I'm not sure what you mean by 'proprietary everything' since OSX is based on FreeBSD, which is Open-Source and uses a whole host of open technologies underneath the general operating system. We can argue about pricing, but in many comparisons--especially equivalent systems (which is hard) Apple is often very close to competitors; Apple's Powerbooks are quite reasonably priced.
The wizard thing is just, in my mind, a fundemental problem. With Windows connecting to a wireless network requires a couple of dialogues and a pop-up. OSX just finds the network and connects. There's a subtle difference, but I find it all over the place. Yes, you can dismiss wizards and even disable them, but some are the primary way to use things, like digital cameras.
Furthermore, ACDSee and Photoshop Album are both handled by iPhoto--which is free, how much were the two programs?--and I can't think of an equivalent to GetRight, but I'm sure something exists.
Lastly, you don't need to know anyone who has a Mac, you can borrow one for 30 days.
You may not like OSX, you may not like the Mac Mini or any of the other machines, but I think it would be interesting for you to try one. And, I know Chevy mechanics--good ones at least--who also work on Fords.
Security? Talk to me when your OS has 95% of the market share.
But, even if you accept that Windows is attacked because it is ubiquitous--and not because it's an easy target--then OSX still is a safer bet, and OSX will remain a safer bet until it's saturation reaches 51%--if we're, again, assuming that market-share is directly correlated with exploited vulnerabilities. This of course means that OSX will remain a more secure system for the foreseeable future. This is what you pro-Windows guys don't seem to get, OSX is more secure than Windows right now, you'll spend less time farting around with malware.
As for applications, it depends on what you do, I for one use the iApps and FCP and consider the Windows equivalents to be anemic at best.
Finally, OSX is very easy to deal with, I don't get the odd dialog asking me if I want to launch a wizard every time I do something new and I don't have Outlook demanding attention. I have to deal with fewer patches and updates and I get some very cool extras like Automator that make my computing life a little easier. You should try OSX when you get the chance.
Well, you're just a wet blanket. Spotlight is very fast on my 550mhz G4 TiBook w/ 768mb and I haven't noticed system slow-downs from either Dashboard or Spotlight.
As for Automator, you just have to think about what can be done or when you're doing a repetative task you may realize what Automator is good for. I've had it take music I've downloaded from iTMS, drop it into a folder, and then share that folder with my wife's machine, all I have to do is click on the music on her machine and boom she's got all the same stuff I do. This way I don't have to hunt down the new songs and manually move them over to her machine. This happens at night as well.
The widgets are a mixed bag, I've found some of the game really fun and I found a Gmail widget that lets me know when there's new mail and a widget the tracks my NetFlix subscription. There are cool things out there.
We stayed above 'their' level for the last 1000 years, and look what it got us.
Congratulations, you win a price for the most simplistic and ignorant view of history for the week. And what does he win? He win a big-slap upside the head for being such a stupid bastard.
Look, for all intensive purposes we are dealing with a reincarnation of the Assassins of the 14th Century--who incidentally were finished off by the Mongols. We are dealing with Islamic Fundamentalists married to a death-cult mentality fueled by violence and sectarian division and oil money. These people are evil, relentless bastards who believe--like so many Christians of the Middle Ages--that the deaths of innocents will somehow lead to a greater Islamic world. These people are nuts, but to pretend that all Muslims for the last 1000 years are akin to the same goons is akin to marrying all Christianity to the appalling behavior of the KKK or the Spanish Inquisition.
Bush has oversimplified the situation and while he has not said that god speaks directly to him, he has intimated that his belief is what helps him make decision. He intimates, he ducks and weaves, because he knows he would lose much of the support he has managed to slowly squander.
Stop watching Fox News and listening to Bush and pick up a few books and maybe learn something about the world. Otherwise, shut the hell up.
Screwed with the rest of the world for fifty years? Guess what? Payback time!
Oh joy, maybe Europe will be back in charge, I mean they never did anything wrong, right? Ask any anyone, just not anyone from Egypt, Congo, Vietnam, China...on second thought never mind. Or maybe the Russians can be in charge with all their peaceful history. Or maybe Canada. Yeah, that's it put the Canucks in charge.
