Way to use statistics to try to brow-beat us off the topic, but you're talking AROUND the GP's point. Every single one of your points is qualified: "41%", "two-thirds", "nearly three-quarters," etc. What is your point? That there is a range to any set of data? Well color me shocked. Of course if you define a set there will be some people who fall near the high end of the range, and some who fall near the low end. You would have us pay attention only to the high end, I guess. Sorry, not falling for it.
In addition, the concept of "poor" makes no sense without a context. In the context of the United States, poor means poor nutrition, poor health care, poor living conditions, and poor education. Yes, if you compare to say Darfur, where poor means no nutrition, no health care, no living conditions, and no education, that's not bad. But is "slightly better than Darfur" really your ideal standard for American citizens??
Of course the Heritage Foundation like most conservative think-tanks (and you apparently) utterly misses the irony of using statements like this to attack social programs:
Two-thirds of "poor" households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
In fact, numerous government reports indicate that most "poor" Americans today are better housed, better fed, and own more personal property than average Americans throughout most of this century. (from your link)
Geez, I wonder why the poor are so much better off now than they used to be?? Oh well, let's get rid of all these social programs since they don't seem to have any positive effect on the nation...
Is it hard reality? No, of course not. But neither are the depictions in Frankenstein, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Jurassic Park, Gattaca, or Animal Farm or Watership Down for that matter. But clearly these are important pieces of thinking on the issues they address--issues like surveillance technology, abuse of political power, genetic manipulation, etc.
Speculative fiction is often where the implications of technological change are first addressed. The most successful practitioners are literally thought leaders, because their stories are sometimes the first to draw out concepts of the future to possible implications or conclusions. That is why science fiction authors are often sought out as consultants to private or public enterprises that push tech barriers. It's not because they are necessarily "right" about the future, but because they are thinking about the issues in unique or broader or farther-reaching ways.
For instance Asimov didn't create his laws as hard-nosed coding advice for modern programmers. They are just part of his larger consideration of a) what it would take for the public to accept sentient robots among them, and b) what are the practical and ethical implications of trying to hard-code rigid laws onto actual intelligence? You say they wouldn't work for law-enforcement robots, and you might be righter than you know...would the public even accept law enforcement robots, even with such laws in place? A question like this is where a science fiction story (and the public reaction to it) can be very illuminating.
Unless you've got some real sentient machines we can use for hard research, we're stuck with thought experiments in considering the implications of such machines. Asimov's stories involving robots are some of the most detailed and coherent examples. They serve as common ground upon which to start conversations...for example this one. They don't need to be "right" or "accurate" to serve that purpose.
Fantasizing about standing up to a bully in a physical way is natural and inevitable of course, and harmless: provided you know better, safer and more effective strategies.
This to me gets at the heart of the matter. Games are fantasy. They are escapist, they are entertainment. The whole point of video games is to fire the imagination and step into a different life/world/experience for a little while.
A game where you get to play a student dealing with bullies is the perfect place to fight back against them as much as you want. Most folks who are bullied fight back in their mind later anyway. I know I used to. It's not like this video game is going to introduce entirely new thoughts into people's heads...revenge is one of the impulses and stories that seems common to every culture on earth.
Kids are already thinking it--they're already sitting and stewing their rooms. Whether or not there's a game controller in their hands is not a big difference IMO. And either way the key to coping with such strong feelings is good parenting and good friends. Video game or not does not change that.
Your post was modded troll because it's self-aggrandizing, impossible to verify, and falsely humble. You must know that your single anecdote proves no substantial point about the effect of mass media on children in general, so it could be inferred that the only reason you posted it was to talk about yourself.
If you had rigorously collected and analyzed data comparing TV to non-TV kids, that would be an insightful or informative post.
As the jihad advances, Greece will eventually be conquered and converted to a Muslim state, thereby retroactively converting Eratosthenese' discovery to a Muslim one. Just like many of the other discoveries in this article that predate Mohammed.;-D
I don't really care about details of how it's accomplished. Nano-treated surfaces and micro-robots? Sweet, whatever. Just so long as I never have to clean the tub or mop the kitchen by hand again.
There are plenty of articles on this subject that don't mention Google at all, and do mention the companies I listed (how do you think I learned about them--I'm not a stock broker) as well as others.
