I know this will be one of a million posts where people post their dream Doctor, but what the hell.
I would be more than overjoyed if Philip Glenister was the next Docotor. He won't be familiar to most of us outside of the UK but he should be. For those who are interested, he is best known for his role as DCI Gene Hunt in Life on Mars. I think he is perfect for a lot of reasons. First, he is physically very different than any recent doctor. Older, larger frame, physicly more imposing. Second, he has the balls out charisma to take over a room just by standing there quietly. Third, and most importantly, he is a hell of an actor with a powerful and subtle control of his emotional range.
I think that the most important thing in finding the next Doctor will be making the character unique. The one thing guaranteed to fail is trying to continue Tennant's Doctor instead of carving out a mind space for a new one.
Yes and no. China does have the world's largest standing army and citizens with a tradition of taking their orders from the government. If it comes down to a question of which county can suppress the riots for longer, my money is on China. They do a LOT of business with the EU and other nations, even if their single biggest trade partner is the US.
My guess is that if trade between the US and China was cut off, China could hold back the riots for as long as it took to retool their production and markets. If Walmart ran out of stock, there would be rioting in the US within the week.
Just about everyone who uses it professionally. In the great scheme of things, $2500 is not a large business expense. If you can't afford that, software costs are hardly your biggest business worry.
Sure you can blast a company for doing something and be OK with another company doing it. If you sign up with company A because they promise to keep your data private and then find them selling your data you are mad at them. If you sign up with company B under the understanding that they resell customer information as part of their business you are going to get a lot of funny looks if you rail against their violation of your privacy.
Apple escapes a lot of the bashing because they are upfront about what they are doing. You buy an Apple you know (or at least should) what to expect, both good and bad. That is not to say that everything they do is sunshine and rainbows, but that is a known part of doing business with them and as such a cost already accepted.
When a company sells you something on the condition that it only be installed on their hardware it is hard for mot people to work up much sympathy when you complain that they will only let you install it on their hardware. The fact that other businesses do it differently does not matter. You were free to buy from them instead.
In this same situation Microsoft would catch a lot of flack because they explicitly sell their product to run on anything that meets the hardware requirements. People have entered into a different contract with them and thus have different expectations and different reactions to the same actions.
Everyone was pissed off at Sony because they broke the social contract. People were sold a CD with the reasonable expectation that it would NOT install a virus on their computer. Fewer people complain about Apple's iTunes DRM because it is an upfront part of the purchase. You know what you are getting and can purchase appropriately to your own tastes.
You fail to follow your own logic through to the end. The answer to the pass that Apple gets is in your question.
People buy Apple products because they like shiny stuff. A large part of the reason that Apple stuff is shiny is because they control the entire experience. Control=Shiny=Happy customers. Less control (for whatever reason) tends to mean less shiny which leads to less happy customers, thus support for continued control.
Really, the opposition to Apple's policies confuses me. It's not like the company or Jobs is sneaky or underhanded about their methods or agenda. They have been open about their intention and market strategy for the last quarter century. Google gets a hard rap when they don't play nice because their image and social contract is based on openness. Apple has never even pretended to play by those rules. They deliver exactly what they promise, the good and the bad. If you don't like it, you are free to buy someone other companies computer.
Also, as a side point, every time there is an article about the piss poor service or quality at some hardware or software company there are always people saying that that is to be expected when you buy the cheapest brand all the time. Then they go on to say some company should take advantage of the market segment willing to pay a small premium for quality. Guess what, that company is Apple. If you want the quality (and you obviously do, otherwise you would not care if it was available to general PC buyers or not) pay the premium. If you don't want to pay the price, go with the cheaper alternative.
Until you get the next time where someone has a genius idea with a subtle flaw that doesn't get caught until it goes through the 3rd level of red tape. When you are talking about a big enough organization, any amount of bureaucracy and layers will pay for itself if it prevents a single huge mistake every couple years.
Actually, I don't think the traditional method of retrieving court information can be classified as security through obscurity. It is security through cost. Not so much cost in money but in time.
