So, we stand to lose billions, or trillians, of dollars. On the other hand, if the theories are correct but we don't take them seriously, we stand to lose... life on earth (as we know it).
Dollars/Life on earth. Life on earth/Dollars. Hmmm. Tough one.
Ding, ding, ding! You have just won the "Thanks for proving their point by spewing useless doomsday propaganda." award.
Want to know to spot a political hack? Find a jackass who gives you two choices as if they were the only ones to a subject that is significantly more complicated. I do this with my friends a lot, "Are you going to hang with us tonight or are you going to be gay?" Bush does this too, "You're either with us or you support terrorists." Then there's the ever popular, "If you don't support this bill you believe in hurting/killing/molesting/exploiting children."
The only reason you got modded "insightful" is because there are a ton of mods out there that are complete shills who buy into global warming with the level of blind faith that would make any brainless Christian Fundamentalist feel unworthy. You talk about millions and billions and trillions of dollars like they're disposable fizz that have no affect on life in this world at all. How much hunger could that stop? How many other scientific advances could it be put toward? Think of the children!
It's not just, "Well, if it's an incorrect theory, no harm, no foul. If it's not, we've saved all life on earth (as we know it)." And if global warming is actually not just a natural cycle we're in right now and it's not CO2 and is something else, what then? What if the money should have been spent doing something else to combat global warming?
Once again, it's clear that global warming is far from a conclusive problem and that "all scientists" don't agree. It's also clear that we should still try to be as efficient as possible and that alternatives to things like fossil fuels should be found because smog sucks even when the world isn't burning. If global warming is a problem and the scientists in that camp are correct then I can promise you governments and corporations aren't going to do anything until it gets uncomfortable enough for them to do so.
In the meantime, let me ask you personally, since you believe all life on earth is at state: What do you do personally to combat global warming? Do you drive a hybrid, or better yet, avoid a car altogether? Do you power your home using alternative energy, or are you connected to the grid? Do you only do business with companies with a history of environmental kindness? Or are you just another leftist whiner that thinks it's up to someone else to solve the problem? (A problem that might not even be anything more than a natural cycle.) And if you haven't done those things, why? Too expensive? Not enough time? What about all life on earth (as we know it)?
Every time I see a global warming topic on this site, I see a lot of people who say "Something must be done!" when they are neither scientists in the field nor are they doing anything actively to solve the problem with what little they do have control over. Fundamentalists have armageddon and leftist shills have global warming and the masses of both sides generally fail in doing anything. Christians ignore Christ and the leftists drive their cars and buy from the corporations. Brilliant.
Disclaimer: I am pro alternative energy. I don't think dumping nasty chemicals into the ocean or sky is a good idea. I don't think we should waste natural resources. I believe in intelligent and efficient energy use. I loathe George W. Bush. I am not and never have been a Republican. I am not a Christian Fundamentalist. I add this because, like the person I am replying to, there are many out there that see an opponent to the validity of global warming a certain way and that way is generally very wrong and very prejudiced. Nothing new. The fact that I have to include this is annoying in and of itself.
My first computer was an Apple IIgs so I always had some level of respect for Macs, though until OS X came out I was totally uninterested in using them again.
I covered this pretty extensively in another post, but as long as Linux has the software you need, many distros (*buntu is all the rage these days, and for a good reason) "just work." Although, it's just not as slick or as simple as a Mac. Linux doesn't have to be a tweaker OS, but I think a real problem we geeks face is that if it CAN be tweaked... we'll tweak it.
Your point is interesting too. Kids. (If you have a newer Mac laptop I bet the magnetic plug is a nice bonus!)
Ultimately it's just a matter of using what "just works for you," since "just works" is a pretty damn subjective phrase.
Well, unless something has changed, I haven't had to enter any kind of code to run OS X, but I don't know that it matters. It's propriety, and I think that's a problem Apple has. It's got this sort of open image by using Darwin, but it's not all that open. Mind you, the fact that it IS propriety is something I always accepted and never cared about. Should it ever begin to interfere with work or freedom to the extent that it's more trouble than production, then I'll switch. Aside from the lack of commercial software, I'm pretty happy with pretty much any distro running KDE.
I think to say that Linux "just works" is a bit of a misnomer. In all honesty saying "Linux" is usually a misnomer. When I say "OS X" people know I'm talking about the Mach kernel, Darwin, Aqua, etc. In most instances they even know what file manager I'm talking about without me having to specify. When someone says "Linux" they're either really talking about their distribution (Ubuntu "just worked" last I installed it but a stage 1 Gentoo install certainly didn't... which was the point really).
Most of what people around here tell me they like about Linux--take multiple desktops for instance (and I loved them too, expose is nice but it's debatable what setup I like better)--are things that are specific to desktop environments or window managers. Multiple desktops is not a Linux thing anymore than it's a *BSD thing. It's a Gnome, KDE, XFce or whatever thing. Hardware "just working" is always distro specific. Some do. Some don't. How bothersome popups and such are and interruption is also generally app and DE specific.
That's really one of Linux's biggest problems for mass adoption and its biggest strength for geeks. Choice and diversity is great for people who like to tinker and customize. However, it's not so great when something is trying to define itself which is pretty much necessary to be marketable. "Linux" is a kernel with some specific apps that go with it. (UDEV for instance, which is one of the few things other than the kernel that's truly a Linux only thing.)
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux. I keep a Linux desktop around to make sure I don't get TOO rusty with it and run it on some of my servers. I also keep it around to make sure that my heavy Mac use doesn't inspire me to wear a turtleneck. However, at the end of the day my computers are no more part of any of my personal idealism than my hammers and screwdrivers. I'm going to use what I like and prefer. At the same time, I also don't really care what other people use. I'm not trying to sell anyone on the idea that Macs are the be all end all... they're not. No computer platform ever will be. Find what you like best (which is matter of your preferences, skills and how much you're willing to pay or steal) and that's that.
Right now, Mac wins out for me because (and not in any particular order): 1. It's pretty (and frankly, the aesthetic is important to me). 2. Commercial Software that is either unavailable or that I just plain like better (Pages, Photoshop, Illustrator, TextMate, Safari, Mail). 3. Peripheral device support AND usability (digital camera, scanner, printer) is better (for me). 4. I like Mac laptops and Minis. I also like booting from Firewire drives.
