Since we have had people with full civil rights who had their hearts ripped out of them and they retained their humanity and their rights (both heart transplants and artificial heart variants should be considered) your standard doesn't pass muster. Do try and *think* a bit on border cases, would you?
Making human beings is a bloody business. Lots of people die along the way and that does not mean that mom is a murderer. Murder implies intent. It doesn't even equate to manslaughter or involuntary homicide. It's just life and nothing to be done about it.
The balance of world economic power is shifting to the East because the East isn't economically handicapping itself as much as it used to. That reduces relative dominance of the US but does not affect the US' ability to support any particular project, including a space elevator. The pie is radically growing because 2 billion people are being progressively freed of their economic bondage. That's unalloyed good news no matter where you are.
Putting aside the fact that you're dead wrong factually on Bush's stem cell record (like a lot of things, he cut a middle of the road deal) you also seem to have a misunderstanding of the whole checks and balances thing. The President and Vice President are elected, do represent the people, and have always had the right to veto legislation they disagree with. This is a fairly common setup for democratic republics. The veto rights are not absolute and Bush has pushed the envelope a bit with his signing statements but the kind of accusations you level are simply not supported by the evidence.
If your theory would be true, legislators would be voting against adult stem cell research. Some do, but it's not who you think. The embryonic stem cell supporters tend to dump on adult stem cell research funding and vice versa. There's been excellent recent news on adult stem cell totipotency with peer reviewed work recently being published. Instead of fighting over the moral question, if you care about getting quick therapies, why not cheerlead the adult cell researchers?
We don't experiment on condemned prisoners. We don't use PVS patients as parts banks, we don't grab inner-city urchins and run practice operations on them. "I don't like things going to waste" without being paired with a respect for the sanctity of life leads to all of the above practices either now (elsewhere) or in the past. It's an unsustainable argument.
If you accept that slashdot contributors are human beings and that sperm/eggs are not, there must be a transition point where you go from not-human to human. The most logical point ends up being at fertilization as it gets you in the least logical trouble. Generally pleasing/clean logic is considered scientific evidence (especially if you listen to the string theorists and quantum mechanics folks).
I highly doubt that the law prohibits mowing over 1 inch oak seedlings (anybody who has an oak tree and isn't religious about their lawn will have these occasionally) and thus acorn crushing should be just fine but if you'll link to the law, I'm willing to be educated on the matter.
I seriously doubt that you could even maintain that standard with a straight face for more than a round or two. Sperm and egg cells are not genetically identical to you and never were at any point. They are not human beings and nobody seriously maintains that they are.
And can I see your "I can define humanity" license please? The definition of humanity is not usually "doesn't look like a human to me" because it's entirely subjective and relegitimizes the stormtroopers who find that lots of broad categories of people aren't really human.
At a time when you have high academics seriously discussing the legalization of infanticide, I'm all for pushing the definition as wide as possible just to be on the safe side. Unique genetic code and the potential to develop are a fit bulwark against the Peter Singers of the world.
Your reasoning is sound but the behavior you describe is not jealousy, it's marketing.
What Apple sees is that MS is getting worn down by its competitive threats but that it still has the resources and the power to take out almost anybody they want who hits the top of MS' shit list. Apple doesn't want to be at the top of MS' list which is simple rational self-preservation in the technology marketplace of 2007.
Or you could have 1 copy of itunes on your 2k3 server and share the library while your separate copies of itunes on your XP boxes play the songs on the shared library just fine. Apple has an elegant solution for sharing music but sharing music isn't the problem. The problem is that iTunes doesn't want to run multiple copies of itself on the same machine and you want it to, just 'cause.
That's not to say that you're not justified, but please don't make stuff up.
Apple doesn't have enough engineers to go after all the things it wants to do. Thus the delay for the OSX 10.5 introduction to October so they could borrow engineers for iPhone's summer rollout. It would be criminally stupid to create a browser just out of jealousy because wasting engineering talent like that eventually will tank your stock price.
