slashdot articles. This is a fine example of a slashdot article where one above all should avoid clicking on the link to tfa, as it smells opinionated blurb that should not be given one single click in ad revenue.
It should be possible to write a more pertinent comparison of word processors.
Some word processors are good for some purposes and some are good for others. Admitting that MS Word does have issues with bugs, corruptions and usability in many areas, it is still a wonderful tool for someone who needs a lot of different functionality. It is the most customizable word processor I know of. It has some of the best scripting support. It has more than decent support for Chinese and Japanese. Paste special, master documents, grammar checks in multiple languages, split windows, opening the same document several times in separate windows. It can do it all.
You never wanted that kind of functionality? Well, then there are other products out there that are much better. But if you do need it, it is difficult to find any product that supports so much functionality equally well.
Even though the grammar check mostly is a joke, there are things it catches that some people appreciate.
I hardly ever recommend MS Word to people who ask for my advice, but that is not because Word is bad. It is because those people usually do not need anything as powerful and expensive as Word. It is not right for them.
Surely there could be cases where our observing is different from a passive matter observing something. If photons come from this dark energy thingummy and simply smash into a rock, the rock does not necessarily "care" about its spin/polarisation or whatnot. The rock simply becomes a little warmer and that's it.
However, if we set up machinery to measure the photon's polarisation, that can then affect the sending object.
The difference is not "consciousness" against no consciousness, but simply different levels of measurement. A rock that is too crude a tool to measure polarisation, does not affect that aspect.
Some of the glyphs do not seem to have any unicode code points. What could the reason for that be in a "web font"?
If I display for example the glyphs of Consolas Regular in InDesign, I see one very strange character with GID 708 but no unicode number. GIDs 585 and 586 look very similar to unicodes 02D8 () and 0306 (), but they are also displayed without unicode number in InDesign.
"If things started out as a big bang, on some scale, we will find a "center" of the universe. "
I thought that was not the case. The big bang started in a point, but a point that is equally far from every other point in the universe, so there is no "centre". It is not a very intuitive statement, but that is what I understood from some article or other on the subject.
"iWork is perfectly safe to store things in, at least in the sense of being able to get things back out in the future."
There is a big difference between "being able to" and "easily being able to". So far no one, as far as I know, have gone through the trouble of writing a.pages importer on any platform.
I would not store any single document, not even today's grocery shopping list, in Pages alone. The risk is too big that it will be practically illegible in a few years' time. I have been burnt by similar situations too often in the past. Luckily one can easily export backups in the form of rtf, doc and pdf copies.
Templates? Clipart? Fonts? I have noticed that a lot of people like that sort of things, but personally I cannot stand them. If I get a spreadsheet application I expect it to do calculations - not to fill my harddisk and my select boxes with eye-candy I will never use. If I want something to look nice, I prefer designing it myself. I may not always succeed, and it may take time, but at least I do not show that stereotypical look of MS design. Usually a simple clear design is more efficient than MS' bells and whistles.
I like MS Excel in general, by the way - in spite of its intrusive design elements.
So far all criticism I have seen against Wikipedia is that it has flaws. Of course it has flaws. There are errors, vandalism, people trying to drive their own agenda or promote commercial products. However, from the single fact that Wikipedia has flaws does not follow that there are any other media that are better.
All information channels have flaws. No exception.
However, I know of no media that have as good possibilities to verify the content as Wikipedia. You can check who wrote what, what else they have written, their experience, how much controversy or vandalism they have been accused of.
If you do not verify the content before you use it for anything serious, you are a fool.
If you use media where you cannot verify the content at all, you are an even bigger fool.
I agree that this is bad, but I am not sure I agree that it is outrageous.
To start with, there are very few 64bit users out there. Does anyone have statistics on how many have taken the plunge?
