Palin was scary mostly those falling somewhere in the middle (who can count either way, depending... on how they vote in a given election), she was the main reason for them to not vote for McCain.
And BTW, you could try noticing sometimes that the real underlying point of contention with AGW / "changes" (also, say, evolution "debate") is the way many people are uncomfortable with anything challenging their ancient answer to the question: "who is in charge of the Earth?"
It's on a more fundamental level, too - when people get older, they tend to start believing myths about how great their youth was (not the least because it makes us feel better when faced with how much better in reality it is "now", for most cases of "now")... that approach right here is also at the core of conservatism.
Since... certain wealthy, rich people in America wanted to create a tax system serving only them, and not one falling under auspices of British Empire?
Ouch, why does this awesomeness have to be in one of only two DE cities connected to my ancestry, and on the footsteps of another, the only DE one where I've spent some time (well, excluding barely remembered DDR stays)... different times which are no more;(
Popes probably internalize lots of this "housekeeping", and differently - very honestly, in a way. One has to, when almost whole life was already dedicated to some cause.
Similarly: I suspect this is one of major factors in how the practice of suppressing sexuality (a practice often quite valued in this context, in those social groups) got a foothold and keeps going - it might have actual benefits for the entirety of particular faith, in its competition with others. Sexuality is an immensely powerful force in us, especially during adolescence and early adulthood, during formative years. One is most likely better off when really internalizing this "forced" suppression, honestly finding a way to value and cherish it somehow, just to not go crazy. With the group helpfully providing majestic reasons to be included. And it's likely to stay for the rest of that individual's life, is likely to be passed on - useful, hm?
Check this recent subthread. In short - actually, yes, Sweden could conceivably do things just because you ask; it did much worse things than making up fake warrants, quite recently. Clearly on the level of sending somebody to Gitmo.
BTW, Pentagon itself admitted that no lives were put at risk by (certainly redacted) leaks... (of course some time after the official hysteria, so people like you could have their "opinion" shaped in the meantime). And the book of a former colleauge from Wikileaks also says this:
"Julian was constantly battling for dominance, even with my tomcat Herr Schmitt,"
"Ever since Julian lived with me in Wiesbaden he (the cat) has suffered from psychosis. Julian would constantly attack the animal. He would spread out his fingers like a fork and grab the cat's throat."
Re:Symbian is good enough for lots of people...
on
Why Nokia Is Toast
·
· Score: 1
they have the be executed well.
Yes, thank you, exactly the point of some ex-Nokia board member(?) against which the self-refuting blog post was arguing.
Trying to not be "firmly wedged into the role of iOS fanboy" also isn't helped by, also self-refuting, pointing out how "features are not everything"... to somebody satisfied with the fairly basic ones (and who would already be almost fine with present S40 (it even has touch UI now; and people choose it, otherwise it wouldn't be by far the most popular mobile platform on the planet - except, say, US - when most of the world owns their phones, uses prepaid, and Nokia handsets are typically not the least expensive ones), or handsets like Samsung Corby, Star or LG Cookie - those are the touchscreen phones of our times, except in few places; more of a "smartphone" than iPhone for a year or WebOS devices (for a... time); it's not even clear now in relation to Android)
It's also not so b&w as "Symbian sucks and it's tantamount to user abuse". If one is used to S40, the Symbian UI can be generally picked up very rapidly (it didn't really have much choice early on, but to mostly follow the paradigms of S40; this even worked for a time... though at some point it started to outgrow those UI paradigms)
Most importantly - human intelligence which itself is emergent, essentially "at its heart,... is simply an exercise in in data storage, lookup, and statistical probabilities in determining a likely answer"
Diffusion MRI/CAT scan images (revealing directional bias of the fibres in the white matter, the long-distance communication) show a nice "tree"-like network... which of it is intelligent?
One won't find it in a neuron, or in (certainly at least) most areas of the brain used for separate specific purposes (say, name of the object vs. its orientation, distance or color - taking separate paths from the image or sound input)... which are yet crucial for the idea of "ourselves". Stroke (brain, generally) clinics have tests which evaluate damage on this basis - it's possible to tell what an object is, but not its orientation or distance; or knowing there's is an object (and where it is), but not being able to name it (but being able to point to something of even just similar category). There's even one very localized brain trauma which makes people blind... without them realizing it! Couple that with how split-brain patients seem almost normal, and you have an idea how much of a "grip" we have on ourselves.
