The Arizona law causes no harm to US citizens of any ethnicity.
The Arizona law allows police to verify residency status of non-citizens.
The problem I have is how they establish whether someone is a non-citizen. They will wind up asking actual citizens to verify their citizenship status in the course of complying with this law, because if they aren't sure someone is a citizen, they have to ask. Further, while an Arizona driver's license is proof of (at least) legal residency status (at the time the license was issued), the same can't be said for many other states, notably New Mexico. Ironically, legal residents are in a much better position that citizens are to establish to a random cop that they are legally permitted to be here.
So suppose I'm an American Citizen with a valid New Mexico driver's license driving through Arizona. I don't have my birth certificate or passport on me, because I have no reason to believe I should require either of those documents to travel between US states. Suppose further that my tail-light is burnt out, but I don't know about it, and I get pulled over. During the course of this lawful interaction, for whatever reason, the officer suspects that I am an illegal alien, and asks to verify my citizenship status. I show him my New Mexico ID
From here, there are two possibilities. First, he accepts my ID as valid proof of my legal residency, even though it is no such thing. Honestly, I believe that this will happen in most cases like this, even though nothing has been demonstrated to the officer. The other possibility is that the officer correctly recognizes that I don't have valid proof of my citizenship or legal residency, and takes me to the lock-up pending investigation. At best, assuming the officers involved are cooperative and non-hostile, it could take several hours for the county clerk's office/hospital where I was born to get the needed documents so I can be released. I don't want to think about the worst case scenario.
Now suppose that, despite the fact that I am a citizen, my English isn't that great, or I'm mentally challenged and can't really understand what's going on, or I just managed to somehow piss off the cop.
I believe the chance that something like this will happen, more than once, is quite high. Regardless, it's possible under both the new law in Arizona and the existing, unenforced federal law. This makes them both bad laws, in my opinion. I don't deny that illegal immigration is a big problem in need of a solution, but there must be a better way than this.
You seem to be laboring under the impression that Slashdot is a single person. I assure you that this is not the case.
So if I get this straight...Slashdot considers listening in to people talking to known terrorists, who would really like nothing more to kill you) an unforgivable sin.
This is really an oversimplification of the issues and concerns involved with warrantless wiretapping. Even so, reasonable people disagree about the extent to which the government can go to combat crime. I happen to think they've gone too far.
And of course, expecting that the immigration laws be enforced is downright racist.
I believe the immigration law is a bad one. Mostly because of the potential it has to harm American Citizens of a certain ethnicity. Again, I am but one of the many people who post their various opinions here.
But they have no problem with what is essentially police state regulation. You can't have salt. You can't put Toys in Happy Meals. You can't, you can't, you can't.
That type of regulation is heavy handed and likely to be ineffective anyway. But the parent only mentioned "government intervention," a phrase which apparently sends your mind to a very dark place. Intervention can take many forms, which can include education and incentives for healthy behavior, or things we haven't thought of yet. I believe it's short sighted to dismiss any attempt at correcting the obesity epidemic out of hand. But did I already mention that I'm not speaking for all of Slashdot?
Well then they should fix that in the UI - that's meant to be their speciality after all.
UI is their speciality in part because they avoid doing something until they figure out how to do it right. See copy/paste on the iPhone.
It can't be that difficult to find some way to alert people when multiple programs might be slowing down the system and give the option to easily locate and close some of them?
You're asking them to make a phone that occasionally interrupts what you're doing to ask for input on what it can do to keep working properly. I don't know that you'll ever get a UI out of that approach that isn't abjectly terrible.
My guess is that multitasking for third party apps will come, but only when it doesn't come with a non-trivial decrease in either performance or usability. It's not as easy a problem as you make it out to be.
I already replied to someone else on this subject, but: I believe that you know better than I do. It sounds like this tool brings some much-needed relief to the task of setting up a Windows system.
