The trouble then comes with getting consensus on who is actually representing a religious framework. You have to judge beliefs on their own truthfulness and merit, rather than on the actions of people who claim to adhere to them. People are unfaithful. The apostle Paul s a good example though of the power that Christianity has to turn someone from violence and hate.
Well of course he was engaging in hyperbole; hyperbole is a rhetorical device. Obviously he wasn't doing physics in his spare time if it was his full time job. The point he was making is that there are more important things in life than physics.
Incidentally, where did I bring prayer into things and what on earth does it have to do with science? One is asking for the intervention of a supernatural God, the other involves the creation of a model that best matches our observations of the natural universe. Prayer doesn't invalidate science and science has nothing to say about the supernatural. You may as well have just said 'French trumps music every time.'
How shocking! Someone thinks that there is something more important than science! Clearly there must be a problem with them. After all, everything is inferior to science, isn't it?
Now that's possibly not how you intended to come across, but it's how it sounds. Do you really think that science is the be all and end all of life? And do you really think that the monk was writing over the only copy of that document? There were bound to have been others, but time, natural disasters and wars have put an end to them.
As one of my quantum mechanics tutors once said, 'Physics is what we do in our spare time, when there's nothing better to be doing.' Well, something very close to that. And before you decide he didn't care about science or was a nutjob, he was actually a researcher at Oxford and now has a chair at Cambridge, doing quantum computing. Great scientist, but he also had his priorities right.
Mob of Jews kills Christians. Mob of Christians get angry, seek revenge, kill Christians and burn some stuff. That's hardly a matter of being for or against learning and science. It was opposing tribes rioting against each other. Reminds me very much of Northern Ireland, where the problems are really two cultures clashing, rather than two religions.
I'm sure that members of the church did at times have in influence on the decline of the Roman Empire, something I never claimed to ignore, but as the church and state become intermeshed, that brought corruption, so it is more an illustration of the problems of church getting mixed up, rather than a proof of Christianity being anti-knowledge. i think that that the way the church got so involved with the state is a travesty and thoroughly unbiblical. Constantine made a lot of mistakes in that regard.
The church of Rome actually had very little influence on many areas of Christianity e.g. Celtic Christians and Eastern Orthodox during this time, so it's also rather unjust to tar all of Christianity with the same brush, especially given that the Protestant view is that the Roman church became increasingly corrupt during this time, requiring the Reformation. Christians involved with the Reformation had a very high of science and knowledge, seeing it as the Christian's duty to investigate God's creation, just as many monks had previously seen it as their duty to record history, providing us with a great part of the little history we have from the 'Dark Ages.' Incidentally, this view was carried on into latter centuries and well embodied by such scientists as Faraday and Maxwell, who were very passionate about science, but also staunchly evangelical Christians.
I suggest you take a look at the Wikipedia article on the Dark ages to see some of the misconceptions and biases that people have concerning the term and the time.
The dark ages were more a result of the collapse of the Roman Empire. The monks were among the few people who kept education going. The monasteries of Ireland were one of the few bastions of learning and knowledge during the Dark Ages.
Pure sixth form colleges? Or Secondary schools that go up to sixth form? It's possible that things are a bit different here in Norther Ireland, compared with the rest of the UK. Oh and there's Scotland with their strange way of doing things as well.
Actually, if you stay at school when you're 16-18, that would be counted as secondary education. If you went somewhere else and studied for a BTEC or NVQ or that kind of thing, then that would be further education I think.
Sadly I don't have the knowledge or financial skills to even hazard a guess. I imagine that the margins are pretty high (somewhere in the 50-95% region), but that revenue helps support unprofitable divisions, so the real profit they make is a fair chunk less.
This is where we need Microsoft's accountant to chip in.
I don't deny that. Just saying that the cost of software is not the cost of duplciation, just as the cost of hardware isn't that of the raw materials and manufacturing.
They're beautiful in a similar kind of way that an A-10 is. As an Apple user who values the fine lines of his MacBook (and iBook before it), I would be most tempted by a Thinkpad if I had to ditch Apple for some reason.
When you've got a product in a comodity market where the software (which costs about $.50 to duplicates can cost more than the hardware (which costs $200 + to duplicate), you don't have a whole lot of room in the 'make it look pretty' department.
