That's just splitting hairs, and not very accurate in any sort of modern context, IMO. Nobody was suggesting the platters themselves caught fire, if that's what you're getting at. The whole thing is considered one "hard drive" unit.
I disagree. I think Apple is a computer company. Apple is interested in selling you the complete package, software and hardware. Having seen the company from the inside, I don't believe that the infrastructure and effort that's behind their applications is merely some kind of slick adjunct or value-add to sell hardware. The strategy is synergy.
Apple is about selling (and having as much control as possible over) the whole enchilada.
Ah, but that analogy doesn't quite fit; you're not being charged a flat rate by your electric company the way most people pay a fixed rate for Internet access.
So what's your point? Are you insinuating that the telcos would somehow end up getting shafted by an increase in subscribers to services they offer? That's absurd.
They're already charging me for my bandwidth. This whole idea that content providers should be paying them for the traffic to and from their sites is a shakedown, nothing more. It also has the potential to make it easier for big companies to marginalize smaller, innovative firms.
If all this traffic over their networks is cutting into their profits as much as they say, then why did my ISP (the now-reviled AT&T) just halve my DSL subscription rate and double my bandwidth?
You miss the point. I was trying to point out partisan opinion, not indulge in it (much). Painting people as leftists (which means what, exactly?) because they oppose these easily-abused, intrusive security measures is hogwash.
For my money, I'm starting to wonder exactly how much influence our elected officials have over this kind of stuff. It's all so black-box. These security bureaucracies, like any bureaucracy, have lives of their own. Events like 9/11 are fertile ground for growth spurts of security organizations. The problem (or one of the big ones) is that their current accretion of power is being accelerated by accomplices in the White House that are too willing for my tastes.
I fear tyranny more than asshat suicide bombers. Foreign enemies are dangerous, perhaps none more so than the current crop of jihadis, but not as much as the creeping institution of a police state. Foreign wars (and shades thereof) come and go, but it's a hell of a lot harder to shake off the repression of your own government.
I'm willing to bet that if a Democratic president had instituted these policies, you'd be screaming your head off about how the liberal pinko conspiracy is snuffing out our Constitutional freedoms in the name of governmental control.
Mark of the Beast or no, I find common cause with evangelicals who see mandatory or de facto mandatory microchipping as wrong; it holds the potential for great evil. Just because I don't share the reason for their opposition doesn't mean we can't pull for the same goal if the end result is the same.
Somehow a white paper that uses 13375p34k ("Total Cost of 0wnership", note the zero in the last word) throughout its document, dismisses OS X as a "toy" and has a graph labeled "Difficulty of owning Windows vs Difficulty to make this graph" is difficult to take seriously.
Well, it's rather presumptuous of you to know what the responsibilities of my job are. Because I also oversee a knowledge base to which dozens of people contribute, I do have to administer the lash when submissions from a given user show patterns of poor language use, and attempt to educate them so their errors won't recur. I really wasn't intending to respond directly to Taco, but rather porkThreeWays. He obviously had a crappy experience with some pinhead, and I initially read it as attacking the validity of proper grammar and punctuation (which I now see that it does not do; so much for my reading comprehension skills). My misinterpretation of his words touched a nerve that gets pinched often, as there are a lot of people out there who just allow themselves to be lazy about it.
As far as my work not having to be technically perfect, the company I work for generally sees such laxity as vile heresy, so while I could tolerate lower standards, it would eventually catch up with me, and I'm loath to find out what might happen if it did.
I agree with what you say about the deliberate breaking of rules to enhance clarity, though your particular example using "but" as the first word in a sentence happens to be something I find to be anathema, and stamp out wherever I see it. That's just a pet peeve, though.
Though I was happy to get this job because I am a deeply committed sadist who relishes inflicting anguish on the users I used to have to directly support, I do try and make clarity my first priority- at least I think I do. I'm going to make "clarity first" my mantra; it's a good one. Thanks; I owe you a mantra.
Regarding my use of "evince", well, I have to admit I have a love of using them thar fancy words. I am unrepentant.
As a technical writer, I am basically paid to be a Grammar Nazi. What you say about the relative credibility of correct language use versus sloppy writing is, of course, true. I work for a big corporation, and they would be understandably embarrassed if the manuals and marketing materials I produce contained misspellings or other blunders. Hell, I'm embarrassed if my own writing is faulty, because I think it reflects poorly on the care I take to communicate ideas.
What irritates me far more than misplaced commas or misused apostrophes, though, is the attitude that correct use of language is either pedantic or pointless, and that anybody who evinces displeasure with (or corrects) sloppy writing can be simply dismissed as the same.
When attempts are made to hide sloppy writing under the pretense of pragmatism (i.e., "only the message matters"), sloppy thinking is often found underneath as well. Don't forget, too, that crummy grammar and spelling can sometimes alter your message so that it is misinterpreted by its recipients.
If you're not losing any sleep over spelling and grammar errors, that's fine by me, but don't dismiss proper language usage as worthless. You only make yourself look stupid, impolite, or both.