Anyway, I'm glad to hear about so many improvements in Windows in general since I last used it on a desktop. I always kind of hoped that the success of its competitors would cause the improvement, rather than the death, of Microsoft, and I'm glad to see some evidence that that's happening
As an aside:
look at mprinkey's uid. 1434. I think you can trust him. He's been around a while.
I suspect we have very different criteria for establishing trust:)
You know what? That's entirely fair. I guess I've been away from the Windows world for too long.
Actually, the idea of a centralized software repository in general is a fantastic idea, and I've been using apt and ports for years. I'm just set to default deny when it comes to the idea of installing anything from an unfamiliar on Windows. But if it's built such a strong base of trust among people more in the know than myself, it must be worth a second look.
That is, if I ever find myself in the position of setting up a Windows system again.
No. The person making the claim ALSO has the responsibility to back it up with citations. If no citations are provided, then the claim is null and void as if it never existed.
It's rare and somewhat refreshing to see someone take such a hard line with respect to intellectual rigor on an internet discussion forum. I decided to take a peek through your comment history to see how you apply it.
And yet that's exactly what [Obama] did:
He assumed in his budget that the Health Bill passed in 2010
and included the corresponding "savings" from it during years 2011 to 2017.
Even so, he still shows +1 trillion in added debt each of those years.
No citation given.
Iceland - bankrupt
Greece - bankrupt
And the other states like the UK and France are teetering on the brink.....
No citation given.
No not really. Must cities and suburbs have metal pipes that carry the cable, DSL, and other service lines. A competitor simply needs to run his fiber through that government-owned metal pipe.
The REAL blockage is the government itself, which gives Comcast and Verizon an exclusive license and therefore no other competitors can enter. The government is the problem (per usual).
No citation given.
Most economists now agree the FDR's actions either made the Depression worse, or did nothing at all. It ultimately did not end until 1951.
No citation given.
And there are many more. Interestingly, I find many of your claims more remarkable than the issue of the EU browser ballot (which has been on the front page of/. several times in recent months), and would be very interested in seeing them backed up.
Others have pointed out how push notification handles your specific use case. I'm not interested in rehashing that.
What you describe works just fine on a phone because you only interact with it for very short spurts.
This is not how I use my phone. I am not unique. Right now I use my phone the way I imagine people who have them use their netbooks, for stretches of up to an hour at a time. I very much want something to fill the niche that the iPad is aiming at, and the only reason I don't already have a netbook running Linux is because I've been waiting to see what both Apple and Google will do. I continue to wait.
Honestly, you Apple apologists just amaze me.
This is unnecessary and rude. You don't know me, and I doubt you've gained traction with anyone with that statement. Also, the fact that some people blindly buy whatever Apple product is currently trendy doesn't mean the products themselves are without merit.
You're willing to throw away one of the greatest advancements in computer interaction in the last 50 years (the ability to have multiple activities ongoing simultaneously) simply because Apple, apparently, thinks that's a good idea, despite ample evidence to the contrary. Hell, Palm did this 20 fucking years ago, and were ripped left and right for having a ridiculously limited operating paradigm. Yet you seem to think it's incredibly awesome. It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so absurd.
My argument is that it's a tradeoff. You give up one useful thing (letting third party apps run in the background) to gain another useful thing (improved system resource management, in particular battery life). As with many tradeoffs in life, it's largely a matter of personal taste. There are several viable alternatives to the iPhone OS for both phones and tablets, and they're getting better quickly. I sincerely hope one of them has exactly what you need.
I would be very happy to see this iPad competitor, and many like it, succeed, because competition is a good thing. That doesn't mean I won't continue to use the product that fits my needs the best. Right now it looks like that's going to be the iPad.
And then when she says "Why can't my stupid email program stay open while I'm browsing the web on this thing", your answer will be "well, you said you hated multitasking... now lie in the bed you made".
