The only question should be how was he doing his job.
Not strictly. There are things besides your job that matter. You can be great at your job, but if you are worst asshole this side of Kansas to everyone during your breaks, that can be sufficient reason to fire you. Because work is also a social environment and everyone else there also has rights.
Nature begs to differ. So your claim is equivalent to saying that your god is a non-natural entity. Consistent in itself as super-natural is a kind of non-natural.
Similarly you can ask if an omnipotent God can create a rock so heavy that he cannot himself lift it.
I agree these simple thought-experiments don't do something that big justice. As soon as you think of gravity as the force of interaction on a cosmis scale, between planets, suns and galaxies, the term "lift" becomes meaningless.
However, that only applies if you take the thought-experiment literal. The principle behind it remains the same. You could apply it to omniscience: Can god create a box with contents unknown even to him? If he can, he's not omniscient. If he can't, he's not omnipotent. But again, you can claim that we are simply too stupid to understand the complex realities of omni-something.
Conversely you could ask what existed before the beginning of time, or where did all mass in the universe come from originally, or what exists beyond the boundary of finite space. Ultimately, you realize that these are utterly unanswerable questions.
Actually, no. Science is busy answering them. Just because we don't yet have the answers doesn't mean they are in principle unanswerable. We already have a pretty good idea of what the answer is going to be like.
Any answer we accept is one of faith
And this is where you go off the deep end. No it isn't. Please try to wrap your head around the fact that science thinks differently than religion does. It is not merely a different form of religion - as false taught in theology classes - but a different approach to the thinking process.
I think most intellectuals who believe in God hide their beliefs out of fear and shame that they will be judged and ostracized for that belief.
And rightfully so.
I would assume that intellectuals would easily spot the logical fallacy that judging a belief solely on the merits of the stupidest people who believe in it doesn't hold water.
Speaking only for myself: I don't care who does or doesn't believe in whatever bullshit. The fact that it is bullshit is what determines my judgement.
And yes, people who claim to be intelligent and at the same time claim to believe in stuff that an intelligent being should see as thoroughly debunked should face the ridicule that is proper for this dissonant views.
There seems to be a fairly widespread ant-Google campaign going on, and the prevalence of it versus anything they've actually done lately seems extremely out of balance
Thank you for saying it.
I've grown wary of Google, but so far I have not yet seen a reason to actually distrust them. For MS, on the other hand, I can't find a reason not to.
a Win8 tablet can run Office when you need to 'get real work done'.
Very little real work gets done using Office. What you mean to say is "busywork for the managers so they can appear to be doing something else than going to meetings". Which, unfortunately, is the long-term damage Office has done to our work environments. Managers ought to be in meetings, managing is their job, not doing secretary work (and most still need a secretary to fix their documents for them anyways, when having it created by the secretary in the first place would've been just as quick).
Managers love tablets because they can now spend twice the time doing half the work, and everyone can see them doing it in the meeting rooms, on the elevator, etc. etc. It's not a coincidence that most companies that introduced iPads did so for the managers and not for the people who really could've used a highly mobile device that is better at output than at input (sales people, some technical people, etc.)
Win8 will be a success with this class of users for the same reasons - the UI makes you seem busy. Unfortunately, these guys make the buying decisions for everyone else as well.
I fully expect many companies to pass up Win7 and go to Win8 as their next windows version.
I travel a lot, all over Europe, North America and Asia, and I've come to realize that tablets are basically a myth.
Travel using some other method than the bike and your opinion will change.;-)
Yes, lots of people use smartphones. Tablet's aren't everywhere, and lots of people seem to keep them at home - I know a lot of people who own an iPad, but never have it with them when I meet them. I myself only carry mine when I expect to use it. The phone, however, is something you pretty much have with you wherever you go. That's why it's no surprise you see more people using smartphones than tablets.
Microsoft will survive because no matter how much they screw up, the competition can't really take their place.
It already is. The competition (for a large group of users) is called iPad and Android tablets.
A lot of users who own or know these will face the epic fail that Win8 is going to be in a different way than before. When confronted with Vista, or WinME, etc. they basically had to suck it up and they rarely even knew that alternatives existed. Now they look at the Metro screen, and then look to their iPad, and many of them will be able to say "fuck this, I'm returning this new PC and do my stuff with my tablet".
We need to go back to software developers creating UIs.
