Trackpads, trackballs, and touchscreens have been around for years. If they were going to replace the mouse, they would have done so already. The only time when one of these devices replaces a mouse is when a mouse is inconvenient, such as portable devices. So we'll see a lot more touchscreens, but they'll be on tablets and cell phones, not desktops. We'll also see touchscreens on things like data desks, but these are special purpose configurations--a horizontal screen simply isn't that attractive for people who spend most of their time keyboarding. Those people are going to want a screen that stands up to face them--and they aren't going to want to hold their hand up in the air several hours a day to do everything on a touchscreen. I expect that eventually all computer monitors will have touch capability--but there will still be a mouse on the desk.
Yes, there was a fair amount of junk, but I spent over $30, and I didn't get everything I was interested in. And there were a lot of free apps, including one of the tip calculators and one of the "flashlight" apps (which just lights the screen up in your choice of colors).
I'd love to know what the day 1 take was. I suspect it was large.
Personally, I'd love to have terrorists wasting their time and giving themselves radiation poisoning trying to build a dirty bomb, instead of reliable, conventional explosives.
Unfortunately, while any plausible dirty bomb would kill at most a small handful of people, probably less than a typical Baghdad car bombing, the cleanup would be horribly expensive, because radioactivity is easily detectable even at levels so low that it poses negligible risk, and people are so frightened of it that we'd have to clean up every speck.
It's hardly news. In fact, one of the reasons the CIA was skeptical about the claim (which Joe Wilson found to be false) that Saddam was trying to buy yellowcake from Niger was that Iraq was known to already have substantial stocks of yellowcake--just no way to process it, so there was no reason for them to be trying to buy more. This was just one of the pieces of information that was ignored by the media because it didn't fit with the "Iraq is actively seeking nuclear weapons" narrative that the Bush administration and much of the US media were promoting as a pretext for invasion.
Of course your conscious analytical mind is going to justify the action somehow. An example: If you decide that the next time you see Joe, you're going to punch him, a scientist monitoring your brain the next time you see Joe will find that your "punching brain" acted before your "conscious brain" did. Does that indicate a lack of free will? You'd have to be an idiot to think so. All it indicates is that your "conscious brain" has a number of programmable sub-units at its disposal.
I also think that our conscious mind has limited access to the internal operations of those low-level decision-making processes, so what we perceive as our motivation for a decision is more along the lines of an educated guess: "Well, Joe said something nasty about my sister yesterday, and I've been stewing about it ever since. Yeah! That's it, I decided to hit him because I'm still mad about what he said yesterday!"
I'm very sure I can't accept it. Having studied various martial arts for the past 30 years, I can tell you with certainty that I can engage in action the instant I decide what I am going to do when responding to a threat situation. It's not just a matter of reflex and ingrained response. Time slows down immediately and I can often sift through a large number of options and decision points. Is this really a threat? If so, what's the best response? Run? Strike? Duck?
I've done martial arts for over 30 years also, but my experience is different from what you describe. I don't "decide" much of anything. Most of the time I don't know what I'm going to do until after I've done it. I think that the reason time seems to "slow down" is that the slow conscious mind realizes that it doesn't have the processing speed to make decisions at this rate, and it gets out of the way, allowing much faster low-level decision-making processes to take control. I think the role of the conscious mind is more along the lines of programming low-level systems in advance, as opposed to making the actual decisions. And even there, the relationship between conscious thought and decision is tenuous. I can remember numerous occasions when I went into a match determined to try some particular technique, and it just didn't happen. The only conscious decisions I make during a fight are broad strategy like engage or retreat--and even then, my body doesn't always listen.
It seems reasonable to me that conscious awareness is not a trivial phenomenon, and that it involves a significant amount of computing, with a large number of synaptic delays. If it was not possible to detect neural indicators of a decision well prior to conscious awareness of the decision, it would argue that there really isn't much to consciousness after all.
....Consumers don't make such hair-splitting distinctions....
Not only that, but most consumers don't bother to upgrade their OS at all. When their present computer doesn't do any more what they wanted to do, they will simply buy a new computer. When Microsoft tells us how many copies of VISTA they have sold, they are not talking about how many consumers have upgraded their present computers, which is a very small number. Most copies of VISTA are included with a new computer.
