Even if we're in no immediate danger of running out, we're still living on a planet with finite resources. It makes sense to concern ourselves with what happens when those resources run out.
That's not exactly Apple making you pay through the nose for addons. Complaining about that is a bit like complaining Microsoft for making you pay for addons because Adobe Photoshop isn't included in Windows.
Yeah, it's kind of a funny claim to say that Apple is "deliberately degrading of the user experience". On the contrary, I think the reason so many people choose the iPhone or iPad is that they specifically prefer the user experience.
I understand the idea that some computer geek would pick up an iPad and say, "This is frustrating. I can't get to a bash prompt. It doesn't run X.org or Java so I can't do the things that I want to." However, for most people the experience is more like, "Oh, I can carry this very easily, read my email and browse the web without complications."
I can see a complaint that the iPad is degrading user capabilities, but not that it's degrading the user experience.
(a) It was unfocused. What were they trying to build, a replacement for email or a collaborative word processor? It wasn't really great at either. Take a lesson from Apple-- sometimes it's better for a product to do 3 things really really well than to do 10 things poorly.
(b) The limited invite system is not a good way to launch a communications product that only works for talking to other people with that product. Invites worked for Gmail because you could still email everyone. Waves only worked with other Wave users, and there weren't very many of them. Google should have polished the system more and then launched big. If they made a big splash, they might have captured enough interest to keep it going. Instead everyone tried it out for a week or two, said, "this doesn't seem to be useful," and then they never looked at it again.
First, even if we posit that Portal has no depth, it's a class for freshman. Sometimes it's better to start people off with something simple so things are a bit more clear. For example, in a linear game with a strict narrative, everyone will have similar/comparable experiences with the game and so there will be common experiences to talk about.
However, I don't agree that Portal has no depth to talk about. Valve is a solid developer and their games have a lot of refinement and details. You might point at something like the lack of dialog with the main character and say, "obviously this is because Valve isn't taking the story seriously enough to bother to write dialog." On the other hand, they've claimed that they never game Gordon Freeman any lines because they wanted the player to be able to imagine himself in the role. When a game character speaks, he speaks with a voice that is not the player's. He says things the player wouldn't really say. But in the game, Freeman's (or Chell's) only response is the player's response.
In some ways, art isn't just in the brushstrokes a painter makes, but in the brushstrokes the painter does not make. As a writer, what you don't say can be just as important as what you do say. One of the things that I found amazing about Portal was how much of a story it has given that there's almost no exposition. You have a strange-sounding computerized voice prodding you through an obstacle course. Meanwhile you notice an empty observation room with an overturned chair. The voice makes some promise of cake when you complete the course, but then you find a small compartment "behind the scenes" of the course with writing scrawled on the wall, "The cake is a lie." You realize the AI is psychotic. You realized the AI is probably intending to kill you at some point. You realize that the AI has already killed others who have attempted the obstacle course before you, and has also killed the people who created these tests and created the AI. From very little explanation, an entire backstory emerges:
Aperture Science is company pushing forward with new and dangerous technologies in order to compete with Black Mesa. An AI charged with running a testing facility begins to take its role too seriously, killing anyone who gets in the way of scientific progress. Something has happened to the world outside (the events depicted in Half Life?), so no one comes in to reclaim the facility. Eventually everyone is dead, except for a lone test subject (which may be a clone created by the AI for the purpose of testing).
Now if you play the game again, pay attention to what it is that you're explicitly told. Think about how much you know and how much you can guess at, relative to how little you're told. I think you'll have to admit that Portal's narrative is brilliantly constructed.
Portal, of course, was never created to be some deep statement.
We often put meaning into things even when we don't intend to. Why did they choose to make both Chell and GLaDOS female? Why did they make the antagonist a psychotic AI instead of the malevolent executive from Aperture Science? It's not simply "no reason". All these sorts of decisions were made by a confluence of conscious, subconscious, and unconscious factors.
Uhm, live kernel driver updates is something windows has done since Windows 2000. 99.9% of the time in Windows XP can have its graphics drivers update on the fly and work fine if you just ignore the 'you must reboot' button.
Yeah, I think Windows 7 included some kind of support that allowed for the possibility of hot-swappable video cards.... or something like that...? I don't remember. But that's probably what's confusing the GP.
