Humans have sensors that allow them to feel and perceive also. That is how we do it.
Sensors are necessary but not sufficient.
I don't disagree with this. But, feel and perceive is not in any way what defines it.
Check the wikipedia article so that we are on the same page with a common working definition of "sentience". I think you might be using sentience in another sense, perhaps to include "cognizance" or "sapience" or some other characteristic... Or perhaps you are simply over simplifying sentience so that its undistinguished from 'feel or perceive'.
I don't think my laptop or phone can 'feel or perceive'. These things have sensors, but I don't think it is remotely the same thing.
The problem with the term sentience is that it is a word like 'Lots". We know what it means, but it is a sliding scale.
I agree the line between sentience and non-sentience is very ill defined, but in my opinion its clear that higher animals fall on the sentient side of it while laptops and cell phones fall on the non-sentient side of the line.
depends on your definition of sentience. By the wikipedia definition for example I'd say dogs are sentient.
from wikipedia... "Sentience is the ability to feel or perceive. The term is used in science and philosophy, and in the study of artificial intelligence. Sentience is used in the study of consciousness to describe the ability to have sensations or experiences, known to Western philosophers as "qualia""
Around here p-a-y-g generally costs more for high usage users and there are usually options you can't get. The majority of p-a-y-g services are setup for low end users who can't get credit. They aren't aimed at mid-high end customers who want to control their bill.
iPhone: You can get MobileMe. At that is required is that you pay the yearly subscription.
Except that the VAST majority aren't and are foregoing the extra features (online sync, find my phone, etc).
Windows Phone 7: It has Xbox Live Integration: At that is required is that you have an Xbox 360 and an Xbox Live subscription.
AHA. This seems to be a source of confusion. No, you don't require an xbox 360.
Its not JUST integrating with your pre-existing xbox 360 games account.
You can have an xbox live game account without a 360. You'll be able to play games, get ranked, use player matching services, collect achievements, chat with friends, play online/multiplayer games, etc... strictly from the phone.
It takes the itunes games marketplace, and the iOS "game center" and kicks it out of the park.
Xbox Live integration isn't about being useful if you have a 360. Its a games platform all on its own.
But, yeah, if you have a 360 too, you use the same account on both.
If you already have Xbox Live, it's great.
Yes, if you already have a 360 its that much better.
But if you don't its still worth looking at as a gaming platform in its own right.
Now, to be perfectly fair, out of the 23m XBox gamers, you're going to have to remove the under-18 demographic, and a reasonable percentage of folks who can afford an XBox, but not an ongoing smartphone plan. The leftover folks may or may not consider a console-phone semi-link to be a factor, let alone a deciding one.
The under 18 demographic? All those 14 year olds who bought xboxes and subscribe to xbox live gold? I don't think that's much of a demographic. There certainly are parents who bought xboxes for their kids, they'll buy their kids phones too.
there are roughly 1.5 - 2 billion human beings who could be reasonably considered as "consumers" out there.
Those 1.5 - 2 billion human beings are consumers and target market for any phone.
You are talking about the market for the service itself. I am talking about the ability to market integration features to users of the service.
What I'm saying is:
Microsofts Xbox live integration feature in WinMo7 targets 23 million xbox live users. Apple's MobileMe integration feature in iOS benefits 2 million mobileme users.
It's a great service for gamers who have Xboxes. For general consumers that don't have an Xbox or Xbox Live, there isn't much of an advantage to having Xbox Live integration.
MobileMe is a great service for iPhone owners with MobileMe. For general consumers that don't have a MobileMe account, there isn't much of an advantage to having MobileMe integration.
See what I did there?
There are far more Xbox Live subscribers than MobileMe account holders. Only a tiny fraction of iphone owners get a mobileme account. Yet several of the iphones more interesting features are locked away behind that service. If WinMo7 offers mobileme features for free + extra stuff that ties into the gamer-centric xbl it will potentially be quite attractive to a LOT of people.
There's a reason rooted Linux machines are orders of magnitude more expensive than rooted Windows machines on the black market. There's no lack of interest.
A rooted linux server is far more likely to have something interesting on it than the average rooted windows box that is some clueless families home pc.
And you believe that Apple can not get "enough out there"?
I have no reason not to.
I will concede that Apple may have made a series of business decisions that they should have known would lead to their being a shortage... launching in a major market without enough product in the warehouses, and not enough suppliers of crucial components (such as the display) to ramp up production quick....
But that doesn't make the shortage less real.
