Times change, but human nature doesn't and neither does God. The justification for Christian beliefs is still ther ein the Bible, unchanged from when they were given and without need to be changed.
No sex before marriage is a relational issue, not one of pregnancy or disease. It's a matter of sex establishing a bond that should only exist between a married couple.
Wrong. A religion is a group of people who have a common belief. It's not some holy book with some "truth" in it. This is a common fallacy held by religious people.
Christianity is a religion composed of a billion people worldwide.
Those billion people have quite a few different beliefs, many of them contradicting each other. Which one is truly Christianity? Given that the Bible is the source of Christian belief (or rather, God's word revealed there, but I'm guessing you don't believe it's God's word, so we'll stick with 'the Bible' for now).
This "revealed religion" stuff is just a belief held by Christians, but to an outside observer such as myself, it's all crap, so as far as I'm concerned, Christianity is the sum of the beliefs held by its believers.
Christianity is the sum of the beliefs held by its believers -> Its believers believe that the source of what they believe is the Bible -> They believe that Christianity is what God has revealed in the Bible -> Christianity is what God has revealed in the Bible.
The problem with this idea of what a god has revealed in the Bible is that the Bible can be interpreted in an infinite number of ways.
The problem with what you say is that can be interpreted in an infinite number if ways. Thing is that most of those interpretations are wrong. How do we work out which one is right? Rules of the language, definition of words, context, etc. Same with the Bible. Sure, people can claim to interpret it lots of different ways, but it doesn't mean they're right. Look up the words 'exegesis' and 'hermeneutics'
Many Christians have interpreted the Bible to say that the earth is 6000 years old. Who the hell are you to tell them they're wrong?
Didn't you just call me wrong for several things? See the previous paragraph.
Some Christians have interpreted it to say the earth is flat, though this is no longer a popular view.
That would be because the Bible doesn't say it.
Again, you're playing god now
By saying the Bible is the source of Christian belief rather than any individual or group of individuals?
by saying their beliefs are wrong simply because they interpreted some religious texts differently than you
See above. There is such a thing as correct interpretation and incorrect interpretation. Using the rules of grammar, definitions of words, context, comparison with other bits of the Bible, etc. it's quite possible to work out which interpretation is right. That's one of the things they train people to do at seminaries, Bible colleges, on theology degrees, etc.
I could call myself a Christian tomorrow, read the Bible, and proclaim on my website that according to my interpretation that God is a bat, and that all who disagree with me are not true Christians or have incorrect beliefs. In reality, since there would then be 1 billion Christians who think I'm a nut, and only 1 person (me) who believes God is a bat, it would be stupid to say that those 1 billion people are all incorrect. This is basically what you're claiming.
I'm claiming it would be stupid to say those people are incorrect for calling you a nut? I'm not sure you want to put that question in front of me.
Seriously though, you're not suggesting that truth is democratic are you? If a billion people read your post and interpret it is saying that you intend to send me a million dollars, would you be a nut for disagreeing with them? Truth is not consensual, it is absolute. That means that a lot of people calling themselves Christians will hold beliefs that are contrary to Christianity. Not necessarily to the extent that they don't have a saving faith
This only makes sense if you have small numbers of adherents. With large numbers of adherents, you have to accept that any claims held by a sufficient percentage of the total number adherents is representative of that religion.
Not at all. you can say that that they are representative of a large number of people who claim to follow a religion, but that's it.
So, for instance, if 75% of all Christians believe that the earth is 6000 years old, then I believe that it would be valid to say that "Christians believe that the earth is 6000 years old." Similarly, if 40% of Christians believed this, I would also believe that same claim to be valid, though it would certainly be more accurate to preface the statement with "Many". However, if only 2% of Christians believed in a young earth, then it would certainly be rather fallacious to make such a claim.
There's a difference between making claims about what many Christians believe and making claims about what Christianity says. Christianity is not belief by consensus. It is a revealed religion and what constitutes it is therefore dependent on what God has reveal in the Bible.
You don't need to have unanimous agreement by a group of people to make statements generalizing that group.
I never made claims about that. I was saying that the beliefs that constitute a religion can differ from the beliefs and actions of those who claim to follow the religion. Christians get things wrong. But the problem is with them getting their beliefs wrong, rather than with Christianity being wrong.
