"We kill animals for profit and individual survival. No one shoots a deer to save the human race." Just great. And how do you think one is supposed to save the human race as a whole ? By saving individual humans, that's how.
Ahh, but that is a supposition. The motivation is for personal gain. The end result may or may not be the preservation of the species as a whole. For example, many people make choices which benefit them at the expense of our species as a whole. For this reason claiming people act for the benefit of the human species versus acting for their own individual benefit is a very, very different assertion.
Our species' interest is the sum of our individual mutually compatible interests.
But our interests are not mutually compatible. Owning and operating an industrial farm might make me a lot of money. At the same time it might consume resources that could otherwise go to feeding a hundred times as many people on grains, people who are currently starving. Claiming that my killing for individual benefit somehow can be translated to my killing being in the best interests of the human race is... well pretty unsupportable.
Because we choose to ignore the fact nothing passes acid3 on the web, including our beloved firefox.
Actually, Opera and Webkit both do, although not in the production releases just yet. In any case, Acid3 is about testing specific edge cases in javascript. It isn't a standards test so much as a tool for fixing error handling. It is also a damn site different from something MS is trying to get governments to standardize on even though they haven't fully implemented it and there is serious doubt that anyone will be able to do so at all.
I hope they don't fine them over this. It would be far better for the EU to simply issue a directive saying EU member governments and government agencies may not use any Microsoft file format by 2010.
You make it seem like it is either or. The EU should for reasons of pure self interest move to ODF for all government use. That aside, the EU should still take action against this as an antitrust abuse as well. Just because the stops using MS's formats doesn't mean they should also give them a pass on breaking the law. They should be forced to comply with providing complete interoperability with competitors or pay fines for refusing to comply. Remember, while the EU government(s) should be preventing themselves from being locked in and avoiding business deals with criminals, they also need to protect other companies from suffering from MS's criminal actions with regard to all the other software contracts in the EU.
None of the animal rights activist would be behind slaughtering millions of viable animals...
I think your assertion is incorrect. PETA themselves euthanize animals and support killing them instead of letting them roam free when they take possession of pets and the like.
I'm not oversimplifying, exactly, but you're right that we are using different definitions of the word "veganism." It's an arbitrary label...
My dictionary says:
Vegan, noun a person who does not eat or use animal products : I'm a strict vegan | [as adj. ] a vegan diet.
It seems clear to me.
but my experience has been that people who avoid animal products for health or environmental reasons don't tend to label themselves as vegan. Perhaps that's out of touch, though.
I certainly know a number who do. In any case, it has entered the english lexicon to mean pretty much what my dictionary says. The reasons for why people do it are varied.
I use veganism to describe the avoidance of animal products based on ethical concerns.
It's an understandable difference. I just think you're self identifying with a subset of vegans and your use of the term reflects that. (Maybe approaching no true Scotsman?)
I think that's how the word "vegan" was used in the original context of CmdrTaco's post, too, don't you think?
Actually, no. I think he was using the term to apply to vegans in general. The differing motivations of vegans is what makes predicting their responses to such a move questionable. I think he was asking for a consensus from vegans, something which is about as likely to happen as a consensus from Slashdotters. As such, the proper answer to his question should probably list the different, major sub-groupings of vegans and explain which would and would not approve of this. Of course who really wants to read that?
Actually I wouldn't mind spending my taxes on such teaching. I think I should change the term teaching to discussion.
Oh they could be very interesting in a philosophy class.
I know when I was in school we were encouraged to discuss what we thought about scientific theories, including ones which had no proof for them. I do not like the way that this kind of discussion is allowed when discussing computing future (quatumn[sic] and light based computing) but with evolution everything is very closed off.
But in science class one should discuss scientific theories. I think it is important to discuss what is and is not a scientific theory in such a class. With quantum computing, one is discussing technology. With quantum theory versus string theory, one can debate the different theories and their support. That should not, however, be the same kind of discussion as evolution and ID, because only the former is a scientific theory. That is to say, the point of discussing such topics should be to show why ID is not a valid scientific theory and as such is not useful for the understanding of likely truth using science.
Personally, I feel ID should be banned from science classrooms because there are too many science teachers out there trying to push their religious beliefs over the field they're supposed to be teaching. Choosing a less controversial comparison of scientific and unscientific theories is more likely to result in accurate teaching.
As for discussion of evolution, there is more of it in the mainstream media than it deserves for rational people. How many articles do you see questioning the theory of gravity in the mainstream press? Within the scientific community I've never seen any rejection of a scientific theory that challenges evolution without any facts. It is just that all the theories that were even remotely probable alternatives were disproved hundreds of years ago and there haven't been any reasonable challenges of late. Seriously, what scientific theories that are alternatives to evolution do you think have not been given their day by the scientific community? I want a real example.
Veganism is neither irrational nor difficult to understand; if you're making an animal suffer unnecessarily, vegans are against it.
Actually, veganism is simply not using the products of animals (sometimes applied to food and sometimes applied to other products as well). The motivation for this philosophy is often very different ranging from ethical concerns to religious to environmental to dietary. Your position might be that if animals suffer unnecessarily then you are against it, but that is not the position of all vegans and that needs to be understood.
It's amazing to me how such a simple position seems to confuse people.
You're oversimplifying. There are multiple reasons for veganism and thus multiple positions on any one topic from among the vegan community. Some are less concerned with animals suffering and more concerned with their own health or with the ramifications of large scale animal farming for the human species (inefficient use of resources leading to starvation).
If meat can be grown that doesn't have a central nervous system and so can't feel pain, I would feel much better about eating what little meat I do eat.
If you're ethically concerned about the suffering of animals, might I recommend hunting or buying meat from hunters? Wild animals generally have much better quality of life than farm raised animals and at the same time you're helping to reign in the overpopulation problem from which much of the wild animals in the US suffer. I often wish all those people who regard hunting itself as cruelty would spend some time looking at whitetail deer populations that have grown too large and are now slowly dying back by the process of slow and painful diseases due to lack of predation (from humans and the mostly eradicated wild animal predators).
Naturally speaking, killing an animal is VERY different from killing a human.
Aim and fire:)
We kill animals to survive as a species...
I disagree. We kill animals for profit and individual survival. No one shoots a deer to save the human race. No one slaughters chickens because they're interested in preserving our species. We kill for individual benefit more than that of our species.
...we don't kill each other for that same purpose.
We do kill each other for personal profit and personal survival. We also kill both humans and animals for a wide variety of other reasons ranging from entertainment to trying to better society.
Torturing animals doesn't serve a purpose. Killing them for the purpose of nourishment and consumption does.
Some people consider torturing animals to be entertainment and a purpose in and of itself.
Yes, perhaps it's in some ways distasteful, but - being omnivores - it's also part of our natural biological process.
I always find this an interesting argument. Since when has "natural process" equated to "acceptable"? Malaria is a natural, biological process.
You can't compare murdering somebody to the consumption of a food animal.
Sure I can. In both cases it is taking a life. The relative "value" of the life and acceptability of the purpose is a matter of debate.
It's not the same thing.
In some ways it is and in some it isn't. It is all a matter of perspective.
And before you get into the "would killing be OK if we eat each other," that's also a no...