The reason only few users have switched is that there are plenty of incompatibilities with existing software. Microsoft themselves say "The 64-bit editions of Windows Vista are not for everyone, and require a system with a 64-bit processor and 64-bit system drivers. Please confirm that your system, applications, and devices are compatible with a 64-bit edition of Windows Vista before installing."
In other words, if you run 64-bit Windows, you already have a problem. You should not just assume that all previous software works with 64-bit. You should make sure that there is an explicit specification: "Hey! We promise that we work in 64-bit." If not, it is unlikely that it does.
Besides someone who runs 64bit Vista also necessarily has the software to run 32 bit, unless I am mistaken. If you are unlucky enough to have bought an iPhone and only have one computer and that one runs 64 bit, you already have the software to downgrade it to 32 bit for activation.
Is it inconvenient? Yes. Is it surprising that there is an incompatibility? No.
Regarding your deleted post, I am sure it was not because you revealed the truth to mankind. There are dozens of posts in the discussion forum about people with 64 bit problems. Not many out of 6000 posts and many thousands sold units, but some, probably reflecting the number of users in this situation. Posts are deleted when they do not follow the terms of use. They should be constructive, polite, and they should not discuss Apple policies. Further they should not include ads and so on and so on. I do not know what rule you broke against in your post, but it was hardly that you mentioned a technical problem.
I think you are missing the point. Why does Apple launch Safari for Windows? It is hardly to tempt Windows user to switch to MacOS X. If Safari for MacOS X had been such a good reason to switch, it would have been suicide to release it on Windows as well.
The main reason is probably that they want people to get used to the UI to entice them to buy iPhones, or at least make them prepared to do so. And, no less, to make it easy for all the millions of Windows developers to write applications for the iPhone. And those being the reasons, they can of course not adapt the UI to Windows' look and feel.
For the other Apple applications on Windows with non standard UI, I think they fit reasonably well with the Windows platform, as the standards are much less followed than on MacOS, with applications using old APIs, their own controls, and so on. If their had been a user (not expert) outrage, Apple would have heard it and changed the UI.
Saying that Apple's UI is not perfect is of course true. But how many application developers have a perfect UI? Personally I intended to buy Vista when it came out, but I first tried it out and was so horrified by the lack of progress compared to XP, that I decided against it.
Just releasing a browser for Windows makes no sense for Apple. They must have some more motives. A fairly obvious one is that they want Windows developers to be able to debug their iPhone apps on Windows.
What other motives there are I have no idea. Some clever integration with iTunes? Some new technology which Apple will release that runs only in Safari?
Whatever their reason, it is not simply to make Windows users happy with wider browser choice.
"Freely allow Linux machines to be plugged into the workplace. They are highly unlikely to cause any problems."
I genuinely do not know Linux well enough to be able to tell from own experience, but I thought it was one of those flexible OSes you could misconfigure so completely that explodes.
Of course, a well configured system is as safe as any other box out there. But who knows if all your users are configuring their systems well?
I'm sure that more than 99% of all internetcafés are safe, but the problem is that you do not know which ones are not.
If you are staying away for a long time and need to connect to your bank or tax authorities regularly, it feels much safer to use your own laptop and wifi somewhere than to sit in a crowded internetcafé surrounded by smoking and spitting students, who may have installed keyboard sniffers.
But then it depends on who you are and what you are going to do. If someone tells me that he is going to Spokane for the weekend and does he need a laptop, I have to ask what he is going to do there before giving an answer. If you are going around the world, it is much more complicated.
When I went around the world, I brought two 12" laptops, one as a backup, in case the other one would fail. It turned out that I never got far from those places where I easily could have bought a new cheap one if need be, so I would not recommend double laptops, even if you are very dependent on them.
Bring something to backup files. A 4G or 8G SDcard and a USB card reader may be enough. If your Mac crashes, you can transfer all your data to a new PC or Mac, depending on what is best where you happen to be when it happens. If you know for sure you will have internet access all the time, you may trust some server for backup. That is safer, in case your backpack gets stolen.
