+1 Interesting, what are you kidding? All this post does is baselessly insult two groups. And yes, baselessly: the.ogg format/media container is becoming more popular, not less, and.wma is used by almost every non-iTunes store (i.e. it matters). If this deserves +1 Interesting, then I'm a ferris wheel.
Most of these products probably aren't marketed as 'iPod killers'
Maybe they're not marketed as iPod killers, but I suspect they are conceived as such. From a business perspective, winning the MP3 player market quite naturally involves killing the iPod, its current holder. However, more vulnerable than the position of the iPod as the most popular "MP3 player" is Apple's position as the manufacturer of the most popular "portable media player." (Or possibly, "most fashionable gadget.") My point is that no "iPod killer" will end up killing the iPod, but what might succeed is something that deliberately plans to be as suddenly unique to the world as the iPod was originally, something that people will buy instead of the iPod, but not something that does the same thing. Something consumers didn't realize they wanted, but as soon as it was presented to them, know that they do - and that they want it more than the iPod.
Please don't ask me to be more specific. If I knew how to create the circumstances I detailed, I wouldn't be posting on Slashdot, thinking about sleep. (I would be counting money, thinking about sleep. Maybe I'm not missing all that much.)
I could just as easily characterize everything as a Nomad killer, or an iRiver killer
There wouldn't be too much point in killing the Nomad or the iRiver because their market shares are so small, so no, I don't think it comes as naturally to characterize MP3 players as potential killers of minor rivals as it does to compare them to the iPod.
Or are you saying that you only buy the most popular of any given product space? Will you not drink RC Cola because I could say, "It's like Pepsi." Do you only buy Kleenex brand facial tissues? Would you have never bought a portable cassette player that's not a Sony Walkman?
Personally, I'll buy what I think is the best product for my needs, for the best price. In my case, that was an iRiver H340. However, what I would buy is rarely the same as what sells well. More people drink Pepsi than RC Cola, regardless of my preferences.
iRiver does too (Ogg Vorbis, not FLAC). Look into the H320/H340 if you want a feature-packed player with excellent sound and can accept unintuitive controls.
Inevitably, something that wants to be just a "product A killer" lacks the originality that made "product A" popular to begin with.
Creativity can't be mimicked. I for one welcome any products that aren't easily defined by other products. The next batch of iPod-mimicking underlords, on the other hand, aren't so well-met.
This brings up an enticing possibility. What if Microsoft just patented "being first"? Wouldn't that get rid of all the prior art rubbish they have to cope with with their other patents? I mean, if someone showed prior art for "feline flatulence" or whatever else is developing in Bill Gates' unfortunately windowless office, they would be infringing Microsoft's "being first" patent. This is it folks! The future!
In my opinion, cloning embryos is a trivialization of the creation of human life. And I see that a lack of value for human life has preceded many historic tragedies. That is, lives and their loss are being made to represent something other than and in precedence to its value as people: in war, life and its loss is made a military tool to an end; in genocide, it is abstracted as some negative impact or social obstacle that needs overcoming. Okay, so the comparisons aren't perfect because they deal with life rather than the creation of life. But what I fear is that they all constitute the use of life and the destruction of it for a secondary purpose. And it's a crucial similarity - you can't maximize for two variables, so to speak. When life is used effectively (in a way that involves its destruction) for another end, ethics and the gain compete in importance. In the case of Harvard, corporately-funded research will choose its pragmatic interests (gain and profit) over ethical concerns anytime, and so we shouldn't mix ethical dilemmas with the free market if we expect to have a well-considered outcome.
(To avoid 5, Funny posts: Yes, it's extraordinarily naive to say that conception is considered sacred. It's certainly not. But it's never been commercialized before (as opposed to what, er, precedes it, which obviously has been commercialized - i.e. pr0n.))