We are good at "cheating" the complexity of problems requiring "intelligence" - not only distributing workload to (fairly unintelligent by themselves) portions of the brain, also living in approximations, a lot of best effort guessing, settling on quite likely result and taking on another task; focused on rapidly getting sloppy answers (suitable for a sloppy world, with sloppy inputs) - quickly identifying quantities works in the style of "none, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7, few, a dozen or so (then 2 or 3 of them), oh gods that's a lot"
Running mostly in the opposite direction to a predator, with pseudo-random evasive actions and last ditch efforts, is plenty good enough... approaching this in "intelligently accurate" way would be a major waste of brain tissue for most of our evolution and not helping much, anyway.
That said, dragonflies display a spectacular (and similar in style to xkcd above... only in 3D) hunting technique... but "intelligent"? While our abstract thought is a very recent, experimental, unoptimized hack. I doubt if that much different in experience from many higher animals - except that we got ourselves a quite complex way of communicating with ourselves, internally (talking to ourselves is what we usually call "thinking")... but it's not hard to notice that this is not our only mode of operation! Those other are IMHO when we experience the "animal levels" of consciousness. Probably not that different, all things considered.
However - confidence in our abilities, oversensitive alertness and internalizing experiences mostly of fellow humans were certainly also very useful evolutionary traits. Right there is probably large part of our "absolutely unique intelligence" (or, say, convincing ourselves how good our memory is, how we are a mostly unbroken individual consciousness - while being generally closer to our peers than to ourselves at some different life stages; while not being able to recall much about our experiences or thoughts from the first week of March... 1996)
Ask few random fellas how long it takes for the Earth to go around the Sun (a test from one of Carl Sagan's books, and the sad example was about some students of top uni). Yes, we might wonder how well those with sad answers paid full attention to the question, or if they answered without listening (another thing to explore)... well, that is also the point!
(love the nick, BTW;) )
Re:Symbian is good enough for lots of people...
on
Why Nokia Is Toast
·
· Score: 1
What do you want to say by linking to this self-refuting blog post? (NVM by whom)
Saying that they missed on big trends (while clearly pushing them early on) is inaccurate (but typical of views in one place; just like iPod invented everything...). "Kick-ass production values" is itself a new misunderstanding, partly (which of those those companies owns their fabs and supply chain?(*)); "quality and experience" in UIs... is execution of the trends.
(*)Which BTW is an important part of "volume" - cheaper Chinese handsets are not a new thing, not even close.
Re:Symbian is good enough for lots of people...
on
Why Nokia Is Toast
·
· Score: 1
Where is my $100 laptop, then?
Re:Symbian is good enough for lots of people...
on
Why Nokia Is Toast
·
· Score: 1
That's a good idea. Let's pay 10x as much as a phone that just makes phone calls, and get significantly lower battery life too.
You can get an Android phone without contract for $150 in the US or EU 100 in Europe. That's about the same as low-end Symbian phones.
Go on... there's still second part of his quote to address... (plus general sturdiness)
And BTW @"its user interface is impenetrable for new users"...that's not so black&white. If one is used to S40 (by far the most popular mobile platform on the planet; except, say, US), the Symbian UI can be generally picked up very rapidly. It didn't really have much choice early on, but to mostly follow the paradigms of S40; this even worked for a time (at some point it started to outgrow those UI paradigms). But it's still "are you new user to Symbian while wishing for more (hence probably a heavy user) than the dominating mobile platform on the planet provides?" vs. "are you new user to Nokia?"
And anyway, what S40 provides now is more of a "smartphone" than the iPhone for the first year. It even has touch UI now; and Samsung Corby, Star or LG Cookie (the touchscreen handsets of our times, except for few places) are also counted as "feature phones"...
"No money" while being very clearly profitable? Curious...
What you mention does show who gives its customers better deal / who prefers to ignore lesser people, though.