Only use cross platform files! Stick to.doc,.txt,.rtf,.odt and so on. Skip any temptation to use.pages or.cwk or other file types, which will be impossible to read if you end up with a Windows or Linux box.
In addition I had a Palm (excellent for Chinese and Japanese dictionaries) with a butterfly-keyboard, a GPS (which I hardly ever used), an iPod (they can be used as radios nowadays, can't they?), and a camera.
And do not bring anything you would really mind loosing. Use cheap stuff, which can be replaced.
Do you need any electronics at all? It really depends on you. But no matter where you are, there is reading material about the place on the internet - often much better than what you find in the local book stores. With a laptop, you can download all you need, and then read it at your convenience.
"However, because there's no loss, converting the RAW to a TIFF is trivial, "
I think "trivial" is the wrong word. "Possible" would be better. As you mention yourself, there are plenty of different ways to convert RAW to TIFF, and the tweaking to get an optimal result is often very demanding.
"There is no requirement that the attacker personally know the attacked."
Actually, there implicitly is. Or at least "know of" the attacked. Unless you know of him, you can only attack his argument, and the whole point is that you do not attack the argument. An insult in itself is not an argument.
But then, that is the old-fashioned traditional way of using the expression in English. No one prevents you from using it in another way.
In Latin you can use "ad hominem" to describe that you through anything, like a rotten olive or a spear at him. Or indeed an insult.
"No matter how small the effect of our actions, to continue blindly on the same path we've been on for the past 200 years is signing our own death warrant. Doing nothing is completely unjustifiable in all cases. Am I missing something?"
Yes, you are missing something. The choice is not between "do something to limit the effects of carbon dioxide" and "do nothing". The "do something" option actually costs money and resources, which could have been spent on other things. The "do nothing" option implies doing other things with the resources. It can be things like improving health care, building new art museums, start new wars or anything. Some of the other things are laudable. Some are not.
All facts I have access to, tell me that we should cut carbon dioxide emissions drastically straight away. That is my personal opinion, your opinion, and it is shared by most scientists in the world.
However, someone with access to other facts, like Abdussamatov, may be perfectly justified in claiming that there are more important problems in the world than carbon dioxide.
If it had been true that the sun was the main culprit, it would be better to find ways to live with the increased temperatures rather than doing things that have no effect anyhow.
"you fulfilled my expectation that there would be an ad-hominem directed at the researcher in question within the first ten replies."
It seems you misunderstood the expression ad-hominem. If the argument had been "I know Abdussamatov, and he is a nutcase, therefore his opinions must be wrong", we would have had a case of ad-hominem. In this case, the argument is "what Abdussamatov says is wrong, and therefore he must be a nutcase".
It is not necessarily valid, but it is no example of an argumentum ad hominem.
Slashdot Mirror
slashdot articles. This is a fine example of a slashdot article where one above all should avoid clicking on the link to tfa, as it smells opinionated blurb that should not be given one single click in ad revenue.
It's much cheaper than (either) version of iPhone, but frankly, why pay anything at all for a device I do not want?
You got my point exactly! By the way, I just saved $199. Where can I buy that paddlewheel steamer? It sounds real fun.
* Too big.
* No disk mode.
* No possibility to add an external keyboard.
The new one is much cheaper, but, frankly, why pay anything at all for a device I do not want?
Some word processors are good for some purposes and some are good for others. Admitting that MS Word does have issues with bugs, corruptions and usability in many areas, it is still a wonderful tool for someone who needs a lot of different functionality. It is the most customizable word processor I know of. It has some of the best scripting support. It has more than decent support for Chinese and Japanese. Paste special, master documents, grammar checks in multiple languages, split windows, opening the same document several times in separate windows. It can do it all.
You never wanted that kind of functionality? Well, then there are other products out there that are much better. But if you do need it, it is difficult to find any product that supports so much functionality equally well.
Even though the grammar check mostly is a joke, there are things it catches that some people appreciate.