This isn't the same argument as the one over abortion, which is the termination of a life (whose status is disputed) for personal reasons. And IVF uses embryos to create life. What we should fear are industries made out of the use of the creation of human life as a tool to another end. Stem cells may not have any profitable purpose yet, but as soon as they do, and if we depend on cloning embryos to create our stem cells, there will be NO turning back. This is an argument to have now. Does this trivialize the creation of life? And does a trivialization of the creation of life lessen the value we place in life in general? What are the consequences of that? Think about the ultimate point to which the decision here leads, not just its immediate results.
$20 says INDUCE gets tagged onto this one before it's voted on
Dan Glickman gave some Congressmen $19.50 each to vote for these bills. We can turn the stinginess that makes him such an effective MPAA head ("I don't give a fuck how poor the orphanage is! Full price!" -> more profit) against him! We'll buy each Congressmen back with $20 each! Hell, combined with that vote-thingy we have, that might even be worth $20.05!
According to someone further down the thread, here are the names of the $19.50 richer MPAA chums: Rep Berman, Howard L.
Rep Bono, Mary
Rep Coble, Howard
Rep Conyers, John, Jr.
Rep Hoyer, Steny H.
Rep Meehan, Martin T.
Rep Otter, C. L. (Butch)
Since when is not waching an advertisement illegal? That seems a constitutional violation - No one has a right to FORCE me to watch/listen to anything.
If there is an implied arrangement to watch an ad in return for a service, then I guess, from one point of view, this is justifiable (if not currently legal), however offensive we may find it. Obviously, an "implied arrangment" is not a contract, hence the need to change the law.
Title III designates the national tree as the oak tree.
That's an interesting thing to be pinned to this...
Title VI, the "Preservation of Orphan Works Act" (H.R. 5136)... allow libraries to create copies of certain copyrighted works, such as films and musical compositions that, in their last twenty years of copyright term, are no longer commercially exploited, and are not available at a reasonable price.
This modifies Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act (1998), which extended copyright after the author's death by 20 years, to 70. This provision is a commonsense development. Of course, I hope that "reasonable price" is effectively defined.
In the discussion about the INDUCE Act stalling, several people predicted that the plan was to have the consumer (copyright) rights proponents expend all their energy and finances on opposing the INDUCE Act and that the real draconian act would sneak by the victory parade. Looks like they were right.
Its commendable that Corporate America and its consumers worked hand in hand to push this bill back where it crawled out of.
While some technology companies did oppose the Act, it is totally unreasonable to say that "Corporate America" opposed it. The INDUCE Act was lobbied for by the RIAA and MPAA and supported by Microsoft, among others. It is the ability of Corporate America to push bills into Congress with thick wads of bills in envelopes that resulted in the DMCA and the introduction of this Act.
I worry how the fight will go down when we are pitched against each other and the fight's fair on our end, but the cash pile is taller on their end?
i.e., now.
Also in today's world when corporate will can be swayed by a few choice words like "terrorism", "patriotism" lobbed at them by the Govt,
Businesses act in self-interest, so abstract, not-directly-profitable ideas like patriotism mean nothing. Meanwhile, terrorism means contracts from the U.S. goverment. These things are designed to scare the citizenry into line, not companies.
do we think they will stand with us when we fight the beaureacracy?
Okay, you are off the planet. Corporate America arm in arm with the Government has borne bureaucracy at its foulest. Corporate America does not fight democracy-choking bureaucracy. They fight for it. The more complex and indirect the Government's sovereignty it is, the less obvious and inescapable its accountability to its citizens. Bureaucracy affords corporate America far more ways to, for example, shove through acts like the DMCA or shoot down acts that would interfere with the pharmaceutical industry's profit margin, and importantly, keep the interests of the consumer and the people away from their government.
(This time, BSA (with its tech company members) opposed the INDUCE Act because it would hurt technology. Pure business pragmatism. Meanwhile, companies with an interest in maintaining control of digital content companies, lobbied for the Act. Again, pure business pragmatism.)
We never fought together; we never should. Our causes sometimes overlap. More often than not they don't. But this never changes: members of any "free market" should have no power in changing the rules of the market itself.