Re:Microsoft's previous strategic mobile partners
on
Why Nokia Is Toast
·
· Score: 1
Just one quick look at the stats of places where we know the iPhone to be fairly popular (like... US, in world top20) shows that to be a non-issue.
(and the usage is most likely even more common in places which aren't tied to expensive "unlimited" contracts - in the very same report, Part 4 talks about average monthly data costs; typically in the range of 1 or 2 usd)
Re:Symbian is good enough for lots of people...
on
Why Nokia Is Toast
·
· Score: 1
It's almost like somebody isn't aware that N97 of parent poster is a smartphone, with all those capabilities... (though its map is even better - it doesn't require data connection to work, if you're in some really strange / desolate place)
"Once made" is even slightly inaccurate... apparently they have a tendency to split out some activities while transforming the most visible Nokia - Nokian footwear seems very much still around. Or tires.
Who knows, we might eventually see "wireless / backbone / cellular R&D" becoming separate from consumer handsets. Or even "feature phone" and "smartphone" divisions going their own way.
It's a bad style, we don't have good intuitive grasp on neither of those values - certainly not on millions of something, barely even on "millennia" (with just "one... maybe two or three" being the timespan that we convince ourselves we are grasping - but just look how poor grasp, when looked rigorously, we have on our own timescales, how many myths: merely convincing ourselves that the things we remember are exhaustive (quickly, recollect what were you doing in the last week of November... 1993; also, "times were always better when my (the greatest!) generation was young") or believing in fairly monolithic, unbroken consciousness (while we are generally closer to our peers than to ourselves at different life stages - heck, even split brain patients seem quite normal; there is also a particularly localized brain trauma causing people to become blind... without them realizing it! This is the grip we have on ourselves and our perceptions)
Multiplicating such two values in popular publication only brings more confusion (but hey, it appears it was meant to be "scary"...)
1. is being sold at ~$20 (no contract!) by them, 2. needs to be at least around 4 times more expensive... there's quite a lot in-between, why do you want to deny those hundreds millions of people a phone with a digital camera, gprs/j2me/web/im/fb or music player? Or even a "chat" device in very same price range? (C3 seems to / might be becoming the most popular qwerty device on the planet) Oh, and keep in mind Big Mac Index.
Re:At least they won't be using Symbian
on
Why Nokia Is Toast
·
· Score: 1
Hm, but some sort of balance in life is essential (supposedly, I wouldn't know) for good results...
Nokia manufactures all of their devices. Most of their ~dozen fabs are even outside China, half in the EU (and one quite close to Cupertino...). Own manufacturing capability might be a large part of how their supply chain can work on such scales (the only realistic contender to 1st place, Samsung, also at least mostly owns theirs)
Re:As good for MS as Oracle/Sun was for Oracle
on
Why Nokia Is Toast
·
· Score: 1
Their MP3 player was never quite so dominating. Or - was in the metrics used, when looking at few atypical places. But even in my fairly prosperous late EU memberstate (certainly more prosperous than most of Latin America, CIS, Asia, Middle East and Africa), I can probably count the number of times I've seen an iPod on the fingers of one hand (well, excluding my iPod obviously). People were getting something like Chinese S1 players; then there was some slight shift to "MP4 players", but the bulk moved to mobile phones a good few years ago. So called "feature phones", BTW... of course largely from Nokia (though lately Samsung Star, Corby or LG Cookie seem to be the rage) - it's massive even with how only 20-30% use that functionality.
And that's in one of more prosperous places
(also - so far Nokia is profitable, that's enough - though it's certainly more profitable to ignore lesser people in lesser places, possibly freeriding on cellular R&D. Attack of Chinese phones is not a new thing, too. And BTW overall it's fascinating phenomena to me - many, also here, are quick to voice their contempt towards people involved in stock markets, financial machinations, outsourcing, etc. Except when... being marveled at financial data provided by the very same people.)
Else they are completely at the mercy of MS, where MS can dump them for another hardware manufacturer and they can't drop WP7 without losing their customer base who has invested heavy in WP7 applications.
