Headline should read something like, "NYTimes.com uses web developers who are good designers and at least semi-competent coders in order to develop their site".
Really, since when has it been considered acceptable for professional web developers to *not* write HTML and CSS by hand? If I was paying someone and then caught them using a WYSIWYG editor, I'd be pretty unhappy.
Yeah, I don't know what kind of a "brick wall" Debian is supposed to hit. It's released under the GPL. There are people interested in working on it. Therefore, it will continue to be developed. QED.
Because they're weird words. Both of them can be either a noun or a verb, and in both cases they have very different meaning depending on whether they're nouns or verbs. To compound the trouble, the verb "to affect" means "to have an effect on", while the verb "to effect" means "to cause". But as nouns, "cause" and "effect" are antonyms.
So yes, it's true, teh Anglish be a hard language too lern.
I don't think the problem is just that Apple's "Software Update" doesn't work. More likely the problem is that you can't update your OS without causing it to stop functioning. Psystar hacked the OS to run on generic hardware. If you install an update that overwrites part of that hack, your machine doesn't work anymore.
Sure it does. What I'm getting at is that, obviously, math isn't simply "made up", because if it were I could make any proof of any theorem, following no rules. But if I do that, I get something we'd all agree was nonsense, and it wouldn't prove anything. Like I can't just say:
1+1=2, 2*2=7, and chickens>bears, therefore E=/=mc^2. QED
That's not a proof. The fact that it's not a proof demonstrates that mathematical proofs do need to be constructed in accordance with *something* that is beyond the reach of human will. No matter how much I want a math proof to be true, no matter how much I convince myself that it's true, it still isn't. That's all I mean when I say it depends on the universe in some way.
In the same way, the "invention" of the wheel couldn't have worked if the inventor has chosen to use a square wheel. The invention of gunpowder wouldn't have worked out just as well if the inventor had tried to ignite sand and chalk. There is a reality beyond the influence of our beliefs and will that must be adhered to in order to understand the truth or build things that work.
I don't believe they would be on this particular issue, i.e. whether math is "made up" or somehow "inherent" (assuming that's the question that people are really trying to get to). I think both would probably agree that mathematical principles are not "made up".
Anyhow, I don't really want to get into a generalized philosophic argument, but you might be reading Plato a bit too literally. Plato may have actually believed in reincarnation (who really knows what Plato actually thought?), but it certainly wasn't the only thing at stake in those dialogs. In large part, he was demonstrating an inherent paradox in learning, that you would not be able to learn things if you didn't already have a sort of "knowledge" already, before you began learning, that allowed you to recognize and affirm true things (or at least dismiss false things). You can reconcile that idea with Kant to some degree, if you think of that "knowledge" as being "intuition". While Plato might claim that this "knowledge" must be correct in order for us to know anything, Kant might claim that this "intuition" must be accepted in order for us to think. For both of them, the sort of "knowledge" necessary would include math to some degree. In that sense (if only in that sense), Plato and Kant are not that far apart.
Sorry if I'm speaking too loosely for you. I'm probably not using terminology in the most proper way, but it's been several years. But I'm fairly confident that my recollection of the ideas isn't far off.
No, I think the correct answer is, "What are you asking?"
The problem with questions like this is that it isn't clear what's in the mind of the person asking the question. What do you mean by "invented" and what do you mean by "discovered"? What difference do you see between the two?
For example, some people will think that "invented" means "made up". So in that person's mind, if math is "invented", then it's based only on human thought, and not on real principles of the universe itself. Of course, this line of thought makes me want to ask what it would mean to be a "real principle", and what is the "universe itself" when detached from human conception, but I'll leave that aside.
The problem I see immediately with this concept of "invented" is that real inventions don't exist independently of the universe. For example, was the wheel "invented", or did someone discover that rolling a circularly shaped object requires less energy than dragging an equally massive object? Was gunpowder "invented", or did someone discover than mixing certain chemicals together and setting fire to them caused an explosion? Was the telephone "invented", or did someone discover that you could convert sounds into electrical signals and back again by using magnets?
All inventions are a discovery of sorts, which makes this whole question a bit nonsensical.
Integers were discovered. Beyond that, it's human invention.
I can make a strong case that negative integers are invented. Because you can't have -3 apples. We invented the negative numbers to indicate a loss of positive numbers. We also invented fractions to stand in for ratios.