The Government should represent the people only, each person weighed equally, not proportionate to their access to capital. The government's power and authority is granted by every single person, from nowhere else, and it would do well to remember that if eventually we all grow sick enough of its corruption.
Does it NOT occur to anyone here that if an ideological group can purchase up a bunch of "news sources"/media outlets, they can control what is "most commonly reported"?
It occured to me, but I dismissed it. The fact is that no single ideological group controls what is commonly reported across the globe. Maybe in the U.S., but not across the world. There is incredible diversity in news coverage, in levels of bias, and in ideologies driving that bias. In Google, al-Jazeera and CNN offer competing takes on issues. Sans Google News and fall back on "sources you trust" and dissenting views are harder to find. That's because in a single country, or a single neighbourhood, a single ideological group certainly can control news. Hence if, as the author suggested, we depend on so-called "reliable sources," we can expect far more one-sidedness and single-outlook control over the news than we would encounter in Google News.
You suggest that a single ideological group has the power to ignore events and hence determine what constitutes news and what is "most commonly reported" and as such what appears on Google's headlines. It's a serious issue, but you seem to be whinging in the wrong direction. Google News is part of the solution, not part of the problem of conventional outlets' stranglehold. It submerges any given country's conventional regional sources in a great variety of alternative perspectives. (The Internet gets credit for all that variety, of course, but Google makes it actually available. Say what you like, but "convenience" is crucial to whether information can actually be digested or whether it just overwhelms and is ignored.) It's not perfect, but it's better.
Now if Google News made some attempt to integrate blogs, then we'd have a lot of variety...
While it may nail the top headlines, Google News can't do anything but that. There is no consideration of comprehensiveness of a story at one site over another.
What a silly point. Google News doesn't try to tell you what to read. It gathers the most commonly reported events into headlines and intends the user to sort through them. As a way of organizing news reports, it's unparalleled. Just like traditional Google Search, it doesn't make the choice of resource for you (that's what our discernment is for), it merely organizes your choices so they are accessible. Perhaps from the perspective of a traditional journalist, the idea of a broad range of news sources at the fingertips of the reader rather blind dependency on a few well-known outlets is worrying because it threatens the old way of doing things. Personally, I think more accessibility and more choice for the reader will only make online news more competitive and allow quality articles outside of the conventional vendors to show themselves more easily.
just MacOS X in a handy carrying case. It just works...People claim that Apple is a hardware company, I think I'd disagree. with MacOS X, they're a software company - except the software has a solid, physical presence in the real world
And that's what I'm talking about. It's a consumer device, totally functional (that is, no compatibility issues) as it is. If you just want to use its software, Apple is effective. My comment is that both Apple's skillful design and closed-up hardware ensure that that hardware geeks' understanding of it doesn't get them any more functionality, and that because of its consumer-focus Apple's popularity among the tech community is somewhat surprising. But I guess different parts of the tech community want different things from their PCs. If we look at it from the perspective of people who use their Macs purely for software, as you say, then it makes perfect sense. And if we look at it from the perspective of the digital content makers, it makes perfect sense. I think it's interesting to observe how among Slashdotters focus resides in different areas: technology itself and technology's use. Apple wins in the latter.
Those who want to upgrade or repair their Macs don't understand what liberal Apple is - a company that manufactures computers whose workings are impenetrable and hidden (i.e. information hiding), like parts themselves are in other PCs.
That's a good point, even though your other sentence is a little weird. It also makes me wonder what enthusiasts (like those here on Slashdot) see in Apple. Sure, OS X is a great OS, but Macs as hardware disempower the hobbyist compared to equivalent devices. Same goes for the iPod, whose HDD is deliberately inconvenient to move files from. While their quality is unquestionable, Apple's products perform functions not only without the user needing to understand how they work but where understanding how they work does not extend the user any extra power. That might be considered very good design, but to geeks, who get a kick out of the power of knowing how things work, you wouldn't think it would be so attractive.