Umm great? You can say something is okay or not, but that isn't really anything other than an opinion.
...most mammals don't eat their own species either
A lot of mammals do actually. I'm not sure the percentage, but again I'm not sure what your point is.
A debate is not an argument. The purpose of a debate is to find common ground such that a fundamental disagreement can be understood in its entirety. Few people would argue killing is always wrong (especially in the case of vegetables or invading microorganisms). We must, then, understand what forms of killing people find unacceptable and why... at the most basic level. This topic has been discussed at length by some brilliant thinkers over the years and a good start is reading what they came up with.
For me, I have no objection to killing or eating animals or plants. I do, however, place value on those lives and take personal responsibility for my part in their deaths. I find many reasons to kill insufficient to overcome the value I place on life and would not, personally, kill an animal simply for entertainment. I will kill for food (plants and animals). I prefer to minimize suffering and kill humanely.
The advent of "meat vats" is something I've anticipated for quite a while. I think many people are incorrect about how they will work (likely more like printers than vats). I think many people are incorrect about their implications for society. If I had the option of buying such meat today, I might do so, especially if it was economical. I would not, however, stop killing animals for meat. Replacing meat from industrial farms with "vat grown" meat is something I find ethical. Leaving wild animals to a very broken cycle of overpopulation followed by starvation and rampant disease, seems very unethical to me, especially since it is largely a man-made phenomenon resulting from eradication of large predators, construction that is not compatible with wild animals in the area, and other manmade changes to the environment.
I applaud PETA for this move to create an economic incentive to end industrial animal farming as it now exists. At the same time, I'm not going to stop thinning some of the overpopulated herds of animals, even when I have to bury the corpse because it is so diseased as a result of man made overpopulation problems.
Between this and support for a right-wing social and foreign policy agenda, I sometimes wonder if American evangelicals read the same Bible that I do.
Most American supporters of ID don't read the bible, or for that matter agree with or know the official position of their church. The problem is "superstar" preachers who make money from controversy and the appearance of persecution, and the wealth they have generated which they've used to buy their way into the highest levels of the US government and pay for huge media campaigns to try to miseducate people.
I think it's a pretty poor parody, since it really misses the point. The PI=3 thing is much like the earth being flat... something that no one ever seriously advocated, yet is often brought up as "proof" of the Bible being useful for proving the absurd.
Lots of people seriously believed the earth was flat. And it isn't brought up as proof that the bible is useful for proving anything. It is brought up because it is evidence that what is written in the bible can be objectively proved to not be true, so any claim that the bible cannot present incorrect facts is disproved.
In the second place, the Biblical case against homosexuality is a lot more than "out-of-context Leviticus quotes." The Bible consistently rejects homosexuality, in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.
That is a matter for biblical scholars, but again is misses the point. Just because something is in the Bible doesn't make it true. There are lots of things in the Bible. Some we know were added and subtracted to the popular versions of the bible while there are other, well documented, translation errors. There are also things in almost every version of the bible, that are factually incorrect, ergo, claiming something as truth because it is in the bible is irrational. Claiming evolution is untrue because some interpretation of the bible may not agree with it is likewise irrational. You need better evidence if you're trying to follow the scientific method.
Actually if you watch the film Stein does not necessarily believe in ID.
But he does believe in ID, as he has stated in the past.
He simple is wondering why so many scientists are so religious about evolution.
I disagree. He isn't wondering anything. He's intentionally trying to try to instill doubt by misapplying and intentionally misrepresenting the scientific method and consensus of professional scientists. He's also trying to make money.
He is posing questions like, Why do we teach kids the difference between laws, and theory and then act like evolution is a law?
Yeah, except he doesn't define what "acting like it is a law" means. The theory of gravity is not a law. Nonetheless, very rarely do we see articles questioning whether or not it is holding us on the planet submitted to peer reviewed journals or taken seriously by the media. The theory of gravity and the theory of evolution are on par. They both have mountains of support, have been refined over many years, have entire, very productive, branches of science founded upon their principals, and have long since crossed the threshold of reasonable doubt for the scientific community as a whole. The only reason evolution is a topic at all is because a small subset of religious "leaders" have been trying to use it to make people feel oppressed as a way to manipulate those people.
Evolution is really good at explaining how butterflies change color overtime, it does not explain how you get from paramecium to human...
Who says we did go from a paramecium to a human? Evolution simply states a method by which species change over time to adapt to their environments. Claiming a particular evolutionary route for a specific species is a different theory, albeit one predicated upon evolution.
does that not leave room for some alternate theories?
There is always room for alternative theories. All the theories presented so far, however, have not been supported by the data collected. ID doesn't even get that far. It isn't a testable theory and is scientifically nothing.
All Stein is doing is asking scientists to act like it.
I strongly disagree. Stein doesn't present any alternative theories. What action would he have scientists take to make them more accurately follow the scientific method? No, Stein is simply trying to create doubt in the minds of people, by implying impropriety and bias, while presenting no evidence of that.
They should acknowledge the weak spots in any theory and look to finding the explanations.
I once read a quote about evolution and gravity. A microorganism had been seen evolving to deal with a stress as part of a study. A person asked "doesn't this provide more support for the theory of evolution?" The reply was, "yeah, sort of the way when a metallurgist makes a new alloy and it doesn't go whizzing off the planet it provides more evidence for the theory of gravity." Frankly, while there is question about the details of how both gravity and evolution work in particular cases, providing an alternative to either of them would require the most extraordinary quantity of support. No such theory and support has been presented and ID does not even present an alternative, testable, hypothesis, let alone any evidence to support it. For that matter ID doesn't even falsify evolution were it somehow proven to be true.
He is simply saying don't close the books until all the facts are in. There is nothing wrong with that its good science.
No. He's trying to mischaracterize ID as science and place doubt in the minds of people as to how science works. He's trying to capitalize on a hot button issue by presenting a clever bit of rhetoric to try to make it seem as though evolution is not observed and used as the basis for working science every day. He's trying to provide a crutch for people who
The point is intelligent design basically agrees with evolution but suggests that someone kick started it. There is no science which disagrees with this, I see no reason why this couldn't be taught (for what it is) as a theory in a classroom.
Pastararianism does not contradict evolution, it just suggests an invisible plate of magical pasta is secretly controlling the process in a way that cannot be detected. (Note it did not design evolution, it just secretly took over the already occurring process.) Since there is no scientific evidence to disprove this so I see no reason why it couldn't be taught as a theory in a classroom.
The mega-block meat sacrifice principal suggests that if enough people do not spend their days encasing chunks of meat in Lego blocks while counting from one to seventeen over and over agin for the 1,000 year period from 1994-2994, then evolution will reverse itself. There is no evidence to prove this is not the case, so I see no reason why it cannot be taught in the classroom.
Since intelligent design and Pastafarianism and the mega-block meat principal are on the same scientific standing, there is no reason all three cannot be taught in classrooms. you don't mind if we spend your tax dollars and waste your kids time doing so do you?