Payback time is going to come at a sharp price for the rest of the world, and while I deplore Bush and Co., I cannot understand the sudden hatred so many like you have. I mean really, for all of its faults, has the U.S. acted so poorly compared to every other country that it deserves the world's wrath? Is there another country that has tried, albeit like a rather large superman-strong toddler, to help the rest of the world? Europe would still be a smoldering ruin without the Marshall Plan, Japan a Soviet backwater and a front to the war with China, and Africa and South America would probably remain as European colonies while all the oil was owned by French and British companies. The world's problems are part of the collective malaise of the human condition, not because the U.S. is teh evil. So, put the "payback" to rest because vengence rarely affects only those it targets.
Are you retarded or just completly fucking ignorant? Comparing the KKK of lynchings, beatings, and public abuse to someone trashing your yard?!
The 'liberal anarchists' of Seattle don't set fire to crosses in your yard? But, maybe they threaten you if you sit at the front of the bus? Or maybe drinking from a different fountain? Or maybe you dated a liberal and now a few of them took you out to a field and beat the shit out of you? No? Well, of course there's all those Republicans who mysteriously disappeared. Or, maybe a few staunch 'Ditto-heads' who were found swinging from a tree?
No. I wonder why.
Or right, because it's completely fucking different. Get of your "Help, I'm being prosecuted" perch and start paying attention.
I think your critique of the iPod is way overblown, you make it seem as if the iPod is some huge, clunky system that requires iTunes. But, you're seeing it the wrong way, people wanted iTunes because it is elegant and easy to use, and it worked exceptionally well with the iPod, which also had a great interface that was easy and relatively intuitive to most people. As for HDD over Flash, lots of people wanted to store large (5GB+) amounts of music and Flash hasn't gotten there; yet. And, there are lots of people who don't see FAT-formatted SD cards as an advantage, but yet another thing to buy, break, lose. And, I'm not sure why you care what files are named, it's the meta-data that counts.
The Rio Karma and Forge were good products, but the iPod was better and has kept getting better. Stop acting as if every iPod owner is the victim of 'brainless hype and marketing' and accept that Rio failed to bring to market a player that had a great feature set, a great interface, and a music store specifically designed for it. Face it, Rio got flanked on almost every front. And technology was definitely a place that Rio lost.
You're right, looks are subjective and I can totally respect that you don't like the looks of the iPod. I don't understand what made the Rio Forge more 'practical' than the iPod, but this is also fairly subjective. However, I disagree with you on your next statement, I bought an iPod before they were popular--most people didn't even know what it was--and I told lots of people about it, who then went out and bought the iPod over others. Why? Features, add-ons, iTMS, and a elegant experience with iTunes which worked for both Windows and Mac-users (meanwhile Rio acted as if Mac-users were strange secret species) is what made the iPod popular. As for the big-box sales system, I would say that the Rio had this long before Apple did and squandered their position on shelves at places like Best Buy. Marketing has worked wonders for the iPod, but that must be followed by good product, and the iPod is such a product.
I liked Rio, they had different sense of design, and if I had to pick a company to lose I wouldn't have picked Rio.
So today its [sic] iPod and thy name is Lemming. Yep, all those Lemmings, you're so much better I guess because you are a counter-culture revolutionary.
How did you manage to do that? I've had my TiBook since 2001 and it's pristine; and the only person I know who broke theirs dropped it down a flight of stairs.
The story isn't in that bare framework, but in the journey between those two points. Think of Pulp Fiction, which had several story lines that intersected at strange points. Or, what about 2001, which still remains one of the best sci-fi films because of its silences and use of music. Think of the seminal works of film, that totally changed how we look at movies and story-lines and acting.
I mean if you boil it all down, your life is nothing but birth, then death with some bits in between. But, I'd think you might argue that your life is more than just two events at the peripherial ends.
My point was that of the world's long recorded history, Islam has merely been one of the many religions used as an excuse to pillage, rob, torture, and murder. All of the world's religions have been the defining reason for our most grotesque acts at some point and to say that one religion is worse than all the others belies a certain willingness to prejudice. Islam isn't innocent, but it certaintly isn't the worse.
As for Christian terrorists: Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh, not to mention a few Slobodan Milosevic. And, of course, as Lebanon fell apart in 1983, there were Christian terrorists as well. I won't belabor the point, but I will say that terrorism and Islam have unfortunately been intertwined, but this hasn't always been so, and hopefully won't continue to be. Islam saved Western Civilization from itself and transmitted or added to the most progressive ideas that became the generator for the Rennaissance and the Englightenment.