Demand exceeds supply, and there is nothing apple can do to satisfy that demand now. Its not like there are millions of iphones collecting dust and factories idling while Steve Jobs rubs his hands together cackling.
Requiring programs to be exec modded before running
I've downloaded tons of stuff for linux, and I rarely have to make an explicit exec mod before running it.
Not determining file type by extension
And that adds to security how?
Requiring your password to escalate privileges rather than a yes/no dialog
Run windows as a standard user and it requires a password too. (It only prompts for yes/no if you are already logged in as an administrator.) See screenshots here:
Note it is also possible to configure windows to always require the password entry. But I do not think this makes it more secure.
Installing an overwhelming majority of your software through a repository rather than random websites
This is only true while linux is a 2% marketshare identity. In a world where linux a major or dominant player, the worlds annual production of proprietary software, shareware, trialware, demoware, shovelware, will all be pumped out for linux, and most of it will be unlikely to make it into repos.
Repos work for OSS. The overwhelming majority of software for linux is OSS right now. But if linux were dominant it would attract commercial software the same way it would attrack malware attention.
Tons of software end users will want will NOT be available via repos. From quickbooks to photoshop to itunes... end users will want the shiny, and will click to get it.
I'm sorry, but in what way are the people who are "swooping in and buying them" not customers?
Who cares exactly what you classify them as?
a) They don't benefit Apple by increasing sales. (Given there is a shortage, 100% of the product will move regardless.) They don't represent additional demand. They don't actually want the product except to resell it. Zero sum game.
b) They hurt apple by pissing of many potential customers who see the phones they wanted to use being marked up 100% right in front of their eyes.
Apple doesn't need scalpers, doesn't want scalpers, and has incentive to minimize their impact.
Should I not be allowed to buy iPhones to give as gifts to my family because I'm not the end user?
Of course you should be allowed. You should be allowed buy enough iPhones to fill up a swimming pool if you want. And Apple will be glad to sell you exactly that amount and as many more as they can dump on you, just as soon as they get enough out there.
And is the fact that the stores are not getting enough of them really evidence that there is a true shortage?
Yes. It is evidence of exactly that. It doesn't prove it, but it is good evidence for it. If Apple could double the number of units in China tomorrow they would. The iphone is not just a sale, but a revenue stream. There is zero benefit to creating a false shortage this bad. Sure maybe a very shortage or a couple high-profile sellouts to make the news is good PR and drive the hype machine... but there has never been a benefit to weeks on weeks of chronic shortages.
In the meantime, is there any reason apple should not be allowed to ensure as many households as possible have a chance at getting on at regular retail price? Are you really *that* willing to dramatically increase your odds of getting 0 iphones just because it annoys you that you can't have 10 iphones during a period in the market where getting even 1 would be a pretty big score.
It took me multiple weeks of trying to catch a Nintendo wii in stock. (And I waited for 5 MONTHS after launch before I even started trying.) I originally even had a reservation in place around launch, but the retailer cancelled it outright when they found out what their initial shipment numbers were going to be.) A manufacturer run reservation system would have been welcome.
Sure it would have meant that I couldn't get one for my parents and brother as well. But expecting to get 3 in a market where it takes weeks to months to get even a one is just idiotic.
Do we know that this "one customer/one phone" policy is not just a way for Apple to make sure that they have personal information on all iPhone users in order to better serve their "strategic partners" via advertising?
Apple already has this through the activation of the iphone, its connection with your itunes account, and so on. So if they are creating a massive shortage to justify collecting information they already get...... yeah... I think not.
It's been some years since Apple has earned the "benefit of the doubt" when it comes to their business practices.
They aren't cartoon villains though. This shortage doesn't benefit them. Period. And a step like this genuinely improves the odds that more endusers will be able to obtain a phone at retail, without going through a series of disappointment after long waits, where the entire stock is bought out by the first or second person in line who just carts them off to his ebay store.
Um... so you are advocating that if somehow windows were banned that all those millions of lowest common denominator windows users who couldn't manage to keep their PCs malware free should all hack OSX onto their 2 year old $500 dell, and fiddle with it with no formal support from anyone in the hopes that they manage to get their audio, video, Ethernet card, wifi, sleep, and power management all functioning at the same time... and that it won't crater the first time try run apple's updater?
I think not. I've played around with hackintoshes for fun, and its cool in its way, but unless you got lucky or bought the hardware knowing in advance that you wanted to install OSX on it, it may never work quite right.
In my case, it was enough to get a taste, play around, see what OSX is all about, to make me comfortable picking up a macbook pro laptop. But things didn't work, and it wasn't exactly stable.... brought back memories of windows ME and MacOS8.
