If you broadcast to the world that you like something it...
Except I didn't. Nobody except facebook thinks clicking 'like' has anything to do with actually LIKING something. You have to click 'like' to post on a page just to ask a question. You have to click 'like' to get updates on a page... it doesn't mean you like anything. It just means you wanted to know more. Maybe its something you are politically opposed to, and you "liked" the page, so you get notified on updates.
Take responsibility for your actions.
Your solution appears to be "take no action" since any action can be misconstrued. Enjoy your basement anonymous coward.
The rest of us prefer to live in a world where we can do things and not have companies misconstrue that into an endorsement.
The 2nd amendment is itself, by definition, an amendment to the original constitution.
A constitution that should be amended again in a variety of ways. (clauses to deal with NSA spying/privacy protection, due process, torture, fixing the 4th to eliminate all the work arounds like 100 mile "border zones", reasserting that free speech can't be "zoned", that "protests" by definition do not require advance permission from the government, and yes, fixing the 2nd to reflect the fact that not everyone is responsible enough to have a gun after all.
The constitution is the highest law of the land, but it is not carved in stone, for good reason.
The same number you quoted... but interesting that you left out the injuries and just quoted the fatalities.
Then there's another 20,000 DEATHS from suicide by gun. (Now some people are just determined to die and will find another way if they don't have their gun at hand in their darkest hour, but a LOT of people will choose less effective means of suicide and fail and get help, a LOT of those people will have second thoughts about suicide on the trip to the jumping bridge, a LOT of those people will just get over it and choose to live if they don't end up dead because gun suicide is just literally a finger flick away. Suicide by gun is the suicide equivalent of an impulse buy at the candy store.
"That compared to at least 67,740 incidents of self-defense with a firearm a year and possibly far more..."
Yes, I've read that stat. No context whatsoever. Just that guns happened to be around in a 'self-defense' capacity or behavior. It counts pulling a gun on the neighbors dog. It counts pulling a gun when your hear strange noises outside while you called the police. It even counts cases where the victims were still successfully victimized (ie they pulled a gun but were still robbed anyway, and probably robbed of the gun too.)
So... 20,000 dead by suicide, another 20000 injured in accidents, 600 of those dead, 150+ of those children.
And that's offset by 67k 'defensive' actions? In many cases where the gun was neither required nor effective in any capacity.
mostly because legal guns are used only very rarely for illegal purposes.
Agreed.
On the other hand gun related "accidents" happen all the time with legal weapons, and most of them are preventable, often by simply keeping guns out of the hands of people who have failed to demonstrate they have any idea how to treat a firearm.
So I'm not in favor of gun control to prevent crime, but to prevent accidents. We require some demonstration of competence to let people drive, I don't see any reason a similar demonstration of competence to own a gun is unreasonable.
Further, legal guns aren't used all that often for crime prevention either. So that argument doesn't hold a lot of water.
And as for keeping King George or any other threat from taking over the country... I'll need a rifle, not a concealed-carry-handgun. And I need it at home, at the ready for the invasion, not at Burger King with my family. The day I should actually need a gun at Burger King is the day we've crossed over from needing guns to fend off an invasion to actually fighting the invasion.
"Likes" do not represent something people like. So characterizing it as that in an ad is deceptive.
People "like" things for any number of reasons; maybe they were initially interested, but then decided the product was an utter piece of shit upon further inspection. Maybe they "liked" it as a joke, or ironically, or because it was stupid or funny or ridiculous in some way, or accidentally.
To take a "like" out of any sort of context, and then with a serious face say "So and so likes X. You should buy it!" takes a serious lack of appreciation for the real world. If its not illegal it should be.
The NSA would use a major signing authority so as to avoid any warnings. And it would say it was signed by whoever they wanted it to say it was signed by because... NSA.
You are actually better off using your own PKI all the way up and adding your own root certs etc to your browsers if you are concerned about the NSA.
Or like the apoplectic fit browsers go into every time you want to use a self signed cert! Yes, my router/ap/storage appliance is self signed. Shut up already!