America and all adopting nations seem to have approached in with very little testing or thought. The Green Party is right to exercise a degree of pragmatic caution; while the world's population is too much of a strain on conventional agricultural techniques, genetically modified food shouldn't be assumed to be the solution just because it might be. According to Choice magazine,
A recent New Scientist report about Argentina's agricultural and environmental crisis holds a worrying lesson for the rest of the world - particularly the developing world - about the impacts of genetically modified food crops.
It says, after eight years of large-scale cropping of Monsanto's ROUNDUP READY soy beans (soy beans genetically engineered to be resistant to Monsanto's herbicide ROUNDUP), damaging and possibly irreversible effects are becoming increasingly evident:
- Weeds resistant to glyphosate (the chemical name of ROUNDUP) have increased in abundance, and farmers have to use stronger herbicides to control them. Agronomists fear glyphosate resistance will transfer to other weed species, creating 'superweeds.'
- GM soy itself is becoming a weed, with stronger and more harmful herbicides needed to control stray plants.
- Farmers growing GM soy are applying more than twice as much herbicide as conventional soy farmers.
- Careless and excessive spraying of a mix of powerful herbicides has killed non-resistant crops on neighbouring farms, also killing and maiming farm animals and causing health problems for humans.
- Soil microbiology has been affected - essential bacteria normally present are declining, and in some places dead weeds lying on the ground don't even rot.
As I said, the issue is much more complex on practical terms than "GM is good and these ideological nutters are getting in the way."
Fundamentalist atheists are just as bad. Only, it's not socially acceptable to show bigotry towards them, like it is to Christians.
How can this be modded as flamebait? You know what atheist fundamentalism sounds like when you read posts like, "Anything that gets those Christian bigots pissed off is fine by me." Christianity has spent years as a scapegoat for racism and bigotry. It's gratifying to clearly see that people act exactly the same without it. There are few things nothing funnier and more tragic than reading someone write, "I just hate their intolerance!", completely unaware of the irony.
Australia is a very secular country, so Christian parties are notable. Also notable is that they are conservative. This is something that consistently baffles me. The New Testament's doctrine is patently pacifistic and egalitarian (as opposed to that of the Old Testament, which was superseded by this). Neither of these are traits of conservatism as a political ideology. Christ didn't kill anyone in response to their wrongdoing. Christ didn't brand people as irrevocably and unequivocally evil, either; he said anyone could come to God. If you try to create a political ideology out of Christianity, its ideas are radically anti-establishment. That Christianity became associated with maintaining a repressive status quo (often brutally) all the way through history after Constantine is a travesty. It proves that if you mix Christianity with centres of power (be they states or churches), religion tends to be thoroughly misrepresented (scapegoated, typically). Basically, leaders who base their leadership on religion have either set out to misuse religion as a means of repressive enforcement or have been corrupted by a serious conflict of interest along the way. Christianity should not be politicized.
Which brings us to the present day. You can disagree with my theology if you want, but flipping back to Genesis, wasn't the fundamental idea that God gave Adam and Eve freedom, freedom to do wrong and make errors, so that they would love Him for Him, not out of necessity? There were certainly consequences of wrongdoing, but the role of punisher was God's and God's only and fundamentally, humankind was given the freedom to choose (we chose poorly). Isn't it yet another misrepresentation of Christianity to associate it with repression? Not only is personal morality God's business, He has decided that it is wrong to stifle choice because it doesn't inspire true faith.
Of course, Christianity holds that pornography is wrong. But to politicize its message has only ever messed it up.
Slashdot Mirror
+1 Interesting, what are you kidding? All this post does is baselessly insult two groups. And yes, baselessly: the .ogg format/media container is becoming more popular, not less, and .wma is used by almost every non-iTunes store (i.e. it matters). If this deserves +1 Interesting, then I'm a ferris wheel.
P.S. I'm not.