I might find a new OS I like (and $100 for a legit license good for up to 5 systems in the same household sounds a lot better than MSFT's $140 for a single PC license).
Sure. Its a legit license. Until you install it on 5 non-Apple PCs...
The fact that Apple puts out a press release trumpeting the fact that you have to sign up at their web site in order to buy an iPhone.
That is evidence of a shortage.
They did this because scalpers are swooping in and buying them up to resell at inflated prices, which they can successfully do because there aren't enough in the stores for customers to just ignore them and buy directly in the store themselves.
The fact that there aren't enough in the stores is direct evidence that there is a shortage.
What is your evidence that it is a FALSE shortage.
Do you believe that this story about this new requirement to buy an iPhone in China came from someone doing investigative journalism? No, it came from an Apple press release.
Reporting on the iphone shortage issues in china predates this apple press release limiting people to one.
The wii is another product that was seriously constrained for MONTHS after launch, and many retailers did similiar sorts of things to discourage and reduce the impact of scalpers.
Was that a "false shortage" too? Of course not, Nintendo sold every single unit they could ship, and was expanding production as quickly as possible to build more. It was a real shortage.
So again, do you have any evidence that this is a false shortage vs a real shortage?
That's like saying we shouldn't remove deadly exploding cars from the roads because 5% of the drivers are too stupid to drive. There's no link between the two. We can fix the Windows problem by removing it from the internet. Fixing users is done via education.
Right. But the percentages are wrong... the original asserted that removing windows would fix 99.9% of the bullshit on the internet. The parent correctly pointed out that it would do no such thing. "user" issues account for far more than 0.01% of the problem. Removing the Windows "exploding cars" might not even make a dent.
That's not to say we shouldn't remove the exploding cars, but we shouldn't justify it by claiming its going to fix the internet in any meaningful way.
Moreover, the windows as exploding car metaphor is flawed, because the OSX and Linux cars are not really inherently that much more secure in the hands of lowest common denominator users. If you pull the exploding windows cars off the internet within a few months you'll have exploding osx and linux cars to contend with.
Idiot users will let malware infest their systems regardless of what OS they are given if the malware asks them too. Right now, most malware doesn't work on Windows, but if you banned windows overnight, then a week later the internet would be a crap flood of malware that worked on linux or osx.
(Probably linux, because there is no way people could switch to OSX without buying apple hardware...so it would be a less popular choice.)
The ability to read, or surf the web, or watch a movie/TV show durring my commute would be wonderful. Almost like getting a free hour everyday. 52 * 5 * 1 = 250 free hours a year.
You mean fill out reports and attend conference calls.:(
In too many situations if we have more time to work, we'd just work more. Capitalism rewards productivity... if you can be more productive than your competition you have an advantage.
This is why we don't have the effortless 1-hour work days envisioned in the "Jetsons". The premise was that technology would increase our productivity and give us more free time. It didn't account for the fact the competition would just use that freed up time to be more productive, forcing everyone else to do the same.
Just as blackberries and laptops and VPNs have resulted in millions taking their work home to continue into the evenings and weekends, self-driving cars will just result in another hour in which to do more work, at least for millions of people.:(
I've been fortunate enough to establish a work environment I'm very happy with, but I know a lot of people who recall our teenaged fast-food/retails years with envy... "punch-in, work, punch-out, don't work":)
The new health care mandate forces us to pay *private companies* for services they render. Has this ever been the case before in the U.S.?
Car insurance springs to mind.Granted we can choose not to drive, but if we want to drive a car around we are legally required to purchase insurance services from a private company.
But I find it even more interesting that you seem to object to the government cutting out the middle man. Its interesting that Obama wanted a 'public option', but couldn't pass the bill with that in place.
Probably would be at least $30,000. Then again, that is probably more than a house in the rural SE United States is worth..
The cost of actually putting out a particular home fire is pretty trivial. The costs are largely fixed (salary, equipment, maintenance, training) These costs don't change whether you put out 0 fires a month, or 20 fires.
Actually putting out a fire (oxygen, water, fuel, retardants, etc won't add up to much for a normal home fire. A few hundred bucks tops.
Now obviously it should be more than that, considering the high fixed operating costs.
So lets take a look at those fixed operating costs... the community of Naugatuck Connecticut, with ~31,000 people has 41 employees, 5 volunteers, and necessary fire equipment. They have an annual budget of $2.9 million.