When I read these discussions I note this snobbishness that's really annoying. If I say, "I like Macs." I'm not saying, "Linux people suck." Furthermore I see the Free Software crowd as being some of the coolest and worst zealots out there. Some of them really embrace freedom to the full extend of "use what you like" and others feel if you use anything proprietary you are the spawn of hell and are single handed part of a global conspiracy to deprive people of digital freedom. If your platform defines you then you have some serious issues. If you make serious judgments about other people based on their platform, you're an idiot.
Eh, I can "program" in Ruby, Perl, PHP, JavaScript and used to do ASP in JScript. Some people don't consider the "interpreted crowd" to be programmers. I should have been clearer. There are a lot of programming snobs out there and if it ain't assembler, C or C++ you don't seem to count as a "programmer" because you're some high level shmuck who doesn't compile or get close to the machine. I can do algorithms, but I don't do much in the way of specific memory management.
*I'd* call me and others like me "programmers."
I don't really consider HTML, XML or CSS to be programming, but I do those too.
PowerPC wasn't cutting the mustard, otherwise Apple would still be using them. We were still stuck with bloody G4s in the laptops. Thanks to heat, they were one generation behind. With x86 Apple doesn't have to focus on hardware development and they don't have to play magic numbers to try and convince people a crappy G4 is somehow more powerful than what Intel is offering. With Intel, there is no concern as to whether they'll be around tomorrow and with the hard competition from AMD, it's a no brainer that they have to improve. On top of that, if Intel starts to go sour, there's nothing stopping them from going with AMD since there are multiple contenders in the x86 world.
Moving to Intel has allowed dual booting Windows and much improved VMs to work with Windows since the hardware no longer has to be emulated. This gets rid of a major road block for a lot of people and why I was able to sell a major client of mine on the idea of using a Mac instead of a new PC.
A Mac can run pretty much everything under the sun now, plus OS X is awesome. Seriously, PowerPC was a dead zone, just like Motorola before it. Apple no longer has to concern itself with a company that's too busy working on "other things" to update their processor line. Intel gives Macs more power, less power consumption, more versatility and more value than IBM ever could.
I think you hit the nail on the head. The part of "free" software that most people like is the free as in beer portion. Personally, I also like the philosophy behind open source but I initially jumped into Linux/BSD for reasons #1 and #3. (I paid for a boxed distro my first time so free wasn't so much an issue.)
I'm arguably a programmer. (I say that because if you're not using some sort of compiler there are a lot of people around here who won't even call you a programmer.) I do not hack anything but scripts (and the occasional C CGI). I don't look at or mod any source code for major applications and idea didn't even strike me until after I began using Linux on the desktop and I considered all the little features I wanted to see in X app.
Eventually though, I became a Mac user because I had tasted the fruit of Unix and the command line, loved many of the tools there but didn't have a lot of the commercial apps I liked. (Games obviously aren't a factor.) And motivations were #1 and #3. Apple fits the bill. This is why a lot of geeks are going over to Apple.
When you're 16ish - 20ish (and perhaps a little older) it's cool to upgrade your computer every single paycheck, tweak this and that and spend hours fiddling with your computer. My computer used to triple boot: Win2k, Slackware Linux and BeOS 4.5. It was all fun. But when I actually started making money doing web dev and server related stuff, that kind of lost its luster. I wanted a computer that "just worked."
Macs fit the bill. I will say this though, if you use a little but of forethought when picking out hardware, Ubuntu installs and "just works" easier than WinXP or Win2k. I still keep an OSS desktop around and run FreeBSD on my servers, but I don't want to fiddle with my work machine and generally prefer Mac GUI apps to anything I had in Linux. (Safari, TextMate, Pages, iTunes, Photoshop, etc.) My computers are my tools and I go with preference.
OSS is not why most people/geeks play with Linux. The fact that they're geeks and routinely do technological crap like install NetBSD on their DreamCast is why. We like to play with stuff just because.
You might want to look at foXposé. Pretty much the same thing for Firefox. I've never actually used it, but if you like that feature and you use Firefox, you might like it.
This campaign is ridiculous. Although, I think it's pretty fitting that they have the punk music like motif on their website since it's the same "anti-estabishment... but not really" crap that this idont.com stuff is.
All of this nonsense makes me want to start another Fight Club.
I dunno why people get down on Apple for this. Whenever I'm looking for a new car (a new used car anyway) I always avoid the first year of any major body change. When a new processor comes out or some brand-spanking-uber-new-features chipset, I avoid it. When I was in my teens, being an early adopter was cool, but now, I favor reliability over pretty much everything else in all my gadgets.
One of the biggest problems I find in America right now is that we have devalued so much "honest" work that no one wants to do it anymore. If you work as something like, say, a carpenter or in a mine or in a factory or as a mechanic it's because you "didn't go to college" or "weren't smart enough" to be a doctor, laywer, IT something, etc. Even if science jobs have ass pay, you'll still get more respect than an auto mechanic because your job "required college."
There is nothing wrong with or bad about labor jobs. If we'd start promoting them again it'd be a win-win-win for laborers, intellectuals and artists.
I have seen multiple friends that just wanted to take up something like being a mechanic go through years of college only to get some crap job at a place they hated that really didn't pay much better than running their own garage. And why? The mentality right now is, "No degree = no human value."
I'm not saying we should shut down colleges, but seriously, if someone wants to be a tradesman it should be promoted and not discouraged.
"It makes calculating anything exponentially easier if you just have to worry about powers of ten of things, rather than how many hogsheads go in to a cubic furlong, or what the speed of light is in cubits per fortnight (7.93 x 10 ^ 7)."
Yes, because most Americans generally use the more... antiquated measurements. I mean, I use cupits and rods every day. And a fortnight? Oh hell yes!
Get real. You pick a base unit and go with it. Dealing with 1000 miles isn't much differnet than dealing with 1000 kilometers. (And WTF is up with that? Why not just call them megameters? No one does.)
Metric measurements are making their way in to America in most places. About the only exception is distance (and let me just say, as a carpenter, base 12 is way nicer than base 10) and weight (pounds and tons, woop-dee-doo). Even then, in all my science classes 8 years ago, everything was done in metric.