The belief of the adherent may not be the same as the belief they claim to subscribe to, which is where your chain of logic falls down. Adherent_1 believes X_1, while Adherent_2 believes X_2. Both claim to adhere to religion_alpha but X_1 and X_2 are mutually exclusive. One of them, at most, can be correctly representing religion_alpha.
Reading the rest of my post it should be obvious that that's a typo and I meant 'did have,' hence me never quoting them as new features in the T5.
Re:Source of creation, or evolution?
on
The Los Alamos Bug
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· Score: 2, Interesting
You're arguing the wrong point
Actually, you are. I was disagreeing with the compairson between needing to show how non-organic chemicals turned into life with arguments about the origin of God. I was showing that in order to say that the first occured requires you to find a scientific process whereby it is liekly to occur. If you can't, then there is no reason to support the theory. God, on the other hand, does not require an origin or a scientific explanation of his existence.
You say "God is easier to believe in than evolution because evolution is 'rather lacking in scientific support and seems phenomenally unlikely to have happened'."
Where did I say that?
The grandparent post was arguing that "Adding God to the equation doesn't get us any closer to an answer because we still don't know what God is or where it came from."
If the grandparent was saying that then he's misinformed as God has already said who he is and that he didn't come from anywhere, if the Biblical account is true.
You are saying that evolution isn't solved yet, so life must be magic.
No, I'm saying that the theory that non-rganic chemicals could change via a scientific process into life is thus far lacking in evidence. There is no reason for me, as a scientist, to trust it.
In fact, you just proved the grandparent's point: your point doesn't get us any closer to understanding, preserving or improving life.
I wasn't trying to help us understand, preserve or improve life. I simply pointing out a flaw in a comaprison that GP made.
The real problem with this so-called debate is that the purpose of science and religion should never be at odds.
|I'm an evangelical with a degree in Physics so I knida agree on that:^)
Science provides predictive models for mechanisms. Religion puts motivation into the system. How do particles stick together? The four fundamental forces. Why? Because that's how the universe works. In other words, God (or whatever your favorite diety is) setup the world. We can't understand God, but we can build models of the universe we were given.
I half agree with you there. Science doesn't tell us how the universe works. It merely gives us a description of how it appears to work, based on observations. The underlying truth of how it works could be completely different, but as long as the model gives us results that match our observations, we can't really tell the difference and we're happy. I guess we're getting into the realms of philosophy of science here. In fact I'm coming round to the view that all science degrees should have a compulosry philosophy of science component in the first year.
Anyway, science is handy for making prediciotns about the future and figuring out the likely reason why something happened in the past. Trouble is that it's possible fore God to go and do something miraculous and then for our observations to not be able to tell the difference between that and something ordinary happening. Hypothetically, if God created the world in 6 dyas in a per-aged satate, so that it looked like it was 13.7 billion years old, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference between that and a universe that really was created 13.7 billion years old. As long as the univer works as if it was 13.7 billion years old, then we can build our scientific models on the assumption that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. It might only be a few thousand years old in reality, but it makes no difference to our models. Too many people (including many scientists) don't seem to get this, which is quite sad because it ends up with a lot of scientists wasting their time warring with religion and a lot of religious people bashing science in the name of God.
You're using an equation which assumes that intellgient life will develop on fraction f_i of planets that can support life, when we only have one observed planet with intelligent life and no actual method of establishing f_i other than a guess i order to prove that life evoled on this one planet. You do see the massive, massive problems in the logic of that don't you?
There is a problem with your logic. The creationist assumption is that God has always existed and then created the universe using supernatural powers. The evolutionist assumption is that non-biological matter changed via scientific processes to become biological. The first is not scientificly falsifiable/verifable (which isn't to say that it is wrong, just that it isn't in the domain of science, but coudl, if true, overrule scientific claims about how the universe started, though not about its progression). The second, however, is still rather lacking in scientific support and seems phenomenally unlikely to have happened.
Re:Source of creation, or evolution?
on
The Los Alamos Bug
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Has it occurred to you that the problem lies with some practishoners of said religions, rather than the religions themselves?