I can tell you've never used an iPhone. If I'm composing a message in the Mail app, and move to something else, when I return to Mail, the application state is preserved perfectly. The partially composed message is still there with all of its text, the cursor is in the same place, and the keyboard is still up. The same is true of every Apple app and every good third party app I've ever used. And start-up time on these apps is close enough to instant that I don't notice them starting up. From a usability standpoint, this approach is identical to multitasking. From a technical standpoint, I would argue that it's *superior* to multitasking, because the Mail app (and everything else you're using) isn't perpetually running in the background, using memory and precious mobile battery life to do nothing but preserve its state.
The only really compelling reason I've ever seen anyone give for exposing the multitasking capabilities of the OS to third party applications is that it would make it possible to listen to music from a source other than the iPod app (which can already run in the background) while doing something else. That would be cool. But you have to recognize that there's a design trade off here that goes beyond "Apple is evil". If background process abilities were exposed to third party apps, than for every one that used it to accomplish something desirable that couldn't be accomplished any other way, there would be a thousand written by lazy developers that would sit in the background for no reason, killing memory and battery life. And many people who don't know any better (people who are, let's face it, the majority of the market for any mobile device that's had a non-trivial amount of sales) would blame Apple for the iPhone's cruddy performance.
I honestly prefer Apple's approach as an end-user. Luckily android and probably Palm aren't going anywhere, so luckily there is a reasonably healthy market for different approaches to be evaluated. Get a Nexus (or whatever) and let me know if battery life/memory consumption with a large number of third party apps isn't as bad as I suspect.
Absolutely, positively wrong. If you're DW tanking, your threat sucks because of the DW hit penalty, and you're giving bosses free parry hastened attacks against you all the time. Stop giving your healers a headache and tank with a 2H.
Lots of posts have pointed out the humor and hypocrisy in your post, so I'd like to give a serious response a try.
Science is not about opinion. "Science" journalism may be, of course, and there is a strong tendency for journalists to greatly overstate the results of the studies they cover, often resulting in the conflicting reports you mention. Further, applied science (like medicine) often cannot wait for the full rigor of the scientific method, so yes, opinion usually comes into play there. Finally, science is conducted by people, and people are flawed, and not all scientists are equipped to handle their own cognitive biases. This is perhaps an area where the humanities of Psychology, Sociology and History can do a lot of good. Also, astrology is not a science, and no reasonable and informed person will claim that it is.
As an aside, if you're truly attempting a Ph.D. in the humanities, I imagine you'll eventually need to learn to form compelling rhetorical arguments. Things like "let's face it" aren't particularly effective.
Regarding your comments on music, it's somewhat difficult to understand what you're saying. If by "valves" you mean "vacuum tubes", then I assure you that everyone does not agree that they sound great. Many people do, and for such people, analog sound equipment is available for the right price. But transistor-based equipment will always be cheaper, easier to maintain, more reliable, and reproduce reality more accurately (though whether that is superior to the "warm" sound of analog reproduction is certainly a matter of opinion). As to the pieces of paper being useless, well, do you think you could design and build a nice piece of stereo equipment from scratch, analog or otherwise?
I am a programmer at a Very Large Company, one of these technical types you speak of. I went to a liberal arts college, and majored in Mathematics with a minor in Chemistry. I was also just shy of a minor in English, and took many, many humanities classes. Through all this, I probably averaged two books per week for school with another purely for pleasure. This in addition to copious math assignments, lab work, and frequent testing. Over the summers, when I did little else but work, my goal was to read a book per day, and it was a rare book that I couldn't finish in a single day. (Gravity's Rainbow is long and dense, but worth it.) And I'm not unique.
You want to believe that all people with scientific backgrounds are narrow minded and cynical, but I believe I'm living proof that we are not. Of course, you can find such people in science, as you can find them in any field. It's the kind of person you make yourself out to be, and I very much hope you grow past it. You'll be happier if you do, and you'll have a much easier time "enjoying life."