Not so straightforward in the world supply chains and mobile payment deals involving whole world of mobile carriers. Or, hey, if Nokia would turn out to be the absolutely dominating provider of Winmob handsets... (that wouldn't be too unexpected from largest phone manufacturer overall, Symbian line of whom (a bit over 20% of their total) was merely just matched in latest quarterly volumes by one other solution from all manufacturers)
Slashdot Mirror
Couldn't we have some obligatory funnies in such threads too, please? ;/
... possibly even future one )
Like most of those images. Or a beautiful irony from XKCD...
( Particularly this one (but certainly not this!). Very related to TFA. And another. BTW, Zeus is pissed off... Or maybe... Definitely this one in the case of this story, also those two, and certainly this...
Even reminders of how our world unfolded can cheer you up: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten
Palin was scary mostly those falling somewhere in the middle (who can count either way, depending... on how they vote in a given election), she was the main reason for them to not vote for McCain.
And BTW, you could try noticing sometimes that the real underlying point of contention with AGW / "changes" (also, say, evolution "debate") is the way many people are uncomfortable with anything challenging their ancient answer to the question: "who is in charge of the Earth?"
It's on a more fundamental level, too - when people get older, they tend to start believing myths about how great their youth was (not the least because it makes us feel better when faced with how much better in reality it is "now", for most cases of "now") ... that approach right here is also at the core of conservatism.
Since... certain wealthy, rich people in America wanted to create a tax system serving only them, and not one falling under auspices of British Empire?
Ouch, why does this awesomeness have to be in one of only two DE cities connected to my ancestry, and on the footsteps of another, the only DE one where I've spent some time (well, excluding barely remembered DDR stays) ... different times which are no more ;(
Hm, maybe somebody should tell Tom Cruise that what they have on him is no longer a big deal?
Popes probably internalize lots of this "housekeeping", and differently - very honestly, in a way. One has to, when almost whole life was already dedicated to some cause.
Similarly: I suspect this is one of major factors in how the practice of suppressing sexuality (a practice often quite valued in this context, in those social groups) got a foothold and keeps going - it might have actual benefits for the entirety of particular faith, in its competition with others. Sexuality is an immensely powerful force in us, especially during adolescence and early adulthood, during formative years. One is most likely better off when really internalizing this "forced" suppression, honestly finding a way to value and cherish it somehow, just to not go crazy. With the group helpfully providing majestic reasons to be included. And it's likely to stay for the rest of that individual's life, is likely to be passed on - useful, hm?
BTW, Pentagon itself admitted that no lives were put at risk by (certainly redacted) leaks... (of course some time after the official hysteria, so people like you could have their "opinion" shaped in the meantime). And the book of a former colleauge from Wikileaks also says this:
"Julian was constantly battling for dominance, even with my tomcat Herr Schmitt,"
"Ever since Julian lived with me in Wiesbaden he (the cat) has suffered from psychosis. Julian would constantly attack the animal. He would spread out his fingers like a fork and grab the cat's throat."
Assange abused my cat: WikiLeaks insider Assange touched my pussy ...but of course such levels of farce must be reliable.
they have the be executed well.
Yes, thank you, exactly the point of some ex-Nokia board member(?) against which the self-refuting blog post was arguing.
Trying to not be "firmly wedged into the role of iOS fanboy" also isn't helped by, also self-refuting, pointing out how "features are not everything"... to somebody satisfied with the fairly basic ones (and who would already be almost fine with present S40 (it even has touch UI now; and people choose it, otherwise it wouldn't be by far the most popular mobile platform on the planet - except, say, US - when most of the world owns their phones, uses prepaid, and Nokia handsets are typically not the least expensive ones), or handsets like Samsung Corby, Star or LG Cookie - those are the touchscreen phones of our times, except in few places; more of a "smartphone" than iPhone for a year or WebOS devices (for a... time); it's not even clear now in relation to Android)
It's also not so b&w as "Symbian sucks and it's tantamount to user abuse". If one is used to S40, the Symbian UI can be generally picked up very rapidly (it didn't really have much choice early on, but to mostly follow the paradigms of S40; this even worked for a time... though at some point it started to outgrow those UI paradigms)
Most importantly - human intelligence which itself is emergent, essentially "at its heart, ... is simply an exercise in in data storage, lookup, and statistical probabilities in determining a likely answer"
... approaching this in "intelligently accurate" way would be a major waste of brain tissue for most of our evolution and not helping much, anyway.