But as the trailer points out, people have done the research (no idea if its correct) but the second they try to publish it, the Darwinans label them crackpots and shot out: "Its not Darwinism, so its wrong"
If you had a job or tried to get a job as a writer of short stories, but handed a publication, or university, or publishing agent a blank book and told them you had sung a great tale at it... what do you think would happen? They'd tell you to get lost, not because they're anti-singing, but because they're looking to pay people for writings.
Real scientists aren't rejecting studies or papers promoting so-called intelligent design because they are against writing random stuff, but because it is not science. You have to start with a testable hypothesis and then you need to test it. If you haven't done that, you shouldn't even get to the peer review stage of science. They're not saying what the people have done is wrong, just as they may not think consulting a tarot card reader is wrong. It just isn't science.
Acting like that is just childish.
What they're doing is following a formal method that makes personal bias fairly irrelevant. It isn't childish, it is their job.
If Darwin was right, then you have nothing to lose by carefully writing a counter paper, countering the evidence.
There have been thousands of scientific articles debunking such "evidence" over the years. Why would scientists waste their time trying to show people for the hundredth time where they failed to follow the scientific method, something every educated person on the planet should already be able to tell them. If advocates of intelligent design or people who dislike the theory of evolution want to participate in science they are welcome. If they want to pretend to be participating in science while actually just producing rhetoric, they will be deservedly ignored by scientific publications and refused jobs as scientists. It's a level playing field, but creationism has lost over and over and over again on that playing field, so now creationists are trying to avoid the playing field, while arguing that they really are there, and how it is unfair for their "goals" to not count, just because they made them in a goal they themselves built somewhere else entirely.
The problem is, scientists are NOT objective. They are highly biased.
I guess it depends. A scientist is a person who applies the scientific method. If someone is not being objective, then they aren't following the scientific method, ergo they are not scientist.
Sure people are biased, including people who understand and apply the scientific method to other things. The real problem here is that people place credibility in job titles and educational certificates because our system has failed to educate them about the scientific method, how it works, why it works, and how to apply it to find the most likely truth, regardless of who is presenting data.
I'd argue that what we have here is not a problem with science, but that most people are not scientists when it comes to looking at the information presented by people, whoever is paying their salary.
Well for one, you don't need separate OS's to do your development and office tasks. Upgrading to new hardware is faster and better. You can use system services to make both your office tasks and dev tasks easier. Sure it won't make you type you e-mail any faster but it will let you use the same spelling checker dictionary in both your e-mail and word processor (and everything else you want) so you don't have to train each one that MPLS is not a misspelling. You can likewise seamlessly use your grammar checker in everything, language translation plug-ins etc. In short, it doesn't really let you do many fundamentally new tasks. It just makes tasks easier and often faster and makes some tasks that are inconvenient (some so inconvenient you just don't do them) easier.
I know, literally, hundreds of Linux developers that use OS X as their desktop these days, because they have a choice and tried both.
It would probably be expensive to switch over all of the infrastructure and support.
It certainly can be, depending upon what type of infrastructure and support is provided. Still, OS X is plug and play with most Windows services these days and most of the major apps have native versions. If you're already supporting a mixed environment of Linux and Windows and have picked standards that work on both instead of MS only stuff, well it is usually easier and cheaper to support than Windows.
Most users are locked into Windows on the desktop. MS has created a significant number of ways to do this, many of which are illegal. Like what? I've worked for both Netscape and Microsoft. I have a much better understanding of the anti-trust case against MS than most and the short explanation is that it's bullshit.
Your understanding of the anti-trust case can't be very great if you claim such an open and shut case was bullshit. Maybe you should actually read the antitrust laws, or even a short explanation of them such as wikipedia or any economics textbook has.
In any case, the lock-in actions which are obviously illegal are any which leverage an existing monopoly into a new market, or lock a user into a monopolized product through intentional un-interoperability. For example, MS's closed protocols with which their desktop and server products communicated were clearly illegal and a lock-in strategy in that once users deployed them they were restricted from using those same protocols completely with other products... by design. (It is hard to argue MS duplicating the LDAP protocol almost exactly, but with several differences that provided no advantage to the protocol itself was "accidental.")
Yes, MS started giving their browser away and that really hurt Netscape, but it's Netscape's fault that they couldn't come up with another source of revenue.
Bundling is the very first form of tying described in US antitrust law (as an example of illegal action). Netscape not being able to come up with a way to survive the crime against them speaks not at all to whether or not it was a crime.
Their server and portal products sucked.
That's a fine opinion. You can even say their browser sucked. That's fine too. It also has nothing to do with whether or not MS's actions were illegal. The point of antitrust law is to let the capitalist free market determine which product sucks... something which did not happen.
The only anti-trust argument I can think of that is really legit is the way MS altered Windows 3.1 to make it incompatible with DR-DOS.
So you claim to have an understanding of antitrust law... but your understanding differs from that of the the US, EU, and numerous other courts? Did you ever think maybe your understanding isn't quite as good as you seem to think it is?
Sigh, why do I even bother replying? I'll tell you what. Educate yourself enough to know what markets are as defined by antitrust law and several examples of bundling. Also, gain an understanding of why antitrust laws exist in terms of economics and history. Finally, come back to Slashdot and make some informed arguments and I'll be happy to discuss the subject with you in depth.
If operating systems can't be touted as "ready for mainstream users" while *any* difficult use cases exist then no operating system qualifies.
If, however, the market is already dominated by one OS, then you have to assume most users will be moving from that OS. When the same use cases still have poor usability on Ubuntu compared to Windows, then you'll see a lot of people having problems with, often before they even discover use cases where it might be more usable. and, in fact, that is what a number of users were saying about their attempt to switch. They pointed out these specific use cases and I agreed that they were problems and should be dealt with, only to be greeted with dozens of rabid Linux fans, who took offense saying installing applications on Ubuntu is easier and better, ignoring the specific items that were mentioned.
Ubuntu is usable by mainstream users in practice today.
Ubuntu is usable for some users, while others find themselves unable to perform the tasks. It is usable for novice users. It is usable for power users. For people in the middle, they do find themselves unable to do things they could do on Windows and that is an ongoing issue.
It still has places to improve, and identifying those places and submitting well thought out feature suggestions is helpful.
I've tried. I've worked as a professional writer, so I'm pretty good at explaining things. I've worked as a UI designer and usability tester, so I'm pretty well grounded in usability issues. The majority of the time, developers are not interested or claim the usability problem does not really exist or those use cases (running closed source software for example) should be not be a task users want to accomplish. Worse yet, a lot of new users ask questions or complain about these in forums and are flamed by overly defensive Linux users tot he point that people don't want to have anything to do with Linux.
I have addressed usability with bug reports and feature requests. I'm also trying to address it and the social problems that exacerbate it with discussion with users, like you for example. Unless vocal users are aware of real usability issues and willing to admit those problems, it does more to dissuade people from using Linux on the desktop than the problems themselves in many cases.
Maybe NFS would have been a better choice, but I'm not going to apologize for making that decision.
You're the one complaining about the limitations of that choice.
And there are Mac clients for various virus and spam blocking systems.
Who claimed otherwise?
There is no reason to purchase Parallels and Mac/AD integration tools so someone can run email and Powerpoint on a differnt OS.