The flat comment that war requires democracy seems, on its face, stupid. Taken at face value, I certainly think it's a fatuous comment.
However... your argument about the relative success of the British Empire compared to the Roman Empire is intriguing. It seems to me your postulation should be modified to say something like "successful and sustained conquest [not war] is only possible with democracy".
I think there are also extenuating circumstances like the much bigger technological superiority of the British over many of their subject peoples that the Romans lacked; I'm not talking just about in arms, but in many different areas. Nonetheless, it's an interesting idea.
Right, sometimes races are held between equally unappetizing candidates, but the core problem isn't about money. I argue that a big reason you're often stuck with a couple of turkeys or political hacks as candidates is because the vast majority of voters isn't taking an interest in what's going on, and not voting in the primary elections.
This makes it easy for small but organized and motivated factions within parties to steer things the way they want them to go, because the bulk of the voters, who disagree with these small but vocal groups, are too damned lazy to effectively use their numbers to interject their views into the political debate.
I mean, look, most Americans are disgusted with the way money warps the political process, yet what do they do when their Senator or Representative equivocates, knuckles under, or basically wimps out when attempting to tackle real reform? Do they get recalled in the next election? No. Constituents simply aren't holding their representatives responsible. There might not be easy answers to our problems, but we shouldn't be tolerating a line of bullshit - or no answer at all - from the people we send to Washington, your local statehouse, or even your city council.
I urge you to think about it this way: if your boss at work gave you some task to complete, and you never really did any work on it, and every time he asked for a status update, you fed him a line of crap, eventually you'd be fired (how fast depends on the temper and intelligence of the boss). Nonetheless, most of us are expected to actually deliver when we're asked to do something at work. Why should we let our government, which is working for us, slide, when the stakes are so much higher?
I think everybody who is calling for reformed/more/ruthlessly policed political parties is only seeing a partial picture. Would all those things be good? Yes. What I see as telling, though, is that almost everyone flocks to blame the government, and omits the massive culpability of the voting public in how dysfunctional the American political process is.
Despite what some cynics will inevitably say, our republic is not yet irretrievably lost, but the generally increasing apathy and/or fatalism that people use as an excuse to abstain from voting is certainly greasing the skids that lead to the abyss. Too many Americans claim outrage over corruption, incompetence, and vicious ideological clashes, but far too many "outraged" citizens can't be bothered to either move their carcasses down to polling stations or pay any attention to politics.
I firmly believe that this political inertia on the part of the voting public is perhaps one of the biggest contributors to America's (slow) decline in power, prestige, and will.
That's a good point. I wonder if the decision to make downloads a one-time transaction was Apple's decision or that of the music labels. I'd wager it was the latter, especially given some recent comments from the suits regarding how "unfair" it is to be locked into a flat pricing model despite the fact that the old supply and demand logic doesn't fit the download model.
Hear hear. For $180 or less you can buy an external (USB 2.0) 200 GB hard drive that even comes bundled with backup software enabling you to merely push a *single button* on the HD enclosure to perform your backup. The "backups take too much time to administer" excuse is dead.
If your house burns down and melts your computer into slag, do you expect Microsoft or Apple to send you a new copy of the OS you were using? The reason soft content isn't downloadable in perpetuity is because that scheme would be instantly abused.
Slashdot Mirror
That's just splitting hairs, and not very accurate in any sort of modern context, IMO. Nobody was suggesting the platters themselves caught fire, if that's what you're getting at. The whole thing is considered one "hard drive" unit.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your Friend.
I disagree. I think Apple is a computer company. Apple is interested in selling you the complete package, software and hardware. Having seen the company from the inside, I don't believe that the infrastructure and effort that's behind their applications is merely some kind of slick adjunct or value-add to sell hardware. The strategy is synergy.
Apple is about selling (and having as much control as possible over) the whole enchilada.
Ah, but that analogy doesn't quite fit; you're not being charged a flat rate by your electric company the way most people pay a fixed rate for Internet access.
They're already charging me for my bandwidth. This whole idea that content providers should be paying them for the traffic to and from their sites is a shakedown, nothing more. It also has the potential to make it easier for big companies to marginalize smaller, innovative firms.
If all this traffic over their networks is cutting into their profits as much as they say, then why did my ISP (the now-reviled AT&T) just halve my DSL subscription rate and double my bandwidth?
For my money, I'm starting to wonder exactly how much influence our elected officials have over this kind of stuff. It's all so black-box. These security bureaucracies, like any bureaucracy, have lives of their own. Events like 9/11 are fertile ground for growth spurts of security organizations. The problem (or one of the big ones) is that their current accretion of power is being accelerated by accomplices in the White House that are too willing for my tastes.
I'm willing to bet that if a Democratic president had instituted these policies, you'd be screaming your head off about how the liberal pinko conspiracy is snuffing out our Constitutional freedoms in the name of governmental control.