I agree with everything else you said, especially the Firefox UI has become worse with every release and I find myself looking for alternative browsers - and that's from someone who was using Firefox long before it was called that.
However, please don't allow developers to create UIs.
Put real UI designers to that task. Unfortunately, they are a bit of a scarce resource.
I hate to say this--but this concept of 'Apps' that everybody is latching on to--it is a huge pile of steaming buzzword.
Depends which world you come from.
When I migrated from Linux (with windows at work) to OS X (with windows at work), I was pleasantly surprised at their Application concept - everything neatly packed into exactly one directory, uninstalling an application means deleting it, done. Compared to both windows and Linux, where apps shit all over the place whenever you install them (though on Linux you have working package management that makes uninstall painless), that is 90% of the "App" concept right there.
It doesn't mean various Apps can't talk to each other and interact. Even on iOS you have tools like TextExpander.
Basically, an "App" is just the marketing term for what we've been calling a "package" in the Linux world for 10+ years.
It's the way MS treats its users. The main difference between MS (who couldn't get rid of the "Start" menu for close to 15 years even though their final user testing prior to launching windows 95 revealed that it was a horrible, broken idea) and Apple (who can seemingly come up with a new paradigm for the iPhone/iPad and have it accepted) is in how they think.
MS thinks like developers. So when they have an idea they like, they force it on the users. And if the users don't accept it, they force it some more.
Apple thinks like designers. If they have an idea, they test it out and refine it until the users love it.
And that's why this would have worked if the one Steve had come up with the idea, but it'll be an epic fail in the hands of the other Steve.
Only if you'd make it clear that you made up your own term that coincidentally is exactly the same as a common term that actually does have a defined meaning.
"PC era" does not have a defined meaning. Maybe it will, sometime in the future. But right now, it's an empty term.
We are past the era of trains; that is, the era that was defined by the emergence and transformative nature of the train.
That is exactly what I am saying. There is a difference between "past the era-of-trains" and "in the past-trains era".
Among other things, eras are not commonly defined by what they have left behind, but whatever the new thing that defines them is.
Then maybe you should stop twisting it, just so you can ride your own little linguistic hobby horse.
Considering the huge amounts of money Microsoft has thrown at its Xbox division, one could basically say they've purchased that market position.
Not just basically. They have. With this amount of investment, you would have to fuck up very, very badly to not get a good market position in pretty much any market.
marketing bullshit dressed up as wisdom. If he would be saying it in plain and simple words, everyone would immediately spot it as the trivial observation it is. He wouldn't get headlines if he would state "People now have devices besides the PC to do some tasks with that formerly only PCs could do." - well, duh. Every 6 year old knows that.
But putting a nice trolling spin on it, and boom - your name in the headlines.
We are in a Post-Train age. That doesn't mean that we don't have any trains,
Actually, that would be exactly what it would mean if you were using the term correctly.
We are after the "age of steam", yes. But we are not "behind trains". Being "post the X era" is not the same as being in the "post X era". It becomes obvious when you look for where the conglomerates are. being "post... the-X-era" means that the X era has passed. That's a true statement if you entered a new era, since for some reason our mental model thinks we are only in one era at a time, so entering one means leaving the other. but being in the "post-X...era" means that X is post. Our mental model allows us to have more than one X in our world. We definitely are in a post hunting-and-gathering era in the western world, as that lifestyle has all but disappeared. But trains haven't, and neither have PCs, and neither is likely to do so within the next few generations, much less years.
Yes, I'm someone who watches language carefully. Language is meaning. You can't think without language. You can feel, but not think. Try having a thought that doesn't use words. Twisting words is twisting meaning. Orwell was very right in that.
There's so much nonsense there that doesn't have any actual content, it's all about semantics misunderstood.
"Post" implies that something has passed. Since PCs are still around, we're not in a "post-PC" era. It really is that simple. Don't let marketing speech and idiots looking for a soundbite mess with our language.
What these people are really meaning is that we are in an era where the PC is not the only computing option available anymore. But the invention of the automobile did not push us into a "post train era", because the two are not two things for doing the same thing. Trains are still around, even though we have other transport available.
PCs are likely to stay around, because mobile phones, tablets, embedded computers, etc. etc. all have their own niche and while some things that were only possible on a PC until recently are now possible on other devices as well, it's nonsense to talk about "post-PC". That's just a term some fucker came up looking for a headline that would stir people up and catch their interest. On the Internet we call these people trolls.