The AD issue would be your poor choice of MS's closed and intentionally incompatible clone of LDAP instead of, well LDAP. As for Powerpoint, you know MS makes MS Office for OS X right? Or you could use any one of a dozen alternative presentation packages.
Those work pretty well on a PC with Windows.
So you're claiming a broken version of LDAP designed to ony work with Windows, only works with Windows? And you're complaining that you don't know how to install MS Office on a Mac?
Bringing a Mac or Linux flavor into the mix does not improve the situation, it only adds more administrative overhead.
It only adds overhead if you chose to build your infrastructure exclusively with products from one vendor, designed to lock you into that vendor. Don't blame others that your poor choice is now making more work for you.
There are already soutions in place for the users to do the number one thing the network does in a company; provide access to and redundancy of data.
And you again ignored everything but Windows when you chose those and now wish that had been a good choice. This seems somewhat familiar.
Choice is a great option where users will manage their own issues. But that does not happen at most companies. IT is relied on to tie together the disparate elements of communication and reliability, and sometimes that means standardization.
I believe you problem is you don't understand the difference between a standard, and just buying everything from one vendor. A standard is LDAP, which can be and is implemented by many different vendors. Building your directory service on top of it means you can be fairly sure no matter who you buy other components from, they'll be able to work with it. Choosing a proprietary alternative that is an intentionally broken version of LDAP designed to only work with Windows. You ignored the fact that you were being locked in and assumed that would never come back to bite you.
Does IT change the game for the change? IS there a number one solution? What is it? Have I made all of the right choices? Maybe, maybe not.
You know I've worked with IT departments where they did build everything on real standards. Adding some Mac clients for the PR department was not any harder than anything else. The same goes for any other type of client. Some new type of smartphone is a good buy, but isn't made by Microsoft, gee it works just fine too. It's called building a flexible and robust set of services.
But to ask my original question/issue a little more plainly: What are you doing with your Mac that you are not able to do with your XP PC? You indicated it "didn't cut it" and I'm curious how?
Well, having a functional command line that actually integrates with the end user applications is a big plus. Being able to install system services that let me use the same spellchecker, grammar checker, and text manipulation scripts in all my applications is pretty critical to my workflows. Being able to run Adobe Indesign without rebooting twice a day saves time and money, Using OmniGraffle to interoperate with one of our development departments and one of our customers is required. Testing HTML on alternative OS's is required (in fact Safari is more critical than IE to our customers), actually allowing me to smoothly use multiple monitors is pretty critical and actually getting it right when I take a laptop out of hibernate no m
I'm not sure that this is relevant. Worms come from many sources and a great many are obviously not being deployed and exploited by people in Asia. The point is, if you have a Mac you have basically have a negligible chance of being compromised and claims that this is entirely due to market share is, well irrelevant to all the points I made, even if true.
Apple did only two things well with the iPod. The first is they marketed it supernaturally well and got everybody hooked on their cockamamie interface so they didn't want to use anything else.
iPods were the first portable players of this sort that were easily usable one handed. That was a pretty nice innovation. As for marketing, sure they're pretty decent at that, but so is Sony and numerous other market entrants.
Secondly they created the 1.5" hard drive. They weren't the first people to sick a hard drive in an mp3 player, but they were the first to use one that small.
I don't think Apple did make that.
What Apple did was to address the entire user experience with significant usability testing. They addressed having hardware and software and a service that worked together smoothly. I remember very intelligent people installing iTunes just to rip their CD collections because the software that came with the player they had purchased was too hard to use. They were the first manufacturer to offer an integrated music service with DRM that did not get in the average person's way and which allowed them to burn a CD of music purchased online. The main thing they did was concentrate on a subset of features, but polish those usability cases. It worked, even if you don't recognize the work that is involved in that. Go ahead an assume it is all Apple's ability to trick everyone into using a horrible interface with their brilliant marketing.
Can you cite a specific instance of Roughly Drafted posting fabricated documents in the past, or is this just an ad hominem attack? Well, it's easy enough just to got to the root of the site, where anyone who isn't blind might find some sort of bias.
I didn't ask if the site was "biased" as all sites are in some way. I asked if you had evidence that the site has posted fabricated documents in the past as you assert without proof they are doing now. The answer appears to be "no."
But thankfully, Roughly Drafted has included a massive concentrated shrine of an almost dangerous level of Apple fanboism...
I don't care if they are Mac fans or vampires. It has no bearing on whether or not the facts they presented were true or not. Lots of very biased people quote or discover real facts. You can't dismiss those claims as lies without evidence or a history of lies. The spin on the article does not undermine the facts presented, as a history of falsifying data would.
Why the fanatical hatred of Microsoft's ipod competitor?
I don't know, but I also don't know why I should care. Just because they hate MS doesn't mean the program is not happening as reported. If it is made up, well there are plenty of IBM employees here and someone will likely point that out and provide evidence.
At the end we get a screenshot of an internal website of mac users at IBM. A mac user group in a massive organization like IBM? 930 people? Out of 386,000 employees?
How many people are participating in a Website is not important. What is relevant is that the site mentions the program. So if it does not exist than the screenshot must be fabricated. You claim it is, but don't have any evidence to support that, so I don't have any more reason to believe it is fabricated than I did before you commented. I have slightly less reason to find your statements credible since you made a statement was not supported by any such behavior i the past and did not seem to understand the difference between a history of fabricating evidence and a history of being biased.
This whole article and presentation suggests that IBM is planning on adopting macs as their new enterprise workstation platform, but this just isn't indicated as being the case by anyone, much less IBM.
That is not at all what I got from the article. It seemed to me that the point of the article was that IBM has a very, very small program texting Macs on their network and that most of the participants preferred to keep the Macs over their Windows systems.
Poke around the site for a few minutes and it will be come really clear that Roughly Drafted is just some moron running a Microsoft hate blog. Chances are these "documents" are either made up or exaggerated.
Can you cite a specific instance of Roughly Drafted posting fabricated documents in the past, or is this just an ad hominem attack?
Let's stick to numbers and press releases when we start talking about market share and company's official positions on operating systems, not the musings of some apple-phile.
Lets not.
Besides, we know that IBM quite plainly supports linux and unix. They're a top linux contributor:
How does IBM running a pilot program with OS X internally have anything to do with if they contribute to or support Linux?
Chances are much greater they'll be using linux internally more and more as time goes on, not relying on yet another proprietary OS vendor they have no influence over.
Since they're plainly in the process of doing this and since this was pointed out in the roughly drafted article, I don't see that your statement has any point.
They probably use about as many macs internally as microsoft does- and that's not an ironic statement.
They probably use fewer. What does that have to do with this article? It is about IBM testing Macs on their network (very useful for compatibility especially for their clients running mixed environments and possibly a sign of benefits for users of IBM solutions). It also talks about the preference for OS X over Windows by IBM employees. It's not surprising or anything, but that was the point stated, which you seem to have missed.
However, if I had to recommend a non-Windows setup, I would recommend Linux on a ThinkPad.
Recommending Linux makes a lot of sense for IBM, since they're selling it and it is a cost savings. As for the ThinkPad hardware, well independent reviewers tend to have a different opinion.
I see the convenience and reliability of ThinkPad hardware as superior...