You do realise, don't you, that software developers don't work for free at Apple (or Microsoft) and therefore the true cost of software is not the duplication cost? Oh and there's graphic designers, test hardware, etc. as well.
I imagine the reasoning is that they (the Israelis) would lose more troops that way becuse they'd have to get up close in a very hostile environment. This is a war against Hezbollah as far as they're concerned and minimising troop casualties is more important than minimising civilian casualties on the other side. Which means it's a pretty bad time to be Lebanese.
That does not mean, however, that they're deliberately targetting civilians. If they were, then there would be thousands dead. The idiots saying this is genocide clearly haven't a clue just how efficiently a military like the IDF could kill off a population if they wanted to. And they are warning people to move. Trouble is that mkaing it hard for Hezbollah to move about also makes it hard for civilians to move about and Hezbollah are actually rpeventing people from leaving, so that they can use them as shields and create more outcry against Israel.
I think that a lot of attitudes against Israel are coming from viewing the last few weeks in isolation. Hezollah is hiding among civilians and Israel is now saying 'If we have to go through civilians to kill you, then we will, because enough of our people have been killed and we don't want you to get anymore. Basically Lebanese civilans are dying because Israel is sick of Hezbollah killing Israelis.
I'm sure the number of Lebanese that die over the course of this conflcit is going to be far greater than the number of Israelis who would have died as a result of several years of Hezbollah attacks, but as far as Isrel is concerned, if it means that fewer Israelis are killed, then the number of Lebanese casualties isn't massively significant. Which is understandable. Governments and militaries seek to protect their own people, not those of other countries.
That certainly doesn't make it the morally best thing they could do, but it's not the worst either and most countries, but in the same position, would resort to similar measures to protect their people.
Incidentally, I do wish Israel used more of the efforts you suggest. Even when they do thoguh, they get criticised and if I was one of the guys who had to go in and do it, I'd be fairly glad that they're going about the current way.
I'm not saying what Israel is doing is right, but that's a terrible analogy, as are most of the oens I see ont he Internet. Canada hasn't been constantly launching rocket attacks over the border and sending over suicide bombers. Neither is the goernment failing to do anything to prevent attacks and kidnapping. The reason Israel is launching all these attacks in Lebannon is because the Lebannese government has failed ot do anything to stop Hezbollah's activities.
If Canadians were launching constant attacks on the US, with the Canadian goverment failing to do anything to stop them, you can bet there'd be troops going over the border to put an end to things.
Incidentally, this is also why compasions to the IRA are also rubbish; the Irish government and the Gardai were trying to stop them. And the Troubles weren't as bad as what the Israelis have had to go through. Or what people in Iraq and LEbannon are going through at the moment, for that matter.
I've been running OS X on a first gen white iBook for years now. Sure, you don't get all the whizz-bang fancy effects, but it's quite usable. The first gen G4 iBooks had a few logic borad problems, but the first gen G3s were soid wee beasts. All you needed to do was stick in a bit more RAM. Couldn't believe there was a 64MB option, but Low-End Mac confirms it. I started with 384MB and it worked like a charm. The bus did suck though. The next revision ripped CDs almost twice as fast with a CPU boost of only 100 MHz; it was the bus upgrade that made all the difference.
Start at stardestroyer.net for Some information on Star Trek and Star Wars. It has excellent links to a number of other useful sites and the forums have more than a view people who are quite knowledgeable about a lot of areas of sci-fi and can probably recommend good sites for other universes.
Turning the device off IS a function of the device.
I didn't say that it wasn't. What I said is that the other functions are more important as they pertain to the intended use of the device i.e. listening to music and intuition regarding their use is much more critical in day-to-day use. Turning it off is a single function and arguably the least important, especially given that it turns itself off. Denying a device is intuitive to use on the basis of its least important function not being immediately obvious is hardly fair.
People have learned to turn off the device to save battery. In fact, I'd rather shut it off then let it run for another few minutes, which are just wasting battery life.
The thing is that as long as it's asleep, music is still cached, which means that when it's woken up, it can continue playing without spinning up the hard drive I think. This means that depending on the rate at which the battery is drained while asleep, the energy required to spin up the hard drive and refill the cache, how far through the cache you are when you put it to sleep, the time you go between not using the iPod and using it again and your desire to continue where you left off, you may save some battery life by leaving it asleep. If you're going long enough that you wouldn't, then you may well bte at the end of a trip and be charging the battery anyway.