Now I doubt they are going to send all 45 firefighters out to deal with simple home fire, but the picture for the story shows 10, so lets run with that, and for the sake of over estimating assume that it takes a whole day to put out the fire.
Based on that a "reasonable" charge to put out the fire is 10/45ths of 1/365th of $2.9M. You see what I did there? Do you find that agreeable? Then add on a few hundred bucks for consumables etc... aw hell... make it an even $1000.
That works out to about $2800 to put out the fire. Sounds about right to me.
Why exactly do you think it should be 10x that amount?
That's true, this is like the health care debate. In this case, someone chose not to buy the service, and the public outcry will be, "That's terrible! No one should have that choice!"
You should note the people inside city limits did not have a choice. They are required to pay as a component of their property taxes. It was only the rural homes that had an option.
The comparison to national health care doesn't quite fit though, because the question there is whether the US federal government has lawful authority under the Constitution to order people to buy things. It definitely does not, if the Constitution is still a meaningful limit on federal power.
Unless you live in the city, in which case they do compel you to 'buy' fire department service. What point were you trying to make exactly?
1.) It's a unique book - It's the most widely distributed book in history. The Bible has been printed at least 4.7 BILLION times, in more than 2,400 languages. The Bible has endured bans and attacks from opposers.
Too be fair Gideons International is dedicated to carpeting the planet with copies of the thing. According to wikipeida they are personally responsible for distributing 1.5 billion copies. So that accounts for over 30% of all bibles printed right there.
I can't even recall how many of those I've personally tossed myself... at least a dozen or so over the years.
Secondly, "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung" aka "The Little Red Book" was printed an estimated 5 to 6.5 billion times. (or should I write it as BILLION the way you did.)
2.) It is historically sound - People who are named in the Bible have been found to exist. Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea - his name was found on a stone in Caesarea in 1961. Events that happened in the Bible are proven to have happened. The account of Edom and Israel battling was one such event that proved to be true.
Mentioning people, places, and events that are real doesn't lend the quality of "historically sound" to the entire work. I hope we don't decide "The Last Samurai" was "historically sound" because we find a mention of Emperor Meiji in an archeological dig in the year 4210.
And indeed, Washington Irving's retelling of the life of Christopher Columbus creates the picture of a stubborn Columbus trying to make theologians understand that the earth was round. When in reality by this time the church already accepted the earth was round. Our modern conception that the church believed the earth was flat at this time is actually derived from Irving's fictional ("dramatic") account of it.
3.) Candor and honesty - Not only are their achievements recorded, but the people of the Bible also recorded their shortcomings and errors. Moses told of a mistake he made, Jonah made a big mistake and landed in the belly of a fish. Even the Apostle Paul humbly admitted that he made mistakes.
4.) Internal Harmony - There were 40 men who wrote the Bible in the span of some 1,600 years. And yet, they wrote about the same theme - a harmonious message - God's Kingdom. From Genesis to Revelation, this theme can be found.
Its riddled with contradictions. And the modern 'bible' was assembled from a large collection of independant works precisely because they were deemed thematically harmonious by the theology over several hundred years. Books were systematically purged from the Bible, and purged from 'canon'.
The Gospel of Thomas..? First and Second Epistles of Clement?
Seriously the composition of the bible and Christian canon is even more convoluted, contentious, arbitrary, and self-serving than that of Star Trek or Star Wars.
5.) Scientific Accuracy - People used to believe that the earth was flat, but the Bible told that it was round. (Isaiah 40:22)
Yeah, I've seen that one before. But we also have Matthew 4:8 "Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;"
Its easy for the Bible to be right if it contains passages predicting both sides. If the earth were in fact flat, I expect you'd be pointing at Matthew and pounding your chest.
Furthermore, Isaiah 40:22, in the original tongue uses a word that is translated as 'circle' not 'sphere'. Its not like they didn't have a word for "sphere" or "ball". The word Isaiah uses is more properly interpreted as 'circle' like a 'disc' not like a 'sphere'. There are a number of passages in Job that reinforce this disk interpretation as well -- refering to shaking the earth by its edges (spheres don't have edges, nobody ever grabs a ball by its edges, but a disk would make perfect sense). Job also compares the earth to a clay seal w
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Humans have sensors that allow them to feel and perceive also. That is how we do it.
Sensors are necessary but not sufficient.
I don't disagree with this. But, feel and perceive is not in any way what defines it.
Check the wikipedia article so that we are on the same page with a common working definition of "sentience". I think you might be using sentience in another sense, perhaps to include "cognizance" or "sapience" or some other characteristic... Or perhaps you are simply over simplifying sentience so that its undistinguished from 'feel or perceive'.