What Slashdot did do was decide to post this article here, and not one of the articles about the other companies that don't (or are planning not to) offer quarterly guidance. Why? Because this is a tech site and Google is the highest-profile tech company facing this issue.
Show me Slashdot wrote the article and I'll agree with you that the focus from Walstreet is on Google because it's slashdot.
The focus from Wall Street is not (just) on Google, it is on the issue of quarterly earnings guidance in general. Google is simply the focus of this particular story, which was then posted on Slashdot. Don't assume that just because Google is the focus of this story and discussion, that it is somehow the lynchpin of the entire issue. It's not.
There is no legal requirement for a public company to provide quarterly earnings guidance, and in fact a number of large, successful public companies do not provide such guidance. Google can easily meet their legal and fiduciary requirements without providing such guidance.
Contrary to what the analysts would have us believe, companies do have some rights in what and how they communicate to the public. (Because of Regulation FD, communication to investors and communication to the public are one and the same thing.)
Coca-Cola, Gillete, the Washington Post, McDonalds, and Berkshire Hathaway are just some of the companies that do not provide quarterly earnings guidance. In addition the CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently called on businesses to end the practice in favor of better communication about long-term issues. The only reason Google seems to be singled out on this issue is because it's Slashdot.
Google has no responsibility that I can see towards providing analysts with all the information they'd like to have.
More to the point, earnings guidance is not even actual information. It is simply a guess. Google certainly has no responsibility to provide that to analysts or anyone else.
Please point to one study that shows the left bias of NPR News. Every rigorous study I've seen, including the reviews instigated by the noted conservative Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Kenneth Tomlinson, have concluded that NPR provides coverage that is very balanced and fair.
Perhaps you're confusing fair and balanced with "Fair and Balanced"(c).
That particular touchscreen iPod photo was a Photoshopped hoax. Everyone knows this is the direction Apple is most likely to head though. If you disagree, I'd love to hear what you think is the most likely next step in the iPod line.
A pocket-sized, full-screen device needs some sort of screen protection--especially a touchscreen, which are notoriously fragile. The leather sleeve is an accessory to the touchscreen full-screen iPod, whatever it ends up being called. It's Apple's answer to the obvious question of "how do you protect the screen?"
The Dubai Ports World deal is waking Americans up to a painful reality: So-called "conservatives" and "flat world" globalists have bankrupted our nation for their own bag of silver, and in the process are selling off America.
Where do they keep this silver? In what financial instruments is it invested?
Money does not just disappear when a person sells something for a fat profit. They invest that money in other instruments, in effect simply transferring their ownership from one set of companies to another. Foreign-based companies may own and operate in America more and more, but more and more the wealth of America is invested in foreign-based companies because that is where the growth is. So who owns who?
Even the most successful and important companies are run by a leader or core group of leaders with vision, charisma, will, etc. These people determine the direction of the company as a whole and thus dictate the company's ethics and morality. That's why I think it is wrong, in a practical sense, to say that companies have no morals. They have the morals of their leaders.
Consider the near-demise of the bond trading company Salomon Smith Barney in the nineties. When it was led by risk-loving, gambling ex-trader John Guttfreund, the employees gambled with the company by skirting (and crossing) the moral and legal limits imposed on it. It was caught and was nearly wiped out by the Justice Department. When Warren Buffett took over the reins it became an upstanding and moral company almost overnight, and remained so under the leadership of the man Buffett hand-picked to lead afterward.
Likewise there are numerous examples of companies that act very morally, for example Patagonia, Ben and Jerries, or Malden Mills. They enact the morals and ethics of their founders and leaders.
In this respect I do agree with you that companies make excellent barometers--they can be powerful mechanisms for amplifying the decisions and morals of those the people lead them, yet they are susceptible to public influence. They can therefore serve as mirrors of their customers and the public who are aware of them.
The problem is that they are not instantaneous mirrors. In fact there is a pretty significant delay in corrections. Stories like Enron IMO do not illustrate a failure of the system, but rather illustrate the system working properly--just slowly. After all, the executives did get caught and the company suffered (essentially) a death penalty. However there was a pretty significant delay between the immoral acts and the societal response.