I just get so tired of people who hate the Imperial system always jumping to an unrealistic extreme.
"Games are the only applications that ever promt someone to buy a high end machine."
What are you? 14-years-old? Perhaps 16? Perhaps you've never had to use your computer as anything but a toy, but for those of us who use machines for work, there are plenty of other applications that prompt upgrades. High end digital photography, print work, 3D modeling and annimation and let's not forget video editing. That's just the tip of the iceberg.
For me, dual cores rock because they greatly assist with virtualization. For someone who runs multiple OSes at once, the speed increase is appreciated. It means I don't need to use multiple computers for testing anymore. One will do the trick of three. This is especially awesome when that one computer is now a small laptop that I can take pretty much anywhere.
Servers, video, and professional applications drive a large portion of high end hardware. Games are only a slice of the pie and they're also only ONE KIND of computing.
The integrated graphics don't bother me at all. Games aren't my bag for a laptop and I don't do anything 3D or video intensive. As such, I actually APPRECIATE the smaller footprint, less power consumption, etc.
I looked at the disassembly on those things and let me just say, as someone who had to completely disassemble his 12" PowerBook to replace the antenna wire (which pretty much means taking the ENTIRE thing, screen and all, apart), I like that!
I'm probably pathetic enough to buy black. Although the 15" MBP is also looking good. Still, I think I'm gonna wait for the next revision on them. (Finances will likely force me to do so anyway.)
You took the words right out of my mouth. As soon as I score a MacBook I'm beefing it up to 2GB of RAM and running FreeBSD and WinXP inside Parrallels. I'll have my own separate test server and IE to test websites on. That single "appliance" will do EVERYTHING!
I'm really curious about the keyboard. I hate to sound like an echo around here but the keyboard on the 12" PowerBook is damn fine.
What the hell does that even mean? "Ultra portable?" I have a 12" PowerBook and I find that it's about perfect for size vs. usability. Much smaller and the thing just becomes annoying. (The extra width on the new MacBook is something I actuall welcome. 1024x768 just doesn't cut it anymore.)
I can take this thing anywhere and... 5lbs vs. 2lbs? If 3lbs is too much extra baggage then someone needs to hit up a gym.
I don't get it. A glossy screen is "not what professionals" want? Professional what? Perhaps I'm in the minority here, but I like the glossy screens better and I am a "professional" at the things I do.
And more importantly, "You are sooo right about the silly black case upcharge. Note to Apple: We're fanboys, not idiots."
Uhhh... You and the parent might not be idiots, but I am! And if you've mulled through the comments at all, there is no shortage of idiots around here that'll pay $150 for the black. It's sad. It's pathetic. Sure. But I mean... this is Slashdot.
Maybe I'm the only one that's noticed this, but doesn't the onboard video also consumes less space and less power? I mean, this is their smaller book. I'm also assuming this configuration runs cooler. I don't know about everyone else, but I think the tradeoff is fine.
OH NOES!!!!!!1111one NO GAMEZ!
Well, I use my laptop for work, so I couldn't care less about some uber video setup. I've got a 12" PowerBook and other than the splashy effect when I add a new widget in Dashboard, I've noticed little difference with it and my Mac Mini.
First, it's not the scientists that are the problem. Like religious founders who often start with the best of intentions their followers and worshippers take their teachings and use them to mean something they were never meant to mean. You may never have met a scientist that was so arrogant as to believe his was infallible, but that's not the problem. It's the throng of "believers" that take it that way. Most of the people in the pro-evolution camp aren't scientists at all. A lot of them ass hats like Bill Maher who seem to think that if you don't accept the current beliefs on evolution that you're some kind of religious throw back.
"Again, this is an accusation that's easy to make, not a fact."
Have you ever actually read through the evolution threads on this site!? Although my generalization may have been too sweeping as was written, the exact kind of ignorance, blind zeal and arrogance flows through the evolution camp as much as it does the creationist camp.
As far as Behe is concerned, what he says about the flagella is not nearly as interesting as say the human eye. On top of that, I see no issue with comparing biological creatures to machines. That's what they are from my perspective. It's not like the guy has published a single article and he's certainly not alone. I get to define what I feel is "real" evidence as much as you do. Your studies seem to indicate that you don't find that Behe is correct. Great. Mine say otherwise. (Well, not so much correct as valid.) Science, like religion, politics and journalism is rife with bias from most scientists. Bias isn't malicious either, it's merely human nature. Everyone picks what they choose to believe. History has shown that many scientists picked wrong. It happens. It doesn't make them less intelligent or even less qualified. Theories (even wrong ones) have to be made and tested to bring us to the truth.
"And that's the greatest irony of all. No one is questioning things more rigorously than scientists: any number of vast revisions and innovations within science have happened over just the last few decades."
Again, it's not the scientists that are the problem. I'm sitting here typing this on my computer connected to the internet. Obviously, science is kind of important to me and my way of life. It's the jackasses who treat current accepted science like a religion and excuse to berate and attack people who disagree. (Even those who do so intelligently with a competing theory.)
I'm somewhat in the ID camp. However, I'm not in favor of it being taught in schools because honestly, you can't teach ID. There's no point. When I take a physics course it's up to me to decide the nature of the laws. Did a god make them? Are they chaos? Etc. Laws and occurances are merely a how. Why (which is really all ID is) should be left to another realm entirely. Evolution neither proves nor disproves the existence of a god but the problem I have is that people take it to mean one or the other. ID has also become obnoxious to claim belief in because it's a system that's been hijacked by fundamentalists.
"But guess what: spouting off about something you haven't bothered to understand IS ignorant."
And that's the arrogance I take issue with. I've read far more than just Behe. However, in YOUR mind I don't UNDERSTAND unless I come to the same conclusion you do or choose to believe and accept the same sources. I may very well be wrong. That's fine. You may very well be wrong as time progresses and frankly, I figure it's most likely that in time we're both wrong. Just because you're wrong doesn't mean you're ignorant.
Finally, the main thing I was "spouting off" about wasn't the science behind evolution but rather, the veryfsame arrogance you've displayed.
I'm not opposed to the theory of evolution. I do believe in a god and that life as we know it was directed by that being (or whatever you want to call it). Big deal. It doesn't change the mechanics at all.