Ubuntu for beginners and Fedora for advanced users? Really? In my opinion and experience, if Ubuntu isn't "advanced" in a meaningful way, then Fedora isn't either, and users requiring more would go with Debian, Slackware, or maybe Gentoo. The differences between Fedora and Ubuntu really just come down to personal taste.
I personally, have used Gentoo when I feel like playing, and Ubuntu (Debian before Ubuntu existed) when I just want a Linux system that works. And I've bought three new Macs in the past three years, and haven't overpaid for hardware once. That argument is old and ignorant.
It's not Windows that's the niche application, but niche applications are what make it impossible to swich away from Windows for most businesses, even if, as is usually the case, the alternatives would be superior from a support, usability, and security standpoint.
All of the big applications such as web-browsing, email, and office applications have easy equivalents on other major platforms, and don't hinder switching. But do you need CAD software to do your job? Specialized research and computation software? Or just need to occasionally use an internal app to access your company's employee services? All these are niche applications, usually only available on Windows, and in the case of many people I know, the only thing keeping them from switching.
I believe that the move toward web-based interfaces for internal corporate apps will ease this transition in the future, and things like Parallels and VMWare will help for all of those other stragglers.
People who watched the reruns Adult Swim, where the show was actually marketed. It grew the overwhelming majority of its fanbase only after it was cancelled.
I don't understand the source of your confusion. And if you're nitpicking the hyperbolic "no one" in the OP, then you're kind of a jerk.
Your accusation is unreasonable. You don't know why his professional code is of lower quality. Perhaps it's because faces deadlines that prevent him from producing his best possible work, or perhaps he's constrained by poor design decisions made by those above him (a situation in which I often find myself). Or maybe he really does lack professional ethics, and just doesn't care about doing quality work for his employer. You don't know, and you have no right to be a self-righteous asshole.
I don't believe the parent's insight was about astrology. It was instead about the fact that Jungian archetypes have no more descriptive or predictive power than astrology, though the point was made in a somewhat oblique fashion.
You're forcing the comments into a dichotomy that's not there. Try to see what they're actually saying, without imposing your preconcieved ideas of conflict.
Comment: X doesn't do Z because Y happens
Comment: It's OK that X doesn't do Z, because Y is better than not Y.
I found this exchange to be one of the most insightful things to come out of this discussion.
Before: Local farmer produces for for $4. Sells it on local market for $5. People buy food for $5.
Net result: local farmer has earned $1 he can use to buy food, and has extra left over from his own crop to feed his family. It's a healthy economy.
After: France sells surplus to importer for $2. He sells it on local market for $3. Farmer has to quit farming. Local people buy food for $3.
Net result: the importers, of which there are far fewer than there used to be farmers, earn a lot of money. French farmers earn a lot of money at the expense of their fellow subsidizing taxpayers. The majority of local people, who used to be farmers, lose their livelyhood, can't find new work in their country's stunted economy, and become wholly dependent on foreign aid.
It's revealing that you call directly observable economics "mumbo jumbo" simply because you don't understand it. It's rational to decide that someone is ignorant when they are demonstrably without knowledge.
There's no denying they do interesting blue sky research. What I think is truly sad about both Microsoft and Bell Labs is that it took the power of an exploited monopoly to fund their work. Certainly an unfortunate tradeoff.
That $6.6 billion of "wasteful" R&D is one of the few things I like about Microsoft. Long-term research without a guarantee of short-term returns is a good thing, and Microsoft is one of the only companies that does it anymore.
Think about all the advancements that came out of Bell Labs, before it had a need to be more "efficient".
I can't get through your rambling after the first point, so I'll just remind you that "argumentem ad hominem" is not Latin for "that's mean". Calling you a "little boy" would only be fallacious if Whiney Mac Fanboy had built an argument on it. He did not.
Slashdot Mirror
And about that worst case scenario I was reluctant to think about.