See, that's the thing. You don't/intuitively/ know that, either. So you finish using it, and you go to switch it off, like 95% of consumer electronic devices. Doesn't matter that it's designed to sleep automatically - you'd still waste time.
95% of devices with an off button perhaps. But in the absence of an off button, people may assume it doesn't need switched off e.g. most Freeview digital TV boxes her ein the UK. Besides, a lot of people just put devices like TVs and stereos into standby instead of turning them off, which is arugably a form of pausing the device, so there's precedence there:)
As for the other functions? Most of them are only "intuitive" because they're how most walkmans/discmans/audio systems have worked for the last 20+ years (ie holding the 'next' button to fast forward) - I'd still argue that they're fairly learned behaviours, they just feel intuitive because they're second nature.
Whether it's intuitive or learned behaviour, the effect is still the same - it's a very easy device to use. And arguably the behaviours it copies from other, older devices, are quite intuitive themselves. The onyl realy argument is against turning off the iPod, but that is a single, relatively unimportant function. On balance, it's very easy to use, to the extent that most people can pick it up and have a song playing within moments and then rapidly master the complexities of changing volume, pausing, changing track etc. On balance, it is an intuitive device to use.
That's the least important thing you need to learn for an iPod. In fact, they're designed to run without being manually switched off as they go to sleep after not being used for a while. Why not critique the actual using of the device, such as finding, selecting, playing, pausing, fast-forwarding trakcs, etc - the important functions that determine if it's intuitive? Would it be because these functions actually are intuitive?
Ah, right. It'll still create the folder with the xml files, but it won't copy your music into it. You can change the location of the iTunes Music folder as well. Check in Preferences:Advanced:General.
Take the Xbox: a $4 billion dollar loss. People can get up and shout "But they're number 2 in console sales", but they have lost $4 billion dollars, and it doesn't seem like they're going to do any better this time.
The 360 has been out less than a year and other consoles haven't even been released yet. It's a little speculative to make that kind of prediction now. It looks like they're going to get a bigger market share this time round, which is what they're after at the moment. They're playing the long game by building up a customer base they can make money off later. Though I imagine they hoped 'later' would come a bit earlier.
Already the 360 in Japan has been a flop (even interesting looking games like "99 Nights" hasn't helped, through perhaps "Lost Planet" and "Blue Dragon" (if I got the name right) might help),
Japan has been quite disastrous. Will be interesting to see what happens they get games out that the Japenese actually want. Things are considerbly healthier in the US and Europe though.
their Xbox lead made users irritated by claiing that "nobody cares about backwards compatibility", a stance that he had to back pedal from as fast as possible.
To be fair to Microsoft here, I don't think there was any back pedalling. The quote was taken way out of context, which they really should have anticipated, given the way people like to jump up and down on them.
Then again, Sony's trying to figure out how to shoot their foot while sticking it in their mouth at the same time, so maybe they have a chance unless the Wii is as cool as people expect it to. But the Xbox division seems intent on "dominating" the gaming industry. As a counterpoint, look at Nintendo: 3rd place (whenever you take out the handhelds, which I never understand why people ignore), but profitable - and they don't care about being "first", just in making money on every sale.
Conversely, you could say that Nontendo doesn't have a choice. Being a games company, they have to make a profit, or go out of business. Microsoft, on the other ahnd, can subsidise the games division in order to establish the foothold in the market that Nintendo and Sony already have.
I'm waiting for the little light bulb to go off in your mind that explains to you the reason why Macs have a 4% worldwide market share.
Historical reasons laregly rooted in their reufsal to license the OS. Not issues with backward compatability. Their market share was low way before that came up.
My company does have a few Macs for specific tasks, and we couldn't even upgrade to OSX at all until a few months ago - let alone any "latest version" - because one of the apps we use, Media 100i, wouldn't work properly on OSX
If you have to upgrade your hardware and apps at the same time as you upgrade your OS, that is both a huge expense and a huge disruption to any company.
We've used quite a few iMacs and Powermacs which have gone from OS 8 up to 10.4.6. Occasisonally the software does change, but the vast majority of it has run fine in Classic. There are very applications that have problems with it. The one you use may be one of them, but they brought out an OS X native version years ago.