One of the toughest things for humans to deal with cognitively is a delay between action and effect. In one psych study people were given the task of adjusting a thermostat to keep a steady temperature in a refrigerator as it was opened and closed. They did not have too much trouble with it until lag was secretly introducing into the system. This created chaotic oscillations as the participants continually over-compensated. More revealing, none were able to correctly deduce that there was a uniform delay at work. To them it simply seemed like the system was acting erratically and unpredictably. Thus so can the oscillations seem between morally right and immoral corporate behavior.
The solution to some is legislation, in part because it is thought to be a fast and sure way to solve a problem the market does not seem to be able to (at least not yet). However legislation is its own messy system of delays and is neither fast nor sure. No bill passes without extensive compromise and complexity, and no meaningful legislation is implemented effectively without first passing through many rounds of interpretation and litigation.
Legislation also is inflexible in that it is a permanent solution. It can only be replaced or revised except through the same tortuous process that produced it in the first place.
It's amber while charging. Plug it in, and it tests the battery before doing anything. A second or two later, it concludes that the battery needs charging, starts charging it, and the LED changes from green to amber. What's so hard?
It's not hard, just not perfect. Theoretically either LED could just as easily be the default during testing, with either state change initiated as needed.
It just makes more sense to default to amber, because when you plug in a laptop you expect it to charge. If it were amber right away it would match the user expectations better (because it would seem to start charging right away).
Put into words it would mean "I'm charging just like you asked me to...oh wait, I don't need to" (as it goes green). Whereas now, when it defaults to green right away then goes amber, it means "why did you plug me in? The battery is fully charged...oh wait, no it's not. Charging."
They just put winning elections ahead of national security.
Total bullshit--I haven't seen the left win a notable election in at least 8 years. How can you possibly say that the left cares more about winning elections than their values with Howard Dean as the Democratic party chair?? Not exactly famous for winning national elections, but he's totally committed to the core values.
It is the Republican party who has sacrificed their core values on the altar of electoral success.
Small government? Forget it--seniors here is your $600 billion+ pill benefit, contractors here are your $60 billion in non-compete bid contracts. Thanks for the donations and votes.
National security? Forget it--we're going to transform the military by shrinking it drastically (look up Rumsfeld's first 6 months in office), we don't need troops when we've got technology. Whoops! Terrorist attack! Ok, now we'll pay attention to national security. No no, of course we don't need a Homeland Security Dept. Oh, it will mean votes? Ok, we can have one. (look up Bush's huge flip-flop on this one)
Personal responsibility? Forget it, not needed. The government will decide what you can do in your home, what you can write, say, watch on TV, or think, what you can do with music or movies you buy, what books you can check out of the library, etc. Thanks for the soft money, corporations and churches.
Fiscal responsbility? Who needs it, right! Here's your payoff, err, tax cuts. Thanks for the votes, don't worry about paying it back, the next generation will take care of that. The young ones don't vote for us anyway, might as well stick'em with the bill.
The Justice Dept. is not prosecuting a crime, they are appealing a ruling. And the data from Google would not prove the DOJ's case (it is not direct evidence), but would rather assist in building circumstantial support for the case.
So why should Google be forced to comply? In such a proceeding it's not clear to me that the DOJ somehow has "greater" rights than any other appellate litigant. If I appeal some ruling someday, can I force Google to give up their trade secrets, on the basis that they might provide circumstantial support for my case?
Even Tom Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has come out against quarterly earnings guidance, saying that it leads to companies managing to hit their numbers rather than grow a solid long-term business.
The case is basically SCO's business plan right now. As long as it is in contention, SCO employees continue to receive salary. As long as it seems possible they might win, they can raise money to pay those salaries, either by direct investment or by shadow investment via Linux license purchases.
It seems more and more likely they will lose the case, and when they do it's all over. So naturally they will seek every possible way to extend the trial. If they were confident in their ability to win they would be seeking ways to speed things up.
Of course there are going to be crappy newspapers and reporters--it's an industry like any other industry, and the crappy companies go out of business and the crappy reporters lose their jobs.
Parent's point is that even the best American newspapers--NYT, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, etc, are facing financial problems and may not be able to do the job they once did of reporting. Press really is an integral part of our process of government, as the founders recognized when they provided the press with the freedom to operate free from government control.