I'll be honest, I often see people doing just what I referenced - lumping together two separate people as "THE REPUBLICANS", and turning those two people into a caricature of "what conservatives think."
Yeah, it happens. But the examples I gave in my earlier post was not an issue of taking small quotes out of context. There is a lot of self-contradiction going on in the Republican party at the moment.
And to be fair, there's a lot of the same thing coming from Democrats, too.
Sure. It's less so now, though, than what the Republicans are currently doing. Part of the problem IMO is that Obama is actually being fairly reasonable, often using Republican suggestions in his policies. As a result, Republicans must become increasingly irrational in order to keep disagreeing with Obama.
Like if Obama came out for deregulation and tax cuts, Republicans would be jumping all over themselves to argue that tax cuts and deregulation are irresponsible, and probably a nefarious communist plot.
You're lumping together a bunch of individuals saying these things, and saying "the Republican party line" is contradictory - and in many cases, it's not the same person espousing the contradictory views. Person A says "They're all corrupt;" Person B says "They're naive and have no idea how the world works" - they both identify as Republicans... is this contradictory? or simply evidence of the obvious fact that different people have different interpretations of the world?
Nope, I've seen a lot of these contradictory statements come out of the same person's mouth in a single interview. Now you can say that person was just stupid, and it's not what most people think. You can claim that people like Michael Steele and John Boehner don't actually represent the Republican party. But these things are not simply disagreements between different people in the party.
You and I both know that's not what he *means*, but when taken at face value and out of context
I'm not talking about taking things out of context.
We're constantly looking for the "AHA! GOTCHA!" moment that will allow us to "win," for some definition of "win." We don't even let the other guy articulate his point before we're jumping down his throat telling him how heartless/unpatriotic/barbaric/unfeeling/whatever he is. Conversation and civil debate is -- apparently -- a lost art these days, and its passing is not a good thing for the state of our union.
I agree with you. I typically try to be polite. I think if you read my comments, it's not uncommon for me to seem to jump sides. It's because I tend to argue in favor of whichever side I feel is being underrepresented.
Next time you're confronted with a single person espousing apparently contradictory positions... make a genuine attempt to understand what they're *really* trying to say...
Again, I agree. I think that very often, if you think people are merely "stupid and wrong", it's because you don't understand why they're arguing. You have to ask, what's at stake here? What is this person protecting? Often both sides have valid concerns, even if they are confused and obscured by irrational rhetoric.
But if you're replying to me in order to suggest that I'm not doing those things, I think you're off-base. I'm not picking apart some particular instance where a single person misspoke, but rather I'm pointing out some of the self-contradictions in the theories of modern "conservative" thought.
Well to be fair, there is a lot of double-think in the Republican party right now. spun may have phrased it badly, but Democrats are simultaneously painted as bumbling fools who misunderstand everything and can't accomplish anything, and also diabolical geniuses who are perfectly orchestrating a plan to destroy the country by "turning it communist". They're painted as both thoroughly corrupt and malicious and at the same time, overly-idealistic naive children.
And the wealthy are depicted as innocent and good-natured people who are morally leading this country towards greatness. We're lead to believe that "profit" is a good indicator of useful accomplishments, and wealth is a good measure of virtue. We're told that poor people are only poor because they're lazy and vicious and worthless. Meanwhile we're told that the government cannot do anything right, since the government is being controlled by the wealthy and the wealthy people are all evil. Government cannot be trusted because so much money is involved, and money always corrupts. Meanwhile, we can't get campaign finance reform because "money is speech" and there's nothing wrong with people giving massive amounts of money to those campaigns. Supposedly limiting contributions would be discriminating against wealthy people, and we all know that wealthy people are terrific and virtuous.
Oh, and you can't blame rich people for seeking out loopholes in taxes and regulations, because whatever is not illegal is permitted. You can't have moral objection to someone doing something which is within the law, after all. But then we also can't close those loopholes, because that would be unfair to rich people. We can't have social welfare systems or try to create regulations to ensure fair business practices, since the government is only there to protect national security and not legislate morality. But then, we should make sure drugs and sodomy and being Muslim illegal, because those things are immoral. Especially being Muslim, because those Muslims try to govern their countries with religious laws, which is terrible. They should be more like us, who are trying to govern our country with religious laws.