(I never tried it in compatibility mode, but was told not to) [...] Apple does not believe in backward compatibility
So, Apple has a compatibility mode (called Classic, by the way), but doesn't believe in backward compatability? That sounds a little contradictory. And you've heard of Rosetta haven't you? It features superb compatability across a different processor architecture.
Why are you botthering to comment when you clearly haven't played Starcraft, or at least understood what the poster was talking about?
Locking down battlecruisers refers, not to selcting them, but to freezing them with a special weapon fired by a ghost. This requires individually selecting a ghost (so you don't get them all firing at one cruiser, wastefully), slecting the special weapon, then individually targetting a battlecruiser and repeating until all 6 are locked down.
In this case, you could use keyobard shortcuts for everything except the targetting, but having enough ghosts indiviually mapped as groups could be wasteful and you still have to click with the mouse to target, just like any other RTS.
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The trouble then comes with getting consensus on who is actually representing a religious framework. You have to judge beliefs on their own truthfulness and merit, rather than on the actions of people who claim to adhere to them. People are unfaithful. The apostle Paul s a good example though of the power that Christianity has to turn someone from violence and hate.
Well of course he was engaging in hyperbole; hyperbole is a rhetorical device. Obviously he wasn't doing physics in his spare time if it was his full time job. The point he was making is that there are more important things in life than physics.
Incidentally, where did I bring prayer into things and what on earth does it have to do with science? One is asking for the intervention of a supernatural God, the other involves the creation of a model that best matches our observations of the natural universe. Prayer doesn't invalidate science and science has nothing to say about the supernatural. You may as well have just said 'French trumps music every time.'
How shocking! Someone thinks that there is something more important than science! Clearly there must be a problem with them. After all, everything is inferior to science, isn't it?
Now that's possibly not how you intended to come across, but it's how it sounds. Do you really think that science is the be all and end all of life? And do you really think that the monk was writing over the only copy of that document? There were bound to have been others, but time, natural disasters and wars have put an end to them.
As one of my quantum mechanics tutors once said, 'Physics is what we do in our spare time, when there's nothing better to be doing.' Well, something very close to that. And before you decide he didn't care about science or was a nutjob, he was actually a researcher at Oxford and now has a chair at Cambridge, doing quantum computing. Great scientist, but he also had his priorities right.
Mob of Jews kills Christians. Mob of Christians get angry, seek revenge, kill Christians and burn some stuff. That's hardly a matter of being for or against learning and science. It was opposing tribes rioting against each other. Reminds me very much of Northern Ireland, where the problems are really two cultures clashing, rather than two religions.
I'm sure that members of the church did at times have in influence on the decline of the Roman Empire, something I never claimed to ignore, but as the church and state become intermeshed, that brought corruption, so it is more an illustration of the problems of church getting mixed up, rather than a proof of Christianity being anti-knowledge. i think that that the way the church got so involved with the state is a travesty and thoroughly unbiblical. Constantine made a lot of mistakes in that regard.
The church of Rome actually had very little influence on many areas of Christianity e.g. Celtic Christians and Eastern Orthodox during this time, so it's also rather unjust to tar all of Christianity with the same brush, especially given that the Protestant view is that the Roman church became increasingly corrupt during this time, requiring the Reformation. Christians involved with the Reformation had a very high of science and knowledge, seeing it as the Christian's duty to investigate God's creation, just as many monks had previously seen it as their duty to record history, providing us with a great part of the little history we have from the 'Dark Ages.' Incidentally, this view was carried on into latter centuries and well embodied by such scientists as Faraday and Maxwell, who were very passionate about science, but also staunchly evangelical Christians.
I suggest you take a look at the Wikipedia article on the Dark ages to see some of the misconceptions and biases that people have concerning the term and the time.
The dark ages were more a result of the collapse of the Roman Empire. The monks were among the few people who kept education going. The monasteries of Ireland were one of the few bastions of learning and knowledge during the Dark Ages.
Pure sixth form colleges? Or Secondary schools that go up to sixth form? It's possible that things are a bit different here in Norther Ireland, compared with the rest of the UK. Oh and there's Scotland with their strange way of doing things as well.
