That's one of the really great things about federalism. Your voice can be heard and have an impact on local issues, most of the time without the national government stepping in and screwing things up.
Check out the pricing on a new MacBook, which is their consumer-level mobile product. Compare that with an equally equipped Dell, and you will see that the infamous "Apple premium" only exists in their prosumer lines. Apple doesn't sell cheapo crap-in-a-box machines, and as such the lowest MacBook would be considered mid-end by PC standards. Compare that with mid-end PC laptops and you will see that the price difference is almost negligible and sometimes favors the Mac, even.
That is exactly the point I was making. There are no low-end Apple machines. If I want to buy a $300 PC or $600 notebook, Apple isn't even an option. When people compare Macs to other PC's, they usually don't take into account price. Here's a car analogy. BMW cars in general are nicer than Honda cars, but there is a reason Honda sells more. Price is the single largest factor for nearly every person buying a computer.
And I would dispute the fact that the price difference between mid-end systems is "negligible". Here is the link to Dell's PC page and Apple's iMac page. You can see that the E520, which has the same processor, same size monitor, twice as much memory, and 100GB larger hard driver is $150 less than the lowest priced iMac. On Dell's notebook page you can see that the mid-range 1501 has more memory and a larger screen than the lowest price MacBook. It has a less powerful processor, but it is over $250 less! The notebook with a similar AMD processor is still over $100 less than the cheapest Macbook. So you are full of shit about the pricing aspect.
To reiterate my software point when was the last time you ever, under any circumstances, saw a piece of mass-market commercial software that ran on OSX but did not run on Windows? It almost never happens, simply because of Apple's lower market share. There are, however, quite a few programs that run only on Windows (not just games).
Spoken like one who hasn't spent enough time with a Mac... I've seen many people who pick up OSX for 2 hours, get frustrated at the differences, and then proclaim loudly that Macs suck. Many of these same people then spend more time with the system, and in a week or two they're all pretty much die-hard OSX proponents.
This is a completely ridiculous argument. I have used Mac software, and like I said I agree with you that Apple has the edge in ease of use. I like OSX, I'm just not convinced it is such a huge step above Windows as most Apple fans make it out to be. I like a very sparse and unobtrusive UI, and I have my Windows machine set up to reflect that. For this reason, I personally find the Dock to be a huge pain in the ass, although I can see why some people would like it. It's not that I haven't spent enough time with it, I just don't like it. For you to claim to know better than me what I like and don't like is ridiculous.
Besides, my point was that Windows is also fairly intuitive and easy to use, so ease of use isn't as big of a deal for most people as Apple makes it out to be. I have no difficulty doing anything that I want in Windows, so Apple isn't going to drag me away by telling me that it's easier on OSX. I assume most other people using Windows feel the same way.
Honestly, unless you're really into PC games, there aren't many areas where a Mac isn't >= to a Windows machine.
How about price? Software availability? For most people, those are the only things that matter. I would agree that Mac probably has a slight edge in ease of use, but it isn't as if using Windows is difficult by any means.
Few know about the fire bombings on Dresden, even though more people were killed that night than in both Atomic bombings combined.
That's actually a common myth that is untrue. Even at the highest estimates, the Dresden bombings killed at max 60-70,000 people. The wikipedia page says it's probably in the 25-30,000 range. The infamy of Dresden is both because it was later found to be largely unnecessary and because information of the bombing was largely unavailable until quite a while after the war. Most Americans didn't even know about it until Slaughterhouse-5 came out.
A better example would be the fire bombing of Tokyo. More people (probably) died in these attacks than either of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet you hardly ever hear anything about them in the media.
I would say that illegal copying of movies and music proves the cost of these media to be, in fact, more than the market will bear.
That's true in a certain sense. However, even if a popular DVD is on sale for $5, that is still more than most people will be willing to spend. However, that doesn't mean that it is an unreasonable price for a DVD. By the same reasoning, just because most people don't want to spend $25 for a new DVD doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the business model. They are still making plenty of money.
Also, your statement that lawmakers are being duped into giving media companies beneficial laws is irrelevant in this context. Every sane system allows for at least a brief period where the producers have a copyright on a film. Shortening copyright or getting rid of stupid decryption laws would still allow them to charge whatever the hell they wanted for a DVD.
