I firmly believe that the internet will do away with peer-reviewed academic journals...using wiki like technologies will allow the efficient review and commenting of any academic work.
It would stand to think that the academic journal would become more important as people would use the wikis as the technology to edit the journal. The journals could still stand as authority being checked by the members of the field. The 'guarentee' of authority is sometimes very useful and important in which to ascertain knowledge. Not everyone can comment with equal knowledge on a given subject.
I presage that academic journals, if they leverage the right technology, will become more important and that encyclopedias will fall to dust.
Why do you need a Mac in order to help them? Just take the time to learn about the system, I do the same thing for Windows. I never had a Windows computer, but I know enough to make it work and help to solve problems. Google is your friend.
The phrase 'legislated morality' doesn't mean you can't legislate against a immoral act, rather it means you cannot enforce one group's moral objections over the rest of the populace and expect sucess especially against technological or cultural problems.
Furthermore, you post to Slashdot, you have a Slashdot account and a Slashdot 'nick, therefore you are a Slashdotter! Therefore, you cannot say that all Slashdotters think the same thing.
Lastly, there is a very refined difference between you buying a CD, ripping it, and remixing the contents and a company taking a movie you've purchased and remixing it for profit. I disagree with the court's decission because I believe in remix culture and I would defend your right to watch a movie cut and edited for your viewing pleasure, even if I think that watching say Braveheart without the bloodshed or Basic Instinct without the sex is missing much of the movie's substance. But, to each his own.
Your analogy is made to be confusing and your implication about the ACLU is not only distracting, but wrongheaded. You yammer on about some psuedo-Libertarian ideology, but at the same time believe that large-scale profiling of nearly one billion people is a good idea. Not only has this program created thousands of false positives, but while do so has failed to make us safer. Yes, failed, not only do you have the potential to further marginalize people and therefore driving them towards insane and yet seductive people, but you make so much work for the various agencies using this profiling that the likelihood of this ever working becomes a statistical blip.
As for your analogy, if profiling were to assume that every person with the word 'city' in their Slashdot 'nick should be watched, or that every person who opposes discrimination laws should have their Western Union money frozen, than I can't help but think you'd be upset. I think if you were picked out of a line every time you went to fly based on your 'profile' and then searched, questioned, all the while your accounts were frozen or closed you'd think differently.
Lastly, the free market is great, but it needs to have rules. It's like playing poker, everyone should be playing the same game.
Oh my god. You're right, I can't believe no one has ever pointed out that you can buy a PC with good specs and run Linux on it. I'm never going to buy a Mac again now that you've pointed out the error in my ways. Thank god for you sir, thank god for your astute observation.
Maybe it's possible that software matters more than hardware.
But should Apple be responsible for what the CD companies are doing with DRM? Is it Apple's responsibility to open up their format when others can remain closed? This is a potentially serious problem, but Apple has become the whipping boy for the problems with DRM and proprietary formats, Sony, Microsoft and others also engage in similar schemes and any attempt to fix the problem has to keep that in mind.
The problem is not Apple, the iTMS/iPod-lock in is merely a symptom.
For the same reason we let Pakistan, India, and Israel have them. Remember the Bush administration just made a deal with the Indians regarding their nuclear weapons program and Pakistani scientists are the reason that both North Korea and Iran have the technology and the knowledge to start working on their own nuclear programs.
Historically, the advantage wasn't framerates, but the WYSIWYG effect. For years, PCs would display one thing and print another, often several picas off from the image on the screen which caused huge amounts of heartache for graphic designers. This was eventually fixed, but for a very long time Macs were better for graphic designers.
And games don't really drive the large-scale PC market, businesses do. Games drive the video card and chip industry forward, but sales and therefore the installed base has always been tied to how many IBM-compatibles one could sell, and Apple was never very good at that.
A Mac is no more intuitive to someone who's never used one than Windows is.