Most of these products probably aren't marketed as 'iPod killers'
Maybe they're not marketed as iPod killers, but I suspect they are conceived as such. From a business perspective, winning the MP3 player market quite naturally involves killing the iPod, its current holder. However, more vulnerable than the position of the iPod as the most popular "MP3 player" is Apple's position as the manufacturer of the most popular "portable media player." (Or possibly, "most fashionable gadget.") My point is that no "iPod killer" will end up killing the iPod, but what might succeed is something that deliberately plans to be as suddenly unique to the world as the iPod was originally, something that people will buy instead of the iPod, but not something that does the same thing. Something consumers didn't realize they wanted, but as soon as it was presented to them, know that they do - and that they want it more than the iPod.
Please don't ask me to be more specific. If I knew how to create the circumstances I detailed, I wouldn't be posting on Slashdot, thinking about sleep. (I would be counting money, thinking about sleep. Maybe I'm not missing all that much.)
I could just as easily characterize everything as a Nomad killer, or an iRiver killer
There wouldn't be too much point in killing the Nomad or the iRiver because their market shares are so small, so no, I don't think it comes as naturally to characterize MP3 players as potential killers of minor rivals as it does to compare them to the iPod.
Or are you saying that you only buy the most popular of any given product space? Will you not drink RC Cola because I could say, "It's like Pepsi." Do you only buy Kleenex brand facial tissues? Would you have never bought a portable cassette player that's not a Sony Walkman?
Personally, I'll buy what I think is the best product for my needs, for the best price. In my case, that was an iRiver H340. However, what I would buy is rarely the same as what sells well. More people drink Pepsi than RC Cola, regardless of my preferences.
iRiver does too (Ogg Vorbis, not FLAC). Look into the H320/H340 if you want a feature-packed player with excellent sound and can accept unintuitive controls.
'iPod Killers'
Inevitably, something that wants to be just a "product A killer" lacks the originality that made "product A" popular to begin with.
Creativity can't be mimicked. I for one welcome any products that aren't easily defined by other products. The next batch of iPod-mimicking underlords, on the other hand, aren't so well-met.
It was an audacious move for Intel to rhyme its architecture with "Titanic" and still not expect its utter perdition.
Given the rhyming, I'm surprised it lasted this long.
This brings up an enticing possibility. What if Microsoft just patented "being first"? Wouldn't that get rid of all the prior art rubbish they have to cope with with their other patents? I mean, if someone showed prior art for "feline flatulence" or whatever else is developing in Bill Gates' unfortunately windowless office, they would be infringing Microsoft's "being first" patent. This is it folks! The future!
IBM Retakes Fastest Supercomputer Title
If their supercomputers really were that fast, they would have taken the title back earlier.
In my opinion, cloning embryos is a trivialization of the creation of human life. And I see that a lack of value for human life has preceded many historic tragedies. That is, lives and their loss are being made to represent something other than and in precedence to its value as people: in war, life and its loss is made a military tool to an end; in genocide, it is abstracted as some negative impact or social obstacle that needs overcoming. Okay, so the comparisons aren't perfect because they deal with life rather than the creation of life. But what I fear is that they all constitute the use of life and the destruction of it for a secondary purpose. And it's a crucial similarity - you can't maximize for two variables, so to speak. When life is used effectively (in a way that involves its destruction) for another end, ethics and the gain compete in importance. In the case of Harvard, corporately-funded research will choose its pragmatic interests (gain and profit) over ethical concerns anytime, and so we shouldn't mix ethical dilemmas with the free market if we expect to have a well-considered outcome.
(To avoid 5, Funny posts: Yes, it's extraordinarily naive to say that conception is considered sacred. It's certainly not. But it's never been commercialized before (as opposed to what, er, precedes it, which obviously has been commercialized - i.e. pr0n.))