Court records are open because it is assumed that anyone willing to go through the time and effort required to get a copy probably has a pretty good reason to want to see it. Historically, few people have gone t the trouble of looking up random court records on the off chance that it might turn out to be interesting. The likely payoff is so far below the effort needed that there has always been a better way to spend the time.
So, records for a particular case? No problem. Large swaths of random records? Not worth it.
Yeah, the 'won't somebody think of the airplanes!' comment at the end isn't particularly rational. These are not big devices and the only way they will cause more than an inconvenience is if every one on the plane bursts into flame at the same time.
That said, a large chemical fire like you could get from those big battery packs those desktop replacement laptops use would be a special kind of nightmare for any pilot. If they do ever ban lithium batteries and other related things on airplanes it will be very inconvenient but not necessarily stupid.
Also, Vista installs are heavily weighted towards people who have bought a prebuilt retail computer for home use in the last few months. I don't think these are going to be the same people who are inclined to watch something on their computer instead of the television. At the very least, it cut out all the office workers running 2000/XP who would have wanted an Olympic stream running in the background during the day instead of their normal music.
Wait, your OS of choice has 50MB of extra stuff? Oh God, th world is ending! How will you possibly manage if you can't free up that massive portion of your dozens and dozens of GB of storage? It's a travesty! We should lynch the developers!
Really? Because I can't help but suspect you would scream bloody murder at a company that was modifying and redistributing GPL software for money and not following the terms of the license. After all, they paid the requested price ($0) and now they should be able to do what they want with it, right? No, because the price was actually $0 + agreement to the terms of the license. Apple is not charging $130 for OSX. They are charging $130 + agreement to the terms of the license.
If you are not happy with the restrictions of the GPL license you are free to contact the copyright holder and, if they are agreeable, negotiate a different license. And if they are not agreeable you are SOL.
If you are not happy with the restrictions of the Apple license you are free to contact the copyright holder and, if they are agreeable, negotiate a different license. And if they are not agreeable you are SOL.
Far too many people believe Apple has a monopoly on computers that, "just work"(tm).
Hey, no one is stopping anyone else from selling a computer that 'just works'*. They simply choose not to. Quality parts and compatibility testing might cut into their profit margins.
*Yes, they would have to come up with their own slogan. The poor marketing department.
It's a nice argument, but kind of falls apart when you figure that even places like New York, which has some of the highest population densities in the world, have crap internet. If the free market and unregulated business practices was going to provide good internet at competitive rates it would have already materialized, at least in select markets.
See, many people consider the idea of a Darwinist survival of the fittest and civilized society as oxymorons. You should not have to resort to Darwinist solutions to receive the pay agreed upon. Your compensation should not be a competition to see who can screw over who the most.
The idea that laws and contracts should be followed not because you will be penalized for being caught but because they are laws and contracts is significant. I would go so far as to say it defines much of our western society, or at least the ideals our western society strives for at its best.
Actually, I think that matches up rather nicely. I've heard the same thing about the older buildings holding up much better than the new ones. So, what you have is the buildings build in the lat 70s and early 80s that were, on the whole, up to code. But once you get to building that went up in the 90s and 00s you get a lot of buildings that were up to code only in the sense that they were able to pay the inspector enough to certify it. All the regulations in the world don't help if no one is following them.
Neither can thousands of other parasitic species. All the same no one debates the status of all sorts of fungus and ferns and others who tap directly into the circulatory system and other facilities of their host and cannot survive or replicate without them.
If a true answer or classification as to whether viruses are alive or not comes about, I suspect it will be far more subtle and elegant.
What type of sick world do you live in where befriending someone you know is emotionally vulnerable for the express purpose of degrading and humiliating them does not classify as tormenting or cruel?
If you seriously see this as normal or even slightly acceptable behavior I have to strongly question your societal values and the people you associate with.