I disagree, both require acceptance of a particular paradigm (windows, use of the mouse, double-click) but the Mac can be leveled up and down depending on experience, Windows just makes all these problems worse. I've seen it too many times. But, that's just a quibble really
A) They want to run Software Package X (and not necessarily because their job does)
B) They don't want to pay the Apple Tax amounting to a 50-100% increase in price/pc. (Which could explain why fewer business use Apple, leading to A.)
You've managed to pour the last twenty years of computing history into two rules that aren't even correct. First you ignore the deal that Gates made with IBM which installed hundreds of thousands of IBM systems with Windows 3.1, and which created a ubiquity so powerful that no one else has been able to dent it. Second, you insist on the 'Apple Tax' which while true didn't really affect businesses as much as the first reason, and is futhermore, wildly overstated. The problem is simply inertia, Windows has become such a major part of the computing industry that users have apolexy dealing with something else. This, in my opinion, has been a bad thing.
Comments like this are just bizarre. Last night I saw a Chevy commercial which proclaimed their trucks better than Ford's. Now, if I had a Ford truck should I be offended by Chevy's 'smugness.' Should I hope that Chevy trucks fail? And if they did would that make my Ford truck suddenly better? No, it would have all the same flaws and benefits it did before, only now the Chevy drivers would be worse off and I could sit back and revel in my ability to make other people's lives worse. Yay!
Apple's commercials may be obnoxious and may even inaccurate, but they're commercials and if you're offended by a commercial maybe you need some counseling regarding your self-esteem.
Lastly, just because Linux and Windows have Picasa doesn't mean they've suddenly attained the zenith of photo management, the Mac has iPhoto which is arguably better than Picasa and has a much better integration with the rest of the iLife suite. And, what happens when in two or three months Google makes an OSX version, will you retract your statement and proclaim the Mac as the best computer for photos? I doubt it, partisans rarely apologize.
Well if you extend it to the highway, which is actually a poor metaphor, than what if every car that burned regular could be disrupted or damaged by a little bit of sand in the right refinery. Wouldn't it make sense to have a few diesels around?
The analogy falls apart fairly quickly after that, but the simple fact is, you don't want everything to come down because of a single attack or a single virus, and part of what can help is a mixture of OSs.
Security is security, but if every bike had a kryptonite lock and everyone has a bic pen, then it becomes increasingly difficult to keep your stuff.
Your critique was not a troll per se, although I would consider your line about thermal paste to be 'flamebait.' Just because something's flamebait doesn't mean it's not also true. Obviously Apple screwed up with the MacBook Pros, but one would hope they've learned the lesson already and are not only changing procedures on the MBP but won't make the same mistake on the MB. They may not, but I think it would be a fair assumption to think that they would.
As for your other complaints, this computer isn't for you, you need a PCMCIA card slot and you want a Serial port. I don't want a Serial port, nor a 7-card reader because I'll never use them. I just won't and I don't want to pay for an option I'll never use and is merely a conduit for dust and cat hair. I wouldn't mind the PCMCIA slot, but I believe that the Express slot will eventually do the same thing, but faster, so ultimately it will be better.
But, I do think your last post flirts with troll with the line: "However now that I'm doing serious work I have had to opt for a HP business notebook with a dual boot w2k/linux. I might consider buying a Macbook for the kids though." You make the assumption that serious work isn't possible with a MacBook, and for lots of people that isn't true. Your work requires your HP, but not everyone does the same job.
Accept that some people don't want the things you do, that the MacBook is competatively priced for what it is, and that not everyone does the same job. It's okay to say, wow that's cool, but not for me.
Still waiting for a response... I doubt it will come. He appears to be in the business of answering the moronic questions and misleading his readers. While ignoring readily available facts and using his apparent fame as a coverup for not responding to valid emails.
That must be it. Of course, there's absolutely no other reason he'd stop reading or responsding to your emails; I mean since you're the only guy who writes to the Mailbag and you're not annoying or combative.
I guess that's why nobody hires international news correspondents to write software or run networks. Comments like this are probably why nobody hires software engineers or network admins to write international news columns.
Your critiques are valid, but are poorly written, difficult to address and smack of simple name-calling.