The new OSX10.6 will be shipped automatically on new generation multiprocessor hardware. The new OS will simply be an integrated part of the blazingly fast performance of these systems. It may be, that Apple will not even make the 10.6 version available as any sort of upgrade, but only at some point when it is ready, include with all new hardware. This would also put a crimp on the installation of OSX on non-Apple hardware. It is highly likely that Apple is also working hard to make the full-blown Mac OS X and the iPhone version as much alike as possible. This would greatly simplify the life of any developer who wishes to provide their software on both platforms. Apple may extend the secure iPhone software distribution system to the Mac as well. Actually, Mac owners usually do buy the upgrades. They are moderately priced and typically offer new features worth the price, quite apart from "under the hood" enhancements.
Apple has been selling mulitprocessor hardware for some time. It would be a big mistake not to make 10.6 available for compatible systems already in the field. It increases the market for software using the new features of the new OS, and increases the incentive for developers to take advantage of those features. OS X on non -Apple hardware has never been a financial threat to Apple. It is a hacker toy, not something that general consumers will buy instead of a Mac. And Apple can renew the dependence upon Apple hardware with each minor upgrade, just to discourage routine use of OS X on foreign hardware.
Okay, now go read the linked description of snow leopard and show me where is says they're charging for making OS X more stable, instead of adding new technologies that make applications on top of OS X more stable and faster.
Consumers don't make such hair-splitting distinctions. The consumer's view is that any aspect of the OS X that prevents applications from being perfectly stable constitutes a defect, and consumers don't like to pay for somebody else's mistake. Consumers would doubtless willing to pay for an upgrade that actually made the applications that they already have run perceptibly faster (which for most people means something like 20% or better) but it is hard to imagine that this is achievable.
So if it is to be a full-price upgrade, Apple needs to have some sort of bonuses up its sleeve, such that the consumer who upgrades will perceive an immediate, easily perceptible benefit.
Knowing Apple, they probably do, they just aren't disclosing it this early.
You make it sound like "features" exist on some continuum, where you can always add more, but stability, security, and optimization are some binary quantities where the OS either has them or does not.
Charging for stability is not going to go over well with consumers, because lack of stability is a product flaw, and consumers do not appreciate being charged for fixing a product flaw. People will certainly pay for improved speed, but it needs to be enough of an improvement to make a difference.
Of course, Snow Leopard is still some time away, and this is a conference geared to developers, not consumers. If Apple is planning some new applications or other features to add value from the consumer's point of view, there is no reason why they would disclose it at this time, and give the competition a head start on matching them.
So I've never understood the "stand out from the crowd" attitude - to me, mobile phones, laptops, digital cameras etc. are tools to get a job done. Yes, they need to be convenient and portable, they need to be usable but my attitude is that if it's not easy to use out of the box then, whatever - I'll learn to use it and read the instruction manual. And as for what shape or colour it is - within reason I really don't care.
I don't get the "now" generation at all and they probably don't get me so we're even. As for Apple, they've never made anything that I particularly wanted at a price I wanted to pay but to give them credit, they've probably come a whole lot closer than Ferrari, Chanel or Gucci ever have.
In other words, my initial posting was an attempt was trying to make an objective statement of fact without too much emotion involved - I don't need stuff I buy to look nice to other people so take the fact that a fair proportion of the price of an Apple product has gone into making it look good, then I can find equally usable stuff a lot cheaper elsewhere.
I think that the error in your thinking is the idea that people buy Apple products because the "look good." In reality, many of the competing products look just as good. There are already numerous music players that look like the iPod, and phones that look like the iPhone, probably the manufacturer made the same error of thinking that what sells Apple products is the look.
The reality is that what sells Apple products is usability, and the stylish look is primarily a symptom of the fact that the company thinks deeply about every aspect of its products.For many people, working around the limitations of a clumsily designed product is just a constant irritation, like living in a house where the doorways are all so narrow so you have to turn sideways to walk through and each door has the doorknob in a different place. It's not that you can't get from room to room, it's just annoying. If you are going to pay that much for a product, why not pay a little bit more and have it actually work the way you'd like it to? Of course, this depends to some extent on how much you value your own time, and how much the satisfaction of saving money compensates.
I'm glad that they didn't go to multitasking. I don't want to worry about background tasks interfering with my iPhone's core functions or running down the battery. I'm impressed that they've come up with a workaround that achieves many of the same benefits.
And I'm glad that it is still glass. Plastic is just too scratch-prone. With the glass front I can slip it in my pocket with my wallet, and I don't have to spoil it's small size with the bulk of a case.