I hardly ever recommend MS Word to people who ask for my advice, but that is not because Word is bad. It is because those people usually do not need anything as powerful and expensive as Word. It is not right for them.
Some people need it. Some people don't.
However, if we set up machinery to measure the photon's polarisation, that can then affect the sending object.
The difference is not "consciousness" against no consciousness, but simply different levels of measurement. A rock that is too crude a tool to measure polarisation, does not affect that aspect.
Amen!
If I display for example the glyphs of Consolas Regular in InDesign, I see one very strange character with GID 708 but no unicode number. GIDs 585 and 586 look very similar to unicodes 02D8 () and 0306 (), but they are also displayed without unicode number in InDesign.
As a shortcoming you forgot the lack of LAB support in the Gimp.
I thought that was not the case. The big bang started in a point, but a point that is equally far from every other point in the universe, so there is no "centre". It is not a very intuitive statement, but that is what I understood from some article or other on the subject.
There is a big difference between "being able to" and "easily being able to". So far no one, as far as I know, have gone through the trouble of writing a .pages importer on any platform.
I would not store any single document, not even today's grocery shopping list, in Pages alone. The risk is too big that it will be practically illegible in a few years' time. I have been burnt by similar situations too often in the past. Luckily one can easily export backups in the form of rtf, doc and pdf copies.
I like MS Excel in general, by the way - in spite of its intrusive design elements.
All information channels have flaws. No exception.
However, I know of no media that have as good possibilities to verify the content as Wikipedia. You can check who wrote what, what else they have written, their experience, how much controversy or vandalism they have been accused of.
If you do not verify the content before you use it for anything serious, you are a fool.
If you use media where you cannot verify the content at all, you are an even bigger fool.
To start with, there are very few 64bit users out there. Does anyone have statistics on how many have taken the plunge?
The reason only few users have switched is that there are plenty of incompatibilities with existing software. Microsoft themselves say "The 64-bit editions of Windows Vista are not for everyone, and require a system with a 64-bit processor and 64-bit system drivers. Please confirm that your system, applications, and devices are compatible with a 64-bit edition of Windows Vista before installing."
In other words, if you run 64-bit Windows, you already have a problem. You should not just assume that all previous software works with 64-bit. You should make sure that there is an explicit specification: "Hey! We promise that we work in 64-bit." If not, it is unlikely that it does.
Besides someone who runs 64bit Vista also necessarily has the software to run 32 bit, unless I am mistaken. If you are unlucky enough to have bought an iPhone and only have one computer and that one runs 64 bit, you already have the software to downgrade it to 32 bit for activation.
Is it inconvenient? Yes. Is it surprising that there is an incompatibility? No.
Regarding your deleted post, I am sure it was not because you revealed the truth to mankind. There are dozens of posts in the discussion forum about people with 64 bit problems. Not many out of 6000 posts and many thousands sold units, but some, probably reflecting the number of users in this situation. Posts are deleted when they do not follow the terms of use. They should be constructive, polite, and they should not discuss Apple policies. Further they should not include ads and so on and so on. I do not know what rule you broke against in your post, but it was hardly that you mentioned a technical problem.
No.
I actually do not think your "criticism" was polite enough to warrant a point by point answer by the author of the parent article.
The main reason is probably that they want people to get used to the UI to entice them to buy iPhones, or at least make them prepared to do so. And, no less, to make it easy for all the millions of Windows developers to write applications for the iPhone. And those being the reasons, they can of course not adapt the UI to Windows' look and feel.
For the other Apple applications on Windows with non standard UI, I think they fit reasonably well with the Windows platform, as the standards are much less followed than on MacOS, with applications using old APIs, their own controls, and so on. If their had been a user (not expert) outrage, Apple would have heard it and changed the UI.
Saying that Apple's UI is not perfect is of course true. But how many application developers have a perfect UI? Personally I intended to buy Vista when it came out, but I first tried it out and was so horrified by the lack of progress compared to XP, that I decided against it.