That was my point, PIHOW is, as I said, interesting but ultimately invalid as a means to discover what even the averages are. I know lots of Windows users who couldn't find their way out of a wet paper bag, and I know Mac users who couldn't even if given a map; most computer users don't get their machines and don't really care. I'd argue they should since they use the f-ing things all day, but they don't. Thus, any attempt to say one platform's users are somehow less adept than the other is merely fodder for arguments. One of the interesting things is that many Mac users probably also use Windows because of the shear prevalence of Windows and have made a choice regarding the Mac. This indicates a certain preference and could indicate a certain knowledge base, but I wouldn't try to use this as a Macs are better argument, it's just a tendency that we could use polling to find out.
Just don't make up numbers like 99% and follow it up with anecdotal evidence to insist that PC users are inherently smarter because it's just made up and everyone knows it.
Except you're making the assumption that a "few thousand tons of depleted uranium" will be spread over the entire country and not concentrated in a few small areas, say when someone unloads a 100 or so at one particular target. This is not to mention the fact that DU burns and becomes highly toxic after doing so. Having the shell sitting around is no big deal, but things change by how you use it.
Oh yes, the always useful PNOMA* approach to data, which you've correlated with anecdotal evidence or the SIMU* appraoch. Fine work. Good show.
The reality is, most users are clueless no matter what the OS, computers are complex little beasts that require a lot of esoteric knowledge to use and most users don't have the time or the inclination to really learn about the difference between a disk and memory. Your self-selected group or PIHOW* doesn't mean anything about what the general user even wants from their computer. One thing I've noticed is PC users who like PCs have never used a Mac, Mac users have almost always used a PC and gone back to the Mac. This is interesting, but doesn't really tell us much except I pay way too much attention to what kind of computers people use.
And Windows is for the family next door who can't figure out how to program their VCR.
The appeal for Macs is different for each person, some people like Virginia Tech like to make super-computers, others like to composite special effects, and there are lots of people who just want to be able to use their computer with having the OS get in their way because of shoddy design. And some people just think the computers are pretty.
Stop pretending that Windows users are somehow the salt of the earth while Mac users are elitist, especially considering you use the exact same techniques to try to convince people that Windows or Linux is somehow better.
Accept the fact some people like the Mac, it's effective for what they want to do, and the hardware is not 2x as expensive and you know it and the G5 and Intel Duo Core are very powerful parts of very well-designed machines.
If everyone who had a Mac sold it and bought a PC would life be suddenly better for you? If not, then shut up.
That's always the danger with this kind of satire, unless it's very well delivered it can make the author seem utterly insane. I didn't figure it out until after I'd read the article, gotten pissed, and then clicked on the 'some idiot' link and just had to say WTF?
Apparently, Dvorak has been doing satire for years.
I'm sure that allofmp3 plays fast and loose with copyright and paying artists and their legality is at best questionable (that it's based on Russian law, when you are subject to US [or other] law is another problem).
They even mention this in their FAQs:
The user bears sole responsibility for any use and distribution of all materials received from AllOFMP3.com. This responsibility is dependent on the national legislation in each user's country of residence. The Administration of AllOFMP3.com does not possess information on the laws of each particular country and is not responsible for the actions of foreign users.
I would say that eMusic is a much better group of people who have lots of cool indie stuff, like Calexico's new album Garden Ruin for a couple of bucks a month.
This document is a legal argument put forth by the Attorney General, which is very different from a judicial decision. The fact that AG Gonzalez thinks that his boss did nothing wrong is really not all that surprising considering that previously Gonzalez helped define the president's policy with regards to torture and possibly how to legally duck the FISA court. So, thereby finding it illegal would not only put his boss in trouble, but could help to convict himself if things went south.
Well they're calling it domestic because not only was it for International calls into the US, but calls from domestic to domestic numbers, which the NSA was not supposed to do without FISA. They skipped this step and we should be warry of this because it removes a legal sanity-check that may be necessary as was so when the FISA court was created. We've been here before and to assume that the new hotness is better than the old and busted stuff is folly.