Battery? Well, I suppose I'd appreciate a user-switchable battery, but not if it means a thicker phone or less battery life. As it is, my first generation iPhone still runs over a long weekend without a charge. I've yet to be in a situation where I would have used an extra battery if I had one.
And I make free ringtones from my mp3's with Apple's GarageBand application.
I agree. Is there really anybody who did not know from the outset that there would be a new model around now, cheaper and almost certainly 3G/GPS? The phone was worth the price to me that I paid when I bought it at launch, and I feel like I've gotten my money's worth. If I was willing to wait a year to get a more powerful phone for less money, I would have done so. As it is, I've been very happy with my iPhone, and I'm looking forward to upgrading.
I'd be willing to pay the price for the Apple box, but I don't like per-movie pricing, and restrictions that tell you how long you can wait before watching and that potentially cause you to lose your money if something comes up and you can't finish watching on time are simply unacceptable.
One review I read said that it was currently just 480i. This seems surprising, if true, since a good DVD player will output 480p, and the bandwidth, for film at least, should not be any higher, since all that is required is to correctly re-interlace the 480i frames. Roku says that the unit can do HD, but it was unclear as to whether that means "HD as soon as Netflix gets around to adding HD content," or "HD maybe someday if typical ISP bandwidth increases." I was disappointed the article did not say how much storage is in the unit, as this would give us a clue as to the bandwidth demands for HD.
Another reservation I have is the lack of DVD special features, although this is less an issue for TV series. I'd also like to have widescreen for shows that are available in this format.
Apple's problem with the Apple III was the use of socketed chips. That made field repairs easy, but the pins tended to build up corrosion. Repeated heating and cooling cycles may have also played a role by causing the chips to gradually work their way out of their sockets. This was a problem with the Apple II series as well, but hobbyists were less troubled by having to pull off the cover occasionally and reseat the chips. Business users found it unacceptable. For the Mac Plus (which also did not have a fan) they went to soldered chips, and they were highly reliable in spite of having a CRT built in. The Mac Cube also did not have a fan, and they seem to run pretty much forever.
The problem with curvature is that it imples continuity (infinite divisibility), which leads to an infinite regress. Therefore curvature is an unacceptable concept in physics. There is no "rule" that infinities are unacceptable in physics. Whether infinities are realized in nature remains an open question. Even if there is some kind of inherent granularity to space, curvature can still be a valid approximation, just as we can talk about the curvature of physical objects that are made of discrete atoms.
(Moreover, I don't think the screen they provide is particularly useful - in fact, I think it's even harmful because it imposes a socially constructed restriction on one's exposure to new ideas - but that's just my own opinion). There is nothing to stop anybody from publishing an unreviewed journal. There are many laxly reviewed journals, but they are not widely read. There are also journals that specialize in speculative ideas. Again, they are not very widely read. The fact is that in science, as in most fields, ideas are cheap. Most scientists have more ideas than they have time to pursue. What is valued is ideas that are supported by well thought-out, carefully done experiments. Given limited time, most scientists favor a journal in which the papers have at least been reviewed for obvious errors. And while, like everybody, I grouse about clueless criticisms in reviews, I think that almost every paper I've published has been better for going through review.
But is that "Ready for HD" as in "Near future as we begin to add HD titles" ?
or as in
"If someday you get an ISP that offers more bandwidth than all of the ones currently available to you"
On the other hand, a TiVo or XBox360 has the buffering capacity to present HD without ultrahigh bandwidth. I don't really mind waiting a few hours, or even until the next day--that's still a lot faster than waiting for the disk to come in the mail.
I just want to second you on this, Pazy. Yes it was dark - and that was awesome. It's one of the few games where I genuinely felt scared and startled at times. Sure it became a bit predictable at times, but so are horror movies and people still love those.
Again, I don't think the game was perfect, but it was one of the better FPS productions I've seen I'd seen in awhile. Yes, the previous Doom games were sort of OK, but this is the first one that I actually enjoyed enough to play all of the way through, because there was a real sense of atomosphere and suspense.
I have a nephew who refused to play the game without somebody else in the room--he found it too frightening.
