> Time doesn't work like you think, that's just a plain fact.
Stop telling me how I think:-)
Yes, I understand that 'time' has interesting properties in this universe. And I understand how the Big Bang implies the beginning of time (call it t0, or t-nought). However those who say 'before t0 is meaningless' either do not understand English semantics, are being misleading or are the victims (or perpetrators) of Big Bang Dogma, as I explain below.
> A barrier followed by some kind of unplace? What's beyond the North Pole?
As I said in another post, North of the North Pole is meaningless only if you are planet-bound. (And if you are not, North is an ambiguous term anyway.)
Similarly, when someone asks about 'before t0', _semantically_ it is clear he is shifting the frame of reference to _outside_ our universe. This is something our minds can do easily, even though Physics has very little to say on the subject because it has no data to prove or disprove anything outside our universe's frame of reference[1]. So with today's technology and scientific understanding, 'before t0' is a question better left for philosophers.
[1] One could argue that there is nothing outside our universe, hence it is meaningless to shift our frame of reference to outside our universe. To which I say, the fact that there is nothing outside our universe is unprovable either way, hence its meaningless-ness is easily disputable.
To summarize: In our universe, time began at the big bang. This does make 'What happened before the big bang' a meaningless question, it merely forces you to re-consider your frames of reference.
Honestly, early 21st century science hubris is just as amusing as the 18th or 19th centuries, when they ran about smug and satisfied about there theory of phlogistons and corpuscular light.
So you're saying that if we both keep walking north, and we reach the north pole, I'll be compelled to stop by the fact that there's no further northwardness
You will be compelled to stop because your frame of reference is the planet surface. For anyone with interplanetary or interstellar transport, North would be quite relative (of course, such a being would also not use ambiguous terms like 'North').
Similarly, I'm quite willing to concede that time 'started' at the big bang[1] -- for the three-dimensional universe we observe. However, to say that this makes the concept of 'before the big bang' meaningless is quite silly. Beyond comprehension? yes. Meaningless? no.
For example, did the indirectly observed energy->matter conversion we call the big bang create only one closed system (our universe) or did it create several, each with its own particle zoo and physical constants? How can we be certain of the answer either way (short of communication with a parallel universe, which would be impossible if the universe is a closed system)? If it did, what frames of reference will allow us to discuss multiple universes intelligently?
Another one: Where did this 'ball of energy' come from? Did we just replace Genesis with a "In the beginning was the void/And ${Unknown_Entity} said lo/And a superdense ball of energy came into being/and promptly exploded into a particle zoo"?
_Why_ does this 'ball of energy' exist at all?
I believe it was Feinman who once said that to do Physics, you must have the curiousity of a child, because a child will ask the most fundamental questions, and the more fundamental the questions get, the harder the answers!
[1] although IMHO our understanding of time is too elementary for this assumption. However it seems a reasonable assumption to make for the purposes of this discussion.
Your post demonstrates quite nicely that religious people do not have a monopoly over faith-based reasoning.
> Time was created during the Big Bang so "before" is meaningless. There is no "before" or "after" or "cause" and "effect" if there is no Time.
So you're saying that because your belief system cannot conceive of anything before time t, therefore all times before t are meaningless?
> Same goes with "external." The whole universe was contained in this ball of energy so there is no "internal" or "external." So the whole question is absurd and moot.
The moment you posit a ball you also have to admit a bounding surface (to wit, a 3-sphere). And when you admit a bounding surface, shying away from what is on the other side of that boundary is intellectual cowardice.
Have you ever considered the fact that the Israeli army would not have to drop 1 ton bombs on flats if Palestinian terrorsts didn't hide in civilian areas and actually fought according to the rules of the Geneva convention (which every liberal I know quotes like a Bible when it comes to US/Israeli 'violations', completely forgetting the the conventions were not a one-sided affair?)
You organize violent activity against state, and howl about "brutal army dogs" when the state strikes back? *laughs*
And if you believe the Palestinians are too weak militarily to follow the Israeli... well, why didn't they do what Mandela did? what Gandhi did? Those two took on enormously entrenced systems and won. And people -- even their enemies -- respect them for it.
Instead in Palestine we have assholes who think they're doing God's Duty by bombing shopping malls. And we have quislings like you who excuse their actions by saying "it's all the fault of the $state and the $army!". Feh.
Paying for something does not equal morality, I could pay a "fair market rate" to have someone killed, that does not make murder moral.