I don't recall really wanting to play video files or MP3's on my Zire 71, or view color photos. Or open PDF's. Or transfer files / connect to my phone via bluetooth.
The guy I was replying to was objecting to a lack of new features, not a presence of features you didn't want. If you don't want the features, don't buy the product.
Video Files: No Hard Drive. What, I'm gonna watch a feature-length movie re-encoded at 256x128px? No? Maybe I can squeeze one 30-minute episode of a TV show on my SD Card, but it takes longer to re-encode the show than it does to watch.
I didn't say it was ideal, but it's at least an option, unlike on the IIIx the original poster was saying that the T5 hadn't improved upon. I quite like having a few episodes of a comedy available ot watch on the flight from Belfast to London. 320x240 is just fine for that.
Music Files: No Hard Drive. Again, what? 3 albums available to listen to? 3 hours of battery life, if I'm lucky, after which I can't access business apps? No thanks.
Idin't say it was perfect, but it is another feature that the IIIx doesn't have, which is the point I was making. The amount of music is only limited by the number and capacity of cards you have. It's potentially useful to have a couple of albums on. The battery life does, however, suck and certainly needs work. Given how many hours you can get out of a flash mp3 player, you'd think they'd be able to do better than the single-digit number of hours.
Color Photos: Why? If I need to show off photos, my website rocks for that.
Internet access isn't available in every circumstance.
For casual show-off, my camera has as big a screen and is faster to display photos.
My PDA has a significantly bigger screen than my camer and I carry it more than I carry my camera. It also makes a better display than my phone for those rare occassions when I use it to take a picture.
If you feel the need to (repeatedly) pop out a spontaneous slideshow for strangers at work on your PDA, I think that's kinda strange.
Who are you actually addressing with that comment because I certianly never gave the impression that that's what I use it for. I occassionally show friends or fmaily photos that I can carry on it. I also stick on colour maps and anything else that is useful for navigation. Occassionally I'll take a photo of a rota or instructions or some other document and keep it on my PDA to view until I can properly transcribe it. It's a useful function and one that the IIIx didn't have, which was my point.
Otherwise, it's an entirely redundant function. Same with the built-in camera.
Who mentioned a built-in camera? I certainly didn't.
PDF's: Slow as Molasses. Slower. I think the major issue is the lack of an FPU on most mobiles (My SE P910 is just as guilty). People have written dedicated MP3 and video decoding that works without it, but it's a serious problem -- and not just for PDF's. Almost all your multimedia content suffers from a combination of the lack of an FPU and deficiencies in algorithms used to circumvent the need for one.
Slow, yes, but still way more functional than the IIIx whcih couldn't handle PDFs at all, unless I'm very much mistaken. Certianly couldn't handle colour ones. It kind of sucks that my T3 won't handle them raw and needs to convert them first, but it's still useful to be able to carry them round.
Connect via Bluetooth: Your phone? Since the phone & PDA sync to the same PC, I assume this is to get high-priced internet access from your PDA? Wireless carriers in the US have done everything in their power, including (for some) breaking the law and infringing on their customers' fair use rights, to prevent
I always find it so very amusing that for its time Palm IIIx was awesome -- with only 8MBs (eight!) it could do everything that my T5 can, sans browse the web (and I could do even that in an off-line mode had I *really* wanted to). But T5 has much more capable CPU (Dragonball 33MHz vs. XScale 416MHz), much more memory, much bigger screen -- why can't I get as much out of it?! And don't even get me started on reliability of IIIx vs. T5.
I don't recall being able to play video files or mp3s on a IIIx. Or view colour photos. Or open pdfs. Or transfer files/connect to my phone via bluetooth. There's plenty that my T3 can do that a IIIx can't and I'm sure a T5 is even more capable.
That would be a wierd way of stating "Excellent quality right now at a price barely different, in practice, especially when talking about one-off prints"
You said yourself that it was cheaper to get a third party to print. Or did I misunderstand you when you accused people who sue third parties of being 'cheap'? You were also talking about getting large numbers of photos printed. Obviosuly for one-ffs there is no way to match the convenience of home printing, but for the vast majority of situations (not as much as 99.9%, the absurd quantity you gave as the percentage of people unable to tell the difference in quality) it is worth waiting a short period of time for cheaper, better photos.