. Is this simply the selfish best choice for individuals, to cooperate with each other, or can genes code for behaviors that are detrimental to the individual but good for the gene pool overall? They can, but it's hard to make it work. Basically, a mechanism is required such that the benefits of the behavior accrue more to those who have the gene than to those who don't. So if it is detrimental to you, but beneficial to a other of people who are more likely than the average person to share that gene, then it can be favored by natural selection. So one tends to look for direct benefits before looking for indirect ones
Reciprocal altruism is one example--for example, if altruists are more likely to cooperate with one another than with non-altruists, then it may be to your overall benefit to be an altruist, even though individual acts of altruism may cost you, because you benefit from the assistance of other altruists. Of course, that depends upon altruists being able to recognize one another. So if "feeling good about seeing justice served" is accompanied by recognizable cues, such as smiling when you hear of such an occurrence or communicating about it to others, you might, evolutionarily speaking, be identifying yourself as part of the empathetic/altruistic genetic community, and therefore eligible to receive benefit from other members of the club.
Creationists like to use the term "Darwinism," since it makes evolution sound like a philosophy rather than a scientific theory. In fact, while acceptance of the reality of evolution is essentially universal among biologists, there are many religious biologists who do not find evolution to be in opposition to their beliefs. Evolution is, after all, accepted by all major Christian sects.
I will illustrate your point, with an example I saw on CNN:
(1) A BBC reporter wrote a fair, non-biased article on global warming. In one paragraph he stated, "Not all scientists agree that global warming is caused by man-made actions," which is an accurate statement. Not "all" scientists think man caused the problem. Some don't even think it's a problem, saying it's just part of a natural cycle that's been happening for the last 10,000 years. Are you a creationist? I ask, because your distortions of this event resemble the way that the creationists distort the scientific evidence.
You begin by misquoting what the original article said. Instead of "Not all scientists agree that global warming is caused by man-made actions," the actual words were "A minority of scientists...wonder whether this means global warming has peaked." This is very imprecise language, since a minority could be barely less than 50%. So the complaint was that the article should make clear that the truth is that consensus of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists (as reflected in the conclusions of the UN, the WMO, the US National Academy of Sciences, and every single major scientific organization that has reviewed the issue) agree that global warming will continue.
(2) The reporter published the article on the website, and immediately an email rolled-in from an environmentalist demanding that phrase be expunged. Deceptively, this account claims that complaints came only from an "environmentalist." It fails to mention that the WMO also raised concerns that the wording could convey the mistaken impression that there were scientists at the WMO who believed that global warming had peaked.
Note, in fact that the revised version of the report still says that
A minority of scientists question whether this means global warming has peaked ...it just adds additional material to clarify that this view is not supported by the WMO--whose perspective was the main subject of the article.
(4) The reporter refused to rewrite his article until the activist told him, "If you do not comply, I will rally my group and you will receive thousands of emails demanding the change."
(5) The reporter, obviously concerned about this prospect (and possibly losing his job), immediately deleted the offending paragraph. For comparison, here is what the activist actually wrote
I am about to send your comments to others for their contribution, unless you request I do not. They are likely to want to post your comments on forums/fora, so please indicate if you do not want this to happen. Oh, what a horrible threat! I am going to share your comments with others--unless you ask me not to. Surely such a threat must strike abject terror into the heart of every journalist!
The deception evident in this false account--which has been widely repeated by global warming denialists all over the media--seems to be perhaps the defining characteristic of denialists of all kinds, whether it is evolution denialists, 9/11 denialists, or HIV denialists. The producers of "Expelled," for example, lied to scientists about the name and nature of the movie to get them to consent to interviews, and the movie shows Stein supposedly giving a public lecture to a room full of "students" who are in reality paid extras.
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Because it is redundant, the law serves no social purpose, which makes it an undue burden upon manufacturers and dealers.
Trackpads, trackballs, and touchscreens have been around for years. If they were going to replace the mouse, they would have done so already. The only time when one of these devices replaces a mouse is when a mouse is inconvenient, such as portable devices. So we'll see a lot more touchscreens, but they'll be on tablets and cell phones, not desktops. We'll also see touchscreens on things like data desks, but these are special purpose configurations--a horizontal screen simply isn't that attractive for people who spend most of their time keyboarding. Those people are going to want a screen that stands up to face them--and they aren't going to want to hold their hand up in the air several hours a day to do everything on a touchscreen. I expect that eventually all computer monitors will have touch capability--but there will still be a mouse on the desk.