Consumer Reports and several other independent testing companies publish regular statistics on hardware reliability. Lenovo ThinkPads have consistently been coming in second to Apple MacBook pros for several years. Someone (from the article) should have checked their facts.
...and the Mac OS is still a proprietary OS that seems to require a Windows license for some tasks anyway.
OS X is a proprietary OS and will cost an OS licensing fee that Linux will not. For the second part, however, whether you're running WINE, Cedega, RDP, or Windows in VMWare, the cost is the same on Linux and OS X. I'd even argue that today, OS X needs Windows for fewer tasks than Linux does. If you're running MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, or any number of other commercial applications, there are native OS X versions that let you bypass the Windows license whereas Linux still has to pay to play. OS X also does better at interoperating with Windows only protocols in many cases.
I do not see enough of an advantage in the Mac OS to be worth the incompatibility issues when collaborating with my colleagues. Me and my T40 running Gentoo feel very smug. Very smug.
Of the hundred or so people I know who switched from Linux on the desktop to OS X, I know one who switched back. There is always a minority opinion though, in fact more of them from this IBM study than I've seen in my work environment. For some use cases (Linux on the desktop development, for example) Linux certainly is a better choice. That said, several parts of this smug opinion are very doubtful, or poorly researched.
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Ahh, but that is a supposition. The motivation is for personal gain. The end result may or may not be the preservation of the species as a whole. For example, many people make choices which benefit them at the expense of our species as a whole. For this reason claiming people act for the benefit of the human species versus acting for their own individual benefit is a very, very different assertion.
Our species' interest is the sum of our individual mutually compatible interests.But our interests are not mutually compatible. Owning and operating an industrial farm might make me a lot of money. At the same time it might consume resources that could otherwise go to feeding a hundred times as many people on grains, people who are currently starving. Claiming that my killing for individual benefit somehow can be translated to my killing being in the best interests of the human race is... well pretty unsupportable.
Actually, Opera and Webkit both do, although not in the production releases just yet. In any case, Acid3 is about testing specific edge cases in javascript. It isn't a standards test so much as a tool for fixing error handling. It is also a damn site different from something MS is trying to get governments to standardize on even though they haven't fully implemented it and there is serious doubt that anyone will be able to do so at all.
You make it seem like it is either or. The EU should for reasons of pure self interest move to ODF for all government use. That aside, the EU should still take action against this as an antitrust abuse as well. Just because the stops using MS's formats doesn't mean they should also give them a pass on breaking the law. They should be forced to comply with providing complete interoperability with competitors or pay fines for refusing to comply. Remember, while the EU government(s) should be preventing themselves from being locked in and avoiding business deals with criminals, they also need to protect other companies from suffering from MS's criminal actions with regard to all the other software contracts in the EU.
I think your assertion is incorrect. PETA themselves euthanize animals and support killing them instead of letting them roam free when they take possession of pets and the like.
My dictionary says:
Vegan, noun a person who does not eat or use animal products : I'm a strict vegan | [as adj. ] a vegan diet.It seems clear to me.
but my experience has been that people who avoid animal products for health or environmental reasons don't tend to label themselves as vegan. Perhaps that's out of touch, though.I certainly know a number who do. In any case, it has entered the english lexicon to mean pretty much what my dictionary says. The reasons for why people do it are varied.
I use veganism to describe the avoidance of animal products based on ethical concerns.It's an understandable difference. I just think you're self identifying with a subset of vegans and your use of the term reflects that. (Maybe approaching no true Scotsman?)
I think that's how the word "vegan" was used in the original context of CmdrTaco's post, too, don't you think?Actually, no. I think he was using the term to apply to vegans in general. The differing motivations of vegans is what makes predicting their responses to such a move questionable. I think he was asking for a consensus from vegans, something which is about as likely to happen as a consensus from Slashdotters. As such, the proper answer to his question should probably list the different, major sub-groupings of vegans and explain which would and would not approve of this. Of course who really wants to read that?
Oh they could be very interesting in a philosophy class.
I know when I was in school we were encouraged to discuss what we thought about scientific theories, including ones which had no proof for them. I do not like the way that this kind of discussion is allowed when discussing computing future (quatumn[sic] and light based computing) but with evolution everything is very closed off.But in science class one should discuss scientific theories. I think it is important to discuss what is and is not a scientific theory in such a class. With quantum computing, one is discussing technology. With quantum theory versus string theory, one can debate the different theories and their support. That should not, however, be the same kind of discussion as evolution and ID, because only the former is a scientific theory. That is to say, the point of discussing such topics should be to show why ID is not a valid scientific theory and as such is not useful for the understanding of likely truth using science.
Personally, I feel ID should be banned from science classrooms because there are too many science teachers out there trying to push their religious beliefs over the field they're supposed to be teaching. Choosing a less controversial comparison of scientific and unscientific theories is more likely to result in accurate teaching.
As for discussion of evolution, there is more of it in the mainstream media than it deserves for rational people. How many articles do you see questioning the theory of gravity in the mainstream press? Within the scientific community I've never seen any rejection of a scientific theory that challenges evolution without any facts. It is just that all the theories that were even remotely probable alternatives were disproved hundreds of years ago and there haven't been any reasonable challenges of late. Seriously, what scientific theories that are alternatives to evolution do you think have not been given their day by the scientific community? I want a real example.
Actually, veganism is simply not using the products of animals (sometimes applied to food and sometimes applied to other products as well). The motivation for this philosophy is often very different ranging from ethical concerns to religious to environmental to dietary. Your position might be that if animals suffer unnecessarily then you are against it, but that is not the position of all vegans and that needs to be understood.
It's amazing to me how such a simple position seems to confuse people.You're oversimplifying. There are multiple reasons for veganism and thus multiple positions on any one topic from among the vegan community. Some are less concerned with animals suffering and more concerned with their own health or with the ramifications of large scale animal farming for the human species (inefficient use of resources leading to starvation).
If you're ethically concerned about the suffering of animals, might I recommend hunting or buying meat from hunters? Wild animals generally have much better quality of life than farm raised animals and at the same time you're helping to reign in the overpopulation problem from which much of the wild animals in the US suffer. I often wish all those people who regard hunting itself as cruelty would spend some time looking at whitetail deer populations that have grown too large and are now slowly dying back by the process of slow and painful diseases due to lack of predation (from humans and the mostly eradicated wild animal predators).
Who are you? Who wants to eat you?
I'm calling up Meatloaf and licensing to clone his tissue. Never underestimate the power of a celebrity to get people to part with their cash.
Aim and fire :)
We kill animals to survive as a species...I disagree. We kill animals for profit and individual survival. No one shoots a deer to save the human race. No one slaughters chickens because they're interested in preserving our species. We kill for individual benefit more than that of our species.
...we don't kill each other for that same purpose.We do kill each other for personal profit and personal survival. We also kill both humans and animals for a wide variety of other reasons ranging from entertainment to trying to better society.
Some people consider torturing animals to be entertainment and a purpose in and of itself.
Yes, perhaps it's in some ways distasteful, but - being omnivores - it's also part of our natural biological process.I always find this an interesting argument. Since when has "natural process" equated to "acceptable"? Malaria is a natural, biological process.