Science is so awesome, in the most original sense of the word. It inspires awe. Look at what these people are doing. They have odd bits of animals that died uncountable millions of years ago (except they figured out ways of counting them) and put the bits back together. And now they think they can figure out what colour they were? That is fantastic!
Anyone who says that the knowledge of why and how things work somehow ruins the experience has no real wonder in their soul. There is nothing more awe inspiring than pulling back the curtain on some new piece of knowledge.
I agree that the community is not up to the task. However, I suspect that we are not talking about the same community. Let's say that tomorrow I posted an improved layout design to the trac. Descriptions of the various elements, mockup images, UI icons and elements, new error messages, the works. What are the odds that it gets implemented? Seriously? I can't program, but I do decent layout and usability. From my own experience and that of others I suspect that I could post mockups and suggestions on the trac and forums until I am blue in the face.
Even if an entire squadron of UI specialists descended on a linux distro, went through the whole thing and posted up a unified UI design for every level of the system do you really think it would get implemented?
Let's be honest, there are always a million posts and bug reports floating around saying things along the lines of "I'm a regular user who tried to use X feature/menu. It didn't work well because it is missing A,B and C options, and D, E and F are in the wrong menu". If the linux/free software community had any track record of responding to those with 'well, I guess that needs to be fixed' instead of 'read the documentation/use commend line workaround with -r hfg blarg whatamidoing +7' linux would be a better experience than OS X by now.
Because they do not care what you think. They do not care what your politicians think. As long as they can control the information that their own people have access to, any outside fallout is more than acceptable.
I think your risk assessment is somewhat off there. You say you would rather buy off e-bay than download from the piratebay because you are afraid of Apple tracking you down for software piracy? eBay will give all the sale information to anyone with a subpoena, even if it is drawn in crayon. Where as getting TPB's server logs would take a minor international incident.
Now, someone might eventually take down TPB. The list of interested parties is so long that I doubt it will be Apple.
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I know this will be one of a million posts where people post their dream Doctor, but what the hell.
I would be more than overjoyed if Philip Glenister was the next Docotor. He won't be familiar to most of us outside of the UK but he should be. For those who are interested, he is best known for his role as DCI Gene Hunt in Life on Mars. I think he is perfect for a lot of reasons. First, he is physically very different than any recent doctor. Older, larger frame, physicly more imposing. Second, he has the balls out charisma to take over a room just by standing there quietly. Third, and most importantly, he is a hell of an actor with a powerful and subtle control of his emotional range.
I think that the most important thing in finding the next Doctor will be making the character unique. The one thing guaranteed to fail is trying to continue Tennant's Doctor instead of carving out a mind space for a new one.
No idea if it is the one you are thinking of, but that scenario is mentioned in Cory Doctorow's story 'I, Row-boat'
Yes and no. China does have the world's largest standing army and citizens with a tradition of taking their orders from the government. If it comes down to a question of which county can suppress the riots for longer, my money is on China. They do a LOT of business with the EU and other nations, even if their single biggest trade partner is the US.
My guess is that if trade between the US and China was cut off, China could hold back the riots for as long as it took to retool their production and markets. If Walmart ran out of stock, there would be rioting in the US within the week.
The LaTeX name hasn't hindered its adoption because it references neither extreme sexual domination or physical deformity. GIMP does both.
Just about everyone who uses it professionally. In the great scheme of things, $2500 is not a large business expense. If you can't afford that, software costs are hardly your biggest business worry.
Sure you can blast a company for doing something and be OK with another company doing it. If you sign up with company A because they promise to keep your data private and then find them selling your data you are mad at them. If you sign up with company B under the understanding that they resell customer information as part of their business you are going to get a lot of funny looks if you rail against their violation of your privacy.
Apple escapes a lot of the bashing because they are upfront about what they are doing. You buy an Apple you know (or at least should) what to expect, both good and bad. That is not to say that everything they do is sunshine and rainbows, but that is a known part of doing business with them and as such a cost already accepted.