Yes, there was a fair amount of junk, but I spent over $30, and I didn't get everything I was interested in. And there were a lot of free apps, including one of the tip calculators and one of the "flashlight" apps (which just lights the screen up in your choice of colors).
I'd love to know what the day 1 take was. I suspect it was large.
Personally, I'd love to have terrorists wasting their time and giving themselves radiation poisoning trying to build a dirty bomb, instead of reliable, conventional explosives.
Unfortunately, while any plausible dirty bomb would kill at most a small handful of people, probably less than a typical Baghdad car bombing, the cleanup would be horribly expensive, because radioactivity is easily detectable even at levels so low that it poses negligible risk, and people are so frightened of it that we'd have to clean up every speck.
It's hardly news. In fact, one of the reasons the CIA was skeptical about the claim (which Joe Wilson found to be false) that Saddam was trying to buy yellowcake from Niger was that Iraq was known to already have substantial stocks of yellowcake--just no way to process it, so there was no reason for them to be trying to buy more. This was just one of the pieces of information that was ignored by the media because it didn't fit with the "Iraq is actively seeking nuclear weapons" narrative that the Bush administration and much of the US media were promoting as a pretext for invasion.
I also think that our conscious mind has limited access to the internal operations of those low-level decision-making processes, so what we perceive as our motivation for a decision is more along the lines of an educated guess: "Well, Joe said something nasty about my sister yesterday, and I've been stewing about it ever since. Yeah! That's it, I decided to hit him because I'm still mad about what he said yesterday!"
I've done martial arts for over 30 years also, but my experience is different from what you describe. I don't "decide" much of anything. Most of the time I don't know what I'm going to do until after I've done it. I think that the reason time seems to "slow down" is that the slow conscious mind realizes that it doesn't have the processing speed to make decisions at this rate, and it gets out of the way, allowing much faster low-level decision-making processes to take control. I think the role of the conscious mind is more along the lines of programming low-level systems in advance, as opposed to making the actual decisions. And even there, the relationship between conscious thought and decision is tenuous. I can remember numerous occasions when I went into a match determined to try some particular technique, and it just didn't happen. The only conscious decisions I make during a fight are broad strategy like engage or retreat--and even then, my body doesn't always listen.
It seems reasonable to me that conscious awareness is not a trivial phenomenon, and that it involves a significant amount of computing, with a large number of synaptic delays. If it was not possible to detect neural indicators of a decision well prior to conscious awareness of the decision, it would argue that there really isn't much to consciousness after all.
....Consumers don't make such hair-splitting distinctions....Not only that, but most consumers don't bother to upgrade their OS at all. When their present computer doesn't do any more what they wanted to do, they will simply buy a new computer. When Microsoft tells us how many copies of VISTA they have sold, they are not talking about how many consumers have upgraded their present computers, which is a very small number. Most copies of VISTA are included with a new computer.
The new OSX10.6 will be shipped automatically on new generation multiprocessor hardware. The new OS will simply be an integrated part of the blazingly fast performance of these systems. It may be, that Apple will not even make the 10.6 version available as any sort of upgrade, but only at some point when it is ready, include with all new hardware. This would also put a crimp on the installation of OSX on non-Apple hardware. It is highly likely that Apple is also working hard to make the full-blown Mac OS X and the iPhone version as much alike as possible. This would greatly simplify the life of any developer who wishes to provide their software on both platforms. Apple may extend the secure iPhone software distribution system to the Mac as well. Actually, Mac owners usually do buy the upgrades. They are moderately priced and typically offer new features worth the price, quite apart from "under the hood" enhancements.
Apple has been selling mulitprocessor hardware for some time. It would be a big mistake not to make 10.6 available for compatible systems already in the field. It increases the market for software using the new features of the new OS, and increases the incentive for developers to take advantage of those features. OS X on non -Apple hardware has never been a financial threat to Apple. It is a hacker toy, not something that general consumers will buy instead of a Mac. And Apple can renew the dependence upon Apple hardware with each minor upgrade, just to discourage routine use of OS X on foreign hardware.
Consumers don't make such hair-splitting distinctions. The consumer's view is that any aspect of the OS X that prevents applications from being perfectly stable constitutes a defect, and consumers don't like to pay for somebody else's mistake. Consumers would doubtless willing to pay for an upgrade that actually made the applications that they already have run perceptibly faster (which for most people means something like 20% or better) but it is hard to imagine that this is achievable.