Unlike Plato's idea, which is that mathematics involves universal truths we discover, Kant's "Copernican turn" puts the subject as the one who projects mathematics onto everything it experiences.
Does Kant actually discuss the source of intuition? I don't remember him doing so in anything I've read. In that case, then Kant is not saying that we project math onto anything. What he's really pointing out there is that we don't learn about space (and therefore arguably geometry, and therefore arguably math) through empirical means, but rather through intuition. Whether those things exist "in themselves" depends on whether our intuition is actually accessing some source of real knowledge/understanding/whateveryouwanttocallit. I don't remember him saying asserting that this intuition is not coming from some sort of "world as it is in itself". Instead it seems to me that he indicates that we should trust intuition because we must trust it-- we have no other choice.
Sorry to be pedantic, but it seems worth noting that Plato and Kant don't really differ that much on this subject. Both of them would say that mathematics are not created by a person, but derived from principles that we know a priori. Of course they might use different words.
Yeah... I'm not sure what to make of that quote. It's especially strange considering how quickly Linux has been improving in recent years, in contrast to how much Windows has *not* been improving during that same time. I'd be very curious to know just what Gates thinks is going on.
I've never worked with Microsoft, but I've tried to get support from them. From my point of view, it seems like it wouldn't cost much money to support these servers with the same level of support as they do with their other products. That is to say, how expensive can it be to keep a couple people on staff in an Indian help center, and have them not answer your questions and not help you with anything?
Right. Working pretty well sucks. Making money is usually very difficult, taking a lot of work and personal sacrifice. Most of us have to work all day sitting in a small cubical under fluorescent lights, being abused by morons. If you're lucky enough to make a living by sitting in a nice club in front of cheering fans, consider yourself lucky.
Just wait until MS decides to turn off the server farm that enables XP installations; that'll put the music in perspective.
At least Windows XP has the corporate version that allows you to install it without activation. Worse yet is Vista, where even the corporate version requires activation. Also, at the current rate of Vista adoption, they might stop supporting Vista before they stop supporting XP.
Most of these online stores, even the stores with DRM, tell you you're "buying" the album or track. You know, like before you actually pay money, you click on some sort of button that often says something like "buy this album". It doesn't say "rent" or "license".
Now there may well be something buried in the license agreement when you sign up for the store that says, "you aren't actually buying anything, you're just licensing the right listen them, and we can revoke that right whenever we want." Still, the way the stores are representing the transaction as "buying" the album, and that's the way consumers understand the transaction.
If there isn't any legal consequence for the owners of online "stores" for this sort of misrepresentation, there should be.
How is this any different than, say, Ford discontinuing its Aerostar minivan line?
Did Ford engineer the Aerostar specifically so that, if they ever discontinued the line, you'd immediately be unable to change the oil or refill the gas tank?
It's one thing if a product happens to have necessary limits. It's another thing for the product to be purposefully and artificially crippled so that it will not function as expected.
Yes, this is a perfect example against those who would say, "DRM isn't a problem unless you're a pirate." I'm sure there were people who paid good money to buy audio tracks. Not rent, *buy*.
I know, I know, make whatever legalistic argument you want, but when people paid there money, they had an expectation that they were *buying* the music. Therefore, deactivating these servers is effectively stealing those people's property, much more so than "pirates" do. When I "pirate" downloads a music track, they haven't deprived the rightful owner of the use of that music. However, when Microsoft disables their servers, the rightful owners are deprived of their ability to listen to that music.
Of course I'd like to see DRM disappear. Short of that, companies should at least be required to offer the means to crack their DRM should they ever deactivate their servers.
A side question: can Microsoft really not afford to just keep these servers running? I guess they're having some problems with Vista being a flop and all, but how expensive can it be to maintain these servers? On the other hand, I don't particularly blame Microsoft for this situation. It's an inherent problem with DRM, and it was bound to happen to someone sooner or later.
Yeah, sorry, but I think you're missing my point. You're assuming a constant diagonal measurement, which is a very narrow way of looking at things. Instead, you could assume a constant vertical height, in which case making it a wider aspect ratio only adds width, and takes not height away.
Maybe you think I'm being pedantic, but I don't like a very deep laptop because I find that deep/tall laptops (with a lot of vertical height) are harder to work on in tight places. Therefore, I wouldn't want one that was much deeper than my current 15" wide-screen notebook, so if I had to buy a laptop with a 4:3 screen, I would probably buy a 13" or something.