The Arizona law causes no harm to US citizens of any ethnicity. The Arizona law allows police to verify residency status of non-citizens.
The problem I have is how they establish whether someone is a non-citizen. They will wind up asking actual citizens to verify their citizenship status in the course of complying with this law, because if they aren't sure someone is a citizen, they have to ask. Further, while an Arizona driver's license is proof of (at least) legal residency status (at the time the license was issued), the same can't be said for many other states, notably New Mexico. Ironically, legal residents are in a much better position that citizens are to establish to a random cop that they are legally permitted to be here.
So suppose I'm an American Citizen with a valid New Mexico driver's license driving through Arizona. I don't have my birth certificate or passport on me, because I have no reason to believe I should require either of those documents to travel between US states. Suppose further that my tail-light is burnt out, but I don't know about it, and I get pulled over. During the course of this lawful interaction, for whatever reason, the officer suspects that I am an illegal alien, and asks to verify my citizenship status. I show him my New Mexico ID
From here, there are two possibilities. First, he accepts my ID as valid proof of my legal residency, even though it is no such thing. Honestly, I believe that this will happen in most cases like this, even though nothing has been demonstrated to the officer. The other possibility is that the officer correctly recognizes that I don't have valid proof of my citizenship or legal residency, and takes me to the lock-up pending investigation. At best, assuming the officers involved are cooperative and non-hostile, it could take several hours for the county clerk's office/hospital where I was born to get the needed documents so I can be released. I don't want to think about the worst case scenario.
Now suppose that, despite the fact that I am a citizen, my English isn't that great, or I'm mentally challenged and can't really understand what's going on, or I just managed to somehow piss off the cop.
I believe the chance that something like this will happen, more than once, is quite high. Regardless, it's possible under both the new law in Arizona and the existing, unenforced federal law. This makes them both bad laws, in my opinion. I don't deny that illegal immigration is a big problem in need of a solution, but there must be a better way than this.
You seem to be laboring under the impression that Slashdot is a single person. I assure you that this is not the case.
So if I get this straight...Slashdot considers listening in to people talking to known terrorists, who would really like nothing more to kill you) an unforgivable sin.
This is really an oversimplification of the issues and concerns involved with warrantless wiretapping. Even so, reasonable people disagree about the extent to which the government can go to combat crime. I happen to think they've gone too far.
And of course, expecting that the immigration laws be enforced is downright racist.
I believe the immigration law is a bad one. Mostly because of the potential it has to harm American Citizens of a certain ethnicity. Again, I am but one of the many people who post their various opinions here.
But they have no problem with what is essentially police state regulation. You can't have salt. You can't put Toys in Happy Meals. You can't, you can't, you can't.
That type of regulation is heavy handed and likely to be ineffective anyway. But the parent only mentioned "government intervention," a phrase which apparently sends your mind to a very dark place. Intervention can take many forms, which can include education and incentives for healthy behavior, or things we haven't thought of yet. I believe it's short sighted to dismiss any attempt at correcting the obesity epidemic out of hand. But did I already mention that I'm not speaking for all of Slashdot?
Well then they should fix that in the UI - that's meant to be their speciality after all.
UI is their speciality in part because they avoid doing something until they figure out how to do it right. See copy/paste on the iPhone.
It can't be that difficult to find some way to alert people when multiple programs might be slowing down the system and give the option to easily locate and close some of them?
You're asking them to make a phone that occasionally interrupts what you're doing to ask for input on what it can do to keep working properly. I don't know that you'll ever get a UI out of that approach that isn't abjectly terrible.
My guess is that multitasking for third party apps will come, but only when it doesn't come with a non-trivial decrease in either performance or usability. It's not as easy a problem as you make it out to be.
I already replied to someone else on this subject, but: I believe that you know better than I do. It sounds like this tool brings some much-needed relief to the task of setting up a Windows system.