... but "intelligent"? While our abstract thought is a very recent, experimental, unoptimized hack. I doubt if that much different in experience from many higher animals - except that we got ourselves a quite complex way of communicating with ourselves, internally (talking to ourselves is what we usually call "thinking")... but it's not hard to notice that this is not our only mode of operation! Those other are IMHO when we experience the "animal levels" of consciousness. Probably not that different, all things considered.
;) )
Diffusion MRI/CAT scan images (revealing directional bias of the fibres in the white matter, the long-distance communication) show a nice "tree"-like network... which of it is intelligent?
One won't find it in a neuron, or in (certainly at least) most areas of the brain used for separate specific purposes (say, name of the object vs. its orientation, distance or color - taking separate paths from the image or sound input)... which are yet crucial for the idea of "ourselves". Stroke (brain, generally) clinics have tests which evaluate damage on this basis - it's possible to tell what an object is, but not its orientation or distance; or knowing there's is an object (and where it is), but not being able to name it (but being able to point to something of even just similar category). There's even one very localized brain trauma which makes people blind... without them realizing it! Couple that with how split-brain patients seem almost normal, and you have an idea how much of a "grip" we have on ourselves.
We are good at "cheating" the complexity of problems requiring "intelligence" - not only distributing workload to (fairly unintelligent by themselves) portions of the brain, also living in approximations, a lot of best effort guessing, settling on quite likely result and taking on another task; focused on rapidly getting sloppy answers (suitable for a sloppy world, with sloppy inputs) - quickly identifying quantities works in the style of "none, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or 7, few, a dozen or so (then 2 or 3 of them), oh gods that's a lot"
Running mostly in the opposite direction to a predator, with pseudo-random evasive actions and last ditch efforts, is plenty good enough
That said, dragonflies display a spectacular (and similar in style to xkcd above... only in 3D) hunting technique
However - confidence in our abilities, oversensitive alertness and internalizing experiences mostly of fellow humans were certainly also very useful evolutionary traits. Right there is probably large part of our "absolutely unique intelligence" (or, say, convincing ourselves how good our memory is, how we are a mostly unbroken individual consciousness - while being generally closer to our peers than to ourselves at some different life stages; while not being able to recall much about our experiences or thoughts from the first week of March... 1996)
Ask few random fellas how long it takes for the Earth to go around the Sun (a test from one of Carl Sagan's books, and the sad example was about some students of top uni). Yes, we might wonder how well those with sad answers paid full attention to the question, or if they answered without listening (another thing to explore)... well, that is also the point!
(love the nick, BTW
What do you want to say by linking to this self-refuting blog post? (NVM by whom)
Saying that they missed on big trends (while clearly pushing them early on) is inaccurate (but typical of views in one place; just like iPod invented everything...). "Kick-ass production values" is itself a new misunderstanding, partly (which of those those companies owns their fabs and supply chain?(*)); "quality and experience" in UIs... is execution of the trends.
(*)Which BTW is an important part of "volume" - cheaper Chinese handsets are not a new thing, not even close.
Where is my $100 laptop, then?
You can get an Android phone without contract for $150 in the US or EU 100 in Europe. That's about the same as low-end Symbian phones.
Go on... there's still second part of his quote to address... (plus general sturdiness)
And BTW @"its user interface is impenetrable for new users"...that's not so black&white. If one is used to S40 (by far the most popular mobile platform on the planet; except, say, US), the Symbian UI can be generally picked up very rapidly. It didn't really have much choice early on, but to mostly follow the paradigms of S40; this even worked for a time (at some point it started to outgrow those UI paradigms). But it's still "are you new user to Symbian while wishing for more (hence probably a heavy user) than the dominating mobile platform on the planet provides?" vs. "are you new user to Nokia?"
And anyway, what S40 provides now is more of a "smartphone" than the iPhone for the first year. It even has touch UI now; and Samsung Corby, Star or LG Cookie (the touchscreen handsets of our times, except for few places) are also counted as "feature phones"...
"No money" while being very clearly profitable? Curious...