Actually, if you stay at school when you're 16-18, that would be counted as secondary education. If you went somewhere else and studied for a BTEC or NVQ or that kind of thing, then that would be further education I think.
Sadly I don't have the knowledge or financial skills to even hazard a guess. I imagine that the margins are pretty high (somewhere in the 50-95% region), but that revenue helps support unprofitable divisions, so the real profit they make is a fair chunk less.
This is where we need Microsoft's accountant to chip in.
And your source on this would be....?
I don't deny that. Just saying that the cost of software is not the cost of duplciation, just as the cost of hardware isn't that of the raw materials and manufacturing.
They're beautiful in a similar kind of way that an A-10 is. As an Apple user who values the fine lines of his MacBook (and iBook before it), I would be most tempted by a Thinkpad if I had to ditch Apple for some reason.
You do realise, don't you, that software developers don't work for free at Apple (or Microsoft) and therefore the true cost of software is not the duplication cost? Oh and there's graphic designers, test hardware, etc. as well.
I imagine the reasoning is that they (the Israelis) would lose more troops that way becuse they'd have to get up close in a very hostile environment. This is a war against Hezbollah as far as they're concerned and minimising troop casualties is more important than minimising civilian casualties on the other side. Which means it's a pretty bad time to be Lebanese.
That does not mean, however, that they're deliberately targetting civilians. If they were, then there would be thousands dead. The idiots saying this is genocide clearly haven't a clue just how efficiently a military like the IDF could kill off a population if they wanted to. And they are warning people to move. Trouble is that mkaing it hard for Hezbollah to move about also makes it hard for civilians to move about and Hezbollah are actually rpeventing people from leaving, so that they can use them as shields and create more outcry against Israel.
I think that a lot of attitudes against Israel are coming from viewing the last few weeks in isolation. Hezollah is hiding among civilians and Israel is now saying 'If we have to go through civilians to kill you, then we will, because enough of our people have been killed and we don't want you to get anymore. Basically Lebanese civilans are dying because Israel is sick of Hezbollah killing Israelis.
I'm sure the number of Lebanese that die over the course of this conflcit is going to be far greater than the number of Israelis who would have died as a result of several years of Hezbollah attacks, but as far as Isrel is concerned, if it means that fewer Israelis are killed, then the number of Lebanese casualties isn't massively significant. Which is understandable. Governments and militaries seek to protect their own people, not those of other countries.
That certainly doesn't make it the morally best thing they could do, but it's not the worst either and most countries, but in the same position, would resort to similar measures to protect their people.
Incidentally, I do wish Israel used more of the efforts you suggest. Even when they do thoguh, they get criticised and if I was one of the guys who had to go in and do it, I'd be fairly glad that they're going about the current way.
I'm not saying what Israel is doing is right, but that's a terrible analogy, as are most of the oens I see ont he Internet. Canada hasn't been constantly launching rocket attacks over the border and sending over suicide bombers. Neither is the goernment failing to do anything to prevent attacks and kidnapping. The reason Israel is launching all these attacks in Lebannon is because the Lebannese government has failed ot do anything to stop Hezbollah's activities.
If Canadians were launching constant attacks on the US, with the Canadian goverment failing to do anything to stop them, you can bet there'd be troops going over the border to put an end to things.
Incidentally, this is also why compasions to the IRA are also rubbish; the Irish government and the Gardai were trying to stop them. And the Troubles weren't as bad as what the Israelis have had to go through. Or what people in Iraq and LEbannon are going through at the moment, for that matter.
I've been running OS X on a first gen white iBook for years now. Sure, you don't get all the whizz-bang fancy effects, but it's quite usable. The first gen G4 iBooks had a few logic borad problems, but the first gen G3s were soid wee beasts. All you needed to do was stick in a bit more RAM. Couldn't believe there was a 64MB option, but Low-End Mac confirms it. I started with 384MB and it worked like a charm. The bus did suck though. The next revision ripped CDs almost twice as fast with a CPU boost of only 100 MHz; it was the bus upgrade that made all the difference.
Start at stardestroyer.net for Some information on Star Trek and Star Wars. It has excellent links to a number of other useful sites and the forums have more than a view people who are quite knowledgeable about a lot of areas of sci-fi and can probably recommend good sites for other universes.