Apple would love having the mac become the dominant computer platform for the 21st century. They really would love that. But Apple is targeting specialized verticals where it can make a compelling business case for their integrated hardware/software approach and make a lot of money doing it.
I've used Macs when I'm in Apple's target markets and when I'm not (mac user since 1986). You very definitely can feel the difference. Apple can make sense even when you're not in the target market but you need to be more careful with them.
I paid $500 for my Mac mini (working nicely as a specialty server), $700-$800 for my eMacs (getting long in the tooth) and expect to pop out several thousand on an xServe reasonably soon. Compared to Dell, HP, or IBM those are reasonable prices for the hardware I've gotten and am looking to get. Yes, you can get a lot less going "white box" but that's true for all the big brands.
Sometimes Apple is high cost and other times it's actually lower than its competition. It really depends on the machine and software needs you have.
Of course they want people to switch to macs. That is why Apple executives get paid, to create and market Apple's products and make money for the shareholders. But there's nothing wrong with that, capitalism at its finest. Anybody can make an industry standard motherboard with EFI instead of BIOS and you have, in essence, a mac. Lock-in is about making it impossible to leave a platform once you start being dissatisfied with it. Apple has actually gone out of its way to ensure that all of its technologies have a realistic exit path if you really want out. Most of those exit paths run through Linux/*BSD
The rendering engine is KHTML. If they don't write the site to support that, Safari will have trouble. But the guys who are really shitting a brick right now are those who assured their bosses that they could safely ignore KHTML testing because there was no KHTML browser and no prospect of one anytime soon.
The point of a web application for your phone is not for it to be cross-platform at this point, it's to work at all. You're talking about a very different environment. I'd use this to enable sales reps to move data back and forth from the phone to the enterprise database (so-and-so's moved on to a competitor, we need to come back in 2 months after the reorg is finished, that sort of thing) and others will no doubt find other uses. Without 3rd party hooks, I can't get the data flowing. With them, my pain is eased and the iPhone is viewed as a real possibility for the enterprise.
Transgaming's website currently has the EA announcement on their home page. They explicitly say that their engine will be used.
The history of these sorts of ports has been very bad for gaming houses that have tried them. Sales have been disappointing as the Apple crowd historically have turned their noses up at them. We'll see if there's going to be a repeat.
It just didn't happen. The consequences of a parliamentary request for the US to leave that wasn't obeyed would throw the entire international system direct into crisis mode.
I think you really don't understand what dictatorships do to infrastructure. There might have been a nice ribbon ceremony marking the "rebuilding" of Iraqi infrastructure after the Gulf War but what we found when we went in was crap that had been deteriorating for decades. As for the US rebuild efforts, lots of errors but a fair minded evaluation would recognize that there has been progress.
Why you imagine your version of history is "actual history" is beyond me but you're pretty obviously biased. The death squads were a US invention? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
You seem to have a funny idea of what infrastructure is and what a functioning army is. Iraq's army was a brutal machine good at internal repression and brutality but it was not designed to be a professional institution that could be reliably folded in to a free government. If you've read your history, you'd know the old Iraqi military's proclivity for coups.
There was a price to be paid for not keeping the thugs around and we've all paid it but the alternative would have been worse. The death squad activity would have been significantly worse as well as the problem of military units "flipping" to the enemy.
As for infrastructure, we're building schools, roads, power and sewage plants as fast as we can. The moribund state of domestic Iraqi institutions outside of the Baath means that we had to lean on foreign workers more than normal until we could sort out who was going to work honestly and who was a mole or riddled with moles from the other side. Every year, the % of Iraqi participation goes up and the foreigners are used less.
Everybody can have their own opinions but you seem to want your own facts. The Iraqis have not, in fact voted to have us leave. If they did, we'd be gone and relatively quickly.
Any international call you place will be tapped. The question really is whether the USG is going to be on the list of tappers and how they are going to get the information, whether directly through this NSA program or indicrectly through Echelon.
Slashdot Mirror
Since we have had people with full civil rights who had their hearts ripped out of them and they retained their humanity and their rights (both heart transplants and artificial heart variants should be considered) your standard doesn't pass muster. Do try and *think* a bit on border cases, would you?