The browser warning is correct. You don't know the identity of the computer you are connecting to. Only that it was signed at some point, by somebody.
Verify the cert, then add the signing chain to your browser. The warning goes away and you actually know you are talking to your device.
I would instead drive to the middle of Iowa and pay for a beer fest for an entire small town, then get feedback from them about your product after they had knocked back a few. You want feedback?
I think that tends to backfire too... show up and throw people a party and give them a product and you'll get lots of glowing reviews based on them being happy for a party and free stuff. As long as the product doesn't actually injure them you'll get limited useful feedback.
Getting good feedback is just plain hard. The film and music industry has professional critics at least... but even they aren't a great barometer on what the public at large will like.
You're making the mistake of assuming technology will advance within the confines of our current designs only
I'm taking the statement "eye tracking coming to video games" at face value. Because that is how I see it being implemented in the near term.
you're ignoring the fact that whenever technology advances it often crashes through the confines of walls assigned to try and keep it the way a select few want it to be
I'm not ignoring that. That's something else entirely. "Novel user interfaces for eye tracking being looked at in the lab" would describe that. Anything "coming to video games" now isn't going to be some futuristic implementation.
We might see some proof of concept eye-tracking mechanics based games along the lines of what the Wii did with its motion controller, and that's fine. But the headline implies (to me at least) that the next round of FPS sequels could have eye tracking... and that will be unmitigated SUCK.
If the cursor was your eye, the icon is redundant.
Even if it was perfect you'd need the feedback to know where you are looking. You line up a shot, and you are checking your health meter by the time you register a click, or already scanning for the next target.
So don't make your eye the button/trigger, just the cursor/reticle.
Your eyes are scanning the whole screen, checks ammo, health. It would be distracting to have the reticule due that.
Imagine you are sighted on a window, you glance down at your health... the whole screen moves as your 'avatar' looks at his feet... then madly scrambles back up to the window.
Or... you are sighted on one window, but scan other areas for enemies... your reticule bounces around like an idiot.
This is way better ergonomically than sliding a mouse or using your hand on a touchpad because no part of your body is actually pushing against a slide-surface.
Is it? I for one, do not want the mouse following my eye around. Have you ever played an FPS? or RTS? Do you really want the selection cursor/targeting reticule following your eyes?
I'm scanning the screen, looking at the mini map, checking the build status of units, glancing at ammo levels,... providing cover fire in a FPS while scanning windows for activity...
I can't imagine ever wanting the 'cursor' to follow my eyes around like that. Not only would it be distracting to have some sort of eye tracking cursor flitting around the screen like a deranged idiot but it would be counter productive since we often want independent control of where we are looking and where something is happening.
e.g. I'll have the cursor positioned over an icon, but I'm looking at any enemy health meter or waiting for them to be in a certain position to time when I activate it.
I can see how it would be nice to simply flick your eyes to an icon to do something, or to make it easier to dig through your in-game inventory."
I can't see that being nice at all.
I may look at an icon, then decide not to use it, when considering my options. Or what If I want to activate an icon but need to activate it at a precise moment... I have to avoid looking at it until the right moment? That's not user friendly.
On the flipside, presumably there will be some method of preventing spurious activations, will I have to do some sort of obnoxious eye waggle every time to "confirm" yes I really do want to activate it?
All in all it sounds downright awful and useless for most scenarios. I can't really think of a scenario where it would be more useful than obnoxious.
Even a simple 'pause' when I look away from the screen would be obnoxious.
I'm not against it though, maybe it will let one handed people play more games, or some paraplegic will be able to play doom by blinking at the screen and it betters his life...
But I don't think I want this rammed down our throats as something we'll actually need to do to activate something in a game.
The Western world is at war with al Qaida and its allies.
To compare the "war on terror" with "world war ii" is utter nonsense.
What Snowden has done is equivalent to telling the Germans in 1941 that their submarine codes have been compromised.
More the equivalent of telling the public that the store installed security cameras in the change room, and your lamenting that the war on shoplifting has been set back.