Anyway, I'm glad to hear about so many improvements in Windows in general since I last used it on a desktop. I always kind of hoped that the success of its competitors would cause the improvement, rather than the death, of Microsoft, and I'm glad to see some evidence that that's happening
As an aside:
look at mprinkey's uid. 1434. I think you can trust him. He's been around a while.
I suspect we have very different criteria for establishing trust :)
You know what? That's entirely fair. I guess I've been away from the Windows world for too long.
Actually, the idea of a centralized software repository in general is a fantastic idea, and I've been using apt and ports for years. I'm just set to default deny when it comes to the idea of installing anything from an unfamiliar on Windows. But if it's built such a strong base of trust among people more in the know than myself, it must be worth a second look.
That is, if I ever find myself in the position of setting up a Windows system again.
You mean I can download my anti-virus software from an oddly named third party that I've never heard of? Forgive me if I pass.
No. The person making the claim ALSO has the responsibility to back it up with citations. If no citations are provided, then the claim is null and void as if it never existed.
It's rare and somewhat refreshing to see someone take such a hard line with respect to intellectual rigor on an internet discussion forum. I decided to take a peek through your comment history to see how you apply it.
And yet that's exactly what [Obama] did:
He assumed in his budget that the Health Bill passed in 2010
and included the corresponding "savings" from it during years 2011 to 2017.
Even so, he still shows +1 trillion in added debt each of those years.
No citation given.
Iceland - bankrupt
Greece - bankrupt
And the other states like the UK and France are teetering on the brink.....
No citation given.
No not really. Must cities and suburbs have metal pipes that carry the cable, DSL, and other service lines. A competitor simply needs to run his fiber through that government-owned metal pipe.
The REAL blockage is the government itself, which gives Comcast and Verizon an exclusive license and therefore no other competitors can enter. The government is the problem (per usual).
No citation given.
Most economists now agree the FDR's actions either made the Depression worse, or did nothing at all. It ultimately did not end until 1951.
No citation given.
/. several times in recent months), and would be very interested in seeing them backed up.
And there are many more. Interestingly, I find many of your claims more remarkable than the issue of the EU browser ballot (which has been on the front page of
What you describe works just fine on a phone because you only interact with it for very short spurts.
This is not how I use my phone. I am not unique. Right now I use my phone the way I imagine people who have them use their netbooks, for stretches of up to an hour at a time. I very much want something to fill the niche that the iPad is aiming at, and the only reason I don't already have a netbook running Linux is because I've been waiting to see what both Apple and Google will do. I continue to wait.
Honestly, you Apple apologists just amaze me.
This is unnecessary and rude. You don't know me, and I doubt you've gained traction with anyone with that statement. Also, the fact that some people blindly buy whatever Apple product is currently trendy doesn't mean the products themselves are without merit.
You're willing to throw away one of the greatest advancements in computer interaction in the last 50 years (the ability to have multiple activities ongoing simultaneously) simply because Apple, apparently, thinks that's a good idea, despite ample evidence to the contrary. Hell, Palm did this 20 fucking years ago, and were ripped left and right for having a ridiculously limited operating paradigm. Yet you seem to think it's incredibly awesome. It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so absurd.
My argument is that it's a tradeoff. You give up one useful thing (letting third party apps run in the background) to gain another useful thing (improved system resource management, in particular battery life). As with many tradeoffs in life, it's largely a matter of personal taste. There are several viable alternatives to the iPhone OS for both phones and tablets, and they're getting better quickly. I sincerely hope one of them has exactly what you need.
I would be very happy to see this iPad competitor, and many like it, succeed, because competition is a good thing. That doesn't mean I won't continue to use the product that fits my needs the best. Right now it looks like that's going to be the iPad.
And then when she says "Why can't my stupid email program stay open while I'm browsing the web on this thing", your answer will be "well, you said you hated multitasking... now lie in the bed you made".