Printing on-line is very cheap and overnight delivery is generally free. Or at least it is here in the UK. That certainly invalidates your objections about time and driving expense. Admittedly, this does require a broadband connection, but if you're looking to print a large number of digital photos, it's not terribly unlikely you have one. For people on dialup, your arugemnts have some merit. But for broadband users, they are completely irrelevant.
Incidentally, don't you find that whole business of having to buy paper, ink, a new printer from time to time, etc. a bit inconvenient?
photobox.co.uk is better quality and much cheaper than iPhoto, especially if you order several hundred photos in one go. Excellent delivery too; next day if you order before 4pm. A couple of years ago I placed an order, but it got helf up in a postal strike. Unsure about whether it would arrive or not, I gave them a ring after a week and they dispatched a new set out for free. It arrived swiftly and a few dyas later the wayward set also arrived. I was happy and they got a big chunk of customer loyalty.
Not everything is about money. If you rely upon print/photo shops to print every single photo you have, you're either cheap, or a snob with eyesight far beyond the norm. For the rest of us, inkjets do what we want. Give me the tyranny of slightly overpriced ink cartridges over the tyranny of relying upon third parties to print my photos any day.
If by 'what we want' you mean worse quality at greater expense. Somehow you've managed to make it sound like people who buy a better quality product for less money are idiots. Congratulations. I'll be a snob (who gets a cheaper product) I tihnk. Or maybe I'll be cheap and go with the better product. I haven't quite decided which way of putting it illustrates the tyranny of my situation better.
The cruical problem with your reasoning is that Spec B does not cost the same as spec A. Spec B isn't even for sale. If it was, your criticism would be valid. But then again, if B was for sale, then people just wouldn't buy A and there wouldn't be any need for criticism then either.
If I wanted a Mini of spec 'A', then I would be content with receiving one.
If I wanted a Mini of spec 'B', then I would be waiting until the line si refreshed. The fact that some orders for an 'A' might prematurely become 'B's wouldn't change what I need and how long I'm willing to wait. It just means that I might get an unexpected bonus.
If you needed a Mini with spec 'A' right now, you can get one right now. If you wanted one of spec 'B', you would be waiting for one anyway. You are not losing out as a consequence of Apple has done. You can only possibly gain from it.
Look at iMacs. They're the same price now that they were a few months ago and with the same spec. IS someone who buys an iMac now being ripped off? If you think they are, then you're accusing every company invovled in selling a product that gets upgraded at any point in its lifetime of ripping its customers off.
If you don't think they are, then how is the basic Mac Mini a rip-off? The line hasn't been refreshed. Apple are clearing their inventory, to the benefit of some consumers.
If you were willing to spend 'X' dollars for a machine capable of doing 'A', you can still do that today, so Apple isn't preventing you doing something you would have been wiling to do. The ability of the Mini has not degraded overnight. If you weren't willing to spend 'X' dollars on the Mini before, then there's nothing making you do it now and again, you're not being ripped off.
Incidentally, the price of spec 'A' has not been inflated. It's the same as it was before, the same as what it has been, so your accusation against Apple is way off base.
Apple certainly is within its rights to do this. In fact other companies have been doing this sort of things since before computer were even invented. So really this is a non-story and not a big deal. But you can't honestly be surprised at the reaction that some people are having.
Anyone would tihnk from this that Apple was selling some systems with a lower spec than edvertised, rather than higher.
So you would have considered spending 'X' dollars on a Mac mini with spec 'A' but you wouldn't consider spending 'X' dollars on a Mac Mini guaranteed to have at least spec 'A', but might have spec 'B' which is better than 'A'?
You're not getting rippped off under this system. You're being given a chance of a slighter better deal. What does it matter how your purchase comapres to anyone else if you would have been happy with the spec 'A' model in the first place?
Read my reply to another poster. There's bucketloads of evidene for natural selection taking, with the case you descirbed being a very good example. It's the addition of genetic material part of the theory that is on rather more shaky ground.
IIRC, Darwin's original theories were wildly incorrect and were greatly modified before a large proporition of the scientific community would accept them. Even now, the theory of natural selection is certainly very well supported by evidence and you'd find few people seriously doubting it, but the idea that genetic material can be added to a species, rather than lost, is still to be very much found wanting.