In this case, however, paying is _very_ moral. Europe abandoned colonialism (and I'm proud that America pushed Europe on that) and left the Middle East. The Middle East got its own governments and nationalized oil production, forming a cartel (OPEC) to get fair prices. So it's not like they are not being rewarded for their oil production. The middle east would be a shitty place (poorly skilled people, little industrialization) if it were not for oil money.
Yes, we do have to deal with freaking kleptocracies in the Middle East. So what's the alternative? install puppet governments over there (like that hasn't been tried)? Or let fundamentalists depose the kleptocrats and hold the world hostage?
And what's the alternative until an alternative energy source is deployed? Frankly, oil gives a great reason to the international community to stay engaged and _care_ about the Middle East. If tomorrow Jetsons-style powerpacks became reality, the temptation to nuke the Mid-East in retaliation for a terrorist attack would be much higher than it is today -- it'd make both the kleptocrats and the fanatics go away.
what I'm suggesting is that the mess Israel is in is none of our affair in the U.S. and we ought to stop supporting Israel with out tax dollars, period, end of story.
You're deluded if you think Israel is the only 'cause' the Islamic fanatics cream their panties about.
Read OBL's demands, they were well-publicized before he became persona non grata after 9/11.
He's basically looking to (re)create the 'Dar-ul-Islam', a pan-Islamic caliphate spanning the breadth of the old Islamic empire upto Andalus in Spain in the West.
There was also his moaning about how Muslims are much put upon by heathens in Chechnya, Yugoslavia and Kashmir.
If you think the answer to OBL and his ilk is to pack up and go home, you're -- well, to repeat myself, deluded. Giving in to a bully is the single worst thing you can do. Do that and I _guarantee_ you they will find other causes. Europe will have separate laws for Muslims within a decade as Europe's native Muslim fanatics smell blood. And then they'll work up the courage to attack the 'great Satan', which is their charming name for the US.
Am I suggesting the Palestinian suicide bombers are right?
What you are saying is basically we should reward them for thuggery. To which I say: no. I don't _care_ how right or wrong various Muslim grievances are, the day they stop acting like dicks is the day we'll talk with them. Not before.
the problems it has created by violating international law.
PS. There's no such thing as 'international law'. What you call 'international law' is years of convention developed among states that practiced with certain standards (or in the case of UN Security Council Resolutions, the wishes of five countries at any given point of time, enforceable by the five if they wish to). Given that we now have new non-state actors with very different standards (e.g., chopping off civilian heads), please don't look so shocked when international law^Wconvention changes, too.
Excellent post. I'll add the proxy war by Pakistan in Kashmir to the list*.
It high time Islamic nations that forment violence got the message that if it's a fight they want, that's what they'll get. They've been hiding behind the folds of 'undeclared war' for far too long.
* and of course, the Taliban links they bred to nurse the proxy war is coming to bite them in the ass in Waziristan.
Re:some possible addenda to that comment
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Why Windows is Slow
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A Toyota Camry is more expensive than a cheap Ford, too, but that doesn't stop people from buying Camrys.
Perhaps I'm misreading you, but what you seem to imply (and what many Apple fanatics _do_ imply) is that there should be no market for cheap Fords at all. Plus, it might come as a shock to you but the NT line (esp Windows 2000 on for laptop use) is not quite comparable to a cheap Ford.
Every person I know who's switched from Windows to Mac (including my 75-year old mother) is ecstatic.
I'm happy for you. I also know several people who've got (metaphorically) burnt when Apple's hardware (metaphorically) blew up in their faces, sometimes just months out of warranty. That said, I've seen it happen to Dells and DIY rigs too, so IMO blaming any one manufacturer (apart from crap makers like Packard Bell) is silly.
Find me a more capable notebook than the Powerbook or MacBook.
I've cycled through three Thinkpads since 1998 and never had a problem. I also get the giggles when I hear Mac fans rave about 'instant-on' and auto-hibernate on OSX like it was something new, when the Thinkpad+Windows 2000 was doing it very reliably in 1999.
Give up your bigoted attitude. It's been obsolete for years, and just shows ignorance.
I'm not sure if the poster you were responding to was bigoted or not, but he's no more 'bigoted' than many Apple fans I've known. And I say this as a guy who's used Alphas, Indys, Suns, PCs _and_ Macs. Macs are computers, not a religion, and frankly I can certainly understand PC users who think replacing a closed OS with a closed OS+sole manufacturer is lunacy.
Btw - you do realize that video you linked to isn't a real ad, but a parody video made by Microsoft to laugh at their own packaging, don't you?
And this video is a great demonstration of what I said in my previous post-- Microsoft packages its products like I'd package the contents of my kitchen trash when it's time to empty it. But Apple packages its products like its high art, precisely _because_ it is a boutique PC^W Digital Media company.