You see, the "war on terror" isn't real. If we simply ignore them at the political level, and pursue them as the criminals they are at the law enforcement level (augmented by CIA / NSA for tracking them internationally etc), then we win.
That wouldn't have worked on the Germans in World War II... because that was a war.
You have lost any sense of perspective. And your comparison to sigint in WWII robs you of any credibility.
You bet, you will get a free "Google Privacy protector" at any local shopping store for free. simply place on your head and cut holes for your eyes. The stores call them "grocery bags" but that is because they don't understand the Google nomenclature.
Yeah, that sounds great, except the trend is now to make it illegal to wear something that covers your face in public...
No. It's the absence of belief that deities exist. It may extend to active disbelief, but it isn't required.
Atheism is the disbelief in god. Not the absence of belief. My cat is not an atheist.
Someone who's never heard of the concept of god(s) is an atheist.
If they think a superior being makes or shapes their universe in some way then they are a theist, if they don't beleive that they are an atheist, if they can't decide they're an agnostic, and if they were born braindead and havent' had a conscious thought that doesn't make them an atheist, or an agnostic. The question just doesn't apply to them.
Many political atheists are what's called "strong atheists" or even "anti-theists". That's an active disbelief in the possibility of god(s).
Meh... I call them "evangelical atheists". Its not merely an active disbelief, but the impulse to spread that disbelief.
I disagree on the term "non-religious" since I think it means something else. But agree with the principle that newborns haven't decided they don't beleive in God, and atheism is, I think, at least an awareness that one has made that choice.
A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.
I know plenty of atheists who don't pursue it with zeal. Its just an unremarkable aspect of their belief system, where the non-belief in god ranks alongside their non-belief in the easter bunny, and their non-beleif that their neighbor is really a reptilian alien. Does non-beleif in the toothfairy rise to the level of a "religion" ?
Those Glass people are probably not recording you. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you are not that interesting. Even if it were on, you would more than likely be the part that is fast-fowarded over or simply edited out.
My daughter on the other hand... that's not a world she should have to live in just because you happen to think there isn't a problem because you aren't attractive enough to get harassed by it.
Just because I can reinvent the wheel, doesn't mean I should waste my time doing it.
Being competent doesn't make it any less a waste of time. If a month of development time can be eliminated by simply talking to an engineer who built the X and knows it, then only an idiot would brag about how he wasted the weeks figuring it out for himself... because, you know, "competence".
I can waste 10 weeks too, if I have to. Sometimes that IS the only way. But unlike you I seem to be able to recognize that its a waste of time and that there are often better alternatives.
You seem to determined to somehow connect how much time you waste reinventing and rediscovering what other people already know as somehow measuring your competence.
Yes, reverse engineering (which is essentially what this is) requires competence. But reverse engineering is usually the least efficient method of getting to the results, and anyone competent only does it as the last resort.
I remember being handed register documentation for StarPort 16-, 32- and 64-port serial cards and being asked to write FOSSIL drivers for them. And I had to supply my own compiler and logic analyser
I remember being asked to waste my time on things too, to reinvent wheels that had already been invented, and to reverse engineer things that we were presumably supposed to know how worked.
GP is right, you say 'fuck off' when you get handed a task like that. Maybe, it doesn't go anywhere, and you really do have to reverse engineer how the bloody thing works to go forwards, but more often than not, its a more efficient use of time and money to get someone from the supplier to come and tell us what we need to know or otherwise assist, even if we have to pay them, because its just a waste of our time figuring it out for ourselves from scratch.
But everything else he's up to, talking about spying on Merkel's phone calls and the like, that does nothing but hurt US interests.
I would counter that by saying that tapping the phones of our closest allies hurts US interests and that complaining about the guy who let it be known is just shooting the messenger.
The American public (at least the cross section I work with) generally think this has gone too far. While we fully support analysts doing intelligence gathering on allies, we feel it can be done sufficiently without stooping to actually breaking into their stuff, tapping their phones, etc. You can get enough by watching their political movements, their budget/expenditures, seeing who they meet, etc. You don't have to tap their phones to learn "enough".