Oh, and we need to be fiscally responsible and cut the deficit. Oh, and we're going to cut taxes. And we're not really going to cut spending-- in fact we're going to spend more. We'll give government handouts and subsidies and tax cuts to large companies in various industries, but that's because we like the free market, and we're sure that the free market will sort everything out without government aid or intervention. It's just that if we want the free-market players to do well, we should make sure they're well funded and have favorable legislation. But we're financially responsible free-marketers in favor of deficit reduction.
Unlike Slashdot where everyone agrees 100% with everyone else
You do notice that you're arguing with someone here, which means there are at least two people disagreeing, right? Also, you're both being modded up, which means that some people agree with you and some people agree with him.
It often seems to me that when someone complains here about Slashdot groupthink, it's because they say dumb things and have no ability to process intelligent disagreement.
People complain all the time that Amtrak doesn't make a profit, but... nobody seems to notice or care that our roads don't either.
Yeah, I hardly know what to say when people complain that public transportation isn't profitable. The police don't make a profit. Our courts aren't profitable. Fire departments, the military, roads and bridges-- none of these things bring in more money than they expend.
At least not directly. All of these things work indirectly to create circumstances where other things can create profit. Without the police and court systems, we would live in a chaotic and inefficient system where economic growth would be difficult. But either way, why is "profit" the only important measure? "Profit" is essentially a human invention designed to encourage positive outcomes. It's a means, not an end. If the same ends can be reached through other means, then profit is irrelevant.
You could argue that increasing bicycle usage was the opposite effect-- of decreasing governmental control and increasing freedom. Right now we're reliant on a massive government-controlled system of roads which we travel on via government-subsidized vehicles. Automobiles are big and regulated and subsidized and result in a sort of "central planning". Bicycles on the other hand-- anyone can build a bicycle. A bicycle doesn't need a road, and bike paths are much easier to build/move.
I suspect this comes more from the belief that if something is healthy and environmentally friendly and doesn't subsidize big businesses, then it must be some kind of nefarious socialist hippie plot.
Well it's not that easy, is it? We are built for blame. When I learn that you've done some stupid irresponsible shit, a little switch in my brain flips and I think, "This guy isn't completely trustworthy." Sure, there's a sort of statute of limitations, but it's fuzzy at the very least-- if someone did something stupid 60 years ago, you'd probably let it go, but if he did something stupid yesterday, you blame him. Now where's that limit? Is it 1 year? 2 years? 10 years?
And do we have a limit on how bad a thing it is? Like if you get really drunk and throw up on yourself, that should obviously be forgiven. But what if you were a Nazi running the gas chambers? Ok, so something in between: what if you drove drunk and killed a child? Or what if you weren't drunk but merely careless? Or what if it wasn't a child, but a dog?
There are just so many shades of gray, and honestly our primitive brains and relationship-driven societies weren't designed to handle omniscience. It probably shouldn't matter to your boss that you're cheating on your wife, but it probably will matter. Your boss might suddenly see you as an admirable stud or as an untrustworthy bastard-- but your boss will probably have an opinion, and that opinion will impact your work life.
Thank god. Die NAT die! Can't happen soon enough. Some people will still want stateful "one way" firewalls. No problemo.
I can live with NAT (though I wouldn't mind getting rid of it) but I'm personally more excited about the prospect of making it easier/cheaper to get a static IP for home use. Of course, part of the reason static IPs are hard to come by is just ISPs trying to nickel and dime us all to death, so IPv6 may not actually help.
Many network experts argue we're nearing network armageddon, but they've been saying that for years.
That's a retarded argument against IPv6 adoption. If the experts have all been warning about an immanent problem for a several years, it's possible that all the experts are wrong. Or it might be that we're several years closer to that "network armageddon", making quick adoption even more important.
I think it's funny that you insist you are a Linux user and tote the operability of the iPod as the major driving force. I'm curious as to what distro you used that you had no problems syncing your media collection with iTunes.
Well it's pretty common for me to use OSX or Windows on the desktop (depending on what I'm doing and what my options are) and Linux on the server, but I have gotten an iPod to sync on Ubuntu (using rhythmbox, I think?).