The Nature paper joins a wave of work showing that the lines between species are hazy..."
Can someone tell me at what point any 5 - 6 million year old evolutionary division was anything but hazy? I mean seriously. And this isn't specifically about evolution either, it's about anything that's that old. Until we develop time travel or something, it's gonna be hazy.
This is the critical point that creationists who blather on about "macroevolution vs. microevolution" (a distinction without a difference) and "nobody has ever observed a speciation event" (just not true) willfully miss. Species lines are imposed by observers after the fact; they are not inherent in the nature of living organisms.
I'm sorry, there's a huge difference between micro and macro evolution. In all the papers I have read I have yet to see anyone counter Behe's rather simple "irreducable complexity" issues in way that I could go, "Oh, okay. That makes sense." Instead, most of the counter arguments are as poor and emotionally charged as those of creationists defedning a literal interpretation of Genesis.
I haven't decided specifically where I stand on evolution (and I know, since I don't specifically accept the theory I obviously have a huge Confederate flag hoisted in front of my house, still have a few black slaves on my plantation and regularly engage in sex with female cousins) but there's a lot of things I read that I just don't buy. The fascinating machines that biological organisms are just do not compute to me as a product of chaos or random placement.
Call it a god, call it "the force", call it "intelligent design" or call it some kind of unviversal force or energy that inherently produces order... with that I can accept evolution. I also grow tired of the sheer arrogance of the evolution camp who appear to believe as humans that our "science" has moved to the point of infallibility. Anyone who doesn't believe is obviously stupid/inbred/a hillbilly/etc. Sounds kind of like another camp in this war. Only they say you're stupid/damned/etc.
Like religion, science should never create barriers that "just know" we can't cross. It's the very questioning of the status quo and accepted theory that continues to allow us to advance our knowledge.
While I agree with you that "random" doesn't work for me (life or even the universe for that matter being the product of chaos just dieesn't sit well), I couldn't help but notice:
It's just random?
That's a cop-out to a serious question and I'm calling bull-shit.
Like I said, I agree. But I wonder:
Nihilism makes me smile.
Am I missing something? Shouldn't the whole random thing make you happy?
I'd argue that a good file manager that's customizable is crutial to any DE and as such I'd say it's a failure of Gnome. (Explorer is a failure of Windows and Finder is a failure of Apple, so I'm certainly not just pointing a finger at the Gnome guys.)
Screenshots of Directory Opus can be very misleading because the thing is SO customizable. This is an area that Directory Opus and Konq really have the rest of the world beat. (At least in my experience.) Pathfinder is kind of there... but it happens that what can be done in it is the kind of stuff I already like. However, it is, by no means, as flexible as the other two I have mentioned. I'll have to check out Xfce again if they have a new File Manger, since that was the one that that disappointed me about it before.
KIOslaves is part of KDE as a whole, but the area you'll see it used most of the time is in the file management world. Gnome has tried to do the same thing with their VFS, but unless it's seen some MAJOR improvement in the last two releases (like FTP that actually works), it's pretty pitiful. (And still better than Apple's way of doing things.)
To be honest, I've never used ROX Filer but most people who like it swear by it. By the time I had heard of it the world of GTK2 was out and I had no interest in dealing with something like that. I like "pretty" interfaces. I like smooth fonts. Even if it makes me sound like a twit, those are things *I* can't live without. If ROX starts using a modern toolkit, then I'll give it a try. (Although, I should probably check out the functionality anyway just so I can understand what all the fuss is about!)
I'm on a Mac for most of my work right now and I love it. However, I've never been strictly wed to any platform or OS. Commercial apps (Adobe Illustrator in particular) are one of the things keeping me on a Mac. I was still dual booting in Linux or using another machine for certain tasks. That got annoying. (Crossover Office worked pretty darn well though.)
I just set up one of my clients on a Mac Mini running Parallels so he could run XP inside to deal with the apps he HAS to have. After setting that up I totally wanted a MacBook (whenever they come out). The thought of running multiple virtual machines makes me super happy. I know it can be done via other applications on other platforms, but I do love OS X despite its flaws.
I suppose I should have clarified myself a little. Sure, I could use Konq in Gnome (and I actually did for a little while). I even used Konq in XFCE (which kinda defeats the purpose of a "light" DE, but I digress). However, when I use either Gnome or KDE, with the possible exception of GAIM (about 8 months ago when I still ran a Linux desktop, I liked it A LOT better than Kopete) and Firefox (I like Konq better as a browser, but I make it a point to have more than one browser) I try to run a homogeneous widget setup.
For the most part I think of KDE and Gnome as two different platforms and treat them as such.
I never found a GTK2 based file manager I liked much at all. Nautilus sucks. For the longest time I continued used Midnight Commander (though, in those days it was not so much about usability as it was that Nautilus was so slow "back in the day.")
So, KDE has Konq. Windows has Directory Opus. Mac has PathFinder. Gnome has...? Nothing native. Granted, you don't have to be as anal as I am and can mix and match to your heart's content, but it's not something I like doing at all. KIOslaves makes Konq cooler anyway. Using it to sftp and have all my KDE apps treat those like local files without mounting anything was a major point of happiness for me.
All the Linux guys I know (which isn't impressive since I'm talking about 3, and one of them is actually a Linux girl) use KDE and when I'm using a Linux or FreeBSD system, I use KDE.
I used to try Gnome out with every new release (at least up until 2.10 which was about the time I stopped using Linux for my desktop machine) but it was the same disappointments over an over. The number one being Nautilus. Talk about crapsville for a file manager. It's weak. With Konq and kioslaves there was little I couldn't do. Pathfinder on the Mac is cool in its own way and Directory Opus on Windows is sweet too. One thing KDE got right over everyone else (Apple included) was the inclusion of a highly customizable and flexible file manager. On Windows and Macs I can get a replacement, but unless something new has risen in the last two Gnome releases, your choice is still a single crapshoot file manager.
Kparts is the other reason I love KDE.
I could go on, but... what's the point? Gnome isn't even very good at doing what it says it's focusing on. It feels dated and claustrophobic to use.
Slashdot Mirror
Ding, ding, ding! You have just won the "Thanks for proving their point by spewing useless doomsday propaganda." award.