We only support an invasive level of espionage for our antagonists, and actual credible threats. Maybe you disagree. That's fine, we can have that conversation.
Snowden has enabled that conversation to happen.
Government by the people for the people doesn't happen if the people are kept out of the loop.
just offends me. I freely admit I don't get it; that I lack sufficient art history/art appreciation education perhaps to get it. But nonetheless I contend there is nothing to get...
I own a rMBP. I love my machine but I'm not sure that I wouldn't like thicker, more like the old Macbook pro form fact and some of those features. Not having a builtin DVD drive is a pain.
I agree. The trouble is they had the formula right last generation.
The macbook air was extreme light and mobile.
The macbook pro was bigger, and did everything... and I bought one, and other than it having a minidisplay port instead of something sensible like HDMI I've been very happy with it.
So I WAS a good fit for apple's product line, but with the new generation I seem not to be, because I still care about ethernet, and I'd have rather they kept the form factor and used the extra space for an ethenet port and more battery and better video than intel integrated, but instead the new 13" mbp is now just a faster macbook air with all the "pro" sucked right out of it.
But mainly the assumption is if you want 3 monitors that's a pro setup you are supposed to be in the MacPro.
And that's the issue. Three+ screens is a godsend for doing even simple stuff like developing websites or accounting or trading stocks or any number of other creative or professional jobs.
But what on earth would one need a Xeon and dual firepro video cards to write HTML and CSS pages?
The mac pro isn't a general purpose computer, its not even a general purpose workstation... it feels almost like "Final Cut Pro Appliance" in the sense that its configuration options only make any sense to very very specific niche markets.
As far as the 780 for a pro machine. According to online reports the 780 doesn't holdup well for some of the more expensive pro applications.
Right. But the people buying the 780 aren't using it for those. If I wanted a FirePro because I was in the market for a FirePro optimized application then it would make sense... but I'm not... so I'm in the market for a desktop computer.
But apple doesn't make one at all. And that's the gap. They make a "professional film editing workstation" and they make laptops. Their so called desktops are just laptops. The mac mini is a laptop without a screen. The imac is a laptop glued onto the back of a screen.
They don't make a desktop computer and I call that a gap.
What about Apple would you like? I'm having a hard time figure out why you don't just decide you are a bad fit for Apple entirely.
Good question. I still run windows on my desktop computer. I'd like to have OSX on it too though, because I have other OSX devices, and like consistency from one computer to the next.
My brother faced the same conundrum, and he built a hackintosh.
The hackintosh market exists in large part not because people are too cheap to buy a mac, but because apple simply doesn't make a desktop computer, and it doesn't make sense to move into their film editing appliance just to get some basic flexibility and decent consumer parts that don't belong in a laptop.
Slashdot Mirror
If you broadcast to the world that you like something it...
Except I didn't. Nobody except facebook thinks clicking 'like' has anything to do with actually LIKING something. You have to click 'like' to post on a page just to ask a question. You have to click 'like' to get updates on a page ... it doesn't mean you like anything. It just means you wanted to know more. Maybe its something you are politically opposed to, and you "liked" the page, so you get notified on updates.
Take responsibility for your actions.
Your solution appears to be "take no action" since any action can be misconstrued. Enjoy your basement anonymous coward.
The rest of us prefer to live in a world where we can do things and not have companies misconstrue that into an endorsement.
Probably that pesky Second Amendment again
There's nothing "pesky" about it.
The 2nd amendment is itself, by definition, an amendment to the original constitution.
A constitution that should be amended again in a variety of ways. (clauses to deal with NSA spying/privacy protection, due process, torture, fixing the 4th to eliminate all the work arounds like 100 mile "border zones", reasserting that free speech can't be "zoned", that "protests" by definition do not require advance permission from the government, and yes, fixing the 2nd to reflect the fact that not everyone is responsible enough to have a gun after all.