I doubt very many teachers will allow you to use a PDA on a test. For nearly any chemistry class (especially in high school) any cheap scientific calculator should work.
The difference is that the US dollar is backed by a much larger, more trustworthy organization. It is used as the de facto currency for a large percentage of the world. It is based on actual, tangible assets and production. Its value is not easily manipulated by a small group of people. It can be exchanged for other forms of currency or hard goods extremely quickly and without hassle.
Disclaimer: I am not Mormon, but I live in Salt Lake City and have lived around Mormons my entire life. That being said, most people outside of Utah (and surrounding states to a lesser degree) are very ignorant about Mormonism. Most people think the LDS church is some kind of crazy cult and know nothing about the actual belief system, church structure, etc. People just assume it is much weirder than other churches because they don't know anything about it other than stereotypes (white, blond hair and blue eyes, multiples wives, etc.). Once people actually spend some time around Mormons or actually read about the church they understand that it isn't that weird (at least relative to other Christian denominations).
I think that most conservative Christians certainly could be convinced to vote for Romney, but that would take a lot of time and effort. Even in that case, there will definitely be a significant amount of people that will never vote for him just because they are completely ignorant about his church. Even though the LDS church really endorses a lot of the "hot topics" in conservative circles like family values and the lot it is still just too alien to most Americans. A lot of people didn't vote for JFK because of religious reasons, and he was Catholic (something I'm sure nearly everyone is familiar with). Combined with the fact that he is relatively unknown in the public mind, I seriously doubt Romney will win the Republican nomination.
And relating to your last comment, I disagree with a whole hell of a lot of what the LDS church does, but they do some really great stuff in charity work. As you can probably read into from my comments, I personally wouldn't lump them in with the radical churches. Most Mormons are really very nice, intelligent people even if there are a few crackpots. That's not any different from other religions.
I've lived in Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, and Missouri and spent a fair amount of time in the Seattle area and Oklahoma City area and it's different everywhere. In the Midwest, there are huge sections of cities that don't even have a sidewalk. Last summer I walked from my hotel room to a nearby Target in Oklahoma City (about 1.5 miles) and had to walk on the grass median and dirt under an overpass because there was no sidewalk. There also weren't any crosswalks, so I had to sprint across a 6-lane highway. It wasn't fun. Most areas I've lived in Utah, Oregon, Nevada, and Colorado weren't very pedestrian friendly because of the distances between things, but every street had a sidewalk and crosswalks so you at least had the option of walking.
Also, when I lived in Kansas City, I didn't even have the option of riding the bus to work. I lived ~10 miles from where I worked but would've had to hop three different bus lines and walk about a mile total. It would've taken about an hour and a half to take a trip which took 10 minutes in the car. Urban planning in the US sucks.
Well, there are a couple reasons. Mainly, the troops are trained to obey orders and the situation in Iraq really isn't that bad. Don't get me wrong, I completely disagree with what this administration is doing, but by and large what they are doing isn't directly affecting most people. 3,000 deaths over 4 years is not something you ever want but in the grand scheme of things is not a particularly violent war. If a couple hundred foreigners are detained in Gitmo and some innocent people get wiretapped, while that sucks, it isn't enough to spark an entire coup d'etat against the military establishment. If a cultural or military revolution didn't happen over Vietnam, it damn sure won't happen over Iraq.
See his comments for yourself. This first video shows the conversation between Sen. Spector and Mr. Gonzales leading up to the comment, this video shows the reaction from Sen. Spector and Sen. Leahy.
Truly scary stuff. This administration isn't even sticking to conservative values. They've gone off the neo-con deep end.
Actually, Sgt. Pepper's is one of the most expensive rock records ever made (or at least it was when it first came out). On A Day in the Life, for example, they hired a 40-piece orchestra. So you could easily make an album for 10k, but definitely not Sgt. Pepper's.
To be fair, Ben Kweller decided it wasn't worth the effort to fight it. I got the impression that generally he's all right with sampling, he just wished he would've been asked first. He absolutely would've won the court case, though.
Translation: You like rock more than rap. You know way more about rock than you do about rap, therefore you think rock is more influential.
There's nothing wrong with that, but hopefully you realize your biases. Some people think that Kraftwerk is the most influential band ever. Most people would disagree. It's a hard thing to judge.