This isn't the same argument as the one over abortion, which is the termination of a life (whose status is disputed) for personal reasons. And IVF uses embryos to create life. What we should fear are industries made out of the use of the creation of human life as a tool to another end. Stem cells may not have any profitable purpose yet, but as soon as they do, and if we depend on cloning embryos to create our stem cells, there will be NO turning back. This is an argument to have now. Does this trivialize the creation of life? And does a trivialization of the creation of life lessen the value we place in life in general? What are the consequences of that? Think about the ultimate point to which the decision here leads, not just its immediate results.
and now it's being manipulated with third party tools. Is Gmail going to live its entire life in Beta?
Nah, the failure of the humour was the humour. If I failed, I was successful.
Misunderstood "Hack A Day". I was hoping to find out a way to make time itself run Linux.
Oh, come on, groaning is a type of laughing.
$20 says INDUCE gets tagged onto this one before it's voted on
Dan Glickman gave some Congressmen $19.50 each to vote for these bills. We can turn the stinginess that makes him such an effective MPAA head ("I don't give a fuck how poor the orphanage is! Full price!" -> more profit) against him! We'll buy each Congressmen back with $20 each! Hell, combined with that vote-thingy we have, that might even be worth $20.05!
According to someone further down the thread, here are the names of the $19.50 richer MPAA chums:
Rep Berman, Howard L.
Rep Bono, Mary
Rep Coble, Howard
Rep Conyers, John, Jr.
Rep Hoyer, Steny H.
Rep Meehan, Martin T.
Rep Otter, C. L. (Butch)
Since when is not waching an advertisement illegal? That seems a constitutional violation - No one has a right to FORCE me to watch/listen to anything.
If there is an implied arrangement to watch an ad in return for a service, then I guess, from one point of view, this is justifiable (if not currently legal), however offensive we may find it. Obviously, an "implied arrangment" is not a contract, hence the need to change the law.
Title III designates the national tree as the oak tree.
That's an interesting thing to be pinned to this...
Title VI, the "Preservation of Orphan Works Act" (H.R. 5136)... allow libraries to create copies of certain copyrighted works, such as films and musical compositions that, in their last twenty years of copyright term, are no longer commercially exploited, and are not available at a reasonable price.
This modifies Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act (1998), which extended copyright after the author's death by 20 years, to 70. This provision is a commonsense development. Of course, I hope that "reasonable price" is effectively defined.
In the discussion about the INDUCE Act stalling, several people predicted that the plan was to have the consumer (copyright) rights proponents expend all their energy and finances on opposing the INDUCE Act and that the real draconian act would sneak by the victory parade. Looks like they were right.
Its commendable that Corporate America and its consumers worked hand in hand to push this bill back where it crawled out of.
While some technology companies did oppose the Act, it is totally unreasonable to say that "Corporate America" opposed it. The INDUCE Act was lobbied for by the RIAA and MPAA and supported by Microsoft, among others. It is the ability of Corporate America to push bills into Congress with thick wads of bills in envelopes that resulted in the DMCA and the introduction of this Act.
I worry how the fight will go down when we are pitched against each other and the fight's fair on our end, but the cash pile is taller on their end?
i.e., now.
Also in today's world when corporate will can be swayed by a few choice words like "terrorism", "patriotism" lobbed at them by the Govt,
Businesses act in self-interest, so abstract, not-directly-profitable ideas like patriotism mean nothing. Meanwhile, terrorism means contracts from the U.S. goverment. These things are designed to scare the citizenry into line, not companies.
do we think they will stand with us when we fight the beaureacracy?
Okay, you are off the planet. Corporate America arm in arm with the Government has borne bureaucracy at its foulest. Corporate America does not fight democracy-choking bureaucracy. They fight for it. The more complex and indirect the Government's sovereignty it is, the less obvious and inescapable its accountability to its citizens. Bureaucracy affords corporate America far more ways to, for example, shove through acts like the DMCA or shoot down acts that would interfere with the pharmaceutical industry's profit margin, and importantly, keep the interests of the consumer and the people away from their government.
(This time, BSA (with its tech company members) opposed the INDUCE Act because it would hurt technology. Pure business pragmatism. Meanwhile, companies with an interest in maintaining control of digital content companies, lobbied for the Act. Again, pure business pragmatism.)