It's trite I know, but I think there is some truth to saying that if you think you can do a better job as a reporter, why don't you? Freedom of the press is not reserved to card-carrying reporters; anyone can start a newspaper or Web publication or blog.
But it's a fact that the big newspapers still break big stories, and (much more importantly) give them deep, multi-week attention, with detailed reporting, analysis, and opinion. And perhaps most importantly, big newspapers are still printed and archived and stored in libraries. Who archives the blog-o-sphere? Without newspapers, what will serve as the "first draft of history"?
You always claim Apple is better. Pre-OS X you claimed Mac OS was faster because it wasn't Windows and wasn't on Intel. OS-X PPC era, you claimed Apple was faster because it wasn't Windows and wasn't on Intel. Now that Apple is on Intel you claim Apple is faster.
The claim now is that MacBooks and iMacs with Intel inside are faster than Powerbooks and iMacs with PPC inside. That's it. I haven't seen a single claim that an Intel Mac is faster than an Intel PC. If you have, please link to it.
You claim that OS-X has the best designed GUI in the world. However, on large wide screen s users have to scroll more to get to menus that are all on the upper-left side of the screen when their windows are on the right side. How is that a better designed GUI. It is like putting the gas peddle of a car in a fixed location above the dash-board because a committee decided that that was the best place to put it.
One of the ways OS X is better designed is that the menus are not nearly as important as they are in Windows. Almost everything can accomplished with buttons on the app, key combinations, or floating palettes. In fact this is the primary driver behind the wide screen format on Macs, because it gives you maximum flexibility in palette placement.
In addition, in a program that will have multiple windows open, the Mac system is better because all the windows can float on the desktop. On a Windows machine they sit inside a "super window" that you have to maximise anyway!
Finally, because the menus are always in the same place on the edge of the screen, using them develops muscle memory. Whereas on a Windows machine you always have to spot them first then move to them. This is where I'll point out that the gas pedal IS in a fixed location--it is in the same place on every car.
Slashdot Mirror
Way to use statistics to try to brow-beat us off the topic, but you're talking AROUND the GP's point. Every single one of your points is qualified: "41%", "two-thirds", "nearly three-quarters," etc. What is your point? That there is a range to any set of data? Well color me shocked. Of course if you define a set there will be some people who fall near the high end of the range, and some who fall near the low end. You would have us pay attention only to the high end, I guess. Sorry, not falling for it.
In addition, the concept of "poor" makes no sense without a context. In the context of the United States, poor means poor nutrition, poor health care, poor living conditions, and poor education. Yes, if you compare to say Darfur, where poor means no nutrition, no health care, no living conditions, and no education, that's not bad. But is "slightly better than Darfur" really your ideal standard for American citizens??
Of course the Heritage Foundation like most conservative think-tanks (and you apparently) utterly misses the irony of using statements like this to attack social programs:
Two-thirds of "poor" households have air conditioning. By contrast, 30 years ago, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
In fact, numerous government reports indicate that most "poor" Americans today are better housed, better fed, and own more personal property than average Americans throughout most of this century. (from your link)
Geez, I wonder why the poor are so much better off now than they used to be?? Oh well, let's get rid of all these social programs since they don't seem to have any positive effect on the nation...
Is it hard reality? No, of course not. But neither are the depictions in Frankenstein, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Jurassic Park, Gattaca, or Animal Farm or Watership Down for that matter. But clearly these are important pieces of thinking on the issues they address--issues like surveillance technology, abuse of political power, genetic manipulation, etc.
Speculative fiction is often where the implications of technological change are first addressed. The most successful practitioners are literally thought leaders, because their stories are sometimes the first to draw out concepts of the future to possible implications or conclusions. That is why science fiction authors are often sought out as consultants to private or public enterprises that push tech barriers. It's not because they are necessarily "right" about the future, but because they are thinking about the issues in unique or broader or farther-reaching ways.
For instance Asimov didn't create his laws as hard-nosed coding advice for modern programmers. They are just part of his larger consideration of a) what it would take for the public to accept sentient robots among them, and b) what are the practical and ethical implications of trying to hard-code rigid laws onto actual intelligence? You say they wouldn't work for law-enforcement robots, and you might be righter than you know...would the public even accept law enforcement robots, even with such laws in place? A question like this is where a science fiction story (and the public reaction to it) can be very illuminating.