MS is worried and vocal about the whole thing because their ecosystem relies on the PC, and they missed the train (again). Apple never worried about which era they were in, they simply created something that people wanted. Maybe MS could try that approach for a change, build something that people really want, instead of building things they think are cool and then trying to force everyone to use it whether they want to or not.
PIR is a US-based organization, making everything they do inside US jurisdiction.
Actually the best point that was made in this discussion so far.
The problem is, of course, that every registrar will always need to have some kind of organisation, and thus some kind of physical location within the jurisdiction of some country.
Does that put everything they do under the jurisdiction of that country? That is not automatically a given, as we have many forms of international organisations where that isn't true. Extraterritorial rights are a lot more common than most people think, and not limited to embassies.
If you want to make your own.com and run it on your own little island, go right ahead, and others are free to join you.
You are missing the point.
This isn't a game of "who can build the bigger sand-castle". It's a game of building one together, as the generic TLDs are shared world-wide. Anyone coming in to claim ownership is an anti-social asshole, simple as that.
I'm very, very certain if anyone else in the world would try that stunt, Americans would be hurling every insult they can come up with his way.
You are agreeing to listen to our DNS information,
See, that's where your mistake is. You think it is "your" DNS information. It isn't. Why do you think it is?
If they were selected the same way as they were at my last company ("the top 50 managers"), they already weren't doing much actual work anyways. The dirty secret of big business is that management spends a lot of its time and other resources on political infighting.
Slashdot Mirror
The only question should be how was he doing his job.
Not strictly. There are things besides your job that matter. You can be great at your job, but if you are worst asshole this side of Kansas to everyone during your breaks, that can be sufficient reason to fire you. Because work is also a social environment and everyone else there also has rights.
I don't think complexity is at all relevant.
Nature begs to differ. So your claim is equivalent to saying that your god is a non-natural entity. Consistent in itself as super-natural is a kind of non-natural.
Similarly you can ask if an omnipotent God can create a rock so heavy that he cannot himself lift it.
I agree these simple thought-experiments don't do something that big justice. As soon as you think of gravity as the force of interaction on a cosmis scale, between planets, suns and galaxies, the term "lift" becomes meaningless.
However, that only applies if you take the thought-experiment literal. The principle behind it remains the same. You could apply it to omniscience: Can god create a box with contents unknown even to him? If he can, he's not omniscient. If he can't, he's not omnipotent. But again, you can claim that we are simply too stupid to understand the complex realities of omni-something.
Conversely you could ask what existed before the beginning of time, or where did all mass in the universe come from originally, or what exists beyond the boundary of finite space. Ultimately, you realize that these are utterly unanswerable questions.
Actually, no. Science is busy answering them. Just because we don't yet have the answers doesn't mean they are in principle unanswerable. We already have a pretty good idea of what the answer is going to be like.
Any answer we accept is one of faith
And this is where you go off the deep end. No it isn't. Please try to wrap your head around the fact that science thinks differently than religion does. It is not merely a different form of religion - as false taught in theology classes - but a different approach to the thinking process.
I think most intellectuals who believe in God hide their beliefs out of fear and shame that they will be judged and ostracized for that belief.
And rightfully so.
I would assume that intellectuals would easily spot the logical fallacy that judging a belief solely on the merits of the stupidest people who believe in it doesn't hold water.
Speaking only for myself: I don't care who does or doesn't believe in whatever bullshit. The fact that it is bullshit is what determines my judgement.
And yes, people who claim to be intelligent and at the same time claim to believe in stuff that an intelligent being should see as thoroughly debunked should face the ridicule that is proper for this dissonant views.
Thanks.
There seems to be a fairly widespread ant-Google campaign going on, and the prevalence of it versus anything they've actually done lately seems extremely out of balance
Thank you for saying it.
I've grown wary of Google, but so far I have not yet seen a reason to actually distrust them. For MS, on the other hand, I can't find a reason not to.
Source ?
Not because I doubt it happened, but because I'd like to know the details.
a Win8 tablet can run Office when you need to 'get real work done'.