Islam is, I think, running through its own dark ages, a period shadowed by terrorism rather than the plague, and I only hope that the situation will change as it did for Europe after the fall of Rome.
While the damage perpretrated by chrisians [sic] may not be as bad as that perpetrated by muslims...
Islam has been far less a part of the world's atrocities than either Christianity or Hinduism. The greatest atrocities, including the Holocaust, the destruction of the Native Americans (North and South), the raping of Nanking, the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Tamerlane's absolute destruction of Samarkand, the various Jewish pogroms, the Roman conquests, were all committed by people other than Muslims. Muslims have had blood on their hands, including the Armenian and Serbian genocides. But, to say that the damage perpetrated by Christians may not be as bad as that perpetrated by Muslims shows a gross misunderstanding of history.
As long as you posted that AHEAD of time then that is enforcable. When I buy a DVD there is a lot of writing on the box. I should read that writing. When I place the DVD in the DVD player I should read the FBI warning.
Go to your nearest Target, pick up a DVD and read the part where it explains the EULA, Region Coding, etc. It doesn't say anything, except of course the features of the DVD such as 5.1 Surround Sound. So, you are agreeing to something without seeing the terms first. Now, of course you can return the DVD and wash your hands of the whole thing, but you can't always say that you read a contract before you implicitly agreed to it.
Where does it say terms should be reasonable.It doesn't say that, but that is implied in the same way that you use "reasonable expectations" I have a reasonable expectation that renting a DVD won't cost my home.
Furthermore, you said First there is no implicit in business. Anyone who works on the implicit contract methodology will learn they get burned and burned fast. Second there is no implicit contract that the price needs to be fair. and yet you believe in "reasonable expectations." I consider it perfectly reasonable for me to buy a Japanese DVD in Tokyo and have it work in the US, corporate agreements be damned. As for content, I don't understand how my use of a French DVD in a US DVD player protect Chinese from such content. If they want limited players let the market sell them at a premium, but don't limit my rights.
I have a reasonable expectation, when I rent a DVD movie from a video store that copying that movie is illegal. But while Region Coding keeps some dumb Chinese kid from copying, it also takes away rights from everyone else. I'm not talking about copying a DVD, I'm talking about watching my DVD.
Or how would you feel if some guy went a killed your family and then said, "There is a law preventing this?" This is the worst analogy; I am saying that there are reasonable and implicit contracts that exist between corporations and consumers, just as there as implicit societal contracts that are backed by strong laws.
There is also no rule that says a corp can't make an unlimited profit. In fact, in our society, we encourage people to maximize their wealth... But, we also agree that there are certain limits and rules of acquisition that protect both the public and corporate bodies. We don't operate under a true laissez-faire capitalism and you wouldn't like an economy that did. There is a balance that is important and necessary.
But, doesn't this scale after you build more than one. Afterall the tooling necessary to build a new car model are hideously expensive, however if you make 1 Million of them, the cost per vehicle drops. One guy can work on at least two systems, and already your maintenence labor is down by half.
As for subsidies, we still are giving oil and coal massive subsidies (oil companies are asking for more to do exploratory drilling) so why not start up a new industry.
At best DVD region coding is a way for the studios to make an extra buck, at worst it's cartel price-fixing. These are not gov't law, but part of the 'agreement' and part of negotiations between studios and distributors. For the consumer it's a great big shaft either way.
You however mentioned piracy, and my point that region coding doesn't protect against piracy, it may even encourage it.
And while the 'producers' of DVD content are not obligated to sell their product, they are also not guarenteed profits at the expense of consumer rights.
There is an implicit contract between corporation and consumer that the corporation can sell a product at a fair price and the consumer will purchase that product and use it within their rights as understood in the body of Fair Use (which could codified more handily). Corporations were never guarenteed profits, especially at the expense of consumer rights.
Terms should be reasonable, easily understood--if you need a lawyer to read the EULA on your new laptop, we have a real problem--and should account for Fair Uses.
Corporations can legally put all sorts of stupid requirements on their terms, but does this mean they are reasonable or that they should be enforced.