The constitution is the highest law of the land, but it is not carved in stone, for good reason.
There were only about 613 fatal gun accidents in 2007
"In 2007, the United States suffered some 15,000-19,000 accidental shootings. More than 600 of these shootings proved fatal."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/20/why-does-the-gun-lobby-fear-science-and-safety.html
The same number you quoted... but interesting that you left out the injuries and just quoted the fatalities.
Then there's another 20,000 DEATHS from suicide by gun. (Now some people are just determined to die and will find another way if they don't have their gun at hand in their darkest hour, but a LOT of people will choose less effective means of suicide and fail and get help, a LOT of those people will have second thoughts about suicide on the trip to the jumping bridge, a LOT of those people will just get over it and choose to live if they don't end up dead because gun suicide is just literally a finger flick away. Suicide by gun is the suicide equivalent of an impulse buy at the candy store.
"That compared to at least 67,740 incidents of self-defense with a firearm a year and possibly far more..."
Yes, I've read that stat. No context whatsoever. Just that guns happened to be around in a 'self-defense' capacity or behavior. It counts pulling a gun on the neighbors dog. It counts pulling a gun when your hear strange noises outside while you called the police. It even counts cases where the victims were still successfully victimized (ie they pulled a gun but were still robbed anyway, and probably robbed of the gun too.)
So... 20,000 dead by suicide, another 20000 injured in accidents, 600 of those dead, 150+ of those children.
And that's offset by 67k 'defensive' actions? In many cases where the gun was neither required nor effective in any capacity.
mostly because legal guns are used only very rarely for illegal purposes.
Agreed.
On the other hand gun related "accidents" happen all the time with legal weapons, and most of them are preventable, often by simply keeping guns out of the hands of people who have failed to demonstrate they have any idea how to treat a firearm.
So I'm not in favor of gun control to prevent crime, but to prevent accidents. We require some demonstration of competence to let people drive, I don't see any reason a similar demonstration of competence to own a gun is unreasonable.
Further, legal guns aren't used all that often for crime prevention either. So that argument doesn't hold a lot of water.
And as for keeping King George or any other threat from taking over the country... I'll need a rifle, not a concealed-carry-handgun. And I need it at home, at the ready for the invasion, not at Burger King with my family. The day I should actually need a gun at Burger King is the day we've crossed over from needing guns to fend off an invasion to actually fighting the invasion.
"Likes" do not represent something people like. So characterizing it as that in an ad is deceptive.
People "like" things for any number of reasons; maybe they were initially interested, but then decided the product was an utter piece of shit upon further inspection. Maybe they "liked" it as a joke, or ironically, or because it was stupid or funny or ridiculous in some way, or accidentally.
To take a "like" out of any sort of context, and then with a serious face say "So and so likes X. You should buy it!" takes a serious lack of appreciation for the real world. If its not illegal it should be.
Why do you defend it?
The NSA would use a major signing authority so as to avoid any warnings. And it would say it was signed by whoever they wanted it to say it was signed by because... NSA.
You are actually better off using your own PKI all the way up and adding your own root certs etc to your browsers if you are concerned about the NSA.
This isn't actually bad advice in general.
Or like the apoplectic fit browsers go into every time you want to use a self signed cert! Yes, my router/ap/storage appliance is self signed. Shut up already!
The browser warning is correct. You don't know the identity of the computer you are connecting to. Only that it was signed at some point, by somebody.
Verify the cert, then add the signing chain to your browser. The warning goes away and you actually know you are talking to your device.
I would instead drive to the middle of Iowa and pay for a beer fest for an entire small town, then get feedback from them about your product after they had knocked back a few. You want feedback?
I think that tends to backfire too... show up and throw people a party and give them a product and you'll get lots of glowing reviews based on them being happy for a party and free stuff. As long as the product doesn't actually injure them you'll get limited useful feedback.
Getting good feedback is just plain hard. The film and music industry has professional critics at least... but even they aren't a great barometer on what the public at large will like.