I'm sorry, but when I shop for a PHONE, it better be able to function, 100% reliably as a PHONE first.
For what it's worth, my old iPhone (original model) was the most reliable and longest-lasting cell phone I've ever used. I used it for almost 4 years until I dropped it and it finally broke. AT&T kind of sucks, but aside from that, no problems.
Moreover, Apple has always marketed itself as a company that provides technology "for the rest of us" or for people who lack the technical aptitude with no desire to ever cultivate those skills.
I think you're confusing, "I don't know how to screw around with my computer," with "I don't want to have to screw around with my computer." I know a lot of IT people who use Apple products. I'm one of them, and part of the reason is that I spend all day fixing computer crap and I don't want to fix them any more than I have to. Making me jump through extra hoops to get my computer to do simple things is not something I want to bother with-- not when I have the option of a computer that does those simple things without making me jump through hoops.
I can only really speak about the Incredible, since I haven't used other Android phones for a sustained amount of time. So here's the deal:
The Incredible wasn't really terrible. If you had given me the phone before I had used an iPhone, I would have probably thought it was an awesome phone. I didn't really have any trouble syncing with my Gmail contacts and calendars, and the Gmail email client on the phone is pretty good. The Exchange support was fine. The camera was pretty good, but I think the pictures were a little blue-ish. The Flash wasn't as helpful as you'd hope.
The whole thing wasn't as open as you're made to believe. I could not install a plan Android installation or get WiFi tethering working. The Android market isn't great, but then there are only a handful of iPhone apps that I really like. I think the only application that I got from the Android market and used was the Google Voice app, which I wish were available for the iPhone.
Like I said, I had some problems with crashes and battery life, which I'm sure isn't a uniform issue among Android phones. The UI was generally a bit inconsistent. Also, lots of the UI elements were kind of oversized, taking up too much screen real-estate without providing value. Text selection was terrible. Voice recognition was surprisingly good.
There were a large number of fairly subtle things that annoyed me, too many to list, but I'll give you some examples so you can judge whether I'm being crazy:
My company requires that a password be used through ActiveSync, and the Incredible required greater complexity to the password than the Exchange server does. With my iPhone, I can tell it to require the password immediately whenever I lock it, or I can set it to have a delay (5 minutes, 15 minutes, etc). On the Incredible, I couldn't set a delay, which meant that if I locked the phone to prevent accidental input and then immediately tried to access it again, I had to enter the password again. I ran up against this constantly.
I found the notifications on the Incredible annoying, though I can't explain exactly why. Part of the problem is that they popped up too often. There are quirky things like, when a calendar reminder pops up, you can't just dismiss the reminder. If you dismiss the reminder, it's like hitting snooze. Instead you have to go into the actual calendar event and dismiss the whole event. The distinction isn't immediately obvious.
In addition to getting too many seemingly random notifications, the sounds themselves were just annoying. Some of this might be a subconscious thing on my part, i.e. my annoyance with the notifications popping up too often makes me associate that annoyance with the sounds themselves. However, my experience with the iPhone sounds is that they seem somehow "smoother". They're immediately identifiable and hard to miss, yet easy to ignore if you want to. The Incredible sounds were harsher and became more and more grating over a couple months. Since my phone is a work phone and gets work email, it's constantly beeping at me and the kind of sounds it makes matters to me.
Radio reception and call quality was better than the iPhone, but I don't know how much that should be attributed to the phone rather than to the network.
So I don't know if that's helpful or if I'll just sound like an overly-picky maniac (or an Apple fanatic). But I swear I really wanted to like Android, and I really did like it for... maybe a week or two?... before the little things just started to annoy the piss out of me.
I've regularly gotten 2-3 days out of my iPhone without recharging. With my Incredible, with the same usage patterns, if I missed charging it at night it would be dead by 3pm the following day.
Attribute that to whatever you like, but that was my experience.
(a) It's not "Apple's proprietary format". It's AAC. Developed by MPEG to replace MP3. The only common format that most other players support is WMA, which I would have absolutely no interest in using.
(b) You don't necessarily have to use iTunes to make your iPod functional. There are other apps available, but most people don't bother using them because iTunes works pretty well.