We never fought together; we never should. Our causes sometimes overlap. More often than not they don't. But this never changes: members of any "free market" should have no power in changing the rules of the market itself.
The Government should represent the people only, each person weighed equally, not proportionate to their access to capital. The government's power and authority is granted by every single person, from nowhere else, and it would do well to remember that if eventually we all grow sick enough of its corruption.
Does it NOT occur to anyone here that if an ideological group can purchase up a bunch of "news sources"/media outlets, they can control what is "most commonly reported"?
It occured to me, but I dismissed it. The fact is that no single ideological group controls what is commonly reported across the globe. Maybe in the U.S., but not across the world. There is incredible diversity in news coverage, in levels of bias, and in ideologies driving that bias. In Google, al-Jazeera and CNN offer competing takes on issues. Sans Google News and fall back on "sources you trust" and dissenting views are harder to find. That's because in a single country, or a single neighbourhood, a single ideological group certainly can control news. Hence if, as the author suggested, we depend on so-called "reliable sources," we can expect far more one-sidedness and single-outlook control over the news than we would encounter in Google News.
You suggest that a single ideological group has the power to ignore events and hence determine what constitutes news and what is "most commonly reported" and as such what appears on Google's headlines. It's a serious issue, but you seem to be whinging in the wrong direction. Google News is part of the solution, not part of the problem of conventional outlets' stranglehold. It submerges any given country's conventional regional sources in a great variety of alternative perspectives. (The Internet gets credit for all that variety, of course, but Google makes it actually available. Say what you like, but "convenience" is crucial to whether information can actually be digested or whether it just overwhelms and is ignored.) It's not perfect, but it's better.
Now if Google News made some attempt to integrate blogs, then we'd have a lot of variety...
While it may nail the top headlines, Google News can't do anything but that. There is no consideration of comprehensiveness of a story at one site over another.
What a silly point. Google News doesn't try to tell you what to read. It gathers the most commonly reported events into headlines and intends the user to sort through them. As a way of organizing news reports, it's unparalleled. Just like traditional Google Search, it doesn't make the choice of resource for you (that's what our discernment is for), it merely organizes your choices so they are accessible. Perhaps from the perspective of a traditional journalist, the idea of a broad range of news sources at the fingertips of the reader rather blind dependency on a few well-known outlets is worrying because it threatens the old way of doing things. Personally, I think more accessibility and more choice for the reader will only make online news more competitive and allow quality articles outside of the conventional vendors to show themselves more easily.
I was wondering how they'd search my SMS
In Soviet Russia, Google searches YOUr, um, SMS. D'oh!
Like my wife patenting the smell of my body odour and then suing me into the shower.
just MacOS X in a handy carrying case. It just works...People claim that Apple is a hardware company, I think I'd disagree. with MacOS X, they're a software company - except the software has a solid, physical presence in the real world
And that's what I'm talking about. It's a consumer device, totally functional (that is, no compatibility issues) as it is. If you just want to use its software, Apple is effective. My comment is that both Apple's skillful design and closed-up hardware ensure that that hardware geeks' understanding of it doesn't get them any more functionality, and that because of its consumer-focus Apple's popularity among the tech community is somewhat surprising. But I guess different parts of the tech community want different things from their PCs. If we look at it from the perspective of people who use their Macs purely for software, as you say, then it makes perfect sense. And if we look at it from the perspective of the digital content makers, it makes perfect sense. I think it's interesting to observe how among Slashdotters focus resides in different areas: technology itself and technology's use. Apple wins in the latter.
Those who want to upgrade or repair their Macs don't understand what liberal Apple is - a company that manufactures computers whose workings are impenetrable and hidden (i.e. information hiding), like parts themselves are in other PCs.