You're making the mistake of assuming technology will advance within the confines of our current designs only
I'm taking the statement "eye tracking coming to video games" at face value. Because that is how I see it being implemented in the near term.
you're ignoring the fact that whenever technology advances it often crashes through the confines of walls assigned to try and keep it the way a select few want it to be
I'm not ignoring that. That's something else entirely. "Novel user interfaces for eye tracking being looked at in the lab" would describe that. Anything "coming to video games" now isn't going to be some futuristic implementation.
We might see some proof of concept eye-tracking mechanics based games along the lines of what the Wii did with its motion controller, and that's fine. But the headline implies (to me at least) that the next round of FPS sequels could have eye tracking... and that will be unmitigated SUCK.
If the cursor was your eye, the icon is redundant.
Even if it was perfect you'd need the feedback to know where you are looking. You line up a shot, and you are checking your health meter by the time you register a click, or already scanning for the next target.
So don't make your eye the button/trigger, just the cursor/reticle.
Your eyes are scanning the whole screen, checks ammo, health. It would be distracting to have the reticule due that.
Imagine you are sighted on a window, you glance down at your health... the whole screen moves as your 'avatar' looks at his feet... then madly scrambles back up to the window.
Or ... you are sighted on one window, but scan other areas for enemies... your reticule bounces around like an idiot.
Thanks but no thanks.
This is way better ergonomically than sliding a mouse or using your hand on a touchpad because no part of your body is actually pushing against a slide-surface.
Is it? I for one, do not want the mouse following my eye around. Have you ever played an FPS? or RTS? Do you really want the selection cursor/targeting reticule following your eyes?
I'm scanning the screen, looking at the mini map, checking the build status of units, glancing at ammo levels, ... providing cover fire in a FPS while scanning windows for activity...
I can't imagine ever wanting the 'cursor' to follow my eyes around like that. Not only would it be distracting to have some sort of eye tracking cursor flitting around the screen like a deranged idiot but it would be counter productive since we often want independent control of where we are looking and where something is happening.
e.g. I'll have the cursor positioned over an icon, but I'm looking at any enemy health meter or waiting for them to be in a certain position to time when I activate it.
I can see how it would be nice to simply flick your eyes to an icon to do something, or to make it easier to dig through your in-game inventory."
I can't see that being nice at all.
I may look at an icon, then decide not to use it, when considering my options. Or what If I want to activate an icon but need to activate it at a precise moment... I have to avoid looking at it until the right moment? That's not user friendly.
On the flipside, presumably there will be some method of preventing spurious activations, will I have to do some sort of obnoxious eye waggle every time to "confirm" yes I really do want to activate it?
All in all it sounds downright awful and useless for most scenarios. I can't really think of a scenario where it would be more useful than obnoxious.
Even a simple 'pause' when I look away from the screen would be obnoxious.
I'm not against it though, maybe it will let one handed people play more games, or some paraplegic will be able to play doom by blinking at the screen and it betters his life...
But I don't think I want this rammed down our throats as something we'll actually need to do to activate something in a game.
The Western world is at war with al Qaida and its allies.
To compare the "war on terror" with "world war ii" is utter nonsense.
What Snowden has done is equivalent to telling the Germans in 1941 that their submarine codes have been compromised.
More the equivalent of telling the public that the store installed security cameras in the change room, and your lamenting that the war on shoplifting has been set back.
You see, the "war on terror" isn't real. If we simply ignore them at the political level, and pursue them as the criminals they are at the law enforcement level (augmented by CIA / NSA for tracking them internationally etc), then we win.
That wouldn't have worked on the Germans in World War II... because that was a war.
You have lost any sense of perspective. And your comparison to sigint in WWII robs you of any credibility.
You bet, you will get a free "Google Privacy protector" at any local shopping store for free. simply place on your head and cut holes for your eyes. The stores call them "grocery bags" but that is because they don't understand the Google nomenclature.