So if it is to be a full-price upgrade, Apple needs to have some sort of bonuses up its sleeve, such that the consumer who upgrades will perceive an immediate, easily perceptible benefit.
Knowing Apple, they probably do, they just aren't disclosing it this early.
Charging for stability is not going to go over well with consumers, because lack of stability is a product flaw, and consumers do not appreciate being charged for fixing a product flaw. People will certainly pay for improved speed, but it needs to be enough of an improvement to make a difference.
Of course, Snow Leopard is still some time away, and this is a conference geared to developers, not consumers. If Apple is planning some new applications or other features to add value from the consumer's point of view, there is no reason why they would disclose it at this time, and give the competition a head start on matching them.
So I've never understood the "stand out from the crowd" attitude - to me, mobile phones, laptops, digital cameras etc. are tools to get a job done. Yes, they need to be convenient and portable, they need to be usable but my attitude is that if it's not easy to use out of the box then, whatever - I'll learn to use it and read the instruction manual. And as for what shape or colour it is - within reason I really don't care.
I don't get the "now" generation at all and they probably don't get me so we're even. As for Apple, they've never made anything that I particularly wanted at a price I wanted to pay but to give them credit, they've probably come a whole lot closer than Ferrari, Chanel or Gucci ever have.
In other words, my initial posting was an attempt was trying to make an objective statement of fact without too much emotion involved - I don't need stuff I buy to look nice to other people so take the fact that a fair proportion of the price of an Apple product has gone into making it look good, then I can find equally usable stuff a lot cheaper elsewhere.
I think that the error in your thinking is the idea that people buy Apple products because the "look good." In reality, many of the competing products look just as good. There are already numerous music players that look like the iPod, and phones that look like the iPhone, probably the manufacturer made the same error of thinking that what sells Apple products is the look.The reality is that what sells Apple products is usability, and the stylish look is primarily a symptom of the fact that the company thinks deeply about every aspect of its products.For many people, working around the limitations of a clumsily designed product is just a constant irritation, like living in a house where the doorways are all so narrow so you have to turn sideways to walk through and each door has the doorknob in a different place. It's not that you can't get from room to room, it's just annoying. If you are going to pay that much for a product, why not pay a little bit more and have it actually work the way you'd like it to? Of course, this depends to some extent on how much you value your own time, and how much the satisfaction of saving money compensates.
I'm glad that they didn't go to multitasking. I don't want to worry about background tasks interfering with my iPhone's core functions or running down the battery. I'm impressed that they've come up with a workaround that achieves many of the same benefits.
And I'm glad that it is still glass. Plastic is just too scratch-prone. With the glass front I can slip it in my pocket with my wallet, and I don't have to spoil it's small size with the bulk of a case.
Battery? Well, I suppose I'd appreciate a user-switchable battery, but not if it means a thicker phone or less battery life. As it is, my first generation iPhone still runs over a long weekend without a charge. I've yet to be in a situation where I would have used an extra battery if I had one.
And I make free ringtones from my mp3's with Apple's GarageBand application.
I agree. Is there really anybody who did not know from the outset that there would be a new model around now, cheaper and almost certainly 3G/GPS? The phone was worth the price to me that I paid when I bought it at launch, and I feel like I've gotten my money's worth. If I was willing to wait a year to get a more powerful phone for less money, I would have done so. As it is, I've been very happy with my iPhone, and I'm looking forward to upgrading.
I'd be willing to pay the price for the Apple box, but I don't like per-movie pricing, and restrictions that tell you how long you can wait before watching and that potentially cause you to lose your money if something comes up and you can't finish watching on time are simply unacceptable.
One review I read said that it was currently just 480i. This seems surprising, if true, since a good DVD player will output 480p, and the bandwidth, for film at least, should not be any higher, since all that is required is to correctly re-interlace the 480i frames. Roku says that the unit can do HD, but it was unclear as to whether that means "HD as soon as Netflix gets around to adding HD content," or "HD maybe someday if typical ISP bandwidth increases." I was disappointed the article did not say how much storage is in the unit, as this would give us a clue as to the bandwidth demands for HD.
Another reservation I have is the lack of DVD special features, although this is less an issue for TV series. I'd also like to have widescreen for shows that are available in this format.