PS. Neal Stephenson has dealt with what we're discussing here _far_ more comprehensively in "In the beginning was the command line". IPod packaging is nothing new, check out his very valid points about the packaging of Word. However, for all the dorkiness of Microsoft's packaging, it does not take away from the fact that the products are aimed at a much wider market than Apple and millions find them useful.
Apple does marketing because of its products. Microsoft does marketing in spite of its products.
That's basically a content-free assertion. For example, by reading the lines above, one could argue that Apple _needs_ to market its products (because they're inferior? because they have minuscule market share and need to keep in the public eye to do well?), whereas Microsoft doesn't (because they're better? because everyone uses them anyway?).
The truth is: everybody needs to market their products. Apple, Microsoft, Google included. Microsoft's products are not a one-company effort (they involve lots of partner companies and sales channels) and so its marketing will necessarily be different from Apple's, which can afford 'secret' launches and surprise announcements because it is essentially a boutique PC company (this may also be due to the teeny fact that Jobs has problems working with the rest of the industry, probably because he (rightfully) believes they cramp his style).
There's a place for fanboyism (hey, this is slashdot) but one-dimensional "OMG-M$-is-teh-sUck" comments got old in 1999. So you'll excuse me if regurgitated pap like yours and the GP's comments impress me less than you expected.
> M$ is primarily marketing body. While Apple's Jobs understands that it's engineers who are making products
So Apple isn't about marketing? *laughs* if anything it's about a company that's turned marketing into a religion, so much so that it gets fanboys to rave about a $99 leather case the day it's released.
Isn't that what Google already does, with their personal project time and whatnot? That's how GMail got started, and Picasa, and probably a few other things.
Google has done some good things, but please don't give them more credit than due. Picasa was acquired.
> But riddle me this, where were the Islamic rogue elements before you invaded Iraq?
*Some* highlights:
Munich, 1972 World Trade Center bombing, 1993 'Hard' Shariah Rule in Afghanistan, 1990s USS Cole, Yemen, 2000 9/11, 2001 The genocide in Darfur, 2003-present
The sickness in Islam has been visible for a long time, compounded by an unwillingness or failure of moderate muslims to do anything about it. (And of course the rot in Western intelligentsia that seeks to explain away horrendous Islamic barbarism with cultural relativism is equally to blame.)
> So many fundamental flaws, where do I begin?... Reap what you sow, sucker.
My point of view need not match yours but I assure you we will all reap what we have _already_ sown with our failure to unitedly confront evil. By 2030 we'll either have religion-based civil codes (complete with Islamic courts) in Europe or nukes will be deployed on the Middle East. Neither course of action is particularly palatable to me, but hey, that's what you get for listening to the "can't we all just get along" guys.
Any agenda that brings democracy and secularism to the middle east is hardly a 'race to the bottom'. It's more like a leg up to a medieval culture, to put it kindly. This is the Bush administration's stated goal, for what it's worth, and it's a goal worth admiring, even if you doubt its practicality.
The alternative viewpoint (best explained in "Imperial Hubris", and probably the one the CIA holds -- ever noticed there's not much love lost between the White House and the CIA?) is that the Muslim 'street' is a lost cause because of an inherent cultural mismatch and we should either not piss them off or hit them with overwhelming force.
The problem is that by treating the enemy with kid gloves we are putting ourselves at risk AND putting ordinary Muslims at risk (by encouraging more bad behavior from radical Islamics).
> In that case we might win after all....
Oh, I don't doubt our winning because I don't doubt the extent to which our enemy can go. What we're doing in this war is not based on our _capability_ (which includes nuking every Islamic country in the world) but our _intent_ (which is to be, relatively speaking, nice).
Our enemies on the other hand have repeatedly demonstrated they've struck with the full extent of their capabilities. And one day they'll do something so bad it'll make 9/11 look like a picnic. And THEN public opinion in the West will turn and we'll strike back with our full _capability_, and then we'll win. At a terrible cost.
And all because we were not firm enough with Islamic rogue elements in the name of political correctness.
...and strike a deal with Google. New releases of OpenBSD will feature a scrolling text ticker at the bottom of the console:-\
More seriously, if Firefox can earn $72 Million a year from Google referrals, perhaps Google/Yahoo can help out with the $20k or so it takes to keep OpenBSD alive?
And do OpenBSD take Paypal/Amazon Honors/something?
> Tell me something - if it's that bad, why did any country sign up to it?