Under your loose interpretation I enforce this clause: By reading, perusing, glancing or skimming the above post you agree to this license below. This license describes the consumption by the end user, including commenting, quoting or otherwise remembering the words contained above. The cost for consumption is $1,000.00 dollars per word, which will be billed to your account. Thank you.
Send me $50.00 and I'll call it even.
I think we need a better structure, and putting EULAs on eBooks ain't going to work.
That's right, GOOFUS must be biased. I mean he works at (gasp!) Stanford of all places where they just rub crystals together. GOOFUS has never considered the conservative viewpoint, the ideas of the people, or has taken economic data and use that as the baseline for climate data.
He probably flunked that 'conservative' student for being illogical.
Brandybuck, seriously something is happening and we can argue for the next millenia about whether humans caused it or not, but we may still have time to act, we may still have some chance of reversing a series of effects that will wreak havoc on the world's economies. We can fritter away this time continuing to accept a supposedly 'conservative' viewpoint, or we can act. Even if we may find sometime later that the world's climate was going to change humanity be damned at least we acted with the best information at the time. But, no we're going to sit and wait for the very worst effects and then all the environmentalists can say See, we told you this would happen while we're bailing water out of the Capital building.
I don't believe it's a Constitutional right to not hear about someone else's beliefs.
And by what Constitutional right do you have to force your beliefs on someone? Or better yet, why can't a Buddhist come to your home and tell you about Siddartha.
The Constitution does not actually describe a "Separation of Church and State," however over time this has become part of the legal and moral description of the government's relationship with religion. During House's debate during the writing of the Constitution, Madison told his fellow Members that ''he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any Manner contrary to their conscience."
...No matter whether I call something a religion or not, the Federal government shouldn't care or distinguish. Well then I'm sure you support your local Santeria church or the Rastafarians, right?
Judges should not be able to label something religious or secular. Should Congress? The President? You? How do we as a country respect all the variant religions of this country including even the most minority view within reason? You act as if "Judges" are tearing down church after church because a few don't think that a Ten Commandments monument should be in a courthouse. Frankly, if a religion can't survive having its symbols plastered everywhere it might be time to fold the tent.
I disagree with you almost entirely, first mass murder on horrific scales have been executed by many countries: Russia, Japan, China, Australia, Spain, England, just to name a few and to some how mark the US as the one without a sense of ownership is rediculous. How many Chinese can speak about the destruction of Tibet? How many Australians think about the slaughter of the Aboriginals? How many have died by Russian hands?
In the US, we talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and while we may justify the means, we also see the immediate results, the shear horror of the bombings and feel regret. The US cares more about Nagasaki and Hiroshima than any other country sans Germany, whose own acceptance of the Holocaust is simply amazing compared to the rest of the world.
It wasn't just the tragedy of 9/11, but it was the combination of media coverage that repeated the images of fire and dust over and over, but also it broke the American ideal that we are special. We are protected by the oceans, we are protected because of our democracy, we are special loved children of the world and we couldn't believe that the world's problems could reach out and slap us.
As for Asian writers, you may see more fiction in the region that relates to disasters because simply people write about their own time, even when looking towards the future and the past.
The problem with Microsoft Windows is that it is exactly like Edison's lightbulb, it has stagnated and carries so much inertia it's almost impossible to get rid of. The lightbulb is very good at making heat, but isn't really a good light source, and except for some small changes in fillament and shape, the lightbulb overhead is indentical to Edison's. There are much better designs for lightbulbs, but it is very difficult to get these newer technologies accepted because everyone is so used to Edison's. The problem is equivalent to Ford without Chevy, if the Model T and A were the only car in America (and the world) than we would never have gotten all the variations of design we see know. We would be lucky to have a color other than black if it were up to Henry Ford.
I'm also happy when a billion people are online, but I think the revolution didn't come because of Microsoft, rather Microsoft was a very lucky boat in a very strong wind.
I guess I believe in the march of history, and that often times an invention isn't because of one person, but the one person who managed to associate a new technology with their name.
Umm, how? And who decides? I think the ACLU is moving in a dangerous direction where judges are given the power to distinguish between religious and non-religious activity. Nobody should have that power
And who should have that power? Or what mechanism should be in place to make sure that one person's religious activity does not interfere with another's. What does the separation of Church and State mean and how can those sometimes diametrically opposed ideals operate in a modern society?