Making human beings is a bloody business. Lots of people die along the way and that does not mean that mom is a murderer. Murder implies intent. It doesn't even equate to manslaughter or involuntary homicide. It's just life and nothing to be done about it.
correction: they execute confidence tricksters who have paid insufficient bribes in the PRC.
The balance of world economic power is shifting to the East because the East isn't economically handicapping itself as much as it used to. That reduces relative dominance of the US but does not affect the US' ability to support any particular project, including a space elevator. The pie is radically growing because 2 billion people are being progressively freed of their economic bondage. That's unalloyed good news no matter where you are.
Putting aside the fact that you're dead wrong factually on Bush's stem cell record (like a lot of things, he cut a middle of the road deal) you also seem to have a misunderstanding of the whole checks and balances thing. The President and Vice President are elected, do represent the people, and have always had the right to veto legislation they disagree with. This is a fairly common setup for democratic republics. The veto rights are not absolute and Bush has pushed the envelope a bit with his signing statements but the kind of accusations you level are simply not supported by the evidence.
If your theory would be true, legislators would be voting against adult stem cell research. Some do, but it's not who you think. The embryonic stem cell supporters tend to dump on adult stem cell research funding and vice versa. There's been excellent recent news on adult stem cell totipotency with peer reviewed work recently being published. Instead of fighting over the moral question, if you care about getting quick therapies, why not cheerlead the adult cell researchers?
We don't experiment on condemned prisoners. We don't use PVS patients as parts banks, we don't grab inner-city urchins and run practice operations on them. "I don't like things going to waste" without being paired with a respect for the sanctity of life leads to all of the above practices either now (elsewhere) or in the past. It's an unsustainable argument.
If you accept that slashdot contributors are human beings and that sperm/eggs are not, there must be a transition point where you go from not-human to human. The most logical point ends up being at fertilization as it gets you in the least logical trouble. Generally pleasing/clean logic is considered scientific evidence (especially if you listen to the string theorists and quantum mechanics folks).
I highly doubt that the law prohibits mowing over 1 inch oak seedlings (anybody who has an oak tree and isn't religious about their lawn will have these occasionally) and thus acorn crushing should be just fine but if you'll link to the law, I'm willing to be educated on the matter.
I seriously doubt that you could even maintain that standard with a straight face for more than a round or two. Sperm and egg cells are not genetically identical to you and never were at any point. They are not human beings and nobody seriously maintains that they are.
And can I see your "I can define humanity" license please? The definition of humanity is not usually "doesn't look like a human to me" because it's entirely subjective and relegitimizes the stormtroopers who find that lots of broad categories of people aren't really human.
At a time when you have high academics seriously discussing the legalization of infanticide, I'm all for pushing the definition as wide as possible just to be on the safe side. Unique genetic code and the potential to develop are a fit bulwark against the Peter Singers of the world.
Your reasoning is sound but the behavior you describe is not jealousy, it's marketing.
What Apple sees is that MS is getting worn down by its competitive threats but that it still has the resources and the power to take out almost anybody they want who hits the top of MS' shit list. Apple doesn't want to be at the top of MS' list which is simple rational self-preservation in the technology marketplace of 2007.
Or you could have 1 copy of itunes on your 2k3 server and share the library while your separate copies of itunes on your XP boxes play the songs on the shared library just fine. Apple has an elegant solution for sharing music but sharing music isn't the problem. The problem is that iTunes doesn't want to run multiple copies of itself on the same machine and you want it to, just 'cause.
That's not to say that you're not justified, but please don't make stuff up.
Apple doesn't have enough engineers to go after all the things it wants to do. Thus the delay for the OSX 10.5 introduction to October so they could borrow engineers for iPhone's summer rollout. It would be criminally stupid to create a browser just out of jealousy because wasting engineering talent like that eventually will tank your stock price.