You may be right about them making good products, but that does not make his statement untrue about them being fashion products. That is a false dichotomy.
But what was being discussed was not simply whether they are or could be used as a fashion accessory, but whether their "being fashionable" was the driving force behind Apple's success.
There are a large number of Apple users who treat it as a fashion accessory
And there are other subcultures where having Apple products is "uncool", like you "drank the kool-aid" and bought an inferior product. So what?
Slashdot Mirror
Even if we're in no immediate danger of running out, we're still living on a planet with finite resources. It makes sense to concern ourselves with what happens when those resources run out.
That's not exactly Apple making you pay through the nose for addons. Complaining about that is a bit like complaining Microsoft for making you pay for addons because Adobe Photoshop isn't included in Windows.
Actually it's more like get 3 good things out of the box and pay through the nose for the other 7 addons.
I'm not sure to what you're referring.
Yeah, it's kind of a funny claim to say that Apple is "deliberately degrading of the user experience". On the contrary, I think the reason so many people choose the iPhone or iPad is that they specifically prefer the user experience.
I understand the idea that some computer geek would pick up an iPad and say, "This is frustrating. I can't get to a bash prompt. It doesn't run X.org or Java so I can't do the things that I want to." However, for most people the experience is more like, "Oh, I can carry this very easily, read my email and browse the web without complications."
I can see a complaint that the iPad is degrading user capabilities, but not that it's degrading the user experience.
I think the main problems were:
(a) It was unfocused. What were they trying to build, a replacement for email or a collaborative word processor? It wasn't really great at either. Take a lesson from Apple-- sometimes it's better for a product to do 3 things really really well than to do 10 things poorly.
(b) The limited invite system is not a good way to launch a communications product that only works for talking to other people with that product. Invites worked for Gmail because you could still email everyone. Waves only worked with other Wave users, and there weren't very many of them. Google should have polished the system more and then launched big. If they made a big splash, they might have captured enough interest to keep it going. Instead everyone tried it out for a week or two, said, "this doesn't seem to be useful," and then they never looked at it again.
First, even if we posit that Portal has no depth, it's a class for freshman. Sometimes it's better to start people off with something simple so things are a bit more clear. For example, in a linear game with a strict narrative, everyone will have similar/comparable experiences with the game and so there will be common experiences to talk about.
However, I don't agree that Portal has no depth to talk about. Valve is a solid developer and their games have a lot of refinement and details. You might point at something like the lack of dialog with the main character and say, "obviously this is because Valve isn't taking the story seriously enough to bother to write dialog." On the other hand, they've claimed that they never game Gordon Freeman any lines because they wanted the player to be able to imagine himself in the role. When a game character speaks, he speaks with a voice that is not the player's. He says things the player wouldn't really say. But in the game, Freeman's (or Chell's) only response is the player's response.
In some ways, art isn't just in the brushstrokes a painter makes, but in the brushstrokes the painter does not make. As a writer, what you don't say can be just as important as what you do say. One of the things that I found amazing about Portal was how much of a story it has given that there's almost no exposition. You have a strange-sounding computerized voice prodding you through an obstacle course. Meanwhile you notice an empty observation room with an overturned chair. The voice makes some promise of cake when you complete the course, but then you find a small compartment "behind the scenes" of the course with writing scrawled on the wall, "The cake is a lie." You realize the AI is psychotic. You realized the AI is probably intending to kill you at some point. You realize that the AI has already killed others who have attempted the obstacle course before you, and has also killed the people who created these tests and created the AI. From very little explanation, an entire backstory emerges:
Aperture Science is company pushing forward with new and dangerous technologies in order to compete with Black Mesa. An AI charged with running a testing facility begins to take its role too seriously, killing anyone who gets in the way of scientific progress. Something has happened to the world outside (the events depicted in Half Life?), so no one comes in to reclaim the facility. Eventually everyone is dead, except for a lone test subject (which may be a clone created by the AI for the purpose of testing).
Now if you play the game again, pay attention to what it is that you're explicitly told. Think about how much you know and how much you can guess at, relative to how little you're told. I think you'll have to admit that Portal's narrative is brilliantly constructed.
Portal, of course, was never created to be some deep statement.