Want to know to spot a political hack? Find a jackass who gives you two choices as if they were the only ones to a subject that is significantly more complicated. I do this with my friends a lot, "Are you going to hang with us tonight or are you going to be gay?" Bush does this too, "You're either with us or you support terrorists." Then there's the ever popular, "If you don't support this bill you believe in hurting/killing/molesting/exploiting children."
The only reason you got modded "insightful" is because there are a ton of mods out there that are complete shills who buy into global warming with the level of blind faith that would make any brainless Christian Fundamentalist feel unworthy. You talk about millions and billions and trillions of dollars like they're disposable fizz that have no affect on life in this world at all. How much hunger could that stop? How many other scientific advances could it be put toward? Think of the children!
It's not just, "Well, if it's an incorrect theory, no harm, no foul. If it's not, we've saved all life on earth (as we know it)." And if global warming is actually not just a natural cycle we're in right now and it's not CO2 and is something else, what then? What if the money should have been spent doing something else to combat global warming?
Once again, it's clear that global warming is far from a conclusive problem and that "all scientists" don't agree. It's also clear that we should still try to be as efficient as possible and that alternatives to things like fossil fuels should be found because smog sucks even when the world isn't burning. If global warming is a problem and the scientists in that camp are correct then I can promise you governments and corporations aren't going to do anything until it gets uncomfortable enough for them to do so.
In the meantime, let me ask you personally, since you believe all life on earth is at state: What do you do personally to combat global warming? Do you drive a hybrid, or better yet, avoid a car altogether? Do you power your home using alternative energy, or are you connected to the grid? Do you only do business with companies with a history of environmental kindness? Or are you just another leftist whiner that thinks it's up to someone else to solve the problem? (A problem that might not even be anything more than a natural cycle.) And if you haven't done those things, why? Too expensive? Not enough time? What about all life on earth (as we know it)?
Every time I see a global warming topic on this site, I see a lot of people who say "Something must be done!" when they are neither scientists in the field nor are they doing anything actively to solve the problem with what little they do have control over. Fundamentalists have armageddon and leftist shills have global warming and the masses of both sides generally fail in doing anything. Christians ignore Christ and the leftists drive their cars and buy from the corporations. Brilliant.
Disclaimer: I am pro alternative energy. I don't think dumping nasty chemicals into the ocean or sky is a good idea. I don't think we should waste natural resources. I believe in intelligent and efficient energy use. I loathe George W. Bush. I am not and never have been a Republican. I am not a Christian Fundamentalist. I add this because, like the person I am replying to, there are many out there that see an opponent to the validity of global warming a certain way and that way is generally very wrong and very prejudiced. Nothing new. The fact that I have to include this is annoying in and of itself.
My first computer was an Apple IIgs so I always had some level of respect for Macs, though until OS X came out I was totally uninterested in using them again.
I covered this pretty extensively in another post, but as long as Linux has the software you need, many distros (*buntu is all the rage these days, and for a good reason) "just work." Although, it's just not as slick or as simple as a Mac. Linux doesn't have to be a tweaker OS, but I think a real problem we geeks face is that if it CAN be tweaked... we'll tweak it.
Your point is interesting too. Kids. (If you have a newer Mac laptop I bet the magnetic plug is a nice bonus!)
Ultimately it's just a matter of using what "just works for you," since "just works" is a pretty damn subjective phrase.
Well, unless something has changed, I haven't had to enter any kind of code to run OS X, but I don't know that it matters. It's propriety, and I think that's a problem Apple has. It's got this sort of open image by using Darwin, but it's not all that open. Mind you, the fact that it IS propriety is something I always accepted and never cared about. Should it ever begin to interfere with work or freedom to the extent that it's more trouble than production, then I'll switch. Aside from the lack of commercial software, I'm pretty happy with pretty much any distro running KDE.
I think to say that Linux "just works" is a bit of a misnomer. In all honesty saying "Linux" is usually a misnomer. When I say "OS X" people know I'm talking about the Mach kernel, Darwin, Aqua, etc. In most instances they even know what file manager I'm talking about without me having to specify. When someone says "Linux" they're either really talking about their distribution (Ubuntu "just worked" last I installed it but a stage 1 Gentoo install certainly didn't... which was the point really).
Most of what people around here tell me they like about Linux--take multiple desktops for instance (and I loved them too, expose is nice but it's debatable what setup I like better)--are things that are specific to desktop environments or window managers. Multiple desktops is not a Linux thing anymore than it's a *BSD thing. It's a Gnome, KDE, XFce or whatever thing. Hardware "just working" is always distro specific. Some do. Some don't. How bothersome popups and such are and interruption is also generally app and DE specific.
That's really one of Linux's biggest problems for mass adoption and its biggest strength for geeks. Choice and diversity is great for people who like to tinker and customize. However, it's not so great when something is trying to define itself which is pretty much necessary to be marketable. "Linux" is a kernel with some specific apps that go with it. (UDEV for instance, which is one of the few things other than the kernel that's truly a Linux only thing.)
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux. I keep a Linux desktop around to make sure I don't get TOO rusty with it and run it on some of my servers. I also keep it around to make sure that my heavy Mac use doesn't inspire me to wear a turtleneck. However, at the end of the day my computers are no more part of any of my personal idealism than my hammers and screwdrivers. I'm going to use what I like and prefer. At the same time, I also don't really care what other people use. I'm not trying to sell anyone on the idea that Macs are the be all end all... they're not. No computer platform ever will be. Find what you like best (which is matter of your preferences, skills and how much you're willing to pay or steal) and that's that.
Right now, Mac wins out for me because (and not in any particular order): 1. It's pretty (and frankly, the aesthetic is important to me). 2. Commercial Software that is either unavailable or that I just plain like better (Pages, Photoshop, Illustrator, TextMate, Safari, Mail). 3. Peripheral device support AND usability (digital camera, scanner, printer) is better (for me). 4. I like Mac laptops and Minis. I also like booting from Firewire drives.