You can't compare murdering somebody to the consumption of a food animal.Sure I can. In both cases it is taking a life. The relative "value" of the life and acceptability of the purpose is a matter of debate.
It's not the same thing.In some ways it is and in some it isn't. It is all a matter of perspective.
And before you get into the "would killing be OK if we eat each other," that's also a no...Umm great? You can say something is okay or not, but that isn't really anything other than an opinion.
...most mammals don't eat their own species eitherA lot of mammals do actually. I'm not sure the percentage, but again I'm not sure what your point is.
A debate is not an argument. The purpose of a debate is to find common ground such that a fundamental disagreement can be understood in its entirety. Few people would argue killing is always wrong (especially in the case of vegetables or invading microorganisms). We must, then, understand what forms of killing people find unacceptable and why... at the most basic level. This topic has been discussed at length by some brilliant thinkers over the years and a good start is reading what they came up with.
For me, I have no objection to killing or eating animals or plants. I do, however, place value on those lives and take personal responsibility for my part in their deaths. I find many reasons to kill insufficient to overcome the value I place on life and would not, personally, kill an animal simply for entertainment. I will kill for food (plants and animals). I prefer to minimize suffering and kill humanely.
The advent of "meat vats" is something I've anticipated for quite a while. I think many people are incorrect about how they will work (likely more like printers than vats). I think many people are incorrect about their implications for society. If I had the option of buying such meat today, I might do so, especially if it was economical. I would not, however, stop killing animals for meat. Replacing meat from industrial farms with "vat grown" meat is something I find ethical. Leaving wild animals to a very broken cycle of overpopulation followed by starvation and rampant disease, seems very unethical to me, especially since it is largely a man-made phenomenon resulting from eradication of large predators, construction that is not compatible with wild animals in the area, and other manmade changes to the environment.
I applaud PETA for this move to create an economic incentive to end industrial animal farming as it now exists. At the same time, I'm not going to stop thinning some of the overpopulated herds of animals, even when I have to bury the corpse because it is so diseased as a result of man made overpopulation problems.
Most American supporters of ID don't read the bible, or for that matter agree with or know the official position of their church. The problem is "superstar" preachers who make money from controversy and the appearance of persecution, and the wealth they have generated which they've used to buy their way into the highest levels of the US government and pay for huge media campaigns to try to miseducate people.
Lots of people seriously believed the earth was flat. And it isn't brought up as proof that the bible is useful for proving anything. It is brought up because it is evidence that what is written in the bible can be objectively proved to not be true, so any claim that the bible cannot present incorrect facts is disproved.
In the second place, the Biblical case against homosexuality is a lot more than "out-of-context Leviticus quotes." The Bible consistently rejects homosexuality, in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.That is a matter for biblical scholars, but again is misses the point. Just because something is in the Bible doesn't make it true. There are lots of things in the Bible. Some we know were added and subtracted to the popular versions of the bible while there are other, well documented, translation errors. There are also things in almost every version of the bible, that are factually incorrect, ergo, claiming something as truth because it is in the bible is irrational. Claiming evolution is untrue because some interpretation of the bible may not agree with it is likewise irrational. You need better evidence if you're trying to follow the scientific method.
Actually if you watch the film Stein does not necessarily believe in ID.
But he does believe in ID, as he has stated in the past.
He simple is wondering why so many scientists are so religious about evolution.
I disagree. He isn't wondering anything. He's intentionally trying to try to instill doubt by misapplying and intentionally misrepresenting the scientific method and consensus of professional scientists. He's also trying to make money.
He is posing questions like, Why do we teach kids the difference between laws, and theory and then act like evolution is a law?
Yeah, except he doesn't define what "acting like it is a law" means. The theory of gravity is not a law. Nonetheless, very rarely do we see articles questioning whether or not it is holding us on the planet submitted to peer reviewed journals or taken seriously by the media. The theory of gravity and the theory of evolution are on par. They both have mountains of support, have been refined over many years, have entire, very productive, branches of science founded upon their principals, and have long since crossed the threshold of reasonable doubt for the scientific community as a whole. The only reason evolution is a topic at all is because a small subset of religious "leaders" have been trying to use it to make people feel oppressed as a way to manipulate those people.
Evolution is really good at explaining how butterflies change color overtime, it does not explain how you get from paramecium to human...
Who says we did go from a paramecium to a human? Evolution simply states a method by which species change over time to adapt to their environments. Claiming a particular evolutionary route for a specific species is a different theory, albeit one predicated upon evolution.
does that not leave room for some alternate theories?
There is always room for alternative theories. All the theories presented so far, however, have not been supported by the data collected. ID doesn't even get that far. It isn't a testable theory and is scientifically nothing.
All Stein is doing is asking scientists to act like it.
I strongly disagree. Stein doesn't present any alternative theories. What action would he have scientists take to make them more accurately follow the scientific method? No, Stein is simply trying to create doubt in the minds of people, by implying impropriety and bias, while presenting no evidence of that.
They should acknowledge the weak spots in any theory and look to finding the explanations.
I once read a quote about evolution and gravity. A microorganism had been seen evolving to deal with a stress as part of a study. A person asked "doesn't this provide more support for the theory of evolution?" The reply was, "yeah, sort of the way when a metallurgist makes a new alloy and it doesn't go whizzing off the planet it provides more evidence for the theory of gravity." Frankly, while there is question about the details of how both gravity and evolution work in particular cases, providing an alternative to either of them would require the most extraordinary quantity of support. No such theory and support has been presented and ID does not even present an alternative, testable, hypothesis, let alone any evidence to support it. For that matter ID doesn't even falsify evolution were it somehow proven to be true.
He is simply saying don't close the books until all the facts are in. There is nothing wrong with that its good science.
No. He's trying to mischaracterize ID as science and place doubt in the minds of people as to how science works. He's trying to capitalize on a hot button issue by presenting a clever bit of rhetoric to try to make it seem as though evolution is not observed and used as the basis for working science every day. He's trying to provide a crutch for people who
Pastararianism does not contradict evolution, it just suggests an invisible plate of magical pasta is secretly controlling the process in a way that cannot be detected. (Note it did not design evolution, it just secretly took over the already occurring process.) Since there is no scientific evidence to disprove this so I see no reason why it couldn't be taught as a theory in a classroom.
The mega-block meat sacrifice principal suggests that if enough people do not spend their days encasing chunks of meat in Lego blocks while counting from one to seventeen over and over agin for the 1,000 year period from 1994-2994, then evolution will reverse itself. There is no evidence to prove this is not the case, so I see no reason why it cannot be taught in the classroom.
Since intelligent design and Pastafarianism and the mega-block meat principal are on the same scientific standing, there is no reason all three cannot be taught in classrooms. you don't mind if we spend your tax dollars and waste your kids time doing so do you?
If you had a job or tried to get a job as a writer of short stories, but handed a publication, or university, or publishing agent a blank book and told them you had sung a great tale at it... what do you think would happen? They'd tell you to get lost, not because they're anti-singing, but because they're looking to pay people for writings.