The ACLU, like the 'left' acts as a nice boogeyman for some easy soundbites, but the power given to judges has been happening ever since Judge Marshall in the late 18th century.
Furthermore, I find anyone who can espouse the 'left' versus 'right' dipoles with a straight face to be childish and easily led. To say that one political group or leaning has your best interests at heart is laughable at best, dangerous at worst.
Environmentalism, social justice, diversity, are all necessary ideals for a great society, but because of short-sighted and dumbass-squared manuevering, these great ideals have been short-changed. Environmentalism or Conservation, hope to protect our living-breathing environment while balancing the needs of human beings, we often find that say putting lead in gasoline is not only bad for the birds and bees, but also makes our children stupid. Thus, by acting in our own self-interest (we want smarter children) we also protect the environment. To pretend that human beings and the environment are separate things is to ignore the human connection to our world in spite of all our technological attempts to mask it. Neo-Conservatives act as if environmentalism is a danger to progress, but what is really happening, is environmentalism is a danger to the progress and growth of their portfolio.
If there is a religion where one is one's own god...
That would be nihilism, technically speaking.
As for putting stickers in every Bible, I would support that whole heartedly; something like:
Surgeon General's Warning: This book contains the parables and myths of the the nomadic tribes of the Middle East, written down and collected by Medieval monks. This should not be considered an historical document and should be used for entertainment and cultural purposes only.
Kid, he's joking because the earlier poster considers your postings to be essential pro-Windows astroturf. I don't think you are trolling, but I think your opinions are based on very little real information except for what you may have read here on Slashdot. As for benchmarks, there have been many discussions about the problems of benchmarks, especially in comparisons between PPC and x86 chips. As for Apple BS, I'm not sure if your talking about Apple's PR--as unreliable as Microsoft's or anyone else--or if you're trying to refer to Apple adherents who like the platform. As for upgradibility, a Powerbook is as upgradable as a Thinkpad, and a Powermac is as upgradable as a Dell Precision. Apple does entail certain limitations in upgrades, however any Slashdotter worthy of the name can certainly figure this out.
You should learn more about OSX and not pretend that your opinion formed five-minutes working on a Mac means the same thing as someone like me who has used both Windows and OSX for substantial periods of time.
I hope English comes to you as a second language...However, I think noting phone cameras, Visio and Project as innovations is laughable at best. But, frankly I doubt Windows Vista's security will be robust enough to gain any respect from either Linux or Macintosh afficianados.
Also, it's hindered--you wrote harberd, which I assume is harbored which means to protect as in harbor (place where you keep boats safe from a storm.)
Slashdot Mirror
The wizard thing is just, in my mind, a fundemental problem. With Windows connecting to a wireless network requires a couple of dialogues and a pop-up. OSX just finds the network and connects. There's a subtle difference, but I find it all over the place. Yes, you can dismiss wizards and even disable them, but some are the primary way to use things, like digital cameras.
Furthermore, ACDSee and Photoshop Album are both handled by iPhoto--which is free, how much were the two programs?--and I can't think of an equivalent to GetRight, but I'm sure something exists.
Lastly, you don't need to know anyone who has a Mac, you can borrow one for 30 days.
You may not like OSX, you may not like the Mac Mini or any of the other machines, but I think it would be interesting for you to try one. And, I know Chevy mechanics--good ones at least--who also work on Fords.
At least make a honest choice.
But, even if you accept that Windows is attacked because it is ubiquitous--and not because it's an easy target--then OSX still is a safer bet, and OSX will remain a safer bet until it's saturation reaches 51%--if we're, again, assuming that market-share is directly correlated with exploited vulnerabilities. This of course means that OSX will remain a more secure system for the foreseeable future. This is what you pro-Windows guys don't seem to get, OSX is more secure than Windows right now, you'll spend less time farting around with malware.
As for applications, it depends on what you do, I for one use the iApps and FCP and consider the Windows equivalents to be anemic at best.
Finally, OSX is very easy to deal with, I don't get the odd dialog asking me if I want to launch a wizard every time I do something new and I don't have Outlook demanding attention. I have to deal with fewer patches and updates and I get some very cool extras like Automator that make my computing life a little easier. You should try OSX when you get the chance.