Very little real work gets done using Office. What you mean to say is "busywork for the managers so they can appear to be doing something else than going to meetings". Which, unfortunately, is the long-term damage Office has done to our work environments. Managers ought to be in meetings, managing is their job, not doing secretary work (and most still need a secretary to fix their documents for them anyways, when having it created by the secretary in the first place would've been just as quick).
Managers love tablets because they can now spend twice the time doing half the work, and everyone can see them doing it in the meeting rooms, on the elevator, etc. etc. It's not a coincidence that most companies that introduced iPads did so for the managers and not for the people who really could've used a highly mobile device that is better at output than at input (sales people, some technical people, etc.)
Win8 will be a success with this class of users for the same reasons - the UI makes you seem busy. Unfortunately, these guys make the buying decisions for everyone else as well.
I fully expect many companies to pass up Win7 and go to Win8 as their next windows version.
I travel a lot, all over Europe, North America and Asia, and I've come to realize that tablets are basically a myth.
Travel using some other method than the bike and your opinion will change. ;-)
Yes, lots of people use smartphones. Tablet's aren't everywhere, and lots of people seem to keep them at home - I know a lot of people who own an iPad, but never have it with them when I meet them. I myself only carry mine when I expect to use it.
The phone, however, is something you pretty much have with you wherever you go. That's why it's no surprise you see more people using smartphones than tablets.
Microsoft will survive because no matter how much they screw up, the competition can't really take their place.
It already is. The competition (for a large group of users) is called iPad and Android tablets.
A lot of users who own or know these will face the epic fail that Win8 is going to be in a different way than before. When confronted with Vista, or WinME, etc. they basically had to suck it up and they rarely even knew that alternatives existed.
Now they look at the Metro screen, and then look to their iPad, and many of them will be able to say "fuck this, I'm returning this new PC and do my stuff with my tablet".
We need to go back to software developers creating UIs.
I agree with everything else you said, especially the Firefox UI has become worse with every release and I find myself looking for alternative browsers - and that's from someone who was using Firefox long before it was called that.
However, please don't allow developers to create UIs.
Put real UI designers to that task. Unfortunately, they are a bit of a scarce resource.
I hate to say this--but this concept of 'Apps' that everybody is latching on to--it is a huge pile of steaming buzzword.
Depends which world you come from.
When I migrated from Linux (with windows at work) to OS X (with windows at work), I was pleasantly surprised at their Application concept - everything neatly packed into exactly one directory, uninstalling an application means deleting it, done.
Compared to both windows and Linux, where apps shit all over the place whenever you install them (though on Linux you have working package management that makes uninstall painless), that is 90% of the "App" concept right there.
It doesn't mean various Apps can't talk to each other and interact. Even on iOS you have tools like TextExpander.
Basically, an "App" is just the marketing term for what we've been calling a "package" in the Linux world for 10+ years.
It's not the UI.
It's the way MS treats its users. The main difference between MS (who couldn't get rid of the "Start" menu for close to 15 years even though their final user testing prior to launching windows 95 revealed that it was a horrible, broken idea) and Apple (who can seemingly come up with a new paradigm for the iPhone/iPad and have it accepted) is in how they think.
MS thinks like developers. So when they have an idea they like, they force it on the users. And if the users don't accept it, they force it some more.
Apple thinks like designers. If they have an idea, they test it out and refine it until the users love it.
And that's why this would have worked if the one Steve had come up with the idea, but it'll be an epic fail in the hands of the other Steve.
Get an engine. I personally use Unity 3D, and there's a free version of that available.
In this day and age, only the insane and the bleeding-edge write everything from scratch.
I could say we are still in the stone age
Only if you'd make it clear that you made up your own term that coincidentally is exactly the same as a common term that actually does have a defined meaning.
"PC era" does not have a defined meaning. Maybe it will, sometime in the future. But right now, it's an empty term.
We are past the era of trains; that is, the era that was defined by the emergence and transformative nature of the train.
That is exactly what I am saying. There is a difference between "past the era-of-trains" and "in the past-trains era".
Among other things, eras are not commonly defined by what they have left behind, but whatever the new thing that defines them is.
Then maybe you should stop twisting it, just so you can ride your own little linguistic hobby horse.
Argue my point, not your dislike of it.
Considering the huge amounts of money Microsoft has thrown at its Xbox division, one could basically say they've purchased that market position.
Not just basically. They have. With this amount of investment, you would have to fuck up very, very badly to not get a good market position in pretty much any market.