Apple's problem with the Apple III was the use of socketed chips. That made field repairs easy, but the pins tended to build up corrosion. Repeated heating and cooling cycles may have also played a role by causing the chips to gradually work their way out of their sockets. This was a problem with the Apple II series as well, but hobbyists were less troubled by having to pull off the cover occasionally and reseat the chips. Business users found it unacceptable. For the Mac Plus (which also did not have a fan) they went to soldered chips, and they were highly reliable in spite of having a CRT built in. The Mac Cube also did not have a fan, and they seem to run pretty much forever.
But is that "Ready for HD" as in
"Near future as we begin to add HD titles" ?
or as in
"If someday you get an ISP that offers more bandwidth than all of the ones currently available to you"
On the other hand, a TiVo or XBox360 has the buffering capacity to present HD without ultrahigh bandwidth. I don't really mind waiting a few hours, or even until the next day--that's still a lot faster than waiting for the disk to come in the mail.
Again, I don't think the game was perfect, but it was one of the better FPS productions I've seen I'd seen in awhile. Yes, the previous Doom games were sort of OK, but this is the first one that I actually enjoyed enough to play all of the way through, because there was a real sense of atomosphere and suspense.
I have a nephew who refused to play the game without somebody else in the room--he found it too frightening.
Reciprocal altruism is one example--for example, if altruists are more likely to cooperate with one another than with non-altruists, then it may be to your overall benefit to be an altruist, even though individual acts of altruism may cost you, because you benefit from the assistance of other altruists. Of course, that depends upon altruists being able to recognize one another. So if "feeling good about seeing justice served" is accompanied by recognizable cues, such as smiling when you hear of such an occurrence or communicating about it to others, you might, evolutionarily speaking, be identifying yourself as part of the empathetic/altruistic genetic community, and therefore eligible to receive benefit from other members of the club.
Creationists like to use the term "Darwinism," since it makes evolution sound like a philosophy rather than a scientific theory. In fact, while acceptance of the reality of evolution is essentially universal among biologists, there are many religious biologists who do not find evolution to be in opposition to their beliefs. Evolution is, after all, accepted by all major Christian sects.
(1) A BBC reporter wrote a fair, non-biased article on global warming. In one paragraph he stated, "Not all scientists agree that global warming is caused by man-made actions," which is an accurate statement. Not "all" scientists think man caused the problem. Some don't even think it's a problem, saying it's just part of a natural cycle that's been happening for the last 10,000 years. Are you a creationist? I ask, because your distortions of this event resemble the way that the creationists distort the scientific evidence.
You begin by misquoting what the original article said. Instead of "Not all scientists agree that global warming is caused by man-made actions," the actual words were "A minority of scientists...wonder whether this means global warming has peaked." This is very imprecise language, since a minority could be barely less than 50%. So the complaint was that the article should make clear that the truth is that consensus of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists (as reflected in the conclusions of the UN, the WMO, the US National Academy of Sciences, and every single major scientific organization that has reviewed the issue) agree that global warming will continue. (2) The reporter published the article on the website, and immediately an email rolled-in from an environmentalist demanding that phrase be expunged. Deceptively, this account claims that complaints came only from an "environmentalist." It fails to mention that the WMO also raised concerns that the wording could convey the mistaken impression that there were scientists at the WMO who believed that global warming had peaked.
Note, in fact that the revised version of the report still says that A minority of scientists question whether this means global warming has peaked ...it just adds additional material to clarify that this view is not supported by the WMO--whose perspective was the main subject of the article. (4) The reporter refused to rewrite his article until the activist told him, "If you do not comply, I will rally my group and you will receive thousands of emails demanding the change."
(5) The reporter, obviously concerned about this prospect (and possibly losing his job), immediately deleted the offending paragraph. For comparison, here is what the activist actually wrote I am about to send your comments to others for their contribution, unless you request I do not. They are likely to want to post your comments on forums/fora, so please indicate if you do not want this to happen. Oh, what a horrible threat! I am going to share your comments with others--unless you ask me not to. Surely such a threat must strike abject terror into the heart of every journalist!
The deception evident in this false account--which has been widely repeated by global warming denialists all over the media--seems to be perhaps the defining characteristic of denialists of all kinds, whether it is evolution denialists, 9/11 denialists, or HIV denialists. The producers of "Expelled," for example, lied to scientists about the name and nature of the movie to get them to consent to interviews, and the movie shows Stein supposedly giving a public lecture to a room full of "students" who are in reality paid extras.