Practically speaking, many signed it because it made them look good to voters back at home. Especially in Europe where being _seen_ to be green == votes.
Do some reading and find out how well Germany, one of the biggest Kyoto-boosters, is _actually_ implementing Kyoto (along with the rest of Europe, I might add).[1] You'll find that for the flack the US gets over Kyoto they are being less hypocritical than many countries who've actually signed it.
>> t's just a fact: "the sky is blue", "water is wet", Ubuntu is insecure. > Let's check your facts...
*Ahem*
The sky is blue, water is wet, Ubuntu evangelists are pedantic blowhards who can't recognize a common English phrase when they see one...
And don't bother flaming-- I use Ubuntu myself. It's just that It's just that I miss the times when Linux evangelists were, you know, nice people. These days all we seem to get is shrill "$foo_distribution r0x0rs!!" shills.
Besides, flaming a user, especially when your distro is caught with your pants down, is never a good idea.
> Wrapping up, I would mention that unions are most useful for unskilled and semi-skilled labor.
I realize this may sound like flamebait, but _most_ of the people asking for unionizaion of IT come from the least skilled end of the curve. You won't see the guys who run Google's data centers sweating it over unionization -- they don't care, they're irreplaceable (apart from HR violations, I guess) and they know it.
Now, most IT guys aren't irreplaceable -- hard to admit but it's true, especially in a company for which IT is a core/strategic area. 50 years ago a punch card operator used to be a big deal. Today they have been replaced by people who keep our networks running, our OSes patched, our backup tapes safe. They are the equivalent of clerical staff in an 1880s office (being a clerk then was a big deal, btw) -- not key to the business but essential to keeping things moving.
Ultimately, the issue is also one of trust. IT has to necessarily deal with some of the biggest secrets of the company. They get access to the CEO's laptop, they get to guard the salary database, the works. I don't know if managers would be comfortable having unionized employees in those roles.
The principal reason I like CS Monitor is that in this day and age of newspapers all looking alike thanks to endless Reuters/AP/NYTimes/wire repeats, the Monitor has its own correspondents and a very distinctive voice. I believe this is the sort of newspaper that Slashdotters ought to be applauding, not dissing because it has an oddball name.
> and at the other side, and at the other side's attorneys.
Given that many attorneys I know create their 'Word docs' using WordPerfect (WP's very popular in the legal world), I wouldn't be surprised if some of these DOC files were not being generated by Word at all. Most bad.DOCs I've seen have originated outside an MS product.
Of course, like I said, whatever works for you. But file corruption due to edits across Office versions does not match my experience (and we probably deal with many, many more attachments and Office versions than a law firm does).
> I don't mean to come across as too obnoxious here, but as far as any word processors go, my only need for one is writing papers for school.
The problem is your experience does not map onto lots of other people's. It may not even map into your own if/when you get out of academia.
At work you see loads of people creating documents expecting their colleagues to read/review/add to them. Your boss/his boss/your customer might want a hard copy. And yeah, while PDF works for read-only, you need a proper word processor in many cases. And remember that not everyone is technology-savvy, telling a guy who makes an average salary (say $70k a year, about $36/hr) that "he ought to learn LaTeX" is in many cases not the smartest idea-- his time is worth more than that, especially if IT is a support function for him.
It's called MS _Office_ for a reason.
Me, I stick to vim and Word. I used to keep an old SGML editor from Softquad around but ever since Word 2003 I can do my XML right from Word itself. Creating documents is far too basic a task to have holy wars about.
I couldn't explain 'community minded' well-- what I meant was they tend to value familial relations, maintain contacts with their extended family, respect their elders, that sort of thing. Again, not that this doesn't happen in the West, but that it happens much less than in the East.
But to return to the original post, I'd still like to see these "same as everybody else's" phone ads. Were the Chinese afraid that one day all those carrying purple phones would be executed?
Slashdot Mirror
> Time doesn't work like you think, that's just a plain fact.
:-)
Stop telling me how I think
Yes, I understand that 'time' has interesting properties in this universe. And I understand how the Big Bang implies the beginning of time (call it t0, or t-nought). However those who say 'before t0 is meaningless' either do not understand English semantics, are being misleading or are the victims (or perpetrators) of Big Bang Dogma, as I explain below.
> A barrier followed by some kind of unplace? What's beyond the North Pole?
As I said in another post, North of the North Pole is meaningless only if you are planet-bound. (And if you are not, North is an ambiguous term anyway.)