I sometimes wonder if American evangelicals read the same Bible that I do.
Well, you might be assuming too much to think they're reading the Bible at all. Some portion of them are only memorizing certain lines from the Bible and talking about them outside of any meaningful context.
What it does do is undermine (very thoroughly) an argument for god(s) that used to be a 'slam dunk': the 'argument from complexity in the biological world'.
Meh... I think people just aren't clever enough. After all, the introduction of the theory of evolution doesn't make the world less complex, it makes it more complex. In neither case do we have an explanation of how the universe came to be, but we all admit that it did come to be. But which would seem to come from a creator with more cleverness, insight, and forward thinking?-- A world which exists as it does and never changes; or a world that, once set in motion, builds life such as us, from nothing but stardust, using only the most basic and fundamental laws of physics.
No, if you really think about it, evolution shouldn't properly be discouraging to people who believe in god(s). Not in the least.
Here's the catch: most of the emotional advantages are firmly on the side of right-wing truth.
I don't know about that. It feels pretty good to convince yourself that you're somehow saving the world. Whenever I can self-righteously condemn a large group of people for being bad stupid, ignorant, or evil, it gives me a little warm-fuzzy feeling because I know I'm not them. I know I'm better than them. I get to be part a a group of superior people who know better and do "the right thing".
Now, I can get all those warm-fuzzy feelings by being "a good Christian", and talking about how we should "make the world safe for democracy" by "hunting down the terrorists". Or I can get that same sort of feeling by buying Nabisco cookies that are labelled "organic", complaining about "corporate America" and global warming, and trying to convert everyone to Atheism.
I'm not such a big fan of either, but both of those attitudes have emotional advantages.
"There are things for which the debate has been conducted and there is a settled position. Things like the world is not flat and that the Earth is not the center of the Universe. People who debate those points don't have open minds, they're just stupid."
-birdmanesq
Sometimes "settled positions" are still worth questioning. For example, there was a time when we believed that space and time were absolute, and that the earth was the fixed center of the universe. At some point, people realized the Earth was traveling around the sun, and it became settled that the sun was the fixed center of the universe. Now we believe that time and space are not so absolute, but space and time are all relative, based on the frame of reference in which they're measured. Oh, and because of that, the Earth is as much the "center of the universe" as any place can be.
Will our current viewpoint change? Possibly.
That's not to say that I disbelieve theories about global warming. Still, I don't think we should be eager to close a topic, end the discussion, and call the matter "settled". We still have a lot to learn.
It is well-known throughout the publishing world that wide columns of text are harder to read than narrow columns.
I'm very willing to accept that this is true, but I'm not sure that it should lead us to conclude that there's any downside to widescreen displays. Text written across wide lines is harder to read, but having a wide screen does not mean you must display text across the entire screen. For example, as I type this, my browser windows is only taking up a little over half of the width of my screen. The text column is actually thinner than it would be if I had a maximized window running on a 4:3 screen.
I think there are some issues to consider here. For example, my text lines are thinner because my window is not maximized, and therefore doesn't take up my entire screen. Does this mean part of my screen is wasted? In my opinion, no. It instead allows me to have other things displayed in that "extra" space. For example, sometimes I want to view two documents side-by-side. Also, some of the programs I use (e.g. Photoshop) have multiple toolbars and pallets that can make use of the "extra" space on the side".
Sometimes I have an application that I want to keep off to the side so that I can keep an eye on it. For example, I may be working in one application while another application chugs away at some particular task. In those cases, I might drag the background application off to the side so that I can keep its progress bar in view.
Now, some people here are claiming that widescreen aspect ratios are bad because they "take away" vertical space. I think it's worth noting that it all depends on how you look at it-- to make the display wider, do you take away vertical space or do you add horizontal space. For me, when I had a laptop with a 4:3 screen, I didn't have a deeper laptop with more vertical space (which would have been harder for me to carry), but instead had a thinner laptop with the same amount of vertical space and less horizontal space. So getting a wide-screen laptop didn't "take away" any vertical space.
Anyway, I'm a fan of the wide-screen, but not because I watch movies. Because your eyes are spaced out horizontally, your field of view is wider than it is tall, so it just feels more natural. Yes, if I'm reading a lot, I like it to be formatted in thinner columns, but how you format text on a screen is a different issue than what aspect ratio your screen has.
Slashdot Mirror
Headline should read something like, "NYTimes.com uses web developers who are good designers and at least semi-competent coders in order to develop their site".