Richard Dawkins is often held up as a great supporter of evolution, but I'd reccommemd that people check out some of the books AListair McGrath has written is response. He's holder of a doctorate in molecular biology and also the principle of Wycliffe college, a fiarly middle-of-the-road theology college belonging to Oxford University.
Slashdot Mirror
Times change, but human nature doesn't and neither does God. The justification for Christian beliefs is still ther ein the Bible, unchanged from when they were given and without need to be changed.
Err, no. It's the reason given in the Bible.
No sex before marriage is a relational issue, not one of pregnancy or disease. It's a matter of sex establishing a bond that should only exist between a married couple.
Those billion people have quite a few different beliefs, many of them contradicting each other. Which one is truly Christianity? Given that the Bible is the source of Christian belief (or rather, God's word revealed there, but I'm guessing you don't believe it's God's word, so we'll stick with 'the Bible' for now).
Christianity is the sum of the beliefs held by its believers -> Its believers believe that the source of what they believe is the Bible -> They believe that Christianity is what God has revealed in the Bible -> Christianity is what God has revealed in the Bible.
The problem with what you say is that can be interpreted in an infinite number if ways. Thing is that most of those interpretations are wrong. How do we work out which one is right? Rules of the language, definition of words, context, etc. Same with the Bible. Sure, people can claim to interpret it lots of different ways, but it doesn't mean they're right. Look up the words 'exegesis' and 'hermeneutics'
Didn't you just call me wrong for several things? See the previous paragraph.
That would be because the Bible doesn't say it.
By saying the Bible is the source of Christian belief rather than any individual or group of individuals?
See above. There is such a thing as correct interpretation and incorrect interpretation. Using the rules of grammar, definitions of words, context, comparison with other bits of the Bible, etc. it's quite possible to work out which interpretation is right. That's one of the things they train people to do at seminaries, Bible colleges, on theology degrees, etc.
I'm claiming it would be stupid to say those people are incorrect for calling you a nut? I'm not sure you want to put that question in front of me.
Seriously though, you're not suggesting that truth is democratic are you? If a billion people read your post and interpret it is saying that you intend to send me a million dollars, would you be a nut for disagreeing with them? Truth is not consensual, it is absolute. That means that a lot of people calling themselves Christians will hold beliefs that are contrary to Christianity. Not necessarily to the extent that they don't have a saving faith
Not at all. you can say that that they are representative of a large number of people who claim to follow a religion, but that's it.
There's a difference between making claims about what many Christians believe and making claims about what Christianity says. Christianity is not belief by consensus. It is a revealed religion and what constitutes it is therefore dependent on what God has reveal in the Bible.
I never made claims about that. I was saying that the beliefs that constitute a religion can differ from the beliefs and actions of those who claim to follow the religion. Christians get things wrong. But the problem is with them getting their beliefs wrong, rather than with Christianity being wrong.
The belief of the adherent may not be the same as the belief they claim to subscribe to, which is where your chain of logic falls down. Adherent_1 believes X_1, while Adherent_2 believes X_2. Both claim to adhere to religion_alpha but X_1 and X_2 are mutually exclusive. One of them, at most, can be correctly representing religion_alpha.
Reading the rest of my post it should be obvious that that's a typo and I meant 'did have,' hence me never quoting them as new features in the T5.
Actually, you are. I was disagreeing with the compairson between needing to show how non-organic chemicals turned into life with arguments about the origin of God. I was showing that in order to say that the first occured requires you to find a scientific process whereby it is liekly to occur. If you can't, then there is no reason to support the theory. God, on the other hand, does not require an origin or a scientific explanation of his existence.
Where did I say that?
If the grandparent was saying that then he's misinformed as God has already said who he is and that he didn't come from anywhere, if the Biblical account is true.
No, I'm saying that the theory that non-rganic chemicals could change via a scientific process into life is thus far lacking in evidence. There is no reason for me, as a scientist, to trust it.