When I read these discussions I note this snobbishness that's really annoying. If I say, "I like Macs." I'm not saying, "Linux people suck." Furthermore I see the Free Software crowd as being some of the coolest and worst zealots out there. Some of them really embrace freedom to the full extend of "use what you like" and others feel if you use anything proprietary you are the spawn of hell and are single handed part of a global conspiracy to deprive people of digital freedom. If your platform defines you then you have some serious issues. If you make serious judgments about other people based on their platform, you're an idiot.
Blah. Sorry. I'm in a writing mood today.
Eh, I can "program" in Ruby, Perl, PHP, JavaScript and used to do ASP in JScript. Some people don't consider the "interpreted crowd" to be programmers. I should have been clearer. There are a lot of programming snobs out there and if it ain't assembler, C or C++ you don't seem to count as a "programmer" because you're some high level shmuck who doesn't compile or get close to the machine. I can do algorithms, but I don't do much in the way of specific memory management.
*I'd* call me and others like me "programmers."
I don't really consider HTML, XML or CSS to be programming, but I do those too.
Wrong. Just wrong.
PowerPC wasn't cutting the mustard, otherwise Apple would still be using them. We were still stuck with bloody G4s in the laptops. Thanks to heat, they were one generation behind. With x86 Apple doesn't have to focus on hardware development and they don't have to play magic numbers to try and convince people a crappy G4 is somehow more powerful than what Intel is offering. With Intel, there is no concern as to whether they'll be around tomorrow and with the hard competition from AMD, it's a no brainer that they have to improve. On top of that, if Intel starts to go sour, there's nothing stopping them from going with AMD since there are multiple contenders in the x86 world.
Moving to Intel has allowed dual booting Windows and much improved VMs to work with Windows since the hardware no longer has to be emulated. This gets rid of a major road block for a lot of people and why I was able to sell a major client of mine on the idea of using a Mac instead of a new PC.
A Mac can run pretty much everything under the sun now, plus OS X is awesome. Seriously, PowerPC was a dead zone, just like Motorola before it. Apple no longer has to concern itself with a company that's too busy working on "other things" to update their processor line. Intel gives Macs more power, less power consumption, more versatility and more value than IBM ever could.
I think you hit the nail on the head. The part of "free" software that most people like is the free as in beer portion. Personally, I also like the philosophy behind open source but I initially jumped into Linux/BSD for reasons #1 and #3. (I paid for a boxed distro my first time so free wasn't so much an issue.)
I'm arguably a programmer. (I say that because if you're not using some sort of compiler there are a lot of people around here who won't even call you a programmer.) I do not hack anything but scripts (and the occasional C CGI). I don't look at or mod any source code for major applications and idea didn't even strike me until after I began using Linux on the desktop and I considered all the little features I wanted to see in X app.
Eventually though, I became a Mac user because I had tasted the fruit of Unix and the command line, loved many of the tools there but didn't have a lot of the commercial apps I liked. (Games obviously aren't a factor.) And motivations were #1 and #3. Apple fits the bill. This is why a lot of geeks are going over to Apple.
When you're 16ish - 20ish (and perhaps a little older) it's cool to upgrade your computer every single paycheck, tweak this and that and spend hours fiddling with your computer. My computer used to triple boot: Win2k, Slackware Linux and BeOS 4.5. It was all fun. But when I actually started making money doing web dev and server related stuff, that kind of lost its luster. I wanted a computer that "just worked."
Macs fit the bill. I will say this though, if you use a little but of forethought when picking out hardware, Ubuntu installs and "just works" easier than WinXP or Win2k. I still keep an OSS desktop around and run FreeBSD on my servers, but I don't want to fiddle with my work machine and generally prefer Mac GUI apps to anything I had in Linux. (Safari, TextMate, Pages, iTunes, Photoshop, etc.) My computers are my tools and I go with preference.
OSS is not why most people/geeks play with Linux. The fact that they're geeks and routinely do technological crap like install NetBSD on their DreamCast is why. We like to play with stuff just because.
You might want to look at foXposé. Pretty much the same thing for Firefox. I've never actually used it, but if you like that feature and you use Firefox, you might like it.
Two things came to mind when reading this thread, and your post in particular:
This campaign is ridiculous. Although, I think it's pretty fitting that they have the punk music like motif on their website since it's the same "anti-estabishment... but not really" crap that this idont.com stuff is.
All of this nonsense makes me want to start another Fight Club.
THANK YOU!
I dunno why people get down on Apple for this. Whenever I'm looking for a new car (a new used car anyway) I always avoid the first year of any major body change. When a new processor comes out or some brand-spanking-uber-new-features chipset, I avoid it. When I was in my teens, being an early adopter was cool, but now, I favor reliability over pretty much everything else in all my gadgets.
And while you have one guy saying it can be done in Exim and Postfix, lemme add that it can also be done in Qmail.
One of the biggest problems I find in America right now is that we have devalued so much "honest" work that no one wants to do it anymore. If you work as something like, say, a carpenter or in a mine or in a factory or as a mechanic it's because you "didn't go to college" or "weren't smart enough" to be a doctor, laywer, IT something, etc. Even if science jobs have ass pay, you'll still get more respect than an auto mechanic because your job "required college."
There is nothing wrong with or bad about labor jobs. If we'd start promoting them again it'd be a win-win-win for laborers, intellectuals and artists.
I have seen multiple friends that just wanted to take up something like being a mechanic go through years of college only to get some crap job at a place they hated that really didn't pay much better than running their own garage. And why? The mentality right now is, "No degree = no human value."
I'm not saying we should shut down colleges, but seriously, if someone wants to be a tradesman it should be promoted and not discouraged.
"It makes calculating anything exponentially easier if you just have to worry about powers of ten of things, rather than how many hogsheads go in to a cubic furlong, or what the speed of light is in cubits per fortnight (7.93 x 10 ^ 7)."
Yes, because most Americans generally use the more... antiquated measurements. I mean, I use cupits and rods every day. And a fortnight? Oh hell yes!
Get real. You pick a base unit and go with it. Dealing with 1000 miles isn't much differnet than dealing with 1000 kilometers. (And WTF is up with that? Why not just call them megameters? No one does.)
Metric measurements are making their way in to America in most places. About the only exception is distance (and let me just say, as a carpenter, base 12 is way nicer than base 10) and weight (pounds and tons, woop-dee-doo). Even then, in all my science classes 8 years ago, everything was done in metric.