Real scientists aren't rejecting studies or papers promoting so-called intelligent design because they are against writing random stuff, but because it is not science. You have to start with a testable hypothesis and then you need to test it. If you haven't done that, you shouldn't even get to the peer review stage of science. They're not saying what the people have done is wrong, just as they may not think consulting a tarot card reader is wrong. It just isn't science.
Acting like that is just childish.What they're doing is following a formal method that makes personal bias fairly irrelevant. It isn't childish, it is their job.
If Darwin was right, then you have nothing to lose by carefully writing a counter paper, countering the evidence.There have been thousands of scientific articles debunking such "evidence" over the years. Why would scientists waste their time trying to show people for the hundredth time where they failed to follow the scientific method, something every educated person on the planet should already be able to tell them. If advocates of intelligent design or people who dislike the theory of evolution want to participate in science they are welcome. If they want to pretend to be participating in science while actually just producing rhetoric, they will be deservedly ignored by scientific publications and refused jobs as scientists. It's a level playing field, but creationism has lost over and over and over again on that playing field, so now creationists are trying to avoid the playing field, while arguing that they really are there, and how it is unfair for their "goals" to not count, just because they made them in a goal they themselves built somewhere else entirely.
I guess it depends. A scientist is a person who applies the scientific method. If someone is not being objective, then they aren't following the scientific method, ergo they are not scientist.
Sure people are biased, including people who understand and apply the scientific method to other things. The real problem here is that people place credibility in job titles and educational certificates because our system has failed to educate them about the scientific method, how it works, why it works, and how to apply it to find the most likely truth, regardless of who is presenting data.
I'd argue that what we have here is not a problem with science, but that most people are not scientists when it comes to looking at the information presented by people, whoever is paying their salary.
Well for one, you don't need separate OS's to do your development and office tasks. Upgrading to new hardware is faster and better. You can use system services to make both your office tasks and dev tasks easier. Sure it won't make you type you e-mail any faster but it will let you use the same spelling checker dictionary in both your e-mail and word processor (and everything else you want) so you don't have to train each one that MPLS is not a misspelling. You can likewise seamlessly use your grammar checker in everything, language translation plug-ins etc. In short, it doesn't really let you do many fundamentally new tasks. It just makes tasks easier and often faster and makes some tasks that are inconvenient (some so inconvenient you just don't do them) easier.
I know, literally, hundreds of Linux developers that use OS X as their desktop these days, because they have a choice and tried both.
It would probably be expensive to switch over all of the infrastructure and support.It certainly can be, depending upon what type of infrastructure and support is provided. Still, OS X is plug and play with most Windows services these days and most of the major apps have native versions. If you're already supporting a mixed environment of Linux and Windows and have picked standards that work on both instead of MS only stuff, well it is usually easier and cheaper to support than Windows.
Your understanding of the anti-trust case can't be very great if you claim such an open and shut case was bullshit. Maybe you should actually read the antitrust laws, or even a short explanation of them such as wikipedia or any economics textbook has.
In any case, the lock-in actions which are obviously illegal are any which leverage an existing monopoly into a new market, or lock a user into a monopolized product through intentional un-interoperability. For example, MS's closed protocols with which their desktop and server products communicated were clearly illegal and a lock-in strategy in that once users deployed them they were restricted from using those same protocols completely with other products... by design. (It is hard to argue MS duplicating the LDAP protocol almost exactly, but with several differences that provided no advantage to the protocol itself was "accidental.")
Yes, MS started giving their browser away and that really hurt Netscape, but it's Netscape's fault that they couldn't come up with another source of revenue.Bundling is the very first form of tying described in US antitrust law (as an example of illegal action). Netscape not being able to come up with a way to survive the crime against them speaks not at all to whether or not it was a crime.
Their server and portal products sucked.That's a fine opinion. You can even say their browser sucked. That's fine too. It also has nothing to do with whether or not MS's actions were illegal. The point of antitrust law is to let the capitalist free market determine which product sucks... something which did not happen.
The only anti-trust argument I can think of that is really legit is the way MS altered Windows 3.1 to make it incompatible with DR-DOS.So you claim to have an understanding of antitrust law... but your understanding differs from that of the the US, EU, and numerous other courts? Did you ever think maybe your understanding isn't quite as good as you seem to think it is?
Sigh, why do I even bother replying? I'll tell you what. Educate yourself enough to know what markets are as defined by antitrust law and several examples of bundling. Also, gain an understanding of why antitrust laws exist in terms of economics and history. Finally, come back to Slashdot and make some informed arguments and I'll be happy to discuss the subject with you in depth.
If, however, the market is already dominated by one OS, then you have to assume most users will be moving from that OS. When the same use cases still have poor usability on Ubuntu compared to Windows, then you'll see a lot of people having problems with, often before they even discover use cases where it might be more usable. and, in fact, that is what a number of users were saying about their attempt to switch. They pointed out these specific use cases and I agreed that they were problems and should be dealt with, only to be greeted with dozens of rabid Linux fans, who took offense saying installing applications on Ubuntu is easier and better, ignoring the specific items that were mentioned.
Ubuntu is usable by mainstream users in practice today.Ubuntu is usable for some users, while others find themselves unable to perform the tasks. It is usable for novice users. It is usable for power users. For people in the middle, they do find themselves unable to do things they could do on Windows and that is an ongoing issue.
It still has places to improve, and identifying those places and submitting well thought out feature suggestions is helpful.I've tried. I've worked as a professional writer, so I'm pretty good at explaining things. I've worked as a UI designer and usability tester, so I'm pretty well grounded in usability issues. The majority of the time, developers are not interested or claim the usability problem does not really exist or those use cases (running closed source software for example) should be not be a task users want to accomplish. Worse yet, a lot of new users ask questions or complain about these in forums and are flamed by overly defensive Linux users tot he point that people don't want to have anything to do with Linux.
I have addressed usability with bug reports and feature requests. I'm also trying to address it and the social problems that exacerbate it with discussion with users, like you for example. Unless vocal users are aware of real usability issues and willing to admit those problems, it does more to dissuade people from using Linux on the desktop than the problems themselves in many cases.
Maybe NFS would have been a better choice, but I'm not going to apologize for making that decision.
You're the one complaining about the limitations of that choice.
And there are Mac clients for various virus and spam blocking systems.
Who claimed otherwise?
There is no reason to purchase Parallels and Mac/AD integration tools so someone can run email and Powerpoint on a differnt OS.
The AD issue would be your poor choice of MS's closed and intentionally incompatible clone of LDAP instead of, well LDAP. As for Powerpoint, you know MS makes MS Office for OS X right? Or you could use any one of a dozen alternative presentation packages.
Those work pretty well on a PC with Windows.
So you're claiming a broken version of LDAP designed to ony work with Windows, only works with Windows? And you're complaining that you don't know how to install MS Office on a Mac?
Bringing a Mac or Linux flavor into the mix does not improve the situation, it only adds more administrative overhead.
It only adds overhead if you chose to build your infrastructure exclusively with products from one vendor, designed to lock you into that vendor. Don't blame others that your poor choice is now making more work for you.
There are already soutions in place for the users to do the number one thing the network does in a company; provide access to and redundancy of data.
And you again ignored everything but Windows when you chose those and now wish that had been a good choice. This seems somewhat familiar.