Similarly, when someone asks about 'before t0', _semantically_ it is clear he is shifting the frame of reference to _outside_ our universe. This is something our minds can do easily, even though Physics has very little to say on the subject because it has no data to prove or disprove anything outside our universe's frame of reference[1]. So with today's technology and scientific understanding, 'before t0' is a question better left for philosophers.
[1] One could argue that there is nothing outside our universe, hence it is meaningless to shift our frame of reference to outside our universe. To which I say, the fact that there is nothing outside our universe is unprovable either way, hence its meaningless-ness is easily disputable.
To summarize: In our universe, time began at the big bang. This does make 'What happened before the big bang' a meaningless question, it merely forces you to re-consider your frames of reference.
Honestly, early 21st century science hubris is just as amusing as the 18th or 19th centuries, when they ran about smug and satisfied about there theory of phlogistons and corpuscular light.
So you're saying that if we both keep walking north, and we reach the north pole, I'll be compelled to stop by the fact that there's no further northwardness
You will be compelled to stop because your frame of reference is the planet surface. For anyone with interplanetary or interstellar transport, North would be quite relative (of course, such a being would also not use ambiguous terms like 'North').
Similarly, I'm quite willing to concede that time 'started' at the big bang[1] -- for the three-dimensional universe we observe. However, to say that this makes the concept of 'before the big bang' meaningless is quite silly. Beyond comprehension? yes. Meaningless? no.
For example, did the indirectly observed energy->matter conversion we call the big bang create only one closed system (our universe) or did it create several, each with its own particle zoo and physical constants? How can we be certain of the answer either way (short of communication with a parallel universe, which would be impossible if the universe is a closed system)? If it did, what frames of reference will allow us to discuss multiple universes intelligently?
Another one: Where did this 'ball of energy' come from? Did we just replace Genesis with a "In the beginning was the void/And ${Unknown_Entity} said lo/And a superdense ball of energy came into being/and promptly exploded into a particle zoo"?
_Why_ does this 'ball of energy' exist at all?
I believe it was Feinman who once said that to do Physics, you must have the curiousity of a child, because a child will ask the most fundamental questions, and the more fundamental the questions get, the harder the answers!
[1] although IMHO our understanding of time is too elementary for this assumption. However it seems a reasonable assumption to make for the purposes of this discussion.
Your post demonstrates quite nicely that religious people do not have a monopoly over faith-based reasoning.
> Time was created during the Big Bang so "before" is meaningless. There is no "before" or "after" or "cause" and "effect" if there is no Time.
So you're saying that because your belief system cannot conceive of anything before time t, therefore all times before t are meaningless?
> Same goes with "external." The whole universe was contained in this ball of energy so there is no "internal" or "external." So the whole question is absurd and moot.
The moment you posit a ball you also have to admit a bounding surface (to wit, a 3-sphere). And when you admit a bounding surface, shying away from what is on the other side of that boundary is intellectual cowardice.
Have you ever considered the fact that the Israeli army would not have to drop 1 ton bombs on flats if Palestinian terrorsts didn't hide in civilian areas and actually fought according to the rules of the Geneva convention (which every liberal I know quotes like a Bible when it comes to US/Israeli 'violations', completely forgetting the the conventions were not a one-sided affair?)
You organize violent activity against state, and howl about "brutal army dogs" when the state strikes back? *laughs*
And if you believe the Palestinians are too weak militarily to follow the Israeli... well, why didn't they do what Mandela did? what Gandhi did? Those two took on enormously entrenced systems and won. And people -- even their enemies -- respect them for it.
Instead in Palestine we have assholes who think they're doing God's Duty by bombing shopping malls. And we have quislings like you who excuse their actions by saying "it's all the fault of the $state and the $army!". Feh.
> You forgot proud isolationist, if we just minded our own business we would in turn be left alone by other countries.
That worked _so_ well for us in WW2 and Pearl Harbor... also for the Czechs and Slovaks against Nazi Germany.
Paying for something does not equal morality, I could pay a "fair market rate" to have someone killed, that does not make murder moral.
In this case, however, paying is _very_ moral. Europe abandoned colonialism (and I'm proud that America pushed Europe on that) and left the Middle East. The Middle East got its own governments and nationalized oil production, forming a cartel (OPEC) to get fair prices. So it's not like they are not being rewarded for their oil production. The middle east would be a shitty place (poorly skilled people, little industrialization) if it were not for oil money.
Yes, we do have to deal with freaking kleptocracies in the Middle East. So what's the alternative? install puppet governments over there (like that hasn't been tried)? Or let fundamentalists depose the kleptocrats and hold the world hostage?