I wasn't trying to help us understand, preserve or improve life. I simply pointing out a flaw in a comaprison that GP made.
|I'm an evangelical with a degree in Physics so I knida agree on that :^)
I half agree with you there. Science doesn't tell us how the universe works. It merely gives us a description of how it appears to work, based on observations. The underlying truth of how it works could be completely different, but as long as the model gives us results that match our observations, we can't really tell the difference and we're happy. I guess we're getting into the realms of philosophy of science here. In fact I'm coming round to the view that all science degrees should have a compulosry philosophy of science component in the first year.
Anyway, science is handy for making prediciotns about the future and figuring out the likely reason why something happened in the past. Trouble is that it's possible fore God to go and do something miraculous and then for our observations to not be able to tell the difference between that and something ordinary happening. Hypothetically, if God created the world in 6 dyas in a per-aged satate, so that it looked like it was 13.7 billion years old, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference between that and a universe that really was created 13.7 billion years old. As long as the univer works as if it was 13.7 billion years old, then we can build our scientific models on the assumption that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. It might only be a few thousand years old in reality, but it makes no difference to our models. Too many people (including many scientists) don't seem to get this, which is quite sad because it ends up with a lot of scientists wasting their time warring with religion and a lot of religious people bashing science in the name of God.
When the practices of some adherents conflict with the beliefs, then the adherents are at fault, not the belief system.
You're using an equation which assumes that intellgient life will develop on fraction f_i of planets that can support life, when we only have one observed planet with intelligent life and no actual method of establishing f_i other than a guess i order to prove that life evoled on this one planet. You do see the massive, massive problems in the logic of that don't you?
There is a problem with your logic. The creationist assumption is that God has always existed and then created the universe using supernatural powers. The evolutionist assumption is that non-biological matter changed via scientific processes to become biological. The first is not scientificly falsifiable/verifable (which isn't to say that it is wrong, just that it isn't in the domain of science, but coudl, if true, overrule scientific claims about how the universe started, though not about its progression). The second, however, is still rather lacking in scientific support and seems phenomenally unlikely to have happened.
Has it occurred to you that the problem lies with some practishoners of said religions, rather than the religions themselves?
Ah, I stand corrected. Must have been a horrendous expereince on that screen. No colour and way too small. I shudder to think how it must have coped.
The guy I was replying to was objecting to a lack of new features, not a presence of features you didn't want. If you don't want the features, don't buy the product.
I didn't say it was ideal, but it's at least an option, unlike on the IIIx the original poster was saying that the T5 hadn't improved upon. I quite like having a few episodes of a comedy available ot watch on the flight from Belfast to London. 320x240 is just fine for that.
Idin't say it was perfect, but it is another feature that the IIIx doesn't have, which is the point I was making. The amount of music is only limited by the number and capacity of cards you have. It's potentially useful to have a couple of albums on. The battery life does, however, suck and certainly needs work. Given how many hours you can get out of a flash mp3 player, you'd think they'd be able to do better than the single-digit number of hours.
Internet access isn't available in every circumstance.
For casual show-off, my camera has as big a screen and is faster to display photos.
My PDA has a significantly bigger screen than my camer and I carry it more than I carry my camera. It also makes a better display than my phone for those rare occassions when I use it to take a picture.
Who are you actually addressing with that comment because I certianly never gave the impression that that's what I use it for. I occassionally show friends or fmaily photos that I can carry on it. I also stick on colour maps and anything else that is useful for navigation. Occassionally I'll take a photo of a rota or instructions or some other document and keep it on my PDA to view until I can properly transcribe it. It's a useful function and one that the IIIx didn't have, which was my point.
Who mentioned a built-in camera? I certainly didn't.
Slow, yes, but still way more functional than the IIIx whcih couldn't handle PDFs at all, unless I'm very much mistaken. Certianly couldn't handle colour ones. It kind of sucks that my T3 won't handle them raw and needs to convert them first, but it's still useful to be able to carry them round.
I don't recall being able to play video files or mp3s on a IIIx. Or view colour photos. Or open pdfs. Or transfer files/connect to my phone via bluetooth. There's plenty that my T3 can do that a IIIx can't and I'm sure a T5 is even more capable.
You said yourself that it was cheaper to get a third party to print. Or did I misunderstand you when you accused people who sue third parties of being 'cheap'? You were also talking about getting large numbers of photos printed. Obviosuly for one-ffs there is no way to match the convenience of home printing, but for the vast majority of situations (not as much as 99.9%, the absurd quantity you gave as the percentage of people unable to tell the difference in quality) it is worth waiting a short period of time for cheaper, better photos.