What Ozzie and others are saying is
marketing bullshit dressed up as wisdom. If he would be saying it in plain and simple words, everyone would immediately spot it as the trivial observation it is. He wouldn't get headlines if he would state "People now have devices besides the PC to do some tasks with that formerly only PCs could do." - well, duh. Every 6 year old knows that.
But putting a nice trolling spin on it, and boom - your name in the headlines.
We are in a Post-Train age. That doesn't mean that we don't have any trains,
Actually, that would be exactly what it would mean if you were using the term correctly.
We are after the "age of steam", yes. But we are not "behind trains". Being "post the X era" is not the same as being in the "post X era". It becomes obvious when you look for where the conglomerates are. being "post... the-X-era" means that the X era has passed. That's a true statement if you entered a new era, since for some reason our mental model thinks we are only in one era at a time, so entering one means leaving the other.
but being in the "post-X...era" means that X is post. Our mental model allows us to have more than one X in our world. We definitely are in a post hunting-and-gathering era in the western world, as that lifestyle has all but disappeared. But trains haven't, and neither have PCs, and neither is likely to do so within the next few generations, much less years.
Yes, I'm someone who watches language carefully. Language is meaning. You can't think without language. You can feel, but not think. Try having a thought that doesn't use words. Twisting words is twisting meaning. Orwell was very right in that.
There's so much nonsense there that doesn't have any actual content, it's all about semantics misunderstood.
"Post" implies that something has passed. Since PCs are still around, we're not in a "post-PC" era. It really is that simple. Don't let marketing speech and idiots looking for a soundbite mess with our language.
What these people are really meaning is that we are in an era where the PC is not the only computing option available anymore. But the invention of the automobile did not push us into a "post train era", because the two are not two things for doing the same thing. Trains are still around, even though we have other transport available.
PCs are likely to stay around, because mobile phones, tablets, embedded computers, etc. etc. all have their own niche and while some things that were only possible on a PC until recently are now possible on other devices as well, it's nonsense to talk about "post-PC". That's just a term some fucker came up looking for a headline that would stir people up and catch their interest. On the Internet we call these people trolls.
MS is worried and vocal about the whole thing because their ecosystem relies on the PC, and they missed the train (again). Apple never worried about which era they were in, they simply created something that people wanted. Maybe MS could try that approach for a change, build something that people really want, instead of building things they think are cool and then trying to force everyone to use it whether they want to or not.
PIR is a US-based organization, making everything they do inside US jurisdiction.
Actually the best point that was made in this discussion so far.
The problem is, of course, that every registrar will always need to have some kind of organisation, and thus some kind of physical location within the jurisdiction of some country.
Does that put everything they do under the jurisdiction of that country? That is not automatically a given, as we have many forms of international organisations where that isn't true. Extraterritorial rights are a lot more common than most people think, and not limited to embassies.
Sorry, I don't listen to people who get beat in the smarts department by their dogs.
If you want to make your own .com and run it on your own little island, go right ahead, and others are free to join you.
You are missing the point.
This isn't a game of "who can build the bigger sand-castle". It's a game of building one together, as the generic TLDs are shared world-wide. Anyone coming in to claim ownership is an anti-social asshole, simple as that.
I'm very, very certain if anyone else in the world would try that stunt, Americans would be hurling every insult they can come up with his way.
You are agreeing to listen to our DNS information,
See, that's where your mistake is. You think it is "your" DNS information. It isn't. Why do you think it is?
People who only need to an iPad can do that. People who need to do actual work done won't.
I own an iPad and an iMac. Never has the thought of ditching my iMac crossed my mind.
If they were selected the same way as they were at my last company ("the top 50 managers"), they already weren't doing much actual work anyways. The dirty secret of big business is that management spends a lot of its time and other resources on political infighting.
I run my own stuff on my iPad2.
You can jailbreak it, or get a developer license. While you may dislike both options, you can't claim that you can't run your own stuff on the iPad.
Oh yes, ethics in medicine. Did you know they actually do double-blind tests on emergency stroke patients?
Aside from that, for the first part, I think there needs to be a better differentiation regarding the so-called "alternative" treatments.
There are some that have not been proven nor disproven to work.
And then there are some that have been proven to not work.
I'm all for experimenting with the 1st kind.
And I am also calling anyone pandering the 2nd kind a fraud and a liar.