Really, since when has it been considered acceptable for professional web developers to *not* write HTML and CSS by hand? If I was paying someone and then caught them using a WYSIWYG editor, I'd be pretty unhappy.
Yeah, I don't know what kind of a "brick wall" Debian is supposed to hit. It's released under the GPL. There are people interested in working on it. Therefore, it will continue to be developed. QED.
Because they're weird words. Both of them can be either a noun or a verb, and in both cases they have very different meaning depending on whether they're nouns or verbs. To compound the trouble, the verb "to affect" means "to have an effect on", while the verb "to effect" means "to cause". But as nouns, "cause" and "effect" are antonyms.
So yes, it's true, teh Anglish be a hard language too lern.
I don't think the problem is just that Apple's "Software Update" doesn't work. More likely the problem is that you can't update your OS without causing it to stop functioning. Psystar hacked the OS to run on generic hardware. If you install an update that overwrites part of that hack, your machine doesn't work anymore.
It doesn't depend on the "universe" at all.
Sure it does. What I'm getting at is that, obviously, math isn't simply "made up", because if it were I could make any proof of any theorem, following no rules. But if I do that, I get something we'd all agree was nonsense, and it wouldn't prove anything. Like I can't just say:
That's not a proof. The fact that it's not a proof demonstrates that mathematical proofs do need to be constructed in accordance with *something* that is beyond the reach of human will. No matter how much I want a math proof to be true, no matter how much I convince myself that it's true, it still isn't. That's all I mean when I say it depends on the universe in some way.
In the same way, the "invention" of the wheel couldn't have worked if the inventor has chosen to use a square wheel. The invention of gunpowder wouldn't have worked out just as well if the inventor had tried to ignite sand and chalk. There is a reality beyond the influence of our beliefs and will that must be adhered to in order to understand the truth or build things that work.
Plato and Kant differ a great deal.
I don't believe they would be on this particular issue, i.e. whether math is "made up" or somehow "inherent" (assuming that's the question that people are really trying to get to). I think both would probably agree that mathematical principles are not "made up".
Anyhow, I don't really want to get into a generalized philosophic argument, but you might be reading Plato a bit too literally. Plato may have actually believed in reincarnation (who really knows what Plato actually thought?), but it certainly wasn't the only thing at stake in those dialogs. In large part, he was demonstrating an inherent paradox in learning, that you would not be able to learn things if you didn't already have a sort of "knowledge" already, before you began learning, that allowed you to recognize and affirm true things (or at least dismiss false things). You can reconcile that idea with Kant to some degree, if you think of that "knowledge" as being "intuition". While Plato might claim that this "knowledge" must be correct in order for us to know anything, Kant might claim that this "intuition" must be accepted in order for us to think. For both of them, the sort of "knowledge" necessary would include math to some degree. In that sense (if only in that sense), Plato and Kant are not that far apart.
Sorry if I'm speaking too loosely for you. I'm probably not using terminology in the most proper way, but it's been several years. But I'm fairly confident that my recollection of the ideas isn't far off.
No, the correct answer is "both."
No, I think the correct answer is, "What are you asking?"
The problem with questions like this is that it isn't clear what's in the mind of the person asking the question. What do you mean by "invented" and what do you mean by "discovered"? What difference do you see between the two?
For example, some people will think that "invented" means "made up". So in that person's mind, if math is "invented", then it's based only on human thought, and not on real principles of the universe itself. Of course, this line of thought makes me want to ask what it would mean to be a "real principle", and what is the "universe itself" when detached from human conception, but I'll leave that aside.
The problem I see immediately with this concept of "invented" is that real inventions don't exist independently of the universe. For example, was the wheel "invented", or did someone discover that rolling a circularly shaped object requires less energy than dragging an equally massive object? Was gunpowder "invented", or did someone discover than mixing certain chemicals together and setting fire to them caused an explosion? Was the telephone "invented", or did someone discover that you could convert sounds into electrical signals and back again by using magnets?
All inventions are a discovery of sorts, which makes this whole question a bit nonsensical.
Integers were discovered. Beyond that, it's human invention.
I can make a strong case that negative integers are invented. Because you can't have -3 apples. We invented the negative numbers to indicate a loss of positive numbers. We also invented fractions to stand in for ratios.
Sort of.
Yes, and if science fiction were real, I could fix every one of my problems by realigning the deflector array.