We often put meaning into things even when we don't intend to. Why did they choose to make both Chell and GLaDOS female? Why did they make the antagonist a psychotic AI instead of the malevolent executive from Aperture Science? It's not simply "no reason". All these sorts of decisions were made by a confluence of conscious, subconscious, and unconscious factors.
Uhm, live kernel driver updates is something windows has done since Windows 2000. 99.9% of the time in Windows XP can have its graphics drivers update on the fly and work fine if you just ignore the 'you must reboot' button.
Yeah, I think Windows 7 included some kind of support that allowed for the possibility of hot-swappable video cards.... or something like that...? I don't remember. But that's probably what's confusing the GP.
I used to play Portal under WINE. I don't know if that's a good enough solution for you.
I'll be honest, I often see people doing just what I referenced - lumping together two separate people as "THE REPUBLICANS", and turning those two people into a caricature of "what conservatives think."
Yeah, it happens. But the examples I gave in my earlier post was not an issue of taking small quotes out of context. There is a lot of self-contradiction going on in the Republican party at the moment.
And to be fair, there's a lot of the same thing coming from Democrats, too.
Sure. It's less so now, though, than what the Republicans are currently doing. Part of the problem IMO is that Obama is actually being fairly reasonable, often using Republican suggestions in his policies. As a result, Republicans must become increasingly irrational in order to keep disagreeing with Obama.
Like if Obama came out for deregulation and tax cuts, Republicans would be jumping all over themselves to argue that tax cuts and deregulation are irresponsible, and probably a nefarious communist plot.
You're lumping together a bunch of individuals saying these things, and saying "the Republican party line" is contradictory - and in many cases, it's not the same person espousing the contradictory views. Person A says "They're all corrupt;" Person B says "They're naive and have no idea how the world works" - they both identify as Republicans... is this contradictory? or simply evidence of the obvious fact that different people have different interpretations of the world?
Nope, I've seen a lot of these contradictory statements come out of the same person's mouth in a single interview. Now you can say that person was just stupid, and it's not what most people think. You can claim that people like Michael Steele and John Boehner don't actually represent the Republican party. But these things are not simply disagreements between different people in the party.
You and I both know that's not what he *means*, but when taken at face value and out of context
I'm not talking about taking things out of context.
We're constantly looking for the "AHA! GOTCHA!" moment that will allow us to "win," for some definition of "win." We don't even let the other guy articulate his point before we're jumping down his throat telling him how heartless/unpatriotic/barbaric/unfeeling/whatever he is. Conversation and civil debate is -- apparently -- a lost art these days, and its passing is not a good thing for the state of our union.
I agree with you. I typically try to be polite. I think if you read my comments, it's not uncommon for me to seem to jump sides. It's because I tend to argue in favor of whichever side I feel is being underrepresented.
Next time you're confronted with a single person espousing apparently contradictory positions... make a genuine attempt to understand what they're *really* trying to say...
Again, I agree. I think that very often, if you think people are merely "stupid and wrong", it's because you don't understand why they're arguing. You have to ask, what's at stake here? What is this person protecting? Often both sides have valid concerns, even if they are confused and obscured by irrational rhetoric.
But if you're replying to me in order to suggest that I'm not doing those things, I think you're off-base. I'm not picking apart some particular instance where a single person misspoke, but rather I'm pointing out some of the self-contradictions in the theories of modern "conservative" thought.
Well to be fair, there is a lot of double-think in the Republican party right now. spun may have phrased it badly, but Democrats are simultaneously painted as bumbling fools who misunderstand everything and can't accomplish anything, and also diabolical geniuses who are perfectly orchestrating a plan to destroy the country by "turning it communist". They're painted as both thoroughly corrupt and malicious and at the same time, overly-idealistic naive children.
And the wealthy are depicted as innocent and good-natured people who are morally leading this country towards greatness. We're lead to believe that "profit" is a good indicator of useful accomplishments, and wealth is a good measure of virtue. We're told that poor people are only poor because they're lazy and vicious and worthless. Meanwhile we're told that the government cannot do anything right, since the government is being controlled by the wealthy and the wealthy people are all evil. Government cannot be trusted because so much money is involved, and money always corrupts. Meanwhile, we can't get campaign finance reform because "money is speech" and there's nothing wrong with people giving massive amounts of money to those campaigns. Supposedly limiting contributions would be discriminating against wealthy people, and we all know that wealthy people are terrific and virtuous.