As for Automator, you just have to think about what can be done or when you're doing a repetative task you may realize what Automator is good for. I've had it take music I've downloaded from iTMS, drop it into a folder, and then share that folder with my wife's machine, all I have to do is click on the music on her machine and boom she's got all the same stuff I do. This way I don't have to hunt down the new songs and manually move them over to her machine. This happens at night as well.
The widgets are a mixed bag, I've found some of the game really fun and I found a Gmail widget that lets me know when there's new mail and a widget the tracks my NetFlix subscription. There are cool things out there.
1431? Man have you been here a long time.
Congratulations, you win a price for the most simplistic and ignorant view of history for the week. And what does he win? He win a big-slap upside the head for being such a stupid bastard.
Look, for all intensive purposes we are dealing with a reincarnation of the Assassins of the 14th Century--who incidentally were finished off by the Mongols. We are dealing with Islamic Fundamentalists married to a death-cult mentality fueled by violence and sectarian division and oil money. These people are evil, relentless bastards who believe--like so many Christians of the Middle Ages--that the deaths of innocents will somehow lead to a greater Islamic world. These people are nuts, but to pretend that all Muslims for the last 1000 years are akin to the same goons is akin to marrying all Christianity to the appalling behavior of the KKK or the Spanish Inquisition.
Bush has oversimplified the situation and while he has not said that god speaks directly to him, he has intimated that his belief is what helps him make decision. He intimates, he ducks and weaves, because he knows he would lose much of the support he has managed to slowly squander.
Stop watching Fox News and listening to Bush and pick up a few books and maybe learn something about the world. Otherwise, shut the hell up.
Oh joy, maybe Europe will be back in charge, I mean they never did anything wrong, right? Ask any anyone, just not anyone from Egypt, Congo, Vietnam, China...on second thought never mind. Or maybe the Russians can be in charge with all their peaceful history. Or maybe Canada. Yeah, that's it put the Canucks in charge.
Payback time is going to come at a sharp price for the rest of the world, and while I deplore Bush and Co., I cannot understand the sudden hatred so many like you have. I mean really, for all of its faults, has the U.S. acted so poorly compared to every other country that it deserves the world's wrath? Is there another country that has tried, albeit like a rather large superman-strong toddler, to help the rest of the world? Europe would still be a smoldering ruin without the Marshall Plan, Japan a Soviet backwater and a front to the war with China, and Africa and South America would probably remain as European colonies while all the oil was owned by French and British companies. The world's problems are part of the collective malaise of the human condition, not because the U.S. is teh evil. So, put the "payback" to rest because vengence rarely affects only those it targets.
The 'liberal anarchists' of Seattle don't set fire to crosses in your yard? But, maybe they threaten you if you sit at the front of the bus? Or maybe drinking from a different fountain? Or maybe you dated a liberal and now a few of them took you out to a field and beat the shit out of you? No? Well, of course there's all those Republicans who mysteriously disappeared. Or, maybe a few staunch 'Ditto-heads' who were found swinging from a tree?
No. I wonder why.
Or right, because it's completely fucking different. Get of your "Help, I'm being prosecuted" perch and start paying attention.
The Rio Karma and Forge were good products, but the iPod was better and has kept getting better. Stop acting as if every iPod owner is the victim of 'brainless hype and marketing' and accept that Rio failed to bring to market a player that had a great feature set, a great interface, and a music store specifically designed for it. Face it, Rio got flanked on almost every front. And technology was definitely a place that Rio lost.
I liked Rio, they had different sense of design, and if I had to pick a company to lose I wouldn't have picked Rio.
So today its [sic] iPod and thy name is Lemming. Yep, all those Lemmings, you're so much better I guess because you are a counter-culture revolutionary.
How do you open your laptop?
I mean if you boil it all down, your life is nothing but birth, then death with some bits in between. But, I'd think you might argue that your life is more than just two events at the peripherial ends.
As for Christian terrorists: Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh, not to mention a few Slobodan Milosevic. And, of course, as Lebanon fell apart in 1983, there were Christian terrorists as well.
I won't belabor the point, but I will say that terrorism and Islam have unfortunately been intertwined, but this hasn't always been so, and hopefully won't continue to be. Islam saved Western Civilization from itself and transmitted or added to the most progressive ideas that became the generator for the Rennaissance and the Englightenment.