I just get so tired of people who hate the Imperial system always jumping to an unrealistic extreme.
"Games are the only applications that ever promt someone to buy a high end machine."
What are you? 14-years-old? Perhaps 16? Perhaps you've never had to use your computer as anything but a toy, but for those of us who use machines for work, there are plenty of other applications that prompt upgrades. High end digital photography, print work, 3D modeling and annimation and let's not forget video editing. That's just the tip of the iceberg.
For me, dual cores rock because they greatly assist with virtualization. For someone who runs multiple OSes at once, the speed increase is appreciated. It means I don't need to use multiple computers for testing anymore. One will do the trick of three. This is especially awesome when that one computer is now a small laptop that I can take pretty much anywhere.
Servers, video, and professional applications drive a large portion of high end hardware. Games are only a slice of the pie and they're also only ONE KIND of computing.
The integrated graphics don't bother me at all. Games aren't my bag for a laptop and I don't do anything 3D or video intensive. As such, I actually APPRECIATE the smaller footprint, less power consumption, etc.
I looked at the disassembly on those things and let me just say, as someone who had to completely disassemble his 12" PowerBook to replace the antenna wire (which pretty much means taking the ENTIRE thing, screen and all, apart), I like that!
I'm probably pathetic enough to buy black. Although the 15" MBP is also looking good. Still, I think I'm gonna wait for the next revision on them. (Finances will likely force me to do so anyway.)
You took the words right out of my mouth. As soon as I score a MacBook I'm beefing it up to 2GB of RAM and running FreeBSD and WinXP inside Parrallels. I'll have my own separate test server and IE to test websites on. That single "appliance" will do EVERYTHING!
I'm really curious about the keyboard. I hate to sound like an echo around here but the keyboard on the 12" PowerBook is damn fine.
What the hell does that even mean? "Ultra portable?" I have a 12" PowerBook and I find that it's about perfect for size vs. usability. Much smaller and the thing just becomes annoying. (The extra width on the new MacBook is something I actuall welcome. 1024x768 just doesn't cut it anymore.)
I can take this thing anywhere and... 5lbs vs. 2lbs? If 3lbs is too much extra baggage then someone needs to hit up a gym.
I don't get it. A glossy screen is "not what professionals" want? Professional what? Perhaps I'm in the minority here, but I like the glossy screens better and I am a "professional" at the things I do.
And more importantly, "You are sooo right about the silly black case upcharge. Note to Apple: We're fanboys, not idiots."
Uhhh... You and the parent might not be idiots, but I am! And if you've mulled through the comments at all, there is no shortage of idiots around here that'll pay $150 for the black. It's sad. It's pathetic. Sure. But I mean... this is Slashdot.
Maybe I'm the only one that's noticed this, but doesn't the onboard video also consumes less space and less power? I mean, this is their smaller book. I'm also assuming this configuration runs cooler. I don't know about everyone else, but I think the tradeoff is fine.
OH NOES!!!!!!1111one NO GAMEZ!
Well, I use my laptop for work, so I couldn't care less about some uber video setup. I've got a 12" PowerBook and other than the splashy effect when I add a new widget in Dashboard, I've noticed little difference with it and my Mac Mini.
First, it's not the scientists that are the problem. Like religious founders who often start with the best of intentions their followers and worshippers take their teachings and use them to mean something they were never meant to mean. You may never have met a scientist that was so arrogant as to believe his was infallible, but that's not the problem. It's the throng of "believers" that take it that way. Most of the people in the pro-evolution camp aren't scientists at all. A lot of them ass hats like Bill Maher who seem to think that if you don't accept the current beliefs on evolution that you're some kind of religious throw back.
"Again, this is an accusation that's easy to make, not a fact."
Have you ever actually read through the evolution threads on this site!? Although my generalization may have been too sweeping as was written, the exact kind of ignorance, blind zeal and arrogance flows through the evolution camp as much as it does the creationist camp.
As far as Behe is concerned, what he says about the flagella is not nearly as interesting as say the human eye. On top of that, I see no issue with comparing biological creatures to machines. That's what they are from my perspective. It's not like the guy has published a single article and he's certainly not alone. I get to define what I feel is "real" evidence as much as you do. Your studies seem to indicate that you don't find that Behe is correct. Great. Mine say otherwise. (Well, not so much correct as valid.) Science, like religion, politics and journalism is rife with bias from most scientists. Bias isn't malicious either, it's merely human nature. Everyone picks what they choose to believe. History has shown that many scientists picked wrong. It happens. It doesn't make them less intelligent or even less qualified. Theories (even wrong ones) have to be made and tested to bring us to the truth.
"And that's the greatest irony of all. No one is questioning things more rigorously than scientists: any number of vast revisions and innovations within science have happened over just the last few decades."
Again, it's not the scientists that are the problem. I'm sitting here typing this on my computer connected to the internet. Obviously, science is kind of important to me and my way of life. It's the jackasses who treat current accepted science like a religion and excuse to berate and attack people who disagree. (Even those who do so intelligently with a competing theory.)
I'm somewhat in the ID camp. However, I'm not in favor of it being taught in schools because honestly, you can't teach ID. There's no point. When I take a physics course it's up to me to decide the nature of the laws. Did a god make them? Are they chaos? Etc. Laws and occurances are merely a how. Why (which is really all ID is) should be left to another realm entirely. Evolution neither proves nor disproves the existence of a god but the problem I have is that people take it to mean one or the other. ID has also become obnoxious to claim belief in because it's a system that's been hijacked by fundamentalists.
"But guess what: spouting off about something you haven't bothered to understand IS ignorant."
And that's the arrogance I take issue with. I've read far more than just Behe. However, in YOUR mind I don't UNDERSTAND unless I come to the same conclusion you do or choose to believe and accept the same sources. I may very well be wrong. That's fine. You may very well be wrong as time progresses and frankly, I figure it's most likely that in time we're both wrong. Just because you're wrong doesn't mean you're ignorant.
Finally, the main thing I was "spouting off" about wasn't the science behind evolution but rather, the veryfsame arrogance you've displayed.
I'm not opposed to the theory of evolution. I do believe in a god and that life as we know it was directed by that being (or whatever you want to call it). Big deal. It doesn't change the mechanics at all.