What you mention does show who gives its customers better deal / who prefers to ignore lesser people, though.
Just one quick look at the stats of places where we know the iPhone to be fairly popular (like... US, in world top20) shows that to be a non-issue.
(and the usage is most likely even more common in places which aren't tied to expensive "unlimited" contracts - in the very same report, Part 4 talks about average monthly data costs; typically in the range of 1 or 2 usd)
It's almost like somebody isn't aware that N97 of parent poster is a smartphone, with all those capabilities... (though its map is even better - it doesn't require data connection to work, if you're in some really strange / desolate place)
"Once made" is even slightly inaccurate... apparently they have a tendency to split out some activities while transforming the most visible Nokia - Nokian footwear seems very much still around. Or tires.
Who knows, we might eventually see "wireless / backbone / cellular R&D" becoming separate from consumer handsets. Or even "feature phone" and "smartphone" divisions going their own way.
And curious which TFS icon those stories seem to have...
It's a bad style, we don't have good intuitive grasp on neither of those values - certainly not on millions of something, barely even on "millennia" (with just "one... maybe two or three" being the timespan that we convince ourselves we are grasping - but just look how poor grasp, when looked rigorously, we have on our own timescales, how many myths: merely convincing ourselves that the things we remember are exhaustive (quickly, recollect what were you doing in the last week of November... 1993; also, "times were always better when my (the greatest!) generation was young") or believing in fairly monolithic, unbroken consciousness (while we are generally closer to our peers than to ourselves at different life stages - heck, even split brain patients seem quite normal; there is also a particularly localized brain trauma causing people to become blind... without them realizing it! This is the grip we have on ourselves and our perceptions)
Multiplicating such two values in popular publication only brings more confusion (but hey, it appears it was meant to be "scary"...)
1. is being sold at ~$20 (no contract!) by them, 2. needs to be at least around 4 times more expensive... there's quite a lot in-between, why do you want to deny those hundreds millions of people a phone with a digital camera, gprs/j2me/web/im/fb or music player? Or even a "chat" device in very same price range? (C3 seems to / might be becoming the most popular qwerty device on the planet) Oh, and keep in mind Big Mac Index.
Hm, but some sort of balance in life is essential (supposedly, I wouldn't know) for good results...
Nokia manufactures all of their devices. Most of their ~dozen fabs are even outside China, half in the EU (and one quite close to Cupertino...). Own manufacturing capability might be a large part of how their supply chain can work on such scales (the only realistic contender to 1st place, Samsung, also at least mostly owns theirs)
Not entirely correct - check out Nokia Booklet.
Their MP3 player was never quite so dominating. Or - was in the metrics used, when looking at few atypical places. But even in my fairly prosperous late EU memberstate (certainly more prosperous than most of Latin America, CIS, Asia, Middle East and Africa), I can probably count the number of times I've seen an iPod on the fingers of one hand (well, excluding my iPod obviously). People were getting something like Chinese S1 players; then there was some slight shift to "MP4 players", but the bulk moved to mobile phones a good few years ago. So called "feature phones", BTW... of course largely from Nokia (though lately Samsung Star, Corby or LG Cookie seem to be the rage) - it's massive even with how only 20-30% use that functionality.
And that's in one of more prosperous places
(also - so far Nokia is profitable, that's enough - though it's certainly more profitable to ignore lesser people in lesser places, possibly freeriding on cellular R&D. Attack of Chinese phones is not a new thing, too. And BTW overall it's fascinating phenomena to me - many, also here, are quick to voice their contempt towards people involved in stock markets, financial machinations, outsourcing, etc. Except when... being marveled at financial data provided by the very same people.)
Else they are completely at the mercy of MS, where MS can dump them for another hardware manufacturer and they can't drop WP7 without losing their customer base who has invested heavy in WP7 applications.
Not so straightforward in the world supply chains and mobile payment deals involving whole world of mobile carriers. Or, hey, if Nokia would turn out to be the absolutely dominating provider of Winmob handsets... (that wouldn't be too unexpected from largest phone manufacturer overall, Symbian line of whom (a bit over 20% of their total) was merely just matched in latest quarterly volumes by one other solution from all manufacturers)