I can tell you've never used an iPhone. If I'm composing a message in the Mail app, and move to something else, when I return to Mail, the application state is preserved perfectly. The partially composed message is still there with all of its text, the cursor is in the same place, and the keyboard is still up. The same is true of every Apple app and every good third party app I've ever used. And start-up time on these apps is close enough to instant that I don't notice them starting up. From a usability standpoint, this approach is identical to multitasking. From a technical standpoint, I would argue that it's *superior* to multitasking, because the Mail app (and everything else you're using) isn't perpetually running in the background, using memory and precious mobile battery life to do nothing but preserve its state.
The only really compelling reason I've ever seen anyone give for exposing the multitasking capabilities of the OS to third party applications is that it would make it possible to listen to music from a source other than the iPod app (which can already run in the background) while doing something else. That would be cool. But you have to recognize that there's a design trade off here that goes beyond "Apple is evil". If background process abilities were exposed to third party apps, than for every one that used it to accomplish something desirable that couldn't be accomplished any other way, there would be a thousand written by lazy developers that would sit in the background for no reason, killing memory and battery life. And many people who don't know any better (people who are, let's face it, the majority of the market for any mobile device that's had a non-trivial amount of sales) would blame Apple for the iPhone's cruddy performance.
I honestly prefer Apple's approach as an end-user. Luckily android and probably Palm aren't going anywhere, so luckily there is a reasonably healthy market for different approaches to be evaluated. Get a Nexus (or whatever) and let me know if battery life/memory consumption with a large number of third party apps isn't as bad as I suspect.
Absolutely, positively wrong. If you're DW tanking, your threat sucks because of the DW hit penalty, and you're giving bosses free parry hastened attacks against you all the time. Stop giving your healers a headache and tank with a 2H.
Mac users call it the command key, or cmd.
Lots of posts have pointed out the humor and hypocrisy in your post, so I'd like to give a serious response a try.
Science is not about opinion. "Science" journalism may be, of course, and there is a strong tendency for journalists to greatly overstate the results of the studies they cover, often resulting in the conflicting reports you mention. Further, applied science (like medicine) often cannot wait for the full rigor of the scientific method, so yes, opinion usually comes into play there. Finally, science is conducted by people, and people are flawed, and not all scientists are equipped to handle their own cognitive biases. This is perhaps an area where the humanities of Psychology, Sociology and History can do a lot of good. Also, astrology is not a science, and no reasonable and informed person will claim that it is.
As an aside, if you're truly attempting a Ph.D. in the humanities, I imagine you'll eventually need to learn to form compelling rhetorical arguments. Things like "let's face it" aren't particularly effective.
Regarding your comments on music, it's somewhat difficult to understand what you're saying. If by "valves" you mean "vacuum tubes", then I assure you that everyone does not agree that they sound great. Many people do, and for such people, analog sound equipment is available for the right price. But transistor-based equipment will always be cheaper, easier to maintain, more reliable, and reproduce reality more accurately (though whether that is superior to the "warm" sound of analog reproduction is certainly a matter of opinion). As to the pieces of paper being useless, well, do you think you could design and build a nice piece of stereo equipment from scratch, analog or otherwise?
I am a programmer at a Very Large Company, one of these technical types you speak of. I went to a liberal arts college, and majored in Mathematics with a minor in Chemistry. I was also just shy of a minor in English, and took many, many humanities classes. Through all this, I probably averaged two books per week for school with another purely for pleasure. This in addition to copious math assignments, lab work, and frequent testing. Over the summers, when I did little else but work, my goal was to read a book per day, and it was a rare book that I couldn't finish in a single day. (Gravity's Rainbow is long and dense, but worth it.) And I'm not unique.
You want to believe that all people with scientific backgrounds are narrow minded and cynical, but I believe I'm living proof that we are not. Of course, you can find such people in science, as you can find them in any field. It's the kind of person you make yourself out to be, and I very much hope you grow past it. You'll be happier if you do, and you'll have a much easier time "enjoying life."