Simply put, irregardless of the number of emails strings, there needs to be a second body capable of checking the first because that's how the balance of powers between the three branches of government is supposed to work. The Intelligence Community was limited because of excesses in the 1960s and 1970s which forced the issue and made it necessary to put another body (outside of the Executive) with the capacity to limit domestic spying.
Furthermore, under your example, what Intel can be garnered from reading 1,000 emails about humus, how many translators do you have, how many agents to scour through 1,000 messages about humus hoping for that one that breaks the code and makes one realize that humus is an attack?
By monitoring everything the NSA would not only infringe on our rights, but would limit its ability to hunt for the right information. There has to be a third way.
If productivity is the creation of wealth, then why are real wages falling?
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your post, but to say that WalMart is the one engine of the '90s is rediculous. Walmart's efficiencies are good, except when they're bad and merely shift the costs, health care and low wages, to another part of the economy. There's good things and bad things about Walmart's business model.
Personally, I hate Walmart, they sell cheap crap, the stores are ugly, the employees surly, and the prices aren't much lower (sometimes they're even higher).
So wait. On one hand you have the Senator's son who hid from Vietnam in the National Guard, but didn't finish his service because of political cronyism, spent the next years getting drunk and snorting coke, who managed to 'find' god and was governor of Texas, a state in which the governor is for all purposes a figurehead.
On the other hand you have a Senator's son who went to Vietnam, served his tour, was wounded slightly and given a purple heart and returned to protest against the war because he thought it was wrong and then went on to become a US Senator.
Without thinking of just the politics or personalities, why in god's name would you vote for the first guy?
Because I personally can't imagine putting the draft-dodger in charge of the nation's military in time of war rather than the distinguished serviceman. I further can't imagine that someone who was facing a 45% approval rating in the beginning of his term, and was saved only by the nation's reaction to a terrorist attack, whose every domestic policy has faltered or failed, who has fought two wars badly, has had as many scandals, etc. would be a better candidate that the other guy.
I think you bought into the Republican political machine, I think you're a fish wiggling on their line. They've got you so confused you're making fun of Purple Heart recipients, they've got you so confused you think black is white and white is black. You're so confused and twisted around you think Bush (what was that strange lump in his jacket and why can't the man talk his way out of a paperbag) is actually not one of the worst presidents we've ever had.
I'll say this, Clinton was a total jerk-off, but Bush has managed to exceed his predecessor while being incompetent. Which is just damn impressive.
Slashdot Mirror
It would stand to think that the academic journal would become more important as people would use the wikis as the technology to edit the journal. The journals could still stand as authority being checked by the members of the field. The 'guarentee' of authority is sometimes very useful and important in which to ascertain knowledge. Not everyone can comment with equal knowledge on a given subject.
I presage that academic journals, if they leverage the right technology, will become more important and that encyclopedias will fall to dust.
Why do you need a Mac in order to help them? Just take the time to learn about the system, I do the same thing for Windows. I never had a Windows computer, but I know enough to make it work and help to solve problems. Google is your friend.
Furthermore, you post to Slashdot, you have a Slashdot account and a Slashdot 'nick, therefore you are a Slashdotter! Therefore, you cannot say that all Slashdotters think the same thing.
Lastly, there is a very refined difference between you buying a CD, ripping it, and remixing the contents and a company taking a movie you've purchased and remixing it for profit. I disagree with the court's decission because I believe in remix culture and I would defend your right to watch a movie cut and edited for your viewing pleasure, even if I think that watching say Braveheart without the bloodshed or Basic Instinct without the sex is missing much of the movie's substance. But, to each his own.
As for your analogy, if profiling were to assume that every person with the word 'city' in their Slashdot 'nick should be watched, or that every person who opposes discrimination laws should have their Western Union money frozen, than I can't help but think you'd be upset. I think if you were picked out of a line every time you went to fly based on your 'profile' and then searched, questioned, all the while your accounts were frozen or closed you'd think differently.
Lastly, the free market is great, but it needs to have rules. It's like playing poker, everyone should be playing the same game.
Maybe it's possible that software matters more than hardware.