Unless you've got some real sentient machines we can use for hard research, we're stuck with thought experiments in considering the implications of such machines. Asimov's stories involving robots are some of the most detailed and coherent examples. They serve as common ground upon which to start conversations...for example this one. They don't need to be "right" or "accurate" to serve that purpose.
Fantasizing about standing up to a bully in a physical way is natural and inevitable of course, and harmless: provided you know better, safer and more effective strategies.
This to me gets at the heart of the matter. Games are fantasy. They are escapist, they are entertainment. The whole point of video games is to fire the imagination and step into a different life/world/experience for a little while.
A game where you get to play a student dealing with bullies is the perfect place to fight back against them as much as you want. Most folks who are bullied fight back in their mind later anyway. I know I used to. It's not like this video game is going to introduce entirely new thoughts into people's heads...revenge is one of the impulses and stories that seems common to every culture on earth.
Kids are already thinking it--they're already sitting and stewing their rooms. Whether or not there's a game controller in their hands is not a big difference IMO. And either way the key to coping with such strong feelings is good parenting and good friends. Video game or not does not change that.
and then guide its evolution until the creature's offspring develop into a thriving civilization with cities, religion, and spaceships.
Game sponsored by the Intelligent Design Network.
Your post was modded troll because it's self-aggrandizing, impossible to verify, and falsely humble. You must know that your single anecdote proves no substantial point about the effect of mass media on children in general, so it could be inferred that the only reason you posted it was to talk about yourself.
If you had rigorously collected and analyzed data comparing TV to non-TV kids, that would be an insightful or informative post.
As the jihad advances, Greece will eventually be conquered and converted to a Muslim state, thereby retroactively converting Eratosthenese' discovery to a Muslim one. Just like many of the other discoveries in this article that predate Mohammed. ;-D
Self cleaning.
I don't really care about details of how it's accomplished. Nano-treated surfaces and micro-robots? Sweet, whatever. Just so long as I never have to clean the tub or mop the kitchen by hand again.
There are plenty of articles on this subject that don't mention Google at all, and do mention the companies I listed (how do you think I learned about them--I'm not a stock broker) as well as others.
What Slashdot did do was decide to post this article here, and not one of the articles about the other companies that don't (or are planning not to) offer quarterly guidance. Why? Because this is a tech site and Google is the highest-profile tech company facing this issue.
Show me Slashdot wrote the article and I'll agree with you that the focus from Walstreet is on Google because it's slashdot.
The focus from Wall Street is not (just) on Google, it is on the issue of quarterly earnings guidance in general. Google is simply the focus of this particular story, which was then posted on Slashdot. Don't assume that just because Google is the focus of this story and discussion, that it is somehow the lynchpin of the entire issue. It's not.
There is no legal requirement for a public company to provide quarterly earnings guidance, and in fact a number of large, successful public companies do not provide such guidance. Google can easily meet their legal and fiduciary requirements without providing such guidance.
Contrary to what the analysts would have us believe, companies do have some rights in what and how they communicate to the public. (Because of Regulation FD, communication to investors and communication to the public are one and the same thing.)
Coca-Cola, Gillete, the Washington Post, McDonalds, and Berkshire Hathaway are just some of the companies that do not provide quarterly earnings guidance. In addition the CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently called on businesses to end the practice in favor of better communication about long-term issues. The only reason Google seems to be singled out on this issue is because it's Slashdot.
Google has no responsibility that I can see towards providing analysts with all the information they'd like to have.
More to the point, earnings guidance is not even actual information. It is simply a guess. Google certainly has no responsibility to provide that to analysts or anyone else.
Please point to one study that shows the left bias of NPR News. Every rigorous study I've seen, including the reviews instigated by the noted conservative Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Kenneth Tomlinson, have concluded that NPR provides coverage that is very balanced and fair.
Perhaps you're confusing fair and balanced with "Fair and Balanced"(c).
The touchscreen iPod was a Photoshopped hoax. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPNgzz870F4
That particular touchscreen iPod photo was a Photoshopped hoax. Everyone knows this is the direction Apple is most likely to head though. If you disagree, I'd love to hear what you think is the most likely next step in the iPod line.