Yeah, that sounds great, except the trend is now to make it illegal to wear something that covers your face in public...
http://www.wtvq.com/content/localnews/story/Lexington-Adult-Masks-Illegal-To-Wear-In-Public/kduA8xtDwE6DV1LdXH5D5w.cspx
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/06/01/outrageous-critics-angered-by-new-law-making-it-illegal-to-wear-a-mask-at-unlawful-protests/
http://gothamist.com/2011/09/19/nypd_uses_law_from_1845_to_arrest_m.php#photo-1
No. It's the absence of belief that deities exist. It may extend to active disbelief, but it isn't required.
Atheism is the disbelief in god. Not the absence of belief. My cat is not an atheist.
Someone who's never heard of the concept of god(s) is an atheist.
If they think a superior being makes or shapes their universe in some way then they are a theist, if they don't beleive that they are an atheist, if they can't decide they're an agnostic, and if they were born braindead and havent' had a conscious thought that doesn't make them an atheist, or an agnostic. The question just doesn't apply to them.
Many political atheists are what's called "strong atheists" or even "anti-theists". That's an active disbelief in the possibility of god(s).
Meh... I call them "evangelical atheists". Its not merely an active disbelief, but the impulse to spread that disbelief.
newborns are non-religious, not atheist
I disagree on the term "non-religious" since I think it means something else. But agree with the principle that newborns haven't decided they don't beleive in God, and atheism is, I think, at least an awareness that one has made that choice.
A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.
I know plenty of atheists who don't pursue it with zeal. Its just an unremarkable aspect of their belief system, where the non-belief in god ranks alongside their non-belief in the easter bunny, and their non-beleif that their neighbor is really a reptilian alien. Does non-beleif in the toothfairy rise to the level of a "religion" ?
I don't think so.
Those Glass people are probably not recording you. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you are not that interesting. Even if it were on, you would more than likely be the part that is fast-fowarded over or simply edited out.
My daughter on the other hand... that's not a world she should have to live in just because you happen to think there isn't a problem because you aren't attractive enough to get harassed by it.
thinking god isn't real and being an atheist isn't the same thing.
Uh... yes, they are.
Someone might follow a faith for the moral story and community, while not believing that the deity actually exists.
Then they are an atheist who agrees with the morality of a given religion and to be part of the community.
They could also be agnostic/non-religious, which isn't the same thing as atheism.
If they are agnostic they "don't think god isn't real" so they are outside the scope of your argument.
If they are non-religious, that tells us nothing about whether or not they believe in god or not, so it too falls outside the scope.
But if they "think god isn't real", then they are an atheist.
The rest of us are competent.
Just because I can reinvent the wheel, doesn't mean I should waste my time doing it.
Being competent doesn't make it any less a waste of time. If a month of development time can be eliminated by simply talking to an engineer who built the X and knows it, then only an idiot would brag about how he wasted the weeks figuring it out for himself... because, you know, "competence".
I can waste 10 weeks too, if I have to. Sometimes that IS the only way. But unlike you I seem to be able to recognize that its a waste of time and that there are often better alternatives.
You seem to determined to somehow connect how much time you waste reinventing and rediscovering what other people already know as somehow measuring your competence.
Yes, reverse engineering (which is essentially what this is) requires competence. But reverse engineering is usually the least efficient method of getting to the results, and anyone competent only does it as the last resort.
I remember being handed register documentation for StarPort 16-, 32- and 64-port serial cards and being asked to write FOSSIL drivers for them. And I had to supply my own compiler and logic analyser
I remember being asked to waste my time on things too, to reinvent wheels that had already been invented, and to reverse engineer things that we were presumably supposed to know how worked.
GP is right, you say 'fuck off' when you get handed a task like that. Maybe, it doesn't go anywhere, and you really do have to reverse engineer how the bloody thing works to go forwards, but more often than not, its a more efficient use of time and money to get someone from the supplier to come and tell us what we need to know or otherwise assist, even if we have to pay them, because its just a waste of our time figuring it out for ourselves from scratch.
But everything else he's up to, talking about spying on Merkel's phone calls and the like, that does nothing but hurt US interests.