When a company sells you something on the condition that it only be installed on their hardware it is hard for mot people to work up much sympathy when you complain that they will only let you install it on their hardware. The fact that other businesses do it differently does not matter. You were free to buy from them instead.
In this same situation Microsoft would catch a lot of flack because they explicitly sell their product to run on anything that meets the hardware requirements. People have entered into a different contract with them and thus have different expectations and different reactions to the same actions.
Everyone was pissed off at Sony because they broke the social contract. People were sold a CD with the reasonable expectation that it would NOT install a virus on their computer. Fewer people complain about Apple's iTunes DRM because it is an upfront part of the purchase. You know what you are getting and can purchase appropriately to your own tastes.
You fail to follow your own logic through to the end. The answer to the pass that Apple gets is in your question.
People buy Apple products because they like shiny stuff. A large part of the reason that Apple stuff is shiny is because they control the entire experience. Control=Shiny=Happy customers. Less control (for whatever reason) tends to mean less shiny which leads to less happy customers, thus support for continued control.
Really, the opposition to Apple's policies confuses me. It's not like the company or Jobs is sneaky or underhanded about their methods or agenda. They have been open about their intention and market strategy for the last quarter century. Google gets a hard rap when they don't play nice because their image and social contract is based on openness. Apple has never even pretended to play by those rules. They deliver exactly what they promise, the good and the bad. If you don't like it, you are free to buy someone other companies computer.
Also, as a side point, every time there is an article about the piss poor service or quality at some hardware or software company there are always people saying that that is to be expected when you buy the cheapest brand all the time. Then they go on to say some company should take advantage of the market segment willing to pay a small premium for quality. Guess what, that company is Apple. If you want the quality (and you obviously do, otherwise you would not care if it was available to general PC buyers or not) pay the premium. If you don't want to pay the price, go with the cheaper alternative.
Until you get the next time where someone has a genius idea with a subtle flaw that doesn't get caught until it goes through the 3rd level of red tape.
When you are talking about a big enough organization, any amount of bureaucracy and layers will pay for itself if it prevents a single huge mistake every couple years.
Actually, I don't think the traditional method of retrieving court information can be classified as security through obscurity. It is security through cost. Not so much cost in money but in time.
Court records are open because it is assumed that anyone willing to go through the time and effort required to get a copy probably has a pretty good reason to want to see it. Historically, few people have gone t the trouble of looking up random court records on the off chance that it might turn out to be interesting. The likely payoff is so far below the effort needed that there has always been a better way to spend the time.
So, records for a particular case? No problem. Large swaths of random records? Not worth it.
Yeah, the 'won't somebody think of the airplanes!' comment at the end isn't particularly rational. These are not big devices and the only way they will cause more than an inconvenience is if every one on the plane bursts into flame at the same time.
That said, a large chemical fire like you could get from those big battery packs those desktop replacement laptops use would be a special kind of nightmare for any pilot. If they do ever ban lithium batteries and other related things on airplanes it will be very inconvenient but not necessarily stupid.
Also, Vista installs are heavily weighted towards people who have bought a prebuilt retail computer for home use in the last few months. I don't think these are going to be the same people who are inclined to watch something on their computer instead of the television. At the very least, it cut out all the office workers running 2000/XP who would have wanted an Olympic stream running in the background during the day instead of their normal music.
Wait, your OS of choice has 50MB of extra stuff? Oh God, th world is ending! How will you possibly manage if you can't free up that massive portion of your dozens and dozens of GB of storage? It's a travesty! We should lynch the developers!
As long as you define beautiful as elegant, clean and simple then you can have your cake and eat it too.
Really? Because I can't help but suspect you would scream bloody murder at a company that was modifying and redistributing GPL software for money and not following the terms of the license. After all, they paid the requested price ($0) and now they should be able to do what they want with it, right? No, because the price was actually $0 + agreement to the terms of the license. Apple is not charging $130 for OSX. They are charging $130 + agreement to the terms of the license.
If you are not happy with the restrictions of the GPL license you are free to contact the copyright holder and, if they are agreeable, negotiate a different license. And if they are not agreeable you are SOL.