I once used it to block fake HBO seeds that were flooding torrents with fake data (they gave pieces of the torrent that failed the hash so a lot of bandwidth was wasted). I don't know how far to trust it, but it worked for that purpose. I know *AA have used college kids connections to rat on their schoolmates so I am sure they stopped using their own IP addresses to monitor this stuff long ago.
Gimme a break. 21 is 1.167% of 1800. Which is approximately 1% when taking into account error margins in the survey. I don't know the methodology of that survey so it may be even more or less but whatever. Therefore, for Apple to capture 1% of the entire cell phone market, they will either need to capture the entire market (extremely unlikely) or grow the market considerably while capturing a large market share. Either way, it's a tall order for Apple.
Now this is all hypothetical...obviously if handguns had been permitted on board then airlines and pilots would have insisted that pilots also carry guns and have secure cockpits. My point was to call BS on the statement that passengers with guns would have prevented 9/11.
Well I don't really have any objection to guns not being allowed on planes and was just speculating also. It certainly would've made things interesting if a couple passengers had guns, though. Also, if guns were allowed then (presuming good security) only US citizens would have them. Generally speaking people that have concealed weapons permits are pretty safe with their weapons so maybe it isn't such a ridiculous idea as it would first seem. Then again, there are people like Timothy McVeigh who have a pretty clean record and could get a weapons permit.
Well, I don't know about them massacring(sp?) all the passengers. Assuming a larger amount of guns in the hands of the passengers vs. the hijackers I would assume that the passengers would be able to take the hijackers. People that have concealed weapon permits generally know how to use them very well. I certainly wouldn't want to be on a plane during a shootout but then again I wouldn't want to be on the plane when it crashes into a very large building either. I mean, it certainly couldn't have turned out any worse for the passengers, could it? At least with guns they would've had a fighting chance.
And before anyone starts ranting about more coal... California has all but outlawed new coal power plants. Natural gas is much more likely, as well as increased solar and wind production... California is the PERFECT area for large-scale utilization of both, hence Sterling Systems/Edison's plans to build or the largest solar power plant in the world in California.
Which has pushed all the new coal plants into other Western states who then transmit their power back to California. Coal power is still by far the cheapest way to go, even when you have to move the power source further from the consumers. Until other states adopt similar regulations or California stops importing electricity from coal plants, the effects of California's regulations will remain very small.
Yeah, that happens all the time. I can't even walk down the street in the Dallas 'burbs without seeing a transvestite hanging from a tree in someone's front yard. Maybe someone should look into making that illegal.
Yeah, why would anyone possibly think that India could produce anythingsignificantinmathematics. And that's just after a quick wikipedia search for things I already know. Obviously there are many more great mathematicians from India.
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That's one of the really great things about federalism. Your voice can be heard and have an impact on local issues, most of the time without the national government stepping in and screwing things up.
I've got 10 cfls and none of them make noise.
Maybe you just can't hear the noise? I think it's even higher than the high-pitched TV whine and most people can't hear that.
That is exactly the point I was making. There are no low-end Apple machines. If I want to buy a $300 PC or $600 notebook, Apple isn't even an option. When people compare Macs to other PC's, they usually don't take into account price. Here's a car analogy. BMW cars in general are nicer than Honda cars, but there is a reason Honda sells more. Price is the single largest factor for nearly every person buying a computer.
And I would dispute the fact that the price difference between mid-end systems is "negligible". Here is the link to Dell's PC page and Apple's iMac page. You can see that the E520, which has the same processor, same size monitor, twice as much memory, and 100GB larger hard driver is $150 less than the lowest priced iMac. On Dell's notebook page you can see that the mid-range 1501 has more memory and a larger screen than the lowest price MacBook. It has a less powerful processor, but it is over $250 less! The notebook with a similar AMD processor is still over $100 less than the cheapest Macbook. So you are full of shit about the pricing aspect.
To reiterate my software point when was the last time you ever, under any circumstances, saw a piece of mass-market commercial software that ran on OSX but did not run on Windows? It almost never happens, simply because of Apple's lower market share. There are, however, quite a few programs that run only on Windows (not just games).
This is a completely ridiculous argument. I have used Mac software, and like I said I agree with you that Apple has the edge in ease of use. I like OSX, I'm just not convinced it is such a huge step above Windows as most Apple fans make it out to be. I like a very sparse and unobtrusive UI, and I have my Windows machine set up to reflect that. For this reason, I personally find the Dock to be a huge pain in the ass, although I can see why some people would like it. It's not that I haven't spent enough time with it, I just don't like it. For you to claim to know better than me what I like and don't like is ridiculous.