Choice is a great option where users will manage their own issues. But that does not happen at most companies. IT is relied on to tie together the disparate elements of communication and reliability, and sometimes that means standardization.
I believe you problem is you don't understand the difference between a standard, and just buying everything from one vendor. A standard is LDAP, which can be and is implemented by many different vendors. Building your directory service on top of it means you can be fairly sure no matter who you buy other components from, they'll be able to work with it. Choosing a proprietary alternative that is an intentionally broken version of LDAP designed to only work with Windows. You ignored the fact that you were being locked in and assumed that would never come back to bite you.
Does IT change the game for the change? IS there a number one solution? What is it? Have I made all of the right choices? Maybe, maybe not.
You know I've worked with IT departments where they did build everything on real standards. Adding some Mac clients for the PR department was not any harder than anything else. The same goes for any other type of client. Some new type of smartphone is a good buy, but isn't made by Microsoft, gee it works just fine too. It's called building a flexible and robust set of services.
But to ask my original question/issue a little more plainly: What are you doing with your Mac that you are not able to do with your XP PC? You indicated it "didn't cut it" and I'm curious how?
Well, having a functional command line that actually integrates with the end user applications is a big plus. Being able to install system services that let me use the same spellchecker, grammar checker, and text manipulation scripts in all my applications is pretty critical to my workflows. Being able to run Adobe Indesign without rebooting twice a day saves time and money, Using OmniGraffle to interoperate with one of our development departments and one of our customers is required. Testing HTML on alternative OS's is required (in fact Safari is more critical than IE to our customers), actually allowing me to smoothly use multiple monitors is pretty critical and actually getting it right when I take a laptop out of hibernate no m
I'm not sure that this is relevant. Worms come from many sources and a great many are obviously not being deployed and exploited by people in Asia. The point is, if you have a Mac you have basically have a negligible chance of being compromised and claims that this is entirely due to market share is, well irrelevant to all the points I made, even if true.
Apple did only two things well with the iPod. The first is they marketed it supernaturally well and got everybody hooked on their cockamamie interface so they didn't want to use anything else.iPods were the first portable players of this sort that were easily usable one handed. That was a pretty nice innovation. As for marketing, sure they're pretty decent at that, but so is Sony and numerous other market entrants.
Secondly they created the 1.5" hard drive. They weren't the first people to sick a hard drive in an mp3 player, but they were the first to use one that small.I don't think Apple did make that.
What Apple did was to address the entire user experience with significant usability testing. They addressed having hardware and software and a service that worked together smoothly. I remember very intelligent people installing iTunes just to rip their CD collections because the software that came with the player they had purchased was too hard to use. They were the first manufacturer to offer an integrated music service with DRM that did not get in the average person's way and which allowed them to burn a CD of music purchased online. The main thing they did was concentrate on a subset of features, but polish those usability cases. It worked, even if you don't recognize the work that is involved in that. Go ahead an assume it is all Apple's ability to trick everyone into using a horrible interface with their brilliant marketing.
I didn't ask if the site was "biased" as all sites are in some way. I asked if you had evidence that the site has posted fabricated documents in the past as you assert without proof they are doing now. The answer appears to be "no."
But thankfully, Roughly Drafted has included a massive concentrated shrine of an almost dangerous level of Apple fanboism...I don't care if they are Mac fans or vampires. It has no bearing on whether or not the facts they presented were true or not. Lots of very biased people quote or discover real facts. You can't dismiss those claims as lies without evidence or a history of lies. The spin on the article does not undermine the facts presented, as a history of falsifying data would.
Why the fanatical hatred of Microsoft's ipod competitor?I don't know, but I also don't know why I should care. Just because they hate MS doesn't mean the program is not happening as reported. If it is made up, well there are plenty of IBM employees here and someone will likely point that out and provide evidence.
At the end we get a screenshot of an internal website of mac users at IBM. A mac user group in a massive organization like IBM? 930 people? Out of 386,000 employees?How many people are participating in a Website is not important. What is relevant is that the site mentions the program. So if it does not exist than the screenshot must be fabricated. You claim it is, but don't have any evidence to support that, so I don't have any more reason to believe it is fabricated than I did before you commented. I have slightly less reason to find your statements credible since you made a statement was not supported by any such behavior i the past and did not seem to understand the difference between a history of fabricating evidence and a history of being biased.
This whole article and presentation suggests that IBM is planning on adopting macs as their new enterprise workstation platform, but this just isn't indicated as being the case by anyone, much less IBM.That is not at all what I got from the article. It seemed to me that the point of the article was that IBM has a very, very small program texting Macs on their network and that most of the participants preferred to keep the Macs over their Windows systems.
Can you cite a specific instance of Roughly Drafted posting fabricated documents in the past, or is this just an ad hominem attack?
Let's stick to numbers and press releases when we start talking about market share and company's official positions on operating systems, not the musings of some apple-phile.Lets not.
Besides, we know that IBM quite plainly supports linux and unix. They're a top linux contributor:How does IBM running a pilot program with OS X internally have anything to do with if they contribute to or support Linux?
Chances are much greater they'll be using linux internally more and more as time goes on, not relying on yet another proprietary OS vendor they have no influence over.Since they're plainly in the process of doing this and since this was pointed out in the roughly drafted article, I don't see that your statement has any point.
They probably use about as many macs internally as microsoft does- and that's not an ironic statement.They probably use fewer. What does that have to do with this article? It is about IBM testing Macs on their network (very useful for compatibility especially for their clients running mixed environments and possibly a sign of benefits for users of IBM solutions). It also talks about the preference for OS X over Windows by IBM employees. It's not surprising or anything, but that was the point stated, which you seem to have missed.
Recommending Linux makes a lot of sense for IBM, since they're selling it and it is a cost savings. As for the ThinkPad hardware, well independent reviewers tend to have a different opinion.
I see the convenience and reliability of ThinkPad hardware as superior...Consumer Reports and several other independent testing companies publish regular statistics on hardware reliability. Lenovo ThinkPads have consistently been coming in second to Apple MacBook pros for several years. Someone (from the article) should have checked their facts.
...and the Mac OS is still a proprietary OS that seems to require a Windows license for some tasks anyway.OS X is a proprietary OS and will cost an OS licensing fee that Linux will not. For the second part, however, whether you're running WINE, Cedega, RDP, or Windows in VMWare, the cost is the same on Linux and OS X. I'd even argue that today, OS X needs Windows for fewer tasks than Linux does. If you're running MS Office, Adobe Photoshop, or any number of other commercial applications, there are native OS X versions that let you bypass the Windows license whereas Linux still has to pay to play. OS X also does better at interoperating with Windows only protocols in many cases.
I do not see enough of an advantage in the Mac OS to be worth the incompatibility issues when collaborating with my colleagues. Me and my T40 running Gentoo feel very smug. Very smug.Of the hundred or so people I know who switched from Linux on the desktop to OS X, I know one who switched back. There is always a minority opinion though, in fact more of them from this IBM study than I've seen in my work environment. For some use cases (Linux on the desktop development, for example) Linux certainly is a better choice. That said, several parts of this smug opinion are very doubtful, or poorly researched.