I didn't say that it wasn't. What I said is that the other functions are more important as they pertain to the intended use of the device i.e. listening to music and intuition regarding their use is much more critical in day-to-day use. Turning it off is a single function and arguably the least important, especially given that it turns itself off. Denying a device is intuitive to use on the basis of its least important function not being immediately obvious is hardly fair.
The thing is that as long as it's asleep, music is still cached, which means that when it's woken up, it can continue playing without spinning up the hard drive I think. This means that depending on the rate at which the battery is drained while asleep, the energy required to spin up the hard drive and refill the cache, how far through the cache you are when you put it to sleep, the time you go between not using the iPod and using it again and your desire to continue where you left off, you may save some battery life by leaving it asleep. If you're going long enough that you wouldn't, then you may well bte at the end of a trip and be charging the battery anyway.
95% of devices with an off button perhaps. But in the absence of an off button, people may assume it doesn't need switched off e.g. most Freeview digital TV boxes her ein the UK. Besides, a lot of people just put devices like TVs and stereos into standby instead of turning them off, which is arugably a form of pausing the device, so there's precedence there :)
Whether it's intuitive or learned behaviour, the effect is still the same - it's a very easy device to use. And arguably the behaviours it copies from other, older devices, are quite intuitive themselves. The onyl realy argument is against turning off the iPod, but that is a single, relatively unimportant function. On balance, it's very easy to use, to the extent that most people can pick it up and have a song playing within moments and then rapidly master the complexities of changing volume, pausing, changing track etc. On balance, it is an intuitive device to use.
That's the least important thing you need to learn for an iPod. In fact, they're designed to run without being manually switched off as they go to sleep after not being used for a while. Why not critique the actual using of the device, such as finding, selecting, playing, pausing, fast-forwarding trakcs, etc - the important functions that determine if it's intuitive? Would it be because these functions actually are intuitive?
Ah, right. It'll still create the folder with the xml files, but it won't copy your music into it. You can change the location of the iTunes Music folder as well. Check in Preferences:Advanced:General.
There's an option in the preferences to leave music where it is, rather than moving it into the iTunes structure.
The 360 has been out less than a year and other consoles haven't even been released yet. It's a little speculative to make that kind of prediction now. It looks like they're going to get a bigger market share this time round, which is what they're after at the moment. They're playing the long game by building up a customer base they can make money off later. Though I imagine they hoped 'later' would come a bit earlier.
Japan has been quite disastrous. Will be interesting to see what happens they get games out that the Japenese actually want. Things are considerbly healthier in the US and Europe though.
To be fair to Microsoft here, I don't think there was any back pedalling. The quote was taken way out of context, which they really should have anticipated, given the way people like to jump up and down on them.
Conversely, you could say that Nontendo doesn't have a choice. Being a games company, they have to make a profit, or go out of business. Microsoft, on the other ahnd, can subsidise the games division in order to establish the foothold in the market that Nintendo and Sony already have.
Historical reasons laregly rooted in their reufsal to license the OS. Not issues with backward compatability. Their market share was low way before that came up.
Didn't they release a new version almost 4 years ago that took advantage of the features of Mac OS X?
We've used quite a few iMacs and Powermacs which have gone from OS 8 up to 10.4.6. Occasisonally the software does change, but the vast majority of it has run fine in Classic. There are very applications that have problems with it. The one you use may be one of them, but they brought out an OS X native version years ago.
So, Apple has a compatibility mode (called Classic, by the way), but doesn't believe in backward compatability? That sounds a little contradictory. And you've heard of Rosetta haven't you? It features superb compatability across a different processor architecture.
Why are you botthering to comment when you clearly haven't played Starcraft, or at least understood what the poster was talking about?
Locking down battlecruisers refers, not to selcting them, but to freezing them with a special weapon fired by a ghost. This requires individually selecting a ghost (so you don't get them all firing at one cruiser, wastefully), slecting the special weapon, then individually targetting a battlecruiser and repeating until all 6 are locked down.
In this case, you could use keyobard shortcuts for everything except the targetting, but having enough ghosts indiviually mapped as groups could be wasteful and you still have to click with the mouse to target, just like any other RTS.
To be slightly pedantic, it would be more like offering Windows 95 for free, which is only one generation behind 98.