And what's the alternative until an alternative energy source is deployed? Frankly, oil gives a great reason to the international community to stay engaged and _care_ about the Middle East. If tomorrow Jetsons-style powerpacks became reality, the temptation to nuke the Mid-East in retaliation for a terrorist attack would be much higher than it is today -- it'd make both the kleptocrats and the fanatics go away.
what I'm suggesting is that the mess Israel is in is none of our affair in the U.S. and we ought to stop supporting Israel with out tax dollars, period, end of story.
You're deluded if you think Israel is the only 'cause' the Islamic fanatics cream their panties about.
Read OBL's demands, they were well-publicized before he became persona non grata after 9/11.
He's basically looking to (re)create the 'Dar-ul-Islam', a pan-Islamic caliphate spanning the breadth of the old Islamic empire upto Andalus in Spain in the West.
There was also his moaning about how Muslims are much put upon by heathens in Chechnya, Yugoslavia and Kashmir.
If you think the answer to OBL and his ilk is to pack up and go home, you're -- well, to repeat myself, deluded. Giving in to a bully is the single worst thing you can do. Do that and I _guarantee_ you they will find other causes. Europe will have separate laws for Muslims within a decade as Europe's native Muslim fanatics smell blood. And then they'll work up the courage to attack the 'great Satan', which is their charming name for the US.
Am I suggesting the Palestinian suicide bombers are right?
What you are saying is basically we should reward them for thuggery. To which I say: no. I don't _care_ how right or wrong various Muslim grievances are, the day they stop acting like dicks is the day we'll talk with them. Not before.
the problems it has created by violating international law.
PS. There's no such thing as 'international law'. What you call 'international law' is years of convention developed among states that practiced with certain standards (or in the case of UN Security Council Resolutions, the wishes of five countries at any given point of time, enforceable by the five if they wish to). Given that we now have new non-state actors with very different standards (e.g., chopping off civilian heads), please don't look so shocked when international law^Wconvention changes, too.
Excellent post. I'll add the proxy war by Pakistan in Kashmir to the list*.
It high time Islamic nations that forment violence got the message that if it's a fight they want, that's what they'll get. They've been hiding behind the folds of 'undeclared war' for far too long.
* and of course, the Taliban links they bred to nurse the proxy war is coming to bite them in the ass in Waziristan.
> Who's Neal Stephenson?
:-\
That has _got_ to get into my signatures file
A Toyota Camry is more expensive than a cheap Ford, too, but that doesn't stop people from buying Camrys.
Perhaps I'm misreading you, but what you seem to imply (and what many Apple fanatics _do_ imply) is that there should be no market for cheap Fords at all. Plus, it might come as a shock to you but the NT line (esp Windows 2000 on for laptop use) is not quite comparable to a cheap Ford.
Every person I know who's switched from Windows to Mac (including my 75-year old mother) is ecstatic.
I'm happy for you. I also know several people who've got (metaphorically) burnt when Apple's hardware (metaphorically) blew up in their faces, sometimes just months out of warranty. That said, I've seen it happen to Dells and DIY rigs too, so IMO blaming any one manufacturer (apart from crap makers like Packard Bell) is silly.
Find me a more capable notebook than the Powerbook or MacBook.
I've cycled through three Thinkpads since 1998 and never had a problem. I also get the giggles when I hear Mac fans rave about 'instant-on' and auto-hibernate on OSX like it was something new, when the Thinkpad+Windows 2000 was doing it very reliably in 1999.
Give up your bigoted attitude. It's been obsolete for years, and just shows ignorance.
I'm not sure if the poster you were responding to was bigoted or not, but he's no more 'bigoted' than many Apple fans I've known. And I say this as a guy who's used Alphas, Indys, Suns, PCs _and_ Macs. Macs are computers, not a religion, and frankly I can certainly understand PC users who think replacing a closed OS with a closed OS+sole manufacturer is lunacy.
My response to that would be that Apple markets it's products, while Microsoft's product is marketing.
Gee, that sounds profound. But does it mean anything, or is it another of those "How many slums will we bulldoze to build the Information superhighway" expressions that _sound_ neat but mean nothing? I'm betting on the latter.
Btw - you do realize that video you linked to isn't a real ad, but a parody video made by Microsoft to laugh at their own packaging, don't you?
And this video is a great demonstration of what I said in my previous post-- Microsoft packages its products like I'd package the contents of my kitchen trash when it's time to empty it. But Apple packages its products like its high art, precisely _because_ it is a boutique PC^W Digital Media company.