I would counter that by saying that tapping the phones of our closest allies hurts US interests and that complaining about the guy who let it be known is just shooting the messenger.
The American public (at least the cross section I work with) generally think this has gone too far. While we fully support analysts doing intelligence gathering on allies, we feel it can be done sufficiently without stooping to actually breaking into their stuff, tapping their phones, etc. You can get enough by watching their political movements, their budget/expenditures, seeing who they meet, etc. You don't have to tap their phones to learn "enough".
We only support an invasive level of espionage for our antagonists, and actual credible threats. Maybe you disagree. That's fine, we can have that conversation.
Snowden has enabled that conversation to happen.
Government by the people for the people doesn't happen if the people are kept out of the loop.
UPSes do nothing about emergency thermal shutdown which isn't uncommon in laptops when you use them for real work.
Of course they don't. UPS with a laptop is more or less redundant as the laptop has a battery built in. If the power fails, it'll stop charging.
But I'd say in your other scenarios, you need backups more than you need a couple seconds of hard disk back up power.
My not liking that novel doesn't make me better than them, only different.
I disagree. Twilight is terrible. Not liking is sensible. :)
Likewise I can tell you a lot about what's wrong with Lord of the Rings as a novel, but it's a story I love and re-read every couple of years.
Sure it has its failings. But it is also amazing on so many levels.
The more serious you are about an art form the less it becomes about what you like or don't like.
Right. You can recognize good art from bad, and you can appreciate good art even if you don't like it.
But 1.8M for something like this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_Fire
just offends me. I freely admit I don't get it; that I lack sufficient art history/art appreciation education perhaps to get it. But nonetheless I contend there is nothing to get...
I own a rMBP. I love my machine but I'm not sure that I wouldn't like thicker, more like the old Macbook pro form fact and some of those features. Not having a builtin DVD drive is a pain.
I agree. The trouble is they had the formula right last generation.
The macbook air was extreme light and mobile.
The macbook pro was bigger, and did everything... and I bought one, and other than it having a minidisplay port instead of something sensible like HDMI I've been very happy with it.
So I WAS a good fit for apple's product line, but with the new generation I seem not to be, because I still care about ethernet, and I'd have rather they kept the form factor and used the extra space for an ethenet port and more battery and better video than intel integrated, but instead the new 13" mbp is now just a faster macbook air with all the "pro" sucked right out of it.
But mainly the assumption is if you want 3 monitors that's a pro setup you are supposed to be in the MacPro.
And that's the issue. Three+ screens is a godsend for doing even simple stuff like developing websites or accounting or trading stocks or any number of other creative or professional jobs.
But what on earth would one need a Xeon and dual firepro video cards to write HTML and CSS pages?
The mac pro isn't a general purpose computer, its not even a general purpose workstation... it feels almost like "Final Cut Pro Appliance" in the sense that its configuration options only make any sense to very very specific niche markets.
As far as the 780 for a pro machine. According to online reports the 780 doesn't holdup well for some of the more expensive pro applications.
Right. But the people buying the 780 aren't using it for those. If I wanted a FirePro because I was in the market for a FirePro optimized application then it would make sense... but I'm not... so I'm in the market for a desktop computer.
But apple doesn't make one at all. And that's the gap. They make a "professional film editing workstation" and they make laptops. Their so called desktops are just laptops. The mac mini is a laptop without a screen. The imac is a laptop glued onto the back of a screen.
They don't make a desktop computer and I call that a gap.
What about Apple would you like? I'm having a hard time figure out why you don't just decide you are a bad fit for Apple entirely.
Good question. I still run windows on my desktop computer. I'd like to have OSX on it too though, because I have other OSX devices, and like consistency from one computer to the next.
My brother faced the same conundrum, and he built a hackintosh.
The hackintosh market exists in large part not because people are too cheap to buy a mac, but because apple simply doesn't make a desktop computer, and it doesn't make sense to move into their film editing appliance just to get some basic flexibility and decent consumer parts that don't belong in a laptop.