Because Digg certainly never has dupes! (gag)
A pocket-sized, full-screen device needs some sort of screen protection--especially a touchscreen, which are notoriously fragile. The leather sleeve is an accessory to the touchscreen full-screen iPod, whatever it ends up being called. It's Apple's answer to the obvious question of "how do you protect the screen?"
You can't. Macroeconomics is even less of a science than historical climatology.
That burden is on those who assert...
I couldn't agree more.
The Dubai Ports World deal is waking Americans up to a painful reality: So-called "conservatives" and "flat world" globalists have bankrupted our nation for their own bag of silver, and in the process are selling off America.
Where do they keep this silver? In what financial instruments is it invested?
Money does not just disappear when a person sells something for a fat profit. They invest that money in other instruments, in effect simply transferring their ownership from one set of companies to another. Foreign-based companies may own and operate in America more and more, but more and more the wealth of America is invested in foreign-based companies because that is where the growth is. So who owns who?
Even the most successful and important companies are run by a leader or core group of leaders with vision, charisma, will, etc. These people determine the direction of the company as a whole and thus dictate the company's ethics and morality. That's why I think it is wrong, in a practical sense, to say that companies have no morals. They have the morals of their leaders.
Consider the near-demise of the bond trading company Salomon Smith Barney in the nineties. When it was led by risk-loving, gambling ex-trader John Guttfreund, the employees gambled with the company by skirting (and crossing) the moral and legal limits imposed on it. It was caught and was nearly wiped out by the Justice Department. When Warren Buffett took over the reins it became an upstanding and moral company almost overnight, and remained so under the leadership of the man Buffett hand-picked to lead afterward.
Likewise there are numerous examples of companies that act very morally, for example Patagonia, Ben and Jerries, or Malden Mills. They enact the morals and ethics of their founders and leaders.
In this respect I do agree with you that companies make excellent barometers--they can be powerful mechanisms for amplifying the decisions and morals of those the people lead them, yet they are susceptible to public influence. They can therefore serve as mirrors of their customers and the public who are aware of them.
The problem is that they are not instantaneous mirrors. In fact there is a pretty significant delay in corrections. Stories like Enron IMO do not illustrate a failure of the system, but rather illustrate the system working properly--just slowly. After all, the executives did get caught and the company suffered (essentially) a death penalty. However there was a pretty significant delay between the immoral acts and the societal response.
One of the toughest things for humans to deal with cognitively is a delay between action and effect. In one psych study people were given the task of adjusting a thermostat to keep a steady temperature in a refrigerator as it was opened and closed. They did not have too much trouble with it until lag was secretly introducing into the system. This created chaotic oscillations as the participants continually over-compensated. More revealing, none were able to correctly deduce that there was a uniform delay at work. To them it simply seemed like the system was acting erratically and unpredictably. Thus so can the oscillations seem between morally right and immoral corporate behavior.
The solution to some is legislation, in part because it is thought to be a fast and sure way to solve a problem the market does not seem to be able to (at least not yet). However legislation is its own messy system of delays and is neither fast nor sure. No bill passes without extensive compromise and complexity, and no meaningful legislation is implemented effectively without first passing through many rounds of interpretation and litigation.
Legislation also is inflexible in that it is a permanent solution. It can only be replaced or revised except through the same tortuous process that produced it in the first place.
It's amber while charging. Plug it in, and it tests the battery before doing anything. A second or two later, it concludes that the battery needs charging, starts charging it, and the LED changes from green to amber. What's so hard?
It's not hard, just not perfect. Theoretically either LED could just as easily be the default during testing, with either state change initiated as needed.
It just makes more sense to default to amber, because when you plug in a laptop you expect it to charge. If it were amber right away it would match the user expectations better (because it would seem to start charging right away).
Put into words it would mean "I'm charging just like you asked me to...oh wait, I don't need to" (as it goes green). Whereas now, when it defaults to green right away then goes amber, it means "why did you plug me in? The battery is fully charged...oh wait, no it's not. Charging."
The amber default .
They just put winning elections ahead of national security.
Total bullshit--I haven't seen the left win a notable election in at least 8 years. How can you possibly say that the left cares more about winning elections than their values with Howard Dean as the Democratic party chair?? Not exactly famous for winning national elections, but he's totally committed to the core values.
It is the Republican party who has sacrificed their core values on the altar of electoral success.