Islam is, I think, running through its own dark ages, a period shadowed by terrorism rather than the plague, and I only hope that the situation will change as it did for Europe after the fall of Rome.
Islam has been far less a part of the world's atrocities than either Christianity or Hinduism. The greatest atrocities, including the Holocaust, the destruction of the Native Americans (North and South), the raping of Nanking, the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Tamerlane's absolute destruction of Samarkand, the various Jewish pogroms, the Roman conquests, were all committed by people other than Muslims. Muslims have had blood on their hands, including the Armenian and Serbian genocides. But, to say that the damage perpetrated by Christians may not be as bad as that perpetrated by Muslims shows a gross misunderstanding of history.
Go to your nearest Target, pick up a DVD and read the part where it explains the EULA, Region Coding, etc. It doesn't say anything, except of course the features of the DVD such as 5.1 Surround Sound. So, you are agreeing to something without seeing the terms first. Now, of course you can return the DVD and wash your hands of the whole thing, but you can't always say that you read a contract before you implicitly agreed to it.
Where does it say terms should be reasonable.It doesn't say that, but that is implied in the same way that you use "reasonable expectations" I have a reasonable expectation that renting a DVD won't cost my home.
Furthermore, you said First there is no implicit in business. Anyone who works on the implicit contract methodology will learn they get burned and burned fast. Second there is no implicit contract that the price needs to be fair. and yet you believe in "reasonable expectations." I consider it perfectly reasonable for me to buy a Japanese DVD in Tokyo and have it work in the US, corporate agreements be damned. As for content, I don't understand how my use of a French DVD in a US DVD player protect Chinese from such content. If they want limited players let the market sell them at a premium, but don't limit my rights.
I have a reasonable expectation, when I rent a DVD movie from a video store that copying that movie is illegal. But while Region Coding keeps some dumb Chinese kid from copying, it also takes away rights from everyone else. I'm not talking about copying a DVD, I'm talking about watching my DVD.
Or how would you feel if some guy went a killed your family and then said, "There is a law preventing this?" This is the worst analogy; I am saying that there are reasonable and implicit contracts that exist between corporations and consumers, just as there as implicit societal contracts that are backed by strong laws.
There is also no rule that says a corp can't make an unlimited profit. In fact, in our society, we encourage people to maximize their wealth... But, we also agree that there are certain limits and rules of acquisition that protect both the public and corporate bodies. We don't operate under a true laissez-faire capitalism and you wouldn't like an economy that did. There is a balance that is important and necessary.
As for subsidies, we still are giving oil and coal massive subsidies (oil companies are asking for more to do exploratory drilling) so why not start up a new industry.
You however mentioned piracy, and my point that region coding doesn't protect against piracy, it may even encourage it.
And while the 'producers' of DVD content are not obligated to sell their product, they are also not guarenteed profits at the expense of consumer rights.
There is an implicit contract between corporation and consumer that the corporation can sell a product at a fair price and the consumer will purchase that product and use it within their rights as understood in the body of Fair Use (which could codified more handily). Corporations were never guarenteed profits, especially at the expense of consumer rights.
Terms should be reasonable, easily understood--if you need a lawyer to read the EULA on your new laptop, we have a real problem--and should account for Fair Uses.
Corporations can legally put all sorts of stupid requirements on their terms, but does this mean they are reasonable or that they should be enforced.
Under your loose interpretation I enforce this clause: By reading, perusing, glancing or skimming the above post you agree to this license below.
This license describes the consumption by the end user, including commenting, quoting or otherwise remembering the words contained above. The cost for consumption is $1,000.00 dollars per word, which will be billed to your account. Thank you.
Send me $50.00 and I'll call it even.
I think we need a better structure, and putting EULAs on eBooks ain't going to work.
He probably flunked that 'conservative' student for being illogical.
Brandybuck, seriously something is happening and we can argue for the next millenia about whether humans caused it or not, but we may still have time to act, we may still have some chance of reversing a series of effects that will wreak havoc on the world's economies. We can fritter away this time continuing to accept a supposedly 'conservative' viewpoint, or we can act. Even if we may find sometime later that the world's climate was going to change humanity be damned at least we acted with the best information at the time. But, no we're going to sit and wait for the very worst effects and then all the environmentalists can say See, we told you this would happen while we're bailing water out of the Capital building.