PS. Neal Stephenson has dealt with what we're discussing here _far_ more comprehensively in "In the beginning was the command line". IPod packaging is nothing new, check out his very valid points about the packaging of Word. However, for all the dorkiness of Microsoft's packaging, it does not take away from the fact that the products are aimed at a much wider market than Apple and millions find them useful.
Apple does marketing because of its products.
Microsoft does marketing in spite of its products.
That's basically a content-free assertion. For example, by reading the lines above, one could argue that Apple _needs_ to market its products (because they're inferior? because they have minuscule market share and need to keep in the public eye to do well?), whereas Microsoft doesn't (because they're better? because everyone uses them anyway?).
The truth is: everybody needs to market their products. Apple, Microsoft, Google included. Microsoft's products are not a one-company effort (they involve lots of partner companies and sales channels) and so its marketing will necessarily be different from Apple's, which can afford 'secret' launches and surprise announcements because it is essentially a boutique PC company (this may also be due to the teeny fact that Jobs has problems working with the rest of the industry, probably because he (rightfully) believes they cramp his style).
There's a place for fanboyism (hey, this is slashdot) but one-dimensional "OMG-M$-is-teh-sUck" comments got old in 1999. So you'll excuse me if regurgitated pap like yours and the GP's comments impress me less than you expected.
> M$ is primarily marketing body. While Apple's Jobs understands that it's engineers who are making products
So Apple isn't about marketing? *laughs* if anything it's about a company that's turned marketing into a religion, so much so that it gets fanboys to rave about a $99 leather case the day it's released.
Isn't that what Google already does, with their personal project time and whatnot? That's how GMail got started, and Picasa, and probably a few other things.
Google has done some good things, but please don't give them more credit than due. Picasa was acquired.
> But riddle me this, where were the Islamic rogue elements before you invaded Iraq?
... Reap what you sow, sucker.
*Some* highlights:
Munich, 1972
World Trade Center bombing, 1993
'Hard' Shariah Rule in Afghanistan, 1990s
USS Cole, Yemen, 2000
9/11, 2001
The genocide in Darfur, 2003-present
The sickness in Islam has been visible for a long time, compounded by an unwillingness or failure of moderate muslims to do anything about it. (And of course the rot in Western intelligentsia that seeks to explain away horrendous Islamic barbarism with cultural relativism is equally to blame.)
> So many fundamental flaws, where do I begin?
My point of view need not match yours but I assure you we will all reap what we have _already_ sown with our failure to unitedly confront evil. By 2030 we'll either have religion-based civil codes (complete with Islamic courts) in Europe or nukes will be deployed on the Middle East. Neither course of action is particularly palatable to me, but hey, that's what you get for listening to the "can't we all just get along" guys.
> Ah, so it's a race to the bottom, then?
Any agenda that brings democracy and secularism to the middle east is hardly a 'race to the bottom'. It's more like a leg up to a medieval culture, to put it kindly. This is the Bush administration's stated goal, for what it's worth, and it's a goal worth admiring, even if you doubt its practicality.
The alternative viewpoint (best explained in "Imperial Hubris", and probably the one the CIA holds -- ever noticed there's not much love lost between the White House and the CIA?) is that the Muslim 'street' is a lost cause because of an inherent cultural mismatch and we should either not piss them off or hit them with overwhelming force.
The problem is that by treating the enemy with kid gloves we are putting ourselves at risk AND putting ordinary Muslims at risk (by encouraging more bad behavior from radical Islamics).
> In that case we might win after all....
Oh, I don't doubt our winning because I don't doubt the extent to which our enemy can go. What we're doing in this war is not based on our _capability_ (which includes nuking every Islamic country in the world) but our _intent_ (which is to be, relatively speaking, nice).
Our enemies on the other hand have repeatedly demonstrated they've struck with the full extent of their capabilities. And one day they'll do something so bad it'll make 9/11 look like a picnic. And THEN public opinion in the West will turn and we'll strike back with our full _capability_, and then we'll win. At a terrible cost.
And all because we were not firm enough with Islamic rogue elements in the name of political correctness.
but Zoe's Radio has got to be one of the better ones, she RJs very well for someone so young:
Podcast feed: http://webjay.org/by/iancr/zoe5c27sradioshow.xml
Then let's not forget the (supershort but funny) Onion Radio News.
When BSG's on air, Ron Moore's podcasts are also good listening.
> Is through Net Users' adoption of Firefox since the default startup page is Google.
2 0051201YahooFirefoxPartnerInAsianMarket.html
Only in the English and European builds, IIRC. Firefox uses Yahoo as the default startup page in China/Japan/Korea.