Printing on-line is very cheap and overnight delivery is generally free. Or at least it is here in the UK. That certainly invalidates your objections about time and driving expense. Admittedly, this does require a broadband connection, but if you're looking to print a large number of digital photos, it's not terribly unlikely you have one. For people on dialup, your arugemnts have some merit. But for broadband users, they are completely irrelevant.
Incidentally, don't you find that whole business of having to buy paper, ink, a new printer from time to time, etc. a bit inconvenient?
photobox.co.uk is better quality and much cheaper than iPhoto, especially if you order several hundred photos in one go. Excellent delivery too; next day if you order before 4pm. A couple of years ago I placed an order, but it got helf up in a postal strike. Unsure about whether it would arrive or not, I gave them a ring after a week and they dispatched a new set out for free. It arrived swiftly and a few dyas later the wayward set also arrived. I was happy and they got a big chunk of customer loyalty.
If by 'what we want' you mean worse quality at greater expense. Somehow you've managed to make it sound like people who buy a better quality product for less money are idiots. Congratulations. I'll be a snob (who gets a cheaper product) I tihnk. Or maybe I'll be cheap and go with the better product. I haven't quite decided which way of putting it illustrates the tyranny of my situation better.
The cruical problem with your reasoning is that Spec B does not cost the same as spec A. Spec B isn't even for sale. If it was, your criticism would be valid. But then again, if B was for sale, then people just wouldn't buy A and there wouldn't be any need for criticism then either.
If I wanted a Mini of spec 'A', then I would be content with receiving one.
If I wanted a Mini of spec 'B', then I would be waiting until the line si refreshed. The fact that some orders for an 'A' might prematurely become 'B's wouldn't change what I need and how long I'm willing to wait. It just means that I might get an unexpected bonus.
If you needed a Mini with spec 'A' right now, you can get one right now. If you wanted one of spec 'B', you would be waiting for one anyway. You are not losing out as a consequence of Apple has done. You can only possibly gain from it.
Look at iMacs. They're the same price now that they were a few months ago and with the same spec. IS someone who buys an iMac now being ripped off? If you think they are, then you're accusing every company invovled in selling a product that gets upgraded at any point in its lifetime of ripping its customers off.
If you don't think they are, then how is the basic Mac Mini a rip-off? The line hasn't been refreshed. Apple are clearing their inventory, to the benefit of some consumers.
If you were willing to spend 'X' dollars for a machine capable of doing 'A', you can still do that today, so Apple isn't preventing you doing something you would have been wiling to do. The ability of the Mini has not degraded overnight. If you weren't willing to spend 'X' dollars on the Mini before, then there's nothing making you do it now and again, you're not being ripped off.
Incidentally, the price of spec 'A' has not been inflated. It's the same as it was before, the same as what it has been, so your accusation against Apple is way off base.
Anyone would tihnk from this that Apple was selling some systems with a lower spec than edvertised, rather than higher.
So you would have considered spending 'X' dollars on a Mac mini with spec 'A' but you wouldn't consider spending 'X' dollars on a Mac Mini guaranteed to have at least spec 'A', but might have spec 'B' which is better than 'A'?
You're not getting rippped off under this system. You're being given a chance of a slighter better deal. What does it matter how your purchase comapres to anyone else if you would have been happy with the spec 'A' model in the first place?
Read my reply to another poster. There's bucketloads of evidene for natural selection taking, with the case you descirbed being a very good example. It's the addition of genetic material part of the theory that is on rather more shaky ground.
IIRC, Darwin's original theories were wildly incorrect and were greatly modified before a large proporition of the scientific community would accept them. Even now, the theory of natural selection is certainly very well supported by evidence and you'd find few people seriously doubting it, but the idea that genetic material can be added to a species, rather than lost, is still to be very much found wanting.
Richard Dawkins is often held up as a great supporter of evolution, but I'd reccommemd that people check out some of the books AListair McGrath has written is response. He's holder of a doctorate in molecular biology and also the principle of Wycliffe college, a fiarly middle-of-the-road theology college belonging to Oxford University.