Then explain to me how region coding protects the studios without infringing on my rights to watch myDVD in both Japan and the US.
The Constitution does not actually describe a "Separation of Church and State," however over time this has become part of the legal and moral description of the government's relationship with religion. During House's debate during the writing of the Constitution, Madison told his fellow Members that ''he apprehended the meaning of the words to be, that Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any Manner contrary to their conscience."
Judges should not be able to label something religious or secular. Should Congress? The President? You? How do we as a country respect all the variant religions of this country including even the most minority view within reason? You act as if "Judges" are tearing down church after church because a few don't think that a Ten Commandments monument should be in a courthouse. Frankly, if a religion can't survive having its symbols plastered everywhere it might be time to fold the tent.
I disagree with you almost entirely, first mass murder on horrific scales have been executed by many countries: Russia, Japan, China, Australia, Spain, England, just to name a few and to some how mark the US as the one without a sense of ownership is rediculous. How many Chinese can speak about the destruction of Tibet? How many Australians think about the slaughter of the Aboriginals? How many have died by Russian hands?
In the US, we talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and while we may justify the means, we also see the immediate results, the shear horror of the bombings and feel regret. The US cares more about Nagasaki and Hiroshima than any other country sans Germany, whose own acceptance of the Holocaust is simply amazing compared to the rest of the world.
As for Asian writers, you may see more fiction in the region that relates to disasters because simply people write about their own time, even when looking towards the future and the past.
The problem with Microsoft Windows is that it is exactly like Edison's lightbulb, it has stagnated and carries so much inertia it's almost impossible to get rid of. The lightbulb is very good at making heat, but isn't really a good light source, and except for some small changes in fillament and shape, the lightbulb overhead is indentical to Edison's. There are much better designs for lightbulbs, but it is very difficult to get these newer technologies accepted because everyone is so used to Edison's. The problem is equivalent to Ford without Chevy, if the Model T and A were the only car in America (and the world) than we would never have gotten all the variations of design we see know. We would be lucky to have a color other than black if it were up to Henry Ford.
I'm also happy when a billion people are online, but I think the revolution didn't come because of Microsoft, rather Microsoft was a very lucky boat in a very strong wind.
I guess I believe in the march of history, and that often times an invention isn't because of one person, but the one person who managed to associate a new technology with their name.
And who should have that power? Or what mechanism should be in place to make sure that one person's religious activity does not interfere with another's. What does the separation of Church and State mean and how can those sometimes diametrically opposed ideals operate in a modern society?
The ACLU, like the 'left' acts as a nice boogeyman for some easy soundbites, but the power given to judges has been happening ever since Judge Marshall in the late 18th century.
Furthermore, I find anyone who can espouse the 'left' versus 'right' dipoles with a straight face to be childish and easily led. To say that one political group or leaning has your best interests at heart is laughable at best, dangerous at worst.
Environmentalism, social justice, diversity, are all necessary ideals for a great society, but because of short-sighted and dumbass-squared manuevering, these great ideals have been short-changed. Environmentalism or Conservation, hope to protect our living-breathing environment while balancing the needs of human beings, we often find that say putting lead in gasoline is not only bad for the birds and bees, but also makes our children stupid. Thus, by acting in our own self-interest (we want smarter children) we also protect the environment. To pretend that human beings and the environment are separate things is to ignore the human connection to our world in spite of all our technological attempts to mask it. Neo-Conservatives act as if environmentalism is a danger to progress, but what is really happening, is environmentalism is a danger to the progress and growth of their portfolio.
That would be nihilism, technically speaking.
As for putting stickers in every Bible, I would support that whole heartedly; something like:
Surgeon General's Warning: This book contains the parables and myths of the the nomadic tribes of the Middle East, written down and collected by Medieval monks. This should not be considered an historical document and should be used for entertainment and cultural purposes only.
You should learn more about OSX and not pretend that your opinion formed five-minutes working on a Mac means the same thing as someone like me who has used both Windows and OSX for substantial periods of time.
I hope English comes to you as a second language...However, I think noting phone cameras, Visio and Project as innovations is laughable at best. But, frankly I doubt Windows Vista's security will be robust enough to gain any respect from either Linux or Macintosh afficianados. Also, it's hindered--you wrote harberd, which I assume is harbored which means to protect as in harbor (place where you keep boats safe from a storm.)