Besides, my point was that Windows is also fairly intuitive and easy to use, so ease of use isn't as big of a deal for most people as Apple makes it out to be. I have no difficulty doing anything that I want in Windows, so Apple isn't going to drag me away by telling me that it's easier on OSX. I assume most other people using Windows feel the same way.
How about price? Software availability? For most people, those are the only things that matter. I would agree that Mac probably has a slight edge in ease of use, but it isn't as if using Windows is difficult by any means.
That's actually a common myth that is untrue. Even at the highest estimates, the Dresden bombings killed at max 60-70,000 people. The wikipedia page says it's probably in the 25-30,000 range. The infamy of Dresden is both because it was later found to be largely unnecessary and because information of the bombing was largely unavailable until quite a while after the war. Most Americans didn't even know about it until Slaughterhouse-5 came out.
A better example would be the fire bombing of Tokyo. More people (probably) died in these attacks than either of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, yet you hardly ever hear anything about them in the media.
That's true in a certain sense. However, even if a popular DVD is on sale for $5, that is still more than most people will be willing to spend. However, that doesn't mean that it is an unreasonable price for a DVD. By the same reasoning, just because most people don't want to spend $25 for a new DVD doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the business model. They are still making plenty of money.
Also, your statement that lawmakers are being duped into giving media companies beneficial laws is irrelevant in this context. Every sane system allows for at least a brief period where the producers have a copyright on a film. Shortening copyright or getting rid of stupid decryption laws would still allow them to charge whatever the hell they wanted for a DVD.
Plastic doesn't work when the power is out or you don't have an internet connection. Also, most people like the anonymity of cash.
I doubt very many teachers will allow you to use a PDA on a test. For nearly any chemistry class (especially in high school) any cheap scientific calculator should work.
The difference is that the US dollar is backed by a much larger, more trustworthy organization. It is used as the de facto currency for a large percentage of the world. It is based on actual, tangible assets and production. Its value is not easily manipulated by a small group of people. It can be exchanged for other forms of currency or hard goods extremely quickly and without hassle.
Disclaimer: I am not Mormon, but I live in Salt Lake City and have lived around Mormons my entire life. That being said, most people outside of Utah (and surrounding states to a lesser degree) are very ignorant about Mormonism. Most people think the LDS church is some kind of crazy cult and know nothing about the actual belief system, church structure, etc. People just assume it is much weirder than other churches because they don't know anything about it other than stereotypes (white, blond hair and blue eyes, multiples wives, etc.). Once people actually spend some time around Mormons or actually read about the church they understand that it isn't that weird (at least relative to other Christian denominations).
I think that most conservative Christians certainly could be convinced to vote for Romney, but that would take a lot of time and effort. Even in that case, there will definitely be a significant amount of people that will never vote for him just because they are completely ignorant about his church. Even though the LDS church really endorses a lot of the "hot topics" in conservative circles like family values and the lot it is still just too alien to most Americans. A lot of people didn't vote for JFK because of religious reasons, and he was Catholic (something I'm sure nearly everyone is familiar with). Combined with the fact that he is relatively unknown in the public mind, I seriously doubt Romney will win the Republican nomination.
And relating to your last comment, I disagree with a whole hell of a lot of what the LDS church does, but they do some really great stuff in charity work. As you can probably read into from my comments, I personally wouldn't lump them in with the radical churches. Most Mormons are really very nice, intelligent people even if there are a few crackpots. That's not any different from other religions.
I've lived in Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon, and Missouri and spent a fair amount of time in the Seattle area and Oklahoma City area and it's different everywhere. In the Midwest, there are huge sections of cities that don't even have a sidewalk. Last summer I walked from my hotel room to a nearby Target in Oklahoma City (about 1.5 miles) and had to walk on the grass median and dirt under an overpass because there was no sidewalk. There also weren't any crosswalks, so I had to sprint across a 6-lane highway. It wasn't fun. Most areas I've lived in Utah, Oregon, Nevada, and Colorado weren't very pedestrian friendly because of the distances between things, but every street had a sidewalk and crosswalks so you at least had the option of walking.