Yes, it's also amazing that the equation isn't 2.14332544988e=2.14332544988mc^2.
Yes, sorry, I'm being a smart-ass and it's not polite. But c^2 is just a constant.
Unlike Plato's idea, which is that mathematics involves universal truths we discover, Kant's "Copernican turn" puts the subject as the one who projects mathematics onto everything it experiences.
Does Kant actually discuss the source of intuition? I don't remember him doing so in anything I've read. In that case, then Kant is not saying that we project math onto anything. What he's really pointing out there is that we don't learn about space (and therefore arguably geometry, and therefore arguably math) through empirical means, but rather through intuition. Whether those things exist "in themselves" depends on whether our intuition is actually accessing some source of real knowledge/understanding/whateveryouwanttocallit. I don't remember him saying asserting that this intuition is not coming from some sort of "world as it is in itself". Instead it seems to me that he indicates that we should trust intuition because we must trust it-- we have no other choice.
Sorry to be pedantic, but it seems worth noting that Plato and Kant don't really differ that much on this subject. Both of them would say that mathematics are not created by a person, but derived from principles that we know a priori. Of course they might use different words.
Yeah... I'm not sure what to make of that quote. It's especially strange considering how quickly Linux has been improving in recent years, in contrast to how much Windows has *not* been improving during that same time. I'd be very curious to know just what Gates thinks is going on.
I've never worked with Microsoft, but I've tried to get support from them. From my point of view, it seems like it wouldn't cost much money to support these servers with the same level of support as they do with their other products. That is to say, how expensive can it be to keep a couple people on staff in an Indian help center, and have them not answer your questions and not help you with anything?
Right. Working pretty well sucks. Making money is usually very difficult, taking a lot of work and personal sacrifice. Most of us have to work all day sitting in a small cubical under fluorescent lights, being abused by morons. If you're lucky enough to make a living by sitting in a nice club in front of cheering fans, consider yourself lucky.
Just wait until MS decides to turn off the server farm that enables XP installations; that'll put the music in perspective.
At least Windows XP has the corporate version that allows you to install it without activation. Worse yet is Vista, where even the corporate version requires activation. Also, at the current rate of Vista adoption, they might stop supporting Vista before they stop supporting XP.
Most of these online stores, even the stores with DRM, tell you you're "buying" the album or track. You know, like before you actually pay money, you click on some sort of button that often says something like "buy this album". It doesn't say "rent" or "license".
Now there may well be something buried in the license agreement when you sign up for the store that says, "you aren't actually buying anything, you're just licensing the right listen them, and we can revoke that right whenever we want." Still, the way the stores are representing the transaction as "buying" the album, and that's the way consumers understand the transaction.
If there isn't any legal consequence for the owners of online "stores" for this sort of misrepresentation, there should be.
How is this any different than, say, Ford discontinuing its Aerostar minivan line?
Did Ford engineer the Aerostar specifically so that, if they ever discontinued the line, you'd immediately be unable to change the oil or refill the gas tank?
It's one thing if a product happens to have necessary limits. It's another thing for the product to be purposefully and artificially crippled so that it will not function as expected.
Yes, this is a perfect example against those who would say, "DRM isn't a problem unless you're a pirate." I'm sure there were people who paid good money to buy audio tracks. Not rent, *buy*.
I know, I know, make whatever legalistic argument you want, but when people paid there money, they had an expectation that they were *buying* the music. Therefore, deactivating these servers is effectively stealing those people's property, much more so than "pirates" do. When I "pirate" downloads a music track, they haven't deprived the rightful owner of the use of that music. However, when Microsoft disables their servers, the rightful owners are deprived of their ability to listen to that music.
Of course I'd like to see DRM disappear. Short of that, companies should at least be required to offer the means to crack their DRM should they ever deactivate their servers.
A side question: can Microsoft really not afford to just keep these servers running? I guess they're having some problems with Vista being a flop and all, but how expensive can it be to maintain these servers? On the other hand, I don't particularly blame Microsoft for this situation. It's an inherent problem with DRM, and it was bound to happen to someone sooner or later.
Yeah, sorry, but I think you're missing my point. You're assuming a constant diagonal measurement, which is a very narrow way of looking at things. Instead, you could assume a constant vertical height, in which case making it a wider aspect ratio only adds width, and takes not height away.