Oh, and you can't blame rich people for seeking out loopholes in taxes and regulations, because whatever is not illegal is permitted. You can't have moral objection to someone doing something which is within the law, after all. But then we also can't close those loopholes, because that would be unfair to rich people. We can't have social welfare systems or try to create regulations to ensure fair business practices, since the government is only there to protect national security and not legislate morality. But then, we should make sure drugs and sodomy and being Muslim illegal, because those things are immoral. Especially being Muslim, because those Muslims try to govern their countries with religious laws, which is terrible. They should be more like us, who are trying to govern our country with religious laws.
Oh, and we need to be fiscally responsible and cut the deficit. Oh, and we're going to cut taxes. And we're not really going to cut spending-- in fact we're going to spend more. We'll give government handouts and subsidies and tax cuts to large companies in various industries, but that's because we like the free market, and we're sure that the free market will sort everything out without government aid or intervention. It's just that if we want the free-market players to do well, we should make sure they're well funded and have favorable legislation. But we're financially responsible free-marketers in favor of deficit reduction.
Apologies. That was too hostile. I should have phrased that better.
Unlike Slashdot where everyone agrees 100% with everyone else
You do notice that you're arguing with someone here, which means there are at least two people disagreeing, right? Also, you're both being modded up, which means that some people agree with you and some people agree with him.
It often seems to me that when someone complains here about Slashdot groupthink, it's because they say dumb things and have no ability to process intelligent disagreement.
People complain all the time that Amtrak doesn't make a profit, but... nobody seems to notice or care that our roads don't either.
Yeah, I hardly know what to say when people complain that public transportation isn't profitable. The police don't make a profit. Our courts aren't profitable. Fire departments, the military, roads and bridges-- none of these things bring in more money than they expend.
At least not directly. All of these things work indirectly to create circumstances where other things can create profit. Without the police and court systems, we would live in a chaotic and inefficient system where economic growth would be difficult. But either way, why is "profit" the only important measure? "Profit" is essentially a human invention designed to encourage positive outcomes. It's a means, not an end. If the same ends can be reached through other means, then profit is irrelevant.
Not only that, but I believe Intel owns Grisoft, which means they already own an antivirus package. I don't get what they're doing here.
You could argue that increasing bicycle usage was the opposite effect-- of decreasing governmental control and increasing freedom. Right now we're reliant on a massive government-controlled system of roads which we travel on via government-subsidized vehicles. Automobiles are big and regulated and subsidized and result in a sort of "central planning". Bicycles on the other hand-- anyone can build a bicycle. A bicycle doesn't need a road, and bike paths are much easier to build/move.
I suspect this comes more from the belief that if something is healthy and environmentally friendly and doesn't subsidize big businesses, then it must be some kind of nefarious socialist hippie plot.
Well it's not that easy, is it? We are built for blame. When I learn that you've done some stupid irresponsible shit, a little switch in my brain flips and I think, "This guy isn't completely trustworthy." Sure, there's a sort of statute of limitations, but it's fuzzy at the very least-- if someone did something stupid 60 years ago, you'd probably let it go, but if he did something stupid yesterday, you blame him. Now where's that limit? Is it 1 year? 2 years? 10 years?
And do we have a limit on how bad a thing it is? Like if you get really drunk and throw up on yourself, that should obviously be forgiven. But what if you were a Nazi running the gas chambers? Ok, so something in between: what if you drove drunk and killed a child? Or what if you weren't drunk but merely careless? Or what if it wasn't a child, but a dog?
There are just so many shades of gray, and honestly our primitive brains and relationship-driven societies weren't designed to handle omniscience. It probably shouldn't matter to your boss that you're cheating on your wife, but it probably will matter. Your boss might suddenly see you as an admirable stud or as an untrustworthy bastard-- but your boss will probably have an opinion, and that opinion will impact your work life.
Thank god. Die NAT die! Can't happen soon enough. Some people will still want stateful "one way" firewalls. No problemo.