Also, when I lived in Kansas City, I didn't even have the option of riding the bus to work. I lived ~10 miles from where I worked but would've had to hop three different bus lines and walk about a mile total. It would've taken about an hour and a half to take a trip which took 10 minutes in the car. Urban planning in the US sucks.
Well, there are a couple reasons. Mainly, the troops are trained to obey orders and the situation in Iraq really isn't that bad. Don't get me wrong, I completely disagree with what this administration is doing, but by and large what they are doing isn't directly affecting most people. 3,000 deaths over 4 years is not something you ever want but in the grand scheme of things is not a particularly violent war. If a couple hundred foreigners are detained in Gitmo and some innocent people get wiretapped, while that sucks, it isn't enough to spark an entire coup d'etat against the military establishment. If a cultural or military revolution didn't happen over Vietnam, it damn sure won't happen over Iraq.
See his comments for yourself. This first video shows the conversation between Sen. Spector and Mr. Gonzales leading up to the comment, this video shows the reaction from Sen. Spector and Sen. Leahy.
Truly scary stuff. This administration isn't even sticking to conservative values. They've gone off the neo-con deep end.
Well, I'm not sure what programming they have but XM does carry the BBC.
Actually, Sgt. Pepper's is one of the most expensive rock records ever made (or at least it was when it first came out). On A Day in the Life, for example, they hired a 40-piece orchestra. So you could easily make an album for 10k, but definitely not Sgt. Pepper's.
To be fair, Ben Kweller decided it wasn't worth the effort to fight it. I got the impression that generally he's all right with sampling, he just wished he would've been asked first. He absolutely would've won the court case, though.
Translation: You like rock more than rap. You know way more about rock than you do about rap, therefore you think rock is more influential.
There's nothing wrong with that, but hopefully you realize your biases. Some people think that Kraftwerk is the most influential band ever. Most people would disagree. It's a hard thing to judge.
I once used it to block fake HBO seeds that were flooding torrents with fake data (they gave pieces of the torrent that failed the hash so a lot of bandwidth was wasted). I don't know how far to trust it, but it worked for that purpose. I know *AA have used college kids connections to rat on their schoolmates so I am sure they stopped using their own IP addresses to monitor this stuff long ago.
You just have to play the science card:
"Will you be menstruating in the next week?"
*smack*
"No, it's ok. I'm doing a scientific study."
"Oh, sorry."
"So, can I take your picture?"
*smack*
Gimme a break. 21 is 1.167% of 1800. Which is approximately 1% when taking into account error margins in the survey. I don't know the methodology of that survey so it may be even more or less but whatever. Therefore, for Apple to capture 1% of the entire cell phone market, they will either need to capture the entire market (extremely unlikely) or grow the market considerably while capturing a large market share. Either way, it's a tall order for Apple.
Well I don't really have any objection to guns not being allowed on planes and was just speculating also. It certainly would've made things interesting if a couple passengers had guns, though. Also, if guns were allowed then (presuming good security) only US citizens would have them. Generally speaking people that have concealed weapons permits are pretty safe with their weapons so maybe it isn't such a ridiculous idea as it would first seem. Then again, there are people like Timothy McVeigh who have a pretty clean record and could get a weapons permit.
Well, I don't know about them massacring(sp?) all the passengers. Assuming a larger amount of guns in the hands of the passengers vs. the hijackers I would assume that the passengers would be able to take the hijackers. People that have concealed weapon permits generally know how to use them very well. I certainly wouldn't want to be on a plane during a shootout but then again I wouldn't want to be on the plane when it crashes into a very large building either. I mean, it certainly couldn't have turned out any worse for the passengers, could it? At least with guns they would've had a fighting chance.
Which has pushed all the new coal plants into other Western states who then transmit their power back to California. Coal power is still by far the cheapest way to go, even when you have to move the power source further from the consumers. Until other states adopt similar regulations or California stops importing electricity from coal plants, the effects of California's regulations will remain very small.
Some further reading: Western Resource Advocates (read the excellent study at the bottom) and SFGate.com
Yeah, that happens all the time. I can't even walk down the street in the Dallas 'burbs without seeing a transvestite hanging from a tree in someone's front yard. Maybe someone should look into making that illegal.
Yeah, why would anyone possibly think that India could produce anything significant in mathematics. And that's just after a quick wikipedia search for things I already know. Obviously there are many more great mathematicians from India.