I don't think my laptop or phone can 'feel or perceive'. These things have sensors, but I don't think it is remotely the same thing.
The problem with the term sentience is that it is a word like 'Lots". We know what it means, but it is a sliding scale.
I agree the line between sentience and non-sentience is very ill defined, but in my opinion its clear that higher animals fall on the sentient side of it while laptops and cell phones fall on the non-sentient side of the line.
depends on your definition of sentience. By the wikipedia definition for example I'd say dogs are sentient.
from wikipedia...
"Sentience is the ability to feel or perceive. The term is used in science and philosophy, and in the study of artificial intelligence. Sentience is used in the study of consciousness to describe the ability to have sensations or experiences, known to Western philosophers as "qualia""
Around here p-a-y-g generally costs more for high usage users and there are usually options you can't get. The majority of p-a-y-g services are setup for low end users who can't get credit. They aren't aimed at mid-high end customers who want to control their bill.
Well yeah, but it won't be cool to talk about it.
iPhone: You can get MobileMe. At that is required is that you pay the yearly subscription.
Except that the VAST majority aren't and are foregoing the extra features (online sync, find my phone, etc).
Windows Phone 7: It has Xbox Live Integration: At that is required is that you have an Xbox 360 and an Xbox Live subscription.
AHA. This seems to be a source of confusion. No, you don't require an xbox 360.
Its not JUST integrating with your pre-existing xbox 360 games account.
You can have an xbox live game account without a 360. You'll be able to play games, get ranked, use player matching services, collect achievements, chat with friends, play online/multiplayer games, etc... strictly from the phone.
It takes the itunes games marketplace, and the iOS "game center" and kicks it out of the park.
Xbox Live integration isn't about being useful if you have a 360. Its a games platform all on its own.
But, yeah, if you have a 360 too, you use the same account on both.
If you already have Xbox Live, it's great.
Yes, if you already have a 360 its that much better.
But if you don't its still worth looking at as a gaming platform in its own right.
Now, to be perfectly fair, out of the 23m XBox gamers, you're going to have to remove the under-18 demographic, and a reasonable percentage of folks who can afford an XBox, but not an ongoing smartphone plan. The leftover folks may or may not consider a console-phone semi-link to be a factor, let alone a deciding one.
The under 18 demographic? All those 14 year olds who bought xboxes and subscribe to xbox live gold? I don't think that's much of a demographic. There certainly are parents who bought xboxes for their kids, they'll buy their kids phones too.
there are roughly 1.5 - 2 billion human beings who could be reasonably considered as "consumers" out there.
Those 1.5 - 2 billion human beings are consumers and target market for any phone.
No, that's not what I'm saying at all.
You are talking about the market for the service itself.
I am talking about the ability to market integration features to users of the service.
What I'm saying is:
Microsofts Xbox live integration feature in WinMo7 targets 23 million xbox live users.
Apple's MobileMe integration feature in iOS benefits 2 million mobileme users.
There are roughly 2 million MobileMe subscribers vs 23 million Xbox Live Subscribers.
Gee, which population is bigger?
Indeed.
Targeting such a niche population isn't a major benefit.
"such a niche population"?
It's a great service for gamers who have Xboxes. For general consumers that don't have an Xbox or Xbox Live, there isn't much of an advantage to having Xbox Live integration.
MobileMe is a great service for iPhone owners with MobileMe. For general consumers that don't have a MobileMe account, there isn't much of an advantage to having MobileMe integration.
See what I did there?
There are far more Xbox Live subscribers than MobileMe account holders. Only a tiny fraction of iphone owners get a mobileme account. Yet several of the iphones more interesting features are locked away behind that service. If WinMo7 offers mobileme features for free + extra stuff that ties into the gamer-centric xbl it will potentially be quite attractive to a LOT of people.
There's a reason rooted Linux machines are orders of magnitude more expensive than rooted Windows machines on the black market. There's no lack of interest.
A rooted linux server is far more likely to have something interesting on it than the average rooted windows box that is some clueless families home pc.
And you believe that Apple can not get "enough out there"?
I have no reason not to.
I will concede that Apple may have made a series of business decisions that they should have known would lead to their being a shortage... launching in a major market without enough product in the warehouses, and not enough suppliers of crucial components (such as the display) to ramp up production quick....
But that doesn't make the shortage less real.
Demand exceeds supply, and there is nothing apple can do to satisfy that demand now. Its not like there are millions of iphones collecting dust and factories idling while Steve Jobs rubs his hands together cackling.