Small government? Forget it--seniors here is your $600 billion+ pill benefit, contractors here are your $60 billion in non-compete bid contracts. Thanks for the donations and votes.
National security? Forget it--we're going to transform the military by shrinking it drastically (look up Rumsfeld's first 6 months in office), we don't need troops when we've got technology. Whoops! Terrorist attack! Ok, now we'll pay attention to national security. No no, of course we don't need a Homeland Security Dept. Oh, it will mean votes? Ok, we can have one. (look up Bush's huge flip-flop on this one)
Personal responsibility? Forget it, not needed. The government will decide what you can do in your home, what you can write, say, watch on TV, or think, what you can do with music or movies you buy, what books you can check out of the library, etc. Thanks for the soft money, corporations and churches.
Fiscal responsbility? Who needs it, right! Here's your payoff, err, tax cuts. Thanks for the votes, don't worry about paying it back, the next generation will take care of that. The young ones don't vote for us anyway, might as well stick'em with the bill.
The Justice Dept. is not prosecuting a crime, they are appealing a ruling. And the data from Google would not prove the DOJ's case (it is not direct evidence), but would rather assist in building circumstantial support for the case.
So why should Google be forced to comply? In such a proceeding it's not clear to me that the DOJ somehow has "greater" rights than any other appellate litigant. If I appeal some ruling someday, can I force Google to give up their trade secrets, on the basis that they might provide circumstantial support for my case?
Even Tom Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has come out against quarterly earnings guidance, saying that it leads to companies managing to hit their numbers rather than grow a solid long-term business.
The case is basically SCO's business plan right now. As long as it is in contention, SCO employees continue to receive salary. As long as it seems possible they might win, they can raise money to pay those salaries, either by direct investment or by shadow investment via Linux license purchases.
It seems more and more likely they will lose the case, and when they do it's all over. So naturally they will seek every possible way to extend the trial. If they were confident in their ability to win they would be seeking ways to speed things up.
Of course there are going to be crappy newspapers and reporters--it's an industry like any other industry, and the crappy companies go out of business and the crappy reporters lose their jobs.
Parent's point is that even the best American newspapers--NYT, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, etc, are facing financial problems and may not be able to do the job they once did of reporting. Press really is an integral part of our process of government, as the founders recognized when they provided the press with the freedom to operate free from government control.
It's trite I know, but I think there is some truth to saying that if you think you can do a better job as a reporter, why don't you? Freedom of the press is not reserved to card-carrying reporters; anyone can start a newspaper or Web publication or blog.
But it's a fact that the big newspapers still break big stories, and (much more importantly) give them deep, multi-week attention, with detailed reporting, analysis, and opinion. And perhaps most importantly, big newspapers are still printed and archived and stored in libraries. Who archives the blog-o-sphere? Without newspapers, what will serve as the "first draft of history"?
You always claim Apple is better. Pre-OS X you claimed Mac OS was faster because it wasn't Windows and wasn't on Intel. OS-X PPC era, you claimed Apple was faster because it wasn't Windows and wasn't on Intel. Now that Apple is on Intel you claim Apple is faster.
The claim now is that MacBooks and iMacs with Intel inside are faster than Powerbooks and iMacs with PPC inside. That's it. I haven't seen a single claim that an Intel Mac is faster than an Intel PC. If you have, please link to it.
You claim that OS-X has the best designed GUI in the world. However, on large wide screen s users have to scroll more to get to menus that are all on the upper-left side of the screen when their windows are on the right side. How is that a better designed GUI. It is like putting the gas peddle of a car in a fixed location above the dash-board because a committee decided that that was the best place to put it.
One of the ways OS X is better designed is that the menus are not nearly as important as they are in Windows. Almost everything can accomplished with buttons on the app, key combinations, or floating palettes. In fact this is the primary driver behind the wide screen format on Macs, because it gives you maximum flexibility in palette placement.
In addition, in a program that will have multiple windows open, the Mac system is better because all the windows can float on the desktop. On a Windows machine they sit inside a "super window" that you have to maximise anyway!
Finally, because the menus are always in the same place on the edge of the screen, using them develops muscle memory. Whereas on a Windows machine you always have to spot them first then move to them. This is where I'll point out that the gas pedal IS in a fixed location--it is in the same place on every car.