Apple would love having the mac become the dominant computer platform for the 21st century. They really would love that. But Apple is targeting specialized verticals where it can make a compelling business case for their integrated hardware/software approach and make a lot of money doing it.
I've used Macs when I'm in Apple's target markets and when I'm not (mac user since 1986). You very definitely can feel the difference. Apple can make sense even when you're not in the target market but you need to be more careful with them.
I paid $500 for my Mac mini (working nicely as a specialty server), $700-$800 for my eMacs (getting long in the tooth) and expect to pop out several thousand on an xServe reasonably soon. Compared to Dell, HP, or IBM those are reasonable prices for the hardware I've gotten and am looking to get. Yes, you can get a lot less going "white box" but that's true for all the big brands.
Sometimes Apple is high cost and other times it's actually lower than its competition. It really depends on the machine and software needs you have.
Of course they want people to switch to macs. That is why Apple executives get paid, to create and market Apple's products and make money for the shareholders. But there's nothing wrong with that, capitalism at its finest. Anybody can make an industry standard motherboard with EFI instead of BIOS and you have, in essence, a mac. Lock-in is about making it impossible to leave a platform once you start being dissatisfied with it. Apple has actually gone out of its way to ensure that all of its technologies have a realistic exit path if you really want out. Most of those exit paths run through Linux/*BSD
Be a pal and hit the little bug button. Select wrong behavior and do the checkbox for send screen shot.
The bugs do get addressed but they get addressed faster the more people submit them.
The rendering engine is KHTML. If they don't write the site to support that, Safari will have trouble. But the guys who are really shitting a brick right now are those who assured their bosses that they could safely ignore KHTML testing because there was no KHTML browser and no prospect of one anytime soon.
Surprise!
The point of a web application for your phone is not for it to be cross-platform at this point, it's to work at all. You're talking about a very different environment. I'd use this to enable sales reps to move data back and forth from the phone to the enterprise database (so-and-so's moved on to a competitor, we need to come back in 2 months after the reorg is finished, that sort of thing) and others will no doubt find other uses. Without 3rd party hooks, I can't get the data flowing. With them, my pain is eased and the iPhone is viewed as a real possibility for the enterprise.
Transgaming's website currently has the EA announcement on their home page. They explicitly say that their engine will be used.
The history of these sorts of ports has been very bad for gaming houses that have tried them. Sales have been disappointing as the Apple crowd historically have turned their noses up at them. We'll see if there's going to be a repeat.
It just didn't happen. The consequences of a parliamentary request for the US to leave that wasn't obeyed would throw the entire international system direct into crisis mode.
I think you really don't understand what dictatorships do to infrastructure. There might have been a nice ribbon ceremony marking the "rebuilding" of Iraqi infrastructure after the Gulf War but what we found when we went in was crap that had been deteriorating for decades. As for the US rebuild efforts, lots of errors but a fair minded evaluation would recognize that there has been progress.
Why you imagine your version of history is "actual history" is beyond me but you're pretty obviously biased. The death squads were a US invention? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
You seem to have a funny idea of what infrastructure is and what a functioning army is. Iraq's army was a brutal machine good at internal repression and brutality but it was not designed to be a professional institution that could be reliably folded in to a free government. If you've read your history, you'd know the old Iraqi military's proclivity for coups.
There was a price to be paid for not keeping the thugs around and we've all paid it but the alternative would have been worse. The death squad activity would have been significantly worse as well as the problem of military units "flipping" to the enemy.
As for infrastructure, we're building schools, roads, power and sewage plants as fast as we can. The moribund state of domestic Iraqi institutions outside of the Baath means that we had to lean on foreign workers more than normal until we could sort out who was going to work honestly and who was a mole or riddled with moles from the other side. Every year, the % of Iraqi participation goes up and the foreigners are used less.
Everybody can have their own opinions but you seem to want your own facts. The Iraqis have not, in fact voted to have us leave. If they did, we'd be gone and relatively quickly.
Any international call you place will be tapped. The question really is whether the USG is going to be on the list of tappers and how they are going to get the information, whether directly through this NSA program or indicrectly through Echelon.