If you are not happy with the restrictions of the Apple license you are free to contact the copyright holder and, if they are agreeable, negotiate a different license. And if they are not agreeable you are SOL.
Hey, no one is stopping anyone else from selling a computer that 'just works'*. They simply choose not to. Quality parts and compatibility testing might cut into their profit margins.
*Yes, they would have to come up with their own slogan. The poor marketing department.
It's a nice argument, but kind of falls apart when you figure that even places like New York, which has some of the highest population densities in the world, have crap internet. If the free market and unregulated business practices was going to provide good internet at competitive rates it would have already materialized, at least in select markets.
See, many people consider the idea of a Darwinist survival of the fittest and civilized society as oxymorons. You should not have to resort to Darwinist solutions to receive the pay agreed upon. Your compensation should not be a competition to see who can screw over who the most.
The idea that laws and contracts should be followed not because you will be penalized for being caught but because they are laws and contracts is significant. I would go so far as to say it defines much of our western society, or at least the ideals our western society strives for at its best.
Actually, I think that matches up rather nicely. I've heard the same thing about the older buildings holding up much better than the new ones. So, what you have is the buildings build in the lat 70s and early 80s that were, on the whole, up to code. But once you get to building that went up in the 90s and 00s you get a lot of buildings that were up to code only in the sense that they were able to pay the inspector enough to certify it. All the regulations in the world don't help if no one is following them.
Neither can thousands of other parasitic species. All the same no one debates the status of all sorts of fungus and ferns and others who tap directly into the circulatory system and other facilities of their host and cannot survive or replicate without them.
If a true answer or classification as to whether viruses are alive or not comes about, I suspect it will be far more subtle and elegant.
The local phone book makes an interesting read if that's the excuse you need to relax with some good whikey
What type of sick world do you live in where befriending someone you know is emotionally vulnerable for the express purpose of degrading and humiliating them does not classify as tormenting or cruel?
If you seriously see this as normal or even slightly acceptable behavior I have to strongly question your societal values and the people you associate with.
Science is so awesome, in the most original sense of the word. It inspires awe.
Look at what these people are doing. They have odd bits of animals that died uncountable millions of years ago (except they figured out ways of counting them) and put the bits back together. And now they think they can figure out what colour they were? That is fantastic!
Anyone who says that the knowledge of why and how things work somehow ruins the experience has no real wonder in their soul. There is nothing more awe inspiring than pulling back the curtain on some new piece of knowledge.
I agree that the community is not up to the task. However, I suspect that we are not talking about the same community.
Let's say that tomorrow I posted an improved layout design to the trac. Descriptions of the various elements, mockup images, UI icons and elements, new error messages, the works. What are the odds that it gets implemented? Seriously? I can't program, but I do decent layout and usability. From my own experience and that of others I suspect that I could post mockups and suggestions on the trac and forums until I am blue in the face.
Even if an entire squadron of UI specialists descended on a linux distro, went through the whole thing and posted up a unified UI design for every level of the system do you really think it would get implemented?
Let's be honest, there are always a million posts and bug reports floating around saying things along the lines of "I'm a regular user who tried to use X feature/menu. It didn't work well because it is missing A,B and C options, and D, E and F are in the wrong menu". If the linux/free software community had any track record of responding to those with 'well, I guess that needs to be fixed' instead of 'read the documentation/use commend line workaround with -r hfg blarg whatamidoing +7' linux would be a better experience than OS X by now.
Because they do not care what you think. They do not care what your politicians think. As long as they can control the information that their own people have access to, any outside fallout is more than acceptable.
I think your risk assessment is somewhat off there. You say you would rather buy off e-bay than download from the piratebay because you are afraid of Apple tracking you down for software piracy? eBay will give all the sale information to anyone with a subpoena, even if it is drawn in crayon. Where as getting TPB's server logs would take a minor international incident.
Now, someone might eventually take down TPB. The list of interested parties is so long that I doubt it will be Apple.