The problem is not Apple, the iTMS/iPod-lock in is merely a symptom.
For the same reason we let Pakistan, India, and Israel have them. Remember the Bush administration just made a deal with the Indians regarding their nuclear weapons program and Pakistani scientists are the reason that both North Korea and Iran have the technology and the knowledge to start working on their own nuclear programs.
And games don't really drive the large-scale PC market, businesses do. Games drive the video card and chip industry forward, but sales and therefore the installed base has always been tied to how many IBM-compatibles one could sell, and Apple was never very good at that.
I disagree, both require acceptance of a particular paradigm (windows, use of the mouse, double-click) but the Mac can be leveled up and down depending on experience, Windows just makes all these problems worse. I've seen it too many times. But, that's just a quibble really
A) They want to run Software Package X (and not necessarily because their job does) B) They don't want to pay the Apple Tax amounting to a 50-100% increase in price/pc. (Which could explain why fewer business use Apple, leading to A.)
You've managed to pour the last twenty years of computing history into two rules that aren't even correct. First you ignore the deal that Gates made with IBM which installed hundreds of thousands of IBM systems with Windows 3.1, and which created a ubiquity so powerful that no one else has been able to dent it. Second, you insist on the 'Apple Tax' which while true didn't really affect businesses as much as the first reason, and is futhermore, wildly overstated. The problem is simply inertia, Windows has become such a major part of the computing industry that users have apolexy dealing with something else. This, in my opinion, has been a bad thing.
Apple's commercials may be obnoxious and may even inaccurate, but they're commercials and if you're offended by a commercial maybe you need some counseling regarding your self-esteem.
Lastly, just because Linux and Windows have Picasa doesn't mean they've suddenly attained the zenith of photo management, the Mac has iPhoto which is arguably better than Picasa and has a much better integration with the rest of the iLife suite. And, what happens when in two or three months Google makes an OSX version, will you retract your statement and proclaim the Mac as the best computer for photos? I doubt it, partisans rarely apologize.
The analogy falls apart fairly quickly after that, but the simple fact is, you don't want everything to come down because of a single attack or a single virus, and part of what can help is a mixture of OSs.
Security is security, but if every bike had a kryptonite lock and everyone has a bic pen, then it becomes increasingly difficult to keep your stuff.
As for your other complaints, this computer isn't for you, you need a PCMCIA card slot and you want a Serial port. I don't want a Serial port, nor a 7-card reader because I'll never use them. I just won't and I don't want to pay for an option I'll never use and is merely a conduit for dust and cat hair. I wouldn't mind the PCMCIA slot, but I believe that the Express slot will eventually do the same thing, but faster, so ultimately it will be better.
But, I do think your last post flirts with troll with the line: "However now that I'm doing serious work I have had to opt for a HP business notebook with a dual boot w2k/linux. I might consider buying a Macbook for the kids though." You make the assumption that serious work isn't possible with a MacBook, and for lots of people that isn't true. Your work requires your HP, but not everyone does the same job.
Accept that some people don't want the things you do, that the MacBook is competatively priced for what it is, and that not everyone does the same job. It's okay to say, wow that's cool, but not for me.
Not everyone wants the same thing.
That must be it. Of course, there's absolutely no other reason he'd stop reading or responsding to your emails; I mean since you're the only guy who writes to the Mailbag and you're not annoying or combative. I guess that's why nobody hires international news correspondents to write software or run networks. Comments like this are probably why nobody hires software engineers or network admins to write international news columns.
Your critiques are valid, but are poorly written, difficult to address and smack of simple name-calling.
Just don't make up numbers like 99% and follow it up with anecdotal evidence to insist that PC users are inherently smarter because it's just made up and everyone knows it.
Except you're making the assumption that a "few thousand tons of depleted uranium" will be spread over the entire country and not concentrated in a few small areas, say when someone unloads a 100 or so at one particular target. This is not to mention the fact that DU burns and becomes highly toxic after doing so. Having the shell sitting around is no big deal, but things change by how you use it.