The Nature paper joins a wave of work showing that the lines between species are hazy ..."
Can someone tell me at what point any 5 - 6 million year old evolutionary division was anything but hazy? I mean seriously. And this isn't specifically about evolution either, it's about anything that's that old. Until we develop time travel or something, it's gonna be hazy.
This is the critical point that creationists who blather on about "macroevolution vs. microevolution" (a distinction without a difference) and "nobody has ever observed a speciation event" (just not true) willfully miss. Species lines are imposed by observers after the fact; they are not inherent in the nature of living organisms.
I'm sorry, there's a huge difference between micro and macro evolution. In all the papers I have read I have yet to see anyone counter Behe's rather simple "irreducable complexity" issues in way that I could go, "Oh, okay. That makes sense." Instead, most of the counter arguments are as poor and emotionally charged as those of creationists defedning a literal interpretation of Genesis.
I haven't decided specifically where I stand on evolution (and I know, since I don't specifically accept the theory I obviously have a huge Confederate flag hoisted in front of my house, still have a few black slaves on my plantation and regularly engage in sex with female cousins) but there's a lot of things I read that I just don't buy. The fascinating machines that biological organisms are just do not compute to me as a product of chaos or random placement.
Call it a god, call it "the force", call it "intelligent design" or call it some kind of unviversal force or energy that inherently produces order... with that I can accept evolution. I also grow tired of the sheer arrogance of the evolution camp who appear to believe as humans that our "science" has moved to the point of infallibility. Anyone who doesn't believe is obviously stupid/inbred/a hillbilly/etc. Sounds kind of like another camp in this war. Only they say you're stupid/damned/etc.
Like religion, science should never create barriers that "just know" we can't cross. It's the very questioning of the status quo and accepted theory that continues to allow us to advance our knowledge.
While I agree with you that "random" doesn't work for me (life or even the universe for that matter being the product of chaos just dieesn't sit well), I couldn't help but notice:
It's just random?
That's a cop-out to a serious question and I'm calling bull-shit.
Like I said, I agree. But I wonder:
Nihilism makes me smile.
Am I missing something? Shouldn't the whole random thing make you happy?
Are you sure the keyboard is the same as the iBook? I seem to remember reading somewhere that it was improved.
I'd argue that a good file manager that's customizable is crutial to any DE and as such I'd say it's a failure of Gnome. (Explorer is a failure of Windows and Finder is a failure of Apple, so I'm certainly not just pointing a finger at the Gnome guys.)
Screenshots of Directory Opus can be very misleading because the thing is SO customizable. This is an area that Directory Opus and Konq really have the rest of the world beat. (At least in my experience.) Pathfinder is kind of there... but it happens that what can be done in it is the kind of stuff I already like. However, it is, by no means, as flexible as the other two I have mentioned. I'll have to check out Xfce again if they have a new File Manger, since that was the one that that disappointed me about it before.
KIOslaves is part of KDE as a whole, but the area you'll see it used most of the time is in the file management world. Gnome has tried to do the same thing with their VFS, but unless it's seen some MAJOR improvement in the last two releases (like FTP that actually works), it's pretty pitiful. (And still better than Apple's way of doing things.)
To be honest, I've never used ROX Filer but most people who like it swear by it. By the time I had heard of it the world of GTK2 was out and I had no interest in dealing with something like that. I like "pretty" interfaces. I like smooth fonts. Even if it makes me sound like a twit, those are things *I* can't live without. If ROX starts using a modern toolkit, then I'll give it a try. (Although, I should probably check out the functionality anyway just so I can understand what all the fuss is about!)
I'm on a Mac for most of my work right now and I love it. However, I've never been strictly wed to any platform or OS. Commercial apps (Adobe Illustrator in particular) are one of the things keeping me on a Mac. I was still dual booting in Linux or using another machine for certain tasks. That got annoying. (Crossover Office worked pretty darn well though.)
I just set up one of my clients on a Mac Mini running Parallels so he could run XP inside to deal with the apps he HAS to have. After setting that up I totally wanted a MacBook (whenever they come out). The thought of running multiple virtual machines makes me super happy. I know it can be done via other applications on other platforms, but I do love OS X despite its flaws.
I suppose I should have clarified myself a little. Sure, I could use Konq in Gnome (and I actually did for a little while). I even used Konq in XFCE (which kinda defeats the purpose of a "light" DE, but I digress). However, when I use either Gnome or KDE, with the possible exception of GAIM (about 8 months ago when I still ran a Linux desktop, I liked it A LOT better than Kopete) and Firefox (I like Konq better as a browser, but I make it a point to have more than one browser) I try to run a homogeneous widget setup.
For the most part I think of KDE and Gnome as two different platforms and treat them as such.
I never found a GTK2 based file manager I liked much at all. Nautilus sucks. For the longest time I continued used Midnight Commander (though, in those days it was not so much about usability as it was that Nautilus was so slow "back in the day.")
So, KDE has Konq. Windows has Directory Opus. Mac has PathFinder. Gnome has...? Nothing native. Granted, you don't have to be as anal as I am and can mix and match to your heart's content, but it's not something I like doing at all. KIOslaves makes Konq cooler anyway. Using it to sftp and have all my KDE apps treat those like local files without mounting anything was a major point of happiness for me.
Even now, it's a feature I miss on my PowerBook.
All the Linux guys I know (which isn't impressive since I'm talking about 3, and one of them is actually a Linux girl) use KDE and when I'm using a Linux or FreeBSD system, I use KDE.
I used to try Gnome out with every new release (at least up until 2.10 which was about the time I stopped using Linux for my desktop machine) but it was the same disappointments over an over. The number one being Nautilus. Talk about crapsville for a file manager. It's weak. With Konq and kioslaves there was little I couldn't do. Pathfinder on the Mac is cool in its own way and Directory Opus on Windows is sweet too. One thing KDE got right over everyone else (Apple included) was the inclusion of a highly customizable and flexible file manager. On Windows and Macs I can get a replacement, but unless something new has risen in the last two Gnome releases, your choice is still a single crapshoot file manager.
Kparts is the other reason I love KDE.
I could go on, but... what's the point? Gnome isn't even very good at doing what it says it's focusing on. It feels dated and claustrophobic to use.