Reference: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-
...and strike a deal with Google. New releases of OpenBSD will feature a scrolling text ticker at the bottom of the console :-\
More seriously, if Firefox can earn $72 Million a year from Google referrals, perhaps Google/Yahoo can help out with the $20k or so it takes to keep OpenBSD alive?
And do OpenBSD take Paypal/Amazon Honors/something?
> Tell me something - if it's that bad, why did any country sign up to it?
m
Practically speaking, many signed it because it made them look good to voters back at home. Especially in Europe where being _seen_ to be green == votes.
Do some reading and find out how well Germany, one of the biggest Kyoto-boosters, is _actually_ implementing Kyoto (along with the rest of Europe, I might add).[1] You'll find that for the flack the US gets over Kyoto they are being less hypocritical than many countries who've actually signed it.
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4561576.st
> Or could it be that it's not as bad as you're making it out to be, and actually is worthwhile?
Appeals to authority are a lousy way to win an argument btw...
>> t's just a fact: "the sky is blue", "water is wet", Ubuntu is insecure.
> Let's check your facts...
*Ahem*
The sky is blue, water is wet, Ubuntu evangelists are pedantic blowhards who can't recognize a common English phrase when they see one...
And don't bother flaming-- I use Ubuntu myself. It's just that It's just that I miss the times when Linux evangelists were, you know, nice people. These days all we seem to get is shrill "$foo_distribution r0x0rs!!" shills.
Besides, flaming a user, especially when your distro is caught with your pants down, is never a good idea.
> Wrapping up, I would mention that unions are most useful for unskilled and semi-skilled labor.
I realize this may sound like flamebait, but _most_ of the people asking for unionizaion of IT come from the least skilled end of the curve. You won't see the guys who run Google's data centers sweating it over unionization -- they don't care, they're irreplaceable (apart from HR violations, I guess) and they know it.
Now, most IT guys aren't irreplaceable -- hard to admit but it's true, especially in a company for which IT is a core/strategic area. 50 years ago a punch card operator used to be a big deal. Today they have been replaced by people who keep our networks running, our OSes patched, our backup tapes safe. They are the equivalent of clerical staff in an 1880s office (being a clerk then was a big deal, btw) -- not key to the business but essential to keeping things moving.
Ultimately, the issue is also one of trust. IT has to necessarily deal with some of the biggest secrets of the company. They get access to the CEO's laptop, they get to guard the salary database, the works. I don't know if managers would be comfortable having unionized employees in those roles.
They are also a non-profit and are 52% of their running costs come from donations: https://www.csmonitorservices.com/csmonitor/csm_do nation.jhtml
The principal reason I like CS Monitor is that in this day and age of newspapers all looking alike thanks to endless Reuters/AP/NYTimes/wire repeats, the Monitor has its own correspondents and a very distinctive voice. I believe this is the sort of newspaper that Slashdotters ought to be applauding, not dissing because it has an oddball name.
> and at the other side, and at the other side's attorneys.
.DOCs I've seen have originated outside an MS product.
Given that many attorneys I know create their 'Word docs' using WordPerfect (WP's very popular in the legal world), I wouldn't be surprised if some of these DOC files were not being generated by Word at all. Most bad
Of course, like I said, whatever works for you. But file corruption due to edits across Office versions does not match my experience (and we probably deal with many, many more attachments and Office versions than a law firm does).
> I don't mean to come across as too obnoxious here, but as far as any word processors go, my only need for one is writing papers for school.
The problem is your experience does not map onto lots of other people's. It may not even map into your own if/when you get out of academia.
At work you see loads of people creating documents expecting their colleagues to read/review/add to them. Your boss/his boss/your customer might want a hard copy. And yeah, while PDF works for read-only, you need a proper word processor in many cases. And remember that not everyone is technology-savvy, telling a guy who makes an average salary (say $70k a year, about $36/hr) that "he ought to learn LaTeX" is in many cases not the smartest idea-- his time is worth more than that, especially if IT is a support function for him.
It's called MS _Office_ for a reason.
Me, I stick to vim and Word. I used to keep an old SGML editor from Softquad around but ever since Word 2003 I can do my XML right from Word itself. Creating documents is far too basic a task to have holy wars about.
I couldn't explain 'community minded' well-- what I meant was they tend to value familial relations, maintain contacts with their extended family, respect their elders, that sort of thing. Again, not that this doesn't happen in the West, but that it happens much less than in the East.
But to return to the original post, I'd still like to see these "same as everybody else's" phone ads. Were the Chinese afraid that one day all those carrying purple phones would be executed?