Maybe you think I'm being pedantic, but I don't like a very deep laptop because I find that deep/tall laptops (with a lot of vertical height) are harder to work on in tight places. Therefore, I wouldn't want one that was much deeper than my current 15" wide-screen notebook, so if I had to buy a laptop with a 4:3 screen, I would probably buy a 13" or something.
I sometimes wonder if American evangelicals read the same Bible that I do.
Well, you might be assuming too much to think they're reading the Bible at all. Some portion of them are only memorizing certain lines from the Bible and talking about them outside of any meaningful context.
What it does do is undermine (very thoroughly) an argument for god(s) that used to be a 'slam dunk': the 'argument from complexity in the biological world'.
Meh... I think people just aren't clever enough. After all, the introduction of the theory of evolution doesn't make the world less complex, it makes it more complex. In neither case do we have an explanation of how the universe came to be, but we all admit that it did come to be. But which would seem to come from a creator with more cleverness, insight, and forward thinking?-- A world which exists as it does and never changes; or a world that, once set in motion, builds life such as us, from nothing but stardust, using only the most basic and fundamental laws of physics.
No, if you really think about it, evolution shouldn't properly be discouraging to people who believe in god(s). Not in the least.
Here's the catch: most of the emotional advantages are firmly on the side of right-wing truth.
I don't know about that. It feels pretty good to convince yourself that you're somehow saving the world. Whenever I can self-righteously condemn a large group of people for being bad stupid, ignorant, or evil, it gives me a little warm-fuzzy feeling because I know I'm not them. I know I'm better than them. I get to be part a a group of superior people who know better and do "the right thing".
Now, I can get all those warm-fuzzy feelings by being "a good Christian", and talking about how we should "make the world safe for democracy" by "hunting down the terrorists". Or I can get that same sort of feeling by buying Nabisco cookies that are labelled "organic", complaining about "corporate America" and global warming, and trying to convert everyone to Atheism.
I'm not such a big fan of either, but both of those attitudes have emotional advantages.
Sometimes "settled positions" are still worth questioning. For example, there was a time when we believed that space and time were absolute, and that the earth was the fixed center of the universe. At some point, people realized the Earth was traveling around the sun, and it became settled that the sun was the fixed center of the universe. Now we believe that time and space are not so absolute, but space and time are all relative, based on the frame of reference in which they're measured. Oh, and because of that, the Earth is as much the "center of the universe" as any place can be.
Will our current viewpoint change? Possibly.
That's not to say that I disbelieve theories about global warming. Still, I don't think we should be eager to close a topic, end the discussion, and call the matter "settled". We still have a lot to learn.
Oh, so "Why does Apple love DRM?" wasn't your car analogy?
It is well-known throughout the publishing world that wide columns of text are harder to read than narrow columns.
I'm very willing to accept that this is true, but I'm not sure that it should lead us to conclude that there's any downside to widescreen displays. Text written across wide lines is harder to read, but having a wide screen does not mean you must display text across the entire screen. For example, as I type this, my browser windows is only taking up a little over half of the width of my screen. The text column is actually thinner than it would be if I had a maximized window running on a 4:3 screen.
I think there are some issues to consider here. For example, my text lines are thinner because my window is not maximized, and therefore doesn't take up my entire screen. Does this mean part of my screen is wasted? In my opinion, no. It instead allows me to have other things displayed in that "extra" space. For example, sometimes I want to view two documents side-by-side. Also, some of the programs I use (e.g. Photoshop) have multiple toolbars and pallets that can make use of the "extra" space on the side".
Sometimes I have an application that I want to keep off to the side so that I can keep an eye on it. For example, I may be working in one application while another application chugs away at some particular task. In those cases, I might drag the background application off to the side so that I can keep its progress bar in view.
Now, some people here are claiming that widescreen aspect ratios are bad because they "take away" vertical space. I think it's worth noting that it all depends on how you look at it-- to make the display wider, do you take away vertical space or do you add horizontal space. For me, when I had a laptop with a 4:3 screen, I didn't have a deeper laptop with more vertical space (which would have been harder for me to carry), but instead had a thinner laptop with the same amount of vertical space and less horizontal space. So getting a wide-screen laptop didn't "take away" any vertical space.
Anyway, I'm a fan of the wide-screen, but not because I watch movies. Because your eyes are spaced out horizontally, your field of view is wider than it is tall, so it just feels more natural. Yes, if I'm reading a lot, I like it to be formatted in thinner columns, but how you format text on a screen is a different issue than what aspect ratio your screen has.