Requiring programs to be exec modded before running
I've downloaded tons of stuff for linux, and I rarely have to make an explicit exec mod before running it.
Not determining file type by extension
And that adds to security how?
Requiring your password to escalate privileges rather than a yes/no dialog
Run windows as a standard user and it requires a password too. (It only prompts for yes/no if you are already logged in as an administrator.) See screenshots here:
http://unixwiz.net/techtips/win7-limited-user.html
Note it is also possible to configure windows to always require the password entry. But I do not think this makes it more secure.
Installing an overwhelming majority of your software through a repository rather than random websites
This is only true while linux is a 2% marketshare identity. In a world where linux a major or dominant player, the worlds annual production of proprietary software, shareware, trialware, demoware, shovelware, will all be pumped out for linux, and most of it will be unlikely to make it into repos.
Repos work for OSS. The overwhelming majority of software for linux is OSS right now. But if linux were dominant it would attract commercial software the same way it would attrack malware attention.
Tons of software end users will want will NOT be available via repos. From quickbooks to photoshop to itunes ... end users will want the shiny, and will click to get it.
I'm sorry, but in what way are the people who are "swooping in and buying them" not customers?
Who cares exactly what you classify them as?
a) They don't benefit Apple by increasing sales. (Given there is a shortage, 100% of the product will move regardless.) They don't represent additional demand. They don't actually want the product except to resell it. Zero sum game.
b) They hurt apple by pissing of many potential customers who see the phones they wanted to use being marked up 100% right in front of their eyes.
Apple doesn't need scalpers, doesn't want scalpers, and has incentive to minimize their impact.
Should I not be allowed to buy iPhones to give as gifts to my family because I'm not the end user?
Of course you should be allowed. You should be allowed buy enough iPhones to fill up a swimming pool if you want. And Apple will be glad to sell you exactly that amount and as many more as they can dump on you, just as soon as they get enough out there.
And is the fact that the stores are not getting enough of them really evidence that there is a true shortage?
Yes. It is evidence of exactly that. It doesn't prove it, but it is good evidence for it. If Apple could double the number of units in China tomorrow they would. The iphone is not just a sale, but a revenue stream. There is zero benefit to creating a false shortage this bad. Sure maybe a very shortage or a couple high-profile sellouts to make the news is good PR and drive the hype machine... but there has never been a benefit to weeks on weeks of chronic shortages.
In the meantime, is there any reason apple should not be allowed to ensure as many households as possible have a chance at getting on at regular retail price? Are you really *that* willing to dramatically increase your odds of getting 0 iphones just because it annoys you that you can't have 10 iphones during a period in the market where getting even 1 would be a pretty big score.
It took me multiple weeks of trying to catch a Nintendo wii in stock. (And I waited for 5 MONTHS after launch before I even started trying.) I originally even had a reservation in place around launch, but the retailer cancelled it outright when they found out what their initial shipment numbers were going to be.) A manufacturer run reservation system would have been welcome.
Sure it would have meant that I couldn't get one for my parents and brother as well. But expecting to get 3 in a market where it takes weeks to months to get even a one is just idiotic.
Do we know that this "one customer/one phone" policy is not just a way for Apple to make sure that they have personal information on all iPhone users in order to better serve their "strategic partners" via advertising?
Apple already has this through the activation of the iphone, its connection with your itunes account, and so on. So if they are creating a massive shortage to justify collecting information they already get... ... yeah... I think not.
It's been some years since Apple has earned the "benefit of the doubt" when it comes to their business practices.
They aren't cartoon villains though. This shortage doesn't benefit them. Period. And a step like this genuinely improves the odds that more endusers will be able to obtain a phone at retail, without going through a series of disappointment after long waits, where the entire stock is bought out by the first or second person in line who just carts them off to his ebay store.
Uhm.. OS X runs on x86, now...
Um... so you are advocating that if somehow windows were banned that all those millions of lowest common denominator windows users who couldn't manage to keep their PCs malware free should all hack OSX onto their 2 year old $500 dell, and fiddle with it with no formal support from anyone in the hopes that they manage to get their audio, video, Ethernet card, wifi, sleep, and power management all functioning at the same time... and that it won't crater the first time try run apple's updater?
I think not. I've played around with hackintoshes for fun, and its cool in its way, but unless you got lucky or bought the hardware knowing in advance that you wanted to install OSX on it, it may never work quite right.
In my case, it was enough to get a taste, play around, see what OSX is all about, to make me comfortable picking up a macbook pro laptop. But things didn't work, and it wasn't exactly stable.... brought back memories of windows ME and MacOS8.