Ubuntu for beginners and Fedora for advanced users? Really? In my opinion and experience, if Ubuntu isn't "advanced" in a meaningful way, then Fedora isn't either, and users requiring more would go with Debian, Slackware, or maybe Gentoo. The differences between Fedora and Ubuntu really just come down to personal taste. I personally, have used Gentoo when I feel like playing, and Ubuntu (Debian before Ubuntu existed) when I just want a Linux system that works. And I've bought three new Macs in the past three years, and haven't overpaid for hardware once. That argument is old and ignorant.
It's not Windows that's the niche application, but niche applications are what make it impossible to swich away from Windows for most businesses, even if, as is usually the case, the alternatives would be superior from a support, usability, and security standpoint.
All of the big applications such as web-browsing, email, and office applications have easy equivalents on other major platforms, and don't hinder switching. But do you need CAD software to do your job? Specialized research and computation software? Or just need to occasionally use an internal app to access your company's employee services? All these are niche applications, usually only available on Windows, and in the case of many people I know, the only thing keeping them from switching.
I believe that the move toward web-based interfaces for internal corporate apps will ease this transition in the future, and things like Parallels and VMWare will help for all of those other stragglers.
People who watched the reruns Adult Swim, where the show was actually marketed. It grew the overwhelming majority of its fanbase only after it was cancelled.
I don't understand the source of your confusion. And if you're nitpicking the hyperbolic "no one" in the OP, then you're kind of a jerk.
Your accusation is unreasonable. You don't know why his professional code is of lower quality. Perhaps it's because faces deadlines that prevent him from producing his best possible work, or perhaps he's constrained by poor design decisions made by those above him (a situation in which I often find myself). Or maybe he really does lack professional ethics, and just doesn't care about doing quality work for his employer. You don't know, and you have no right to be a self-righteous asshole.
Be careful man. It's not wise to leave unbalanced parentheses in a Slashdot post in general, but in an article about Scheme, it's damn near suicidal!
I don't believe the parent's insight was about astrology. It was instead about the fact that Jungian archetypes have no more descriptive or predictive power than astrology, though the point was made in a somewhat oblique fashion.
Let's rephrase this in a manner that is less profoundly stupid:
Using DRM to enforce restrictions beyond those which are provided for by copyright: Bad
Using copyright law to seek justice against someone who lied to you, manipulated you, and violated your privacy: Good
Does this make a little more sense?
You're forcing the comments into a dichotomy that's not there. Try to see what they're actually saying, without imposing your preconcieved ideas of conflict.
Comment: X doesn't do Z because Y happens
Comment: It's OK that X doesn't do Z, because Y is better than not Y.
I found this exchange to be one of the most insightful things to come out of this discussion.
Net result: local farmer has earned $1 he can use to buy food, and has extra left over from his own crop to feed his family. It's a healthy economy.
Net result: the importers, of which there are far fewer than there used to be farmers, earn a lot of money. French farmers earn a lot of money at the expense of their fellow subsidizing taxpayers. The majority of local people, who used to be farmers, lose their livelyhood, can't find new work in their country's stunted economy, and become wholly dependent on foreign aid.
It's revealing that you call directly observable economics "mumbo jumbo" simply because you don't understand it. It's rational to decide that someone is ignorant when they are demonstrably without knowledge.
Look through their publications if you like. Hitting search with no search string will give you a nice list.
There's no denying they do interesting blue sky research. What I think is truly sad about both Microsoft and Bell Labs is that it took the power of an exploited monopoly to fund their work. Certainly an unfortunate tradeoff.
Think about all the advancements that came out of Bell Labs, before it had a need to be more "efficient".
I can't get through your rambling after the first point, so I'll just remind you that "argumentem ad hominem" is not Latin for "that's mean". Calling you a "little boy" would only be fallacious if Whiney Mac Fanboy had built an argument on it. He did not.
Learn about logic. Stop embarassing yourself.