I can live with NAT (though I wouldn't mind getting rid of it) but I'm personally more excited about the prospect of making it easier/cheaper to get a static IP for home use. Of course, part of the reason static IPs are hard to come by is just ISPs trying to nickel and dime us all to death, so IPv6 may not actually help.
Many network experts argue we're nearing network armageddon, but they've been saying that for years.
That's a retarded argument against IPv6 adoption. If the experts have all been warning about an immanent problem for a several years, it's possible that all the experts are wrong. Or it might be that we're several years closer to that "network armageddon", making quick adoption even more important.
I think it's funny that you insist you are a Linux user and tote the operability of the iPod as the major driving force. I'm curious as to what distro you used that you had no problems syncing your media collection with iTunes.
Well it's pretty common for me to use OSX or Windows on the desktop (depending on what I'm doing and what my options are) and Linux on the server, but I have gotten an iPod to sync on Ubuntu (using rhythmbox, I think?).
I'm sorry, but when I shop for a PHONE, it better be able to function, 100% reliably as a PHONE first.
For what it's worth, my old iPhone (original model) was the most reliable and longest-lasting cell phone I've ever used. I used it for almost 4 years until I dropped it and it finally broke. AT&T kind of sucks, but aside from that, no problems.
Moreover, Apple has always marketed itself as a company that provides technology "for the rest of us" or for people who lack the technical aptitude with no desire to ever cultivate those skills.
I think you're confusing, "I don't know how to screw around with my computer," with "I don't want to have to screw around with my computer." I know a lot of IT people who use Apple products. I'm one of them, and part of the reason is that I spend all day fixing computer crap and I don't want to fix them any more than I have to. Making me jump through extra hoops to get my computer to do simple things is not something I want to bother with-- not when I have the option of a computer that does those simple things without making me jump through hoops.
I can only really speak about the Incredible, since I haven't used other Android phones for a sustained amount of time. So here's the deal:
The Incredible wasn't really terrible. If you had given me the phone before I had used an iPhone, I would have probably thought it was an awesome phone. I didn't really have any trouble syncing with my Gmail contacts and calendars, and the Gmail email client on the phone is pretty good. The Exchange support was fine. The camera was pretty good, but I think the pictures were a little blue-ish. The Flash wasn't as helpful as you'd hope.
The whole thing wasn't as open as you're made to believe. I could not install a plan Android installation or get WiFi tethering working. The Android market isn't great, but then there are only a handful of iPhone apps that I really like. I think the only application that I got from the Android market and used was the Google Voice app, which I wish were available for the iPhone.
Like I said, I had some problems with crashes and battery life, which I'm sure isn't a uniform issue among Android phones. The UI was generally a bit inconsistent. Also, lots of the UI elements were kind of oversized, taking up too much screen real-estate without providing value. Text selection was terrible. Voice recognition was surprisingly good.
There were a large number of fairly subtle things that annoyed me, too many to list, but I'll give you some examples so you can judge whether I'm being crazy:
Radio reception and call quality was better than the iPhone, but I don't know how much that should be attributed to the phone rather than to the network.
So I don't know if that's helpful or if I'll just sound like an overly-picky maniac (or an Apple fanatic). But I swear I really wanted to like Android, and I really did like it for... maybe a week or two?... before the little things just started to annoy the piss out of me.
I've regularly gotten 2-3 days out of my iPhone without recharging. With my Incredible, with the same usage patterns, if I missed charging it at night it would be dead by 3pm the following day.
Attribute that to whatever you like, but that was my experience.
(a) It's not "Apple's proprietary format". It's AAC. Developed by MPEG to replace MP3. The only common format that most other players support is WMA, which I would have absolutely no interest in using.
(b) You don't necessarily have to use iTunes to make your iPod functional. There are other apps available, but most people don't bother using them because iTunes works pretty well.
You may be right about them making good products, but that does not make his statement untrue about them being fashion products. That is a false dichotomy.
But what was being discussed was not simply whether they are or could be used as a fashion accessory, but whether their "being fashionable" was the driving force behind Apple's success.
There are a large number of Apple users who treat it as a fashion accessory
And there are other subcultures where having Apple products is "uncool", like you "drank the kool-aid" and bought an inferior product. So what?