I might find a new OS I like (and $100 for a legit license good for up to 5 systems in the same household sounds a lot better than MSFT's $140 for a single PC license).
Sure. Its a legit license. Until you install it on 5 non-Apple PCs...
The fact that Apple puts out a press release trumpeting the fact that you have to sign up at their web site in order to buy an iPhone.
That is evidence of a shortage.
They did this because scalpers are swooping in and buying them up to resell at inflated prices, which they can successfully do because there aren't enough in the stores for customers to just ignore them and buy directly in the store themselves.
The fact that there aren't enough in the stores is direct evidence that there is a shortage.
What is your evidence that it is a FALSE shortage.
Do you believe that this story about this new requirement to buy an iPhone in China came from someone doing investigative journalism? No, it came from an Apple press release.
Reporting on the iphone shortage issues in china predates this apple press release limiting people to one.
The wii is another product that was seriously constrained for MONTHS after launch, and many retailers did similiar sorts of things to discourage and reduce the impact of scalpers.
Was that a "false shortage" too? Of course not, Nintendo sold every single unit they could ship, and was expanding production as quickly as possible to build more. It was a real shortage.
So again, do you have any evidence that this is a false shortage vs a real shortage?
What exactly is "consumer friendly" about creating a false shortage?
And your evidence that the iphone shortage in china is false is what?
That's like saying we shouldn't remove deadly exploding cars from the roads because 5% of the drivers are too stupid to drive. There's no link between the two. We can fix the Windows problem by removing it from the internet. Fixing users is done via education.
Right. But the percentages are wrong... the original asserted that removing windows would fix 99.9% of the bullshit on the internet. The parent correctly pointed out that it would do no such thing. "user" issues account for far more than 0.01% of the problem. Removing the Windows "exploding cars" might not even make a dent.
That's not to say we shouldn't remove the exploding cars, but we shouldn't justify it by claiming its going to fix the internet in any meaningful way.
Moreover, the windows as exploding car metaphor is flawed, because the OSX and Linux cars are not really inherently that much more secure in the hands of lowest common denominator users. If you pull the exploding windows cars off the internet within a few months you'll have exploding osx and linux cars to contend with.
Idiot users will let malware infest their systems regardless of what OS they are given if the malware asks them too. Right now, most malware doesn't work on Windows, but if you banned windows overnight, then a week later the internet would be a crap flood of malware that worked on linux or osx.
(Probably linux, because there is no way people could switch to OSX without buying apple hardware...so it would be a less popular choice.)
Military invasion of a 1st world western country.
Yeah, they always say that if you have a small genome.
What do they say if you have the largest genome in the world?
"Not tonight dear, I have a headache."
The ability to read, or surf the web, or watch a movie/TV show durring my commute would be wonderful. Almost like getting a free hour everyday. 52 * 5 * 1 = 250 free hours a year.
You mean fill out reports and attend conference calls. :(
In too many situations if we have more time to work, we'd just work more. Capitalism rewards productivity... if you can be more productive than your competition you have an advantage.
This is why we don't have the effortless 1-hour work days envisioned in the "Jetsons". The premise was that technology would increase our productivity and give us more free time. It didn't account for the fact the competition would just use that freed up time to be more productive, forcing everyone else to do the same.
Just as blackberries and laptops and VPNs have resulted in millions taking their work home to continue into the evenings and weekends, self-driving cars will just result in another hour in which to do more work, at least for millions of people. :(
I've been fortunate enough to establish a work environment I'm very happy with, but I know a lot of people who recall our teenaged fast-food/retails years with envy... "punch-in, work, punch-out, don't work" :)
The new health care mandate forces us to pay *private companies* for services they render. Has this ever been the case before in the U.S.?
Car insurance springs to mind.Granted we can choose not to drive, but if we want to drive a car around we are legally required to purchase insurance services from a private company.
But I find it even more interesting that you seem to object to the government cutting out the middle man. Its interesting that Obama wanted a 'public option', but couldn't pass the bill with that in place.
Probably would be at least $30,000. Then again, that is probably more than a house in the rural SE United States is worth..
The cost of actually putting out a particular home fire is pretty trivial. The costs are largely fixed (salary, equipment, maintenance, training) These costs don't change whether you put out 0 fires a month, or 20 fires.
Actually putting out a fire (oxygen, water, fuel, retardants, etc won't add up to much for a normal home fire. A few hundred bucks tops.
Now obviously it should be more than that, considering the high fixed operating costs.