Mark of the Beast or no, I find common cause with evangelicals who see mandatory or de facto mandatory microchipping as wrong; it holds the potential for great evil. Just because I don't share the reason for their opposition doesn't mean we can't pull for the same goal if the end result is the same.
Damn, that's pretty cutting-edge, being able to store and retrieve string data. Valve and id had better watch their backs.
NOW I get it. Duh. Please mod me down as Stupid.
That document is just a joke that is way too technical and obscure for me to understand.
Somehow a white paper that uses 13375p34k ("Total Cost of 0wnership", note the zero in the last word) throughout its document, dismisses OS X as a "toy" and has a graph labeled "Difficulty of owning Windows vs Difficulty to make this graph" is difficult to take seriously.
And no, before you reply with questions about how I know about Fleshlights, I don't own one. Sandwich bags and sofa cushions work just fine, thanks.
Drat! You beat me to the punch. A well-played link, sir.
As far as my work not having to be technically perfect, the company I work for generally sees such laxity as vile heresy, so while I could tolerate lower standards, it would eventually catch up with me, and I'm loath to find out what might happen if it did.
I agree with what you say about the deliberate breaking of rules to enhance clarity, though your particular example using "but" as the first word in a sentence happens to be something I find to be anathema, and stamp out wherever I see it. That's just a pet peeve, though.
Though I was happy to get this job because I am a deeply committed sadist who relishes inflicting anguish on the users I used to have to directly support, I do try and make clarity my first priority- at least I think I do. I'm going to make "clarity first" my mantra; it's a good one. Thanks; I owe you a mantra.
Regarding my use of "evince", well, I have to admit I have a love of using them thar fancy words. I am unrepentant.
What irritates me far more than misplaced commas or misused apostrophes, though, is the attitude that correct use of language is either pedantic or pointless, and that anybody who evinces displeasure with (or corrects) sloppy writing can be simply dismissed as the same.
When attempts are made to hide sloppy writing under the pretense of pragmatism (i.e., "only the message matters"), sloppy thinking is often found underneath as well. Don't forget, too, that crummy grammar and spelling can sometimes alter your message so that it is misinterpreted by its recipients.If you're not losing any sleep over spelling and grammar errors, that's fine by me, but don't dismiss proper language usage as worthless. You only make yourself look stupid, impolite, or both.
However... your argument about the relative success of the British Empire compared to the Roman Empire is intriguing. It seems to me your postulation should be modified to say something like "successful and sustained conquest [not war] is only possible with democracy".
I think there are also extenuating circumstances like the much bigger technological superiority of the British over many of their subject peoples that the Romans lacked; I'm not talking just about in arms, but in many different areas. Nonetheless, it's an interesting idea.Various scumbags use spam; trillions of e-mails they ram- into your inbox, from out of the boondocks, a porn n' viagra flimflam.
This makes it easy for small but organized and motivated factions within parties to steer things the way they want them to go, because the bulk of the voters, who disagree with these small but vocal groups, are too damned lazy to effectively use their numbers to interject their views into the political debate.
I mean, look, most Americans are disgusted with the way money warps the political process, yet what do they do when their Senator or Representative equivocates, knuckles under, or basically wimps out when attempting to tackle real reform? Do they get recalled in the next election? No. Constituents simply aren't holding their representatives responsible. There might not be easy answers to our problems, but we shouldn't be tolerating a line of bullshit - or no answer at all - from the people we send to Washington, your local statehouse, or even your city council.I urge you to think about it this way: if your boss at work gave you some task to complete, and you never really did any work on it, and every time he asked for a status update, you fed him a line of crap, eventually you'd be fired (how fast depends on the temper and intelligence of the boss). Nonetheless, most of us are expected to actually deliver when we're asked to do something at work. Why should we let our government, which is working for us, slide, when the stakes are so much higher?
Despite what some cynics will inevitably say, our republic is not yet irretrievably lost, but the generally increasing apathy and/or fatalism that people use as an excuse to abstain from voting is certainly greasing the skids that lead to the abyss. Too many Americans claim outrage over corruption, incompetence, and vicious ideological clashes, but far too many "outraged" citizens can't be bothered to either move their carcasses down to polling stations or pay any attention to politics.
I firmly believe that this political inertia on the part of the voting public is perhaps one of the biggest contributors to America's (slow) decline in power, prestige, and will.That's a good point. I wonder if the decision to make downloads a one-time transaction was Apple's decision or that of the music labels. I'd wager it was the latter, especially given some recent comments from the suits regarding how "unfair" it is to be locked into a flat pricing model despite the fact that the old supply and demand logic doesn't fit the download model.
Hear hear. For $180 or less you can buy an external (USB 2.0) 200 GB hard drive that even comes bundled with backup software enabling you to merely push a *single button* on the HD enclosure to perform your backup. The "backups take too much time to administer" excuse is dead. If your house burns down and melts your computer into slag, do you expect Microsoft or Apple to send you a new copy of the OS you were using? The reason soft content isn't downloadable in perpetuity is because that scheme would be instantly abused.
I'm just trying to figure out where they put the flux capacitor.