What other motives there are I have no idea. Some clever integration with iTunes? Some new technology which Apple will release that runs only in Safari?
Whatever their reason, it is not simply to make Windows users happy with wider browser choice.
I genuinely do not know Linux well enough to be able to tell from own experience, but I thought it was one of those flexible OSes you could misconfigure so completely that explodes.
Of course, a well configured system is as safe as any other box out there. But who knows if all your users are configuring their systems well?
Isn't it safer when their only communication device is a pencil and a piece of paper?
If you are staying away for a long time and need to connect to your bank or tax authorities regularly, it feels much safer to use your own laptop and wifi somewhere than to sit in a crowded internetcafé surrounded by smoking and spitting students, who may have installed keyboard sniffers.
But then it depends on who you are and what you are going to do. If someone tells me that he is going to Spokane for the weekend and does he need a laptop, I have to ask what he is going to do there before giving an answer. If you are going around the world, it is much more complicated.
When I went around the world, I brought two 12" laptops, one as a backup, in case the other one would fail. It turned out that I never got far from those places where I easily could have bought a new cheap one if need be, so I would not recommend double laptops, even if you are very dependent on them.
Bring something to backup files. A 4G or 8G SDcard and a USB card reader may be enough. If your Mac crashes, you can transfer all your data to a new PC or Mac, depending on what is best where you happen to be when it happens. If you know for sure you will have internet access all the time, you may trust some server for backup. That is safer, in case your backpack gets stolen.
Only use cross platform files! Stick to .doc, .txt, .rtf, .odt and so on. Skip any temptation to use .pages or .cwk or other file types, which will be impossible to read if you end up with a Windows or Linux box.
In addition I had a Palm (excellent for Chinese and Japanese dictionaries) with a butterfly-keyboard, a GPS (which I hardly ever used), an iPod (they can be used as radios nowadays, can't they?), and a camera.
And do not bring anything you would really mind loosing. Use cheap stuff, which can be replaced.
Do you need any electronics at all? It really depends on you. But no matter where you are, there is reading material about the place on the internet - often much better than what you find in the local book stores. With a laptop, you can download all you need, and then read it at your convenience.
That is a beautiful twist of Bill Gates' alleged blurb that no one ever will need more than 640k.
I think "trivial" is the wrong word. "Possible" would be better. As you mention yourself, there are plenty of different ways to convert RAW to TIFF, and the tweaking to get an optimal result is often very demanding.
Actually, there implicitly is. Or at least "know of" the attacked. Unless you know of him, you can only attack his argument, and the whole point is that you do not attack the argument. An insult in itself is not an argument.
But then, that is the old-fashioned traditional way of using the expression in English. No one prevents you from using it in another way.
In Latin you can use "ad hominem" to describe that you through anything, like a rotten olive or a spear at him. Or indeed an insult.
Yes, you are missing something. The choice is not between "do something to limit the effects of carbon dioxide" and "do nothing". The "do something" option actually costs money and resources, which could have been spent on other things. The "do nothing" option implies doing other things with the resources. It can be things like improving health care, building new art museums, start new wars or anything. Some of the other things are laudable. Some are not.
All facts I have access to, tell me that we should cut carbon dioxide emissions drastically straight away. That is my personal opinion, your opinion, and it is shared by most scientists in the world.
However, someone with access to other facts, like Abdussamatov, may be perfectly justified in claiming that there are more important problems in the world than carbon dioxide.
If it had been true that the sun was the main culprit, it would be better to find ways to live with the increased temperatures rather than doing things that have no effect anyhow.
It seems you misunderstood the expression ad-hominem. If the argument had been "I know Abdussamatov, and he is a nutcase, therefore his opinions must be wrong", we would have had a case of ad-hominem. In this case, the argument is "what Abdussamatov says is wrong, and therefore he must be a nutcase".
It is not necessarily valid, but it is no example of an argumentum ad hominem.