So lets take a look at those fixed operating costs... the community of Naugatuck Connecticut, with ~31,000 people has 41 employees, 5 volunteers, and necessary fire equipment. They have an annual budget of $2.9 million.
Now I doubt they are going to send all 45 firefighters out to deal with simple home fire, but the picture for the story shows 10, so lets run with that, and for the sake of over estimating assume that it takes a whole day to put out the fire.
Based on that a "reasonable" charge to put out the fire is 10/45ths of 1/365th of $2.9M. You see what I did there? Do you find that agreeable? Then add on a few hundred bucks for consumables etc... aw hell... make it an even $1000.
That works out to about $2800 to put out the fire. Sounds about right to me.
Why exactly do you think it should be 10x that amount?
That's true, this is like the health care debate. In this case, someone chose not to buy the service, and the public outcry will be, "That's terrible! No one should have that choice!"
You should note the people inside city limits did not have a choice. They are required to pay as a component of their property taxes. It was only the rural homes that had an option.
The comparison to national health care doesn't quite fit though, because the question there is whether the US federal government has lawful authority under the Constitution to order people to buy things. It definitely does not, if the Constitution is still a meaningful limit on federal power.
Unless you live in the city, in which case they do compel you to 'buy' fire department service. What point were you trying to make exactly?
1.) It's a unique book - It's the most widely distributed book in history. The Bible has been printed at least 4.7 BILLION times, in more than 2,400 languages. The Bible has endured bans and attacks from opposers.
Too be fair Gideons International is dedicated to carpeting the planet with copies of the thing. According to wikipeida they are personally responsible for distributing 1.5 billion copies. So that accounts for over 30% of all bibles printed right there.
I can't even recall how many of those I've personally tossed myself... at least a dozen or so over the years.
Secondly, "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung" aka "The Little Red Book" was printed an estimated 5 to 6.5 billion times. (or should I write it as BILLION the way you did.)
2.) It is historically sound - People who are named in the Bible have been found to exist. Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea - his name was found on a stone in Caesarea in 1961. Events that happened in the Bible are proven to have happened. The account of Edom and Israel battling was one such event that proved to be true.
Mentioning people, places, and events that are real doesn't lend the quality of "historically sound" to the entire work. I hope we don't decide "The Last Samurai" was "historically sound" because we find a mention of Emperor Meiji in an archeological dig in the year 4210.
And indeed, Washington Irving's retelling of the life of Christopher Columbus creates the picture of a stubborn Columbus trying to make theologians understand that the earth was round. When in reality by this time the church already accepted the earth was round. Our modern conception that the church believed the earth was flat at this time is actually derived from Irving's fictional ("dramatic") account of it.
3.) Candor and honesty - Not only are their achievements recorded, but the people of the Bible also recorded their shortcomings and errors. Moses told of a mistake he made, Jonah made a big mistake and landed in the belly of a fish. Even the Apostle Paul humbly admitted that he made mistakes.
flawed characters? That's unique how? Achilles infamous heel, Lady Macbeth's self-destructive guilt...
4.) Internal Harmony - There were 40 men who wrote the Bible in the span of some 1,600 years. And yet, they wrote about the same theme - a harmonious message - God's Kingdom. From Genesis to Revelation, this theme can be found.
Its riddled with contradictions. And the modern 'bible' was assembled from a large collection of independant works precisely because they were deemed thematically harmonious by the theology over several hundred years. Books were systematically purged from the Bible, and purged from 'canon'.
The Gospel of Thomas..? First and Second Epistles of Clement?
Seriously the composition of the bible and Christian canon is even more convoluted, contentious, arbitrary, and self-serving than that of Star Trek or Star Wars.
5.) Scientific Accuracy - People used to believe that the earth was flat, but the Bible told that it was round. (Isaiah 40:22)
Yeah, I've seen that one before. But we also have Matthew 4:8 "Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;"
Its easy for the Bible to be right if it contains passages predicting both sides. If the earth were in fact flat, I expect you'd be pointing at Matthew and pounding your chest.
Furthermore, Isaiah 40:22, in the original tongue uses a word that is translated as 'circle' not 'sphere'. Its not like they didn't have a word for "sphere" or "ball". The word Isaiah uses is more properly interpreted as 'circle' like a 'disc' not like a 'sphere'. There are a number of passages in Job that reinforce this disk interpretation as well -- refering to shaking the earth by its edges (spheres don't have edges, nobody ever grabs a ball by its edges, but a disk would make perfect sense). Job also compares the earth to a clay seal w