The reality is, most users are clueless no matter what the OS, computers are complex little beasts that require a lot of esoteric knowledge to use and most users don't have the time or the inclination to really learn about the difference between a disk and memory. Your self-selected group or PIHOW* doesn't mean anything about what the general user even wants from their computer. One thing I've noticed is PC users who like PCs have never used a Mac, Mac users have almost always used a PC and gone back to the Mac. This is interesting, but doesn't really tell us much except I pay way too much attention to what kind of computers people use.
*PNOMA - Pulled Numbers from My Ass
*SIMU - Shit I Made Up
*PIHOW - People I Hang Out With.
The appeal for Macs is different for each person, some people like Virginia Tech like to make super-computers, others like to composite special effects, and there are lots of people who just want to be able to use their computer with having the OS get in their way because of shoddy design. And some people just think the computers are pretty.
Stop pretending that Windows users are somehow the salt of the earth while Mac users are elitist, especially considering you use the exact same techniques to try to convince people that Windows or Linux is somehow better.
Accept the fact some people like the Mac, it's effective for what they want to do, and the hardware is not 2x as expensive and you know it and the G5 and Intel Duo Core are very powerful parts of very well-designed machines.
If everyone who had a Mac sold it and bought a PC would life be suddenly better for you? If not, then shut up.
Making a statement popular does not make it apt or wise.
Apparently, Dvorak has been doing satire for years.
They even mention this in their FAQs:
I would say that eMusic is a much better group of people who have lots of cool indie stuff, like Calexico's new album Garden Ruin for a couple of bucks a month.
This document is a legal argument put forth by the Attorney General, which is very different from a judicial decision. The fact that AG Gonzalez thinks that his boss did nothing wrong is really not all that surprising considering that previously Gonzalez helped define the president's policy with regards to torture and possibly how to legally duck the FISA court. So, thereby finding it illegal would not only put his boss in trouble, but could help to convict himself if things went south.
Well they're calling it domestic because not only was it for International calls into the US, but calls from domestic to domestic numbers, which the NSA was not supposed to do without FISA. They skipped this step and we should be warry of this because it removes a legal sanity-check that may be necessary as was so when the FISA court was created. We've been here before and to assume that the new hotness is better than the old and busted stuff is folly.
Furthermore, under your example, what Intel can be garnered from reading 1,000 emails about humus, how many translators do you have, how many agents to scour through 1,000 messages about humus hoping for that one that breaks the code and makes one realize that humus is an attack?
By monitoring everything the NSA would not only infringe on our rights, but would limit its ability to hunt for the right information. There has to be a third way.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with your post, but to say that WalMart is the one engine of the '90s is rediculous. Walmart's efficiencies are good, except when they're bad and merely shift the costs, health care and low wages, to another part of the economy. There's good things and bad things about Walmart's business model.
Personally, I hate Walmart, they sell cheap crap, the stores are ugly, the employees surly, and the prices aren't much lower (sometimes they're even higher).
On the other hand you have a Senator's son who went to Vietnam, served his tour, was wounded slightly and given a purple heart and returned to protest against the war because he thought it was wrong and then went on to become a US Senator.
Without thinking of just the politics or personalities, why in god's name would you vote for the first guy?
Because I personally can't imagine putting the draft-dodger in charge of the nation's military in time of war rather than the distinguished serviceman. I further can't imagine that someone who was facing a 45% approval rating in the beginning of his term, and was saved only by the nation's reaction to a terrorist attack, whose every domestic policy has faltered or failed, who has fought two wars badly, has had as many scandals, etc. would be a better candidate that the other guy.
I think you bought into the Republican political machine, I think you're a fish wiggling on their line. They've got you so confused you're making fun of Purple Heart recipients, they've got you so confused you think black is white and white is black. You're so confused and twisted around you think Bush (what was that strange lump in his jacket and why can't the man talk his way out of a paperbag) is actually not one of the worst presidents we've ever had.
I'll say this, Clinton was a total jerk-off, but Bush has managed to exceed his predecessor while being incompetent. Which is just damn impressive.