That's a good point, even though your other sentence is a little weird. It also makes me wonder what enthusiasts (like those here on Slashdot) see in Apple. Sure, OS X is a great OS, but Macs as hardware disempower the hobbyist compared to equivalent devices. Same goes for the iPod, whose HDD is deliberately inconvenient to move files from. While their quality is unquestionable, Apple's products perform functions not only without the user needing to understand how they work but where understanding how they work does not extend the user any extra power. That might be considered very good design, but to geeks, who get a kick out of the power of knowing how things work, you wouldn't think it would be so attractive.
America and all adopting nations seem to have approached in with very little testing or thought. The Green Party is right to exercise a degree of pragmatic caution; while the world's population is too much of a strain on conventional agricultural techniques, genetically modified food shouldn't be assumed to be the solution just because it might be. According to Choice magazine,
A recent New Scientist report about Argentina's agricultural and environmental crisis holds a worrying lesson for the rest of the world - particularly the developing world - about the impacts of genetically modified food crops.
It says, after eight years of large-scale cropping of Monsanto's ROUNDUP READY soy beans (soy beans genetically engineered to be resistant to Monsanto's herbicide ROUNDUP), damaging and possibly irreversible effects are becoming increasingly evident:
- Weeds resistant to glyphosate (the chemical name of ROUNDUP) have increased in abundance, and farmers have to use stronger herbicides to control them. Agronomists fear glyphosate resistance will transfer to other weed species, creating 'superweeds.'
- GM soy itself is becoming a weed, with stronger and more harmful herbicides needed to control stray plants.
- Farmers growing GM soy are applying more than twice as much herbicide as conventional soy farmers.
- Careless and excessive spraying of a mix of powerful herbicides has killed non-resistant crops on neighbouring farms, also killing and maiming farm animals and causing health problems for humans.
- Soil microbiology has been affected - essential bacteria normally present are declining, and in some places dead weeds lying on the ground don't even rot.
As I said, the issue is much more complex on practical terms than "GM is good and these ideological nutters are getting in the way."
Fundamentalist atheists are just as bad. Only, it's not socially acceptable to show bigotry towards them, like it is to Christians.
How can this be modded as flamebait? You know what atheist fundamentalism sounds like when you read posts like, "Anything that gets those Christian bigots pissed off is fine by me." Christianity has spent years as a scapegoat for racism and bigotry. It's gratifying to clearly see that people act exactly the same without it. There are few things nothing funnier and more tragic than reading someone write, "I just hate their intolerance!", completely unaware of the irony.
No, stupidity is not a good response to stupidity.
Australia is a very secular country, so Christian parties are notable. Also notable is that they are conservative. This is something that consistently baffles me. The New Testament's doctrine is patently pacifistic and egalitarian (as opposed to that of the Old Testament, which was superseded by this). Neither of these are traits of conservatism as a political ideology. Christ didn't kill anyone in response to their wrongdoing. Christ didn't brand people as irrevocably and unequivocally evil, either; he said anyone could come to God. If you try to create a political ideology out of Christianity, its ideas are radically anti-establishment. That Christianity became associated with maintaining a repressive status quo (often brutally) all the way through history after Constantine is a travesty. It proves that if you mix Christianity with centres of power (be they states or churches), religion tends to be thoroughly misrepresented (scapegoated, typically). Basically, leaders who base their leadership on religion have either set out to misuse religion as a means of repressive enforcement or have been corrupted by a serious conflict of interest along the way. Christianity should not be politicized.
Which brings us to the present day. You can disagree with my theology if you want, but flipping back to Genesis, wasn't the fundamental idea that God gave Adam and Eve freedom, freedom to do wrong and make errors, so that they would love Him for Him, not out of necessity? There were certainly consequences of wrongdoing, but the role of punisher was God's and God's only and fundamentally, humankind was given the freedom to choose (we chose poorly). Isn't it yet another misrepresentation of Christianity to associate it with repression? Not only is personal morality God's business, He has decided that it is wrong to stifle choice because it doesn't inspire true faith.
Of course, Christianity holds that pornography is wrong. But to politicize its message has only ever messed it up.