the same (usually better, in my experience) than the cheap stuff. It's not like using dovetail joints and higher quality lumber is something no amateur would ever think of. Heirloom quality is still just marketing speak.
Get some first hand experience with carpentry and build yourself one. It's not difficult. Borrow some tools from friends and family if you need to, or possibly neighbors. Tell your friend you have a sheet of MDF or something and that you need to make some cuts with a table saw, and would he mind if you came over and used it for 15 minutes. Treat it as an excuse to socialize. Borrow your father-in-law's miter saw and pay him back with a case of beer. You'll get a lot more than 8500 dollars worth of enjoyment out of the process, for a very small fraction of the price, and you'll still get your geek table. And you'll get a good story out of it. The thing may not turn out perfect. You might have a drawer that sticks or something, but big fucking deal. What's their target audience? Millionaire gamers? Good luck with that.
Free porn!?!? You are a dirty pirate who is stifling free enterprise with your sense of entitlement!
This is just a parliamentary tactic the Democrats are using to ram this unpopular legislation down the throats of ordinary, hard-working Americans. They're trying to pass this bill in the dead of night, under the old bridge down town, dressed as hobos and reeking of urine. Write your Congressman, radio your Precinct Boss, phone your local librarian. We need all hands on deck to kill this bill and show the Washington fatcats that we're not going to stand for this. I don't care if it's just to buy toilet paper, but getting a bill through our Congress should take a supermajority, the way God intended! Email Barack Hussein Obama and tell him you don't want socialist aviation!
If Courier came out today, and actually does all the things they say it will do, I'd buy two in a heartbeat. But the iPad? Do not want.
If I were going to go full Yau, I would claim that I discovered this article on the New Yorker's website, and that I am incensed because it is clearly an idea that I came up with first, and if you don't believe me just ask all of my Chinese friends.
Maybe Read the last sentence of TFS?
I can't take credit for finding this. Another Slashdotter was kind enough to link it the last time Perelman came up, but I found this to be very enlightening and illustrative of Perelman's personality as well as the whole Yau controversy. It's an article from the New Yorker co-written by Sylvia Nasar, who wrote the biography of John Nash, A Beautiful Mind. It contains what was at the time the only interview with Grigori Perelman, but I'm not sure if that's still true.
Annals of Mathematic: Manifold Destiny
Look, if you're going to use the Quadratic Formula to complete the proof, we all might as well pack up and go home. It's like the cheat code for all these binomial questions
Someone needs to read WP:OR.
TLC has taught me that God wants me to crank out children until my wife has complications and dies in childbirth, because the 18 kids I already have aren't enough.
In some cases it is atheism with a philosophical bent. Deism is a pretty broad philosophy, and plays pretty loose with what God is or can be. There is a branch of Deism called Pandeism that says that "God" is part of its creation-- that is, that God is "in" the fabric of its creation. You could construe this to mean that "God" is equivalent to Natural Law. This sort of goes to the other extreme and deifies science, but it would mesh with the core of Deism; that God as a First Cause does not exist as a separate entity, and that its influence on creation can only be divined through reason and rational processes.
This is why people like Richard Dawkins regard Deism as being practicably identical to Atheism, and that Deism eventually leads to Atheism. If you are willing to cede that The Creative Force is not a discrete entity who gives a shit about things like prayer or worship, and that Creation can only be understood by reason and science, then Atheists and Deists are in agreement, and whether you call The Creative Force "God," or "Natural Law," you are talking about the same thing, but Atheists just choose not to deify it, because that's kind of silly, since it does not care about worship, insofar as a natural force can even have intelligence or care about anything.
"Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the substance of sermons preached at Boyle's lectures. It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a thorough Deist."
Source? Benjamin Franklin in his own autobiography.
Insofar as other founding fathers were "Christian," it was a sort of namby pamby, liberal, philosophical Christianity more concerned with helping your fellow man and being a good person than the crap religionists cry about today. The Christianity of the Founding Fathers would be barely recognizable as religion today.
These guys were all products of the Enlightenment, more influenced by people like Hume, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Spinoza, Adam Smith, and Montesquieu. These were, almost without exception, deists or atheists. It is impossible to discuss the faith and philosophy of the founding fathers without understanding the prevailing attitudes of the time. You're interpreting history through a modern lens, assuming things had the same connotations then that they do now. "The general principles of Christianity" is a pretty broad statement that actually refers to a lot of very good things, just like "the general principles of Islam," but if someone said today that we should have a government centered around "the general principles of Christianity," they are going to be an evangelical shill advancing a very different cause, trying to use the founding fathers as cover for their bigotry.
Your QED is a little hasty, I think.
You must be new here. Car analogies can only be used on Slashdot when they are totally flawed for explaining the topic at hand. Your apt, informative car analogy is a violation of Slashdot's cultural mores.
I understand all that, and still fail to see why Fermi's Paradox somehow proves that there's no intelligent life in the universe, especially given that relativistic speeds are theoretically unobtainable, so it would surely take a very long time indeed for us to ever make contact. Fermi's Paradox gives people who already believe something a sense of smug superiority, and people who disagree one more thing to ignore. It does not and cannot prove anything, because it does not seek to prove something. Fermi's Paradox is not verifiable, which means it is unscientific.
A few hundred thousand plus the several billion years the universe has been in existence beforehand.
By that logic and "common sense," it's easier to assume we don't exist.
It's taken us this long to be here. Who's to say there's not another intelligent species out there who is just now coming into space travel, but is already depressed because the Xorblat Paradox says searching for alien life is probably a waste of time. The Fermi Paradox is still incredibly short-sighted. It's very hard to draw meaningful conclusions from negative evidence, otherwise we'd have put this whole "God" thing to rest a long time ago.