There's also the fact that it's an iPhone with the phone taken out. The options page is blank, and they haven't changed anything about it except remove some iPhone features. The space is also poor if you're going to be storing those wide screen vids on there, and now the iPod classic seems like a mid-range iPod, and the iPod nano now looks like something you get out of a cereal box. I think they really had a much more solid line up before, and this new lot is a step back.
Science only reaffirms my Faith in this way, each time "We" (mankind) say this is the barrier, this is the absolute; Science through discovery pushes past that barrier.
In fact I propose that there are leaps of Faith in Scientific discovery that only later logic will describe. For me those leaps are our moments of touching the God that is inside us. Using "leap of faith" to mean "an intuition" and "faith" to mean religious belief is (purposely?) misleading. Since when is the word "faith" in "leap of faith" capitalized?
Faith (in a religious context) is belief without evidence, by definition. Science is "belief" with evidence, by definition. They're exactly opposite. They co-exist like war and peace.
And to sneak "faith" in as playing a part in scientific discoveries is an insult to the work of every scientist.
On the ground.. S&$t.. We could use you on the search and rescue team; we were going on the theory that he was either still flying high on a full tank of fuel or hiding in an underground lair.
The problem: if the Chinese military can get enough control over Pentagon computers, then it doesn't really matter what their own hardware capabilities are, they'll be able to deploy some US military hardware for their own objectives. Yeah, it's like the Cold War again, but with modern technology. For illustrative purposes I've recreated what probably happened during the security breach:
Enter password to access pentagon mainframe... HACKING ATTEMPTS DETECTED, LOCKING DOWN IN 5.. 4.. 3.. 2.. Access granted. Welcome to the pentagon.
Please select an option: 1. Self destruct the USA 2. Remote control all submarines to dive to breaking point 3. Wire all money in all US controlled banks to China
You have selected "Self destruct the USA". Are you sure? (Y/N)
Confirmed. Self destructing the USA in 5.. 4.. 3.. 2..
[Connection terminated and day saved by no-nonsense FBI boss and nerdy-but-misunderstood ex-criminal hacker]
Seriously; world affairs aren't a movie, the pentagon isn't hooked up to any military hardware, the sources are dubious, China has denied it, the pentagon hasn't said who they think did it, and the Financial Times has shown that it likes to stir up China-phobia before.
How could it not be subsidized? It's a widescreen iPod, a phone, and an internet communications device.
As Steve Jobs pointed out; a hi-fi system and widescreen TV are $2000, a high end smart-phone is $800, and an internet communications device like a high-end PC goes for $4,000.
If Jobs' figures are correct AT&T must be subsidizing at least $6,200 per iPhone, how else do you explain a widescreen iPod, a phone, and an internet communications device, starting at $499?
I guess everyone on Slashdot is a military commander who knows about the reasoning behind strategic positioning of aircraft carriers.. And why do you say that the enemy's air forces need to be neutralized before carriers can be used? Isn't that exactly what carriers are for?!
One week before the Washington Times hyped the ONI report, the nominated commander of Pacific Command, Admiral Timothy J. Keating, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee where he dismissed alarmist reports of recent gains in Chinese submarine development.
"If the reports are fairly accurate, they are well behind us technologically. We enjoy significant advantages across the spectrum of defensive and offensive systems, in particular undersea warfare," he said according to Taipei Times. In an interview with the paper, Keating added: "Should it become necessary for us to put our forces [in harm's way], the development of Chinese submarines are [sic] a concern to us, but it is hardly an insurmountable concern."
Also read about the low amount of use China's submarine fleet gets, and the inexperience they have:
The implications of the low patrol rate are significant. The total operational experience for the entire Chinese submarine force is only 49 patrols in 25 years, corresponding to each submarine conducting an average of one patrol every third year.
As a result, Chinese submarine crews appear to have relatively little operational experience and consequently limited skills in operating their boats safely and competently. It suggests that the tactical skills that would be needed for the Chinese submarine force to operate effectively in a war may be limited.
China continues - at least for now - to use its submarine force as a coastal defense force.
Source
This basically amounts to China having never actually used their submarines as a nuclear deterrent, and since they have no ICBMs that can reach the US they have no nuclear deterrent against the US and a comparatively very limited navy. (Report)
The media loves to hype up China's military spending, but if you think China's grounded 1980's built subs, or the speculated five new Jin-class (Type 094) subs, are going to make the US Navy "ineffective", or if you think aircraft carriers (the most expensive ships of all) are just for intimidating small nations, then you're a few warheads short of a nuclear power.
I use Eclipse for PHP development using PDT, and it's great. Zend Studio Pro costs $299, and comes with debugging support, but you can get the same thing with Eclipse for free, and support various other languages as well.
If you're doing MFC, or.NET development, or developing specifically for the Windows platform using an MS supported language then of course VS.NET is the obvious choice, but Eclipse is good too.
It's also encouraging that enhancements can be written for Eclipse easily without IBM worrying that your enhancement will stop people upgrading to the Pro edition.
I think that because IDEs for any language all share so many requirements, and because they're used by developers who will want to improve it, it makes a natural open source project, and I expect as time goes on it'll get better and better.
I've read Theo's rant, and I found the section about not sharing code back to be pretty humorous, considering that's the way the BSD license is written. If you wanted to ensure that code be shared back into your projects, you'd use a copyleft-style license instead of a BSD/MIT-style license, wouldn't you? The reason I like using the BSD license is that it's supposed to be progress. When you write good BSD code there's no reason anyone will need to rewrite that code, and it's the kind of code that you hope everyone will use because it makes applications better, or an application developed on top of it will be high quality itself.
Contrast that with the GPL, where code written with the GPL has to be rewritten if you want to use it for proprietary purposes. If you want to end all proprietary code then that's obviously a good thing, but it's not so good if you want the best code to be used, and for no-one to have to needlessly rewrite the code you're writing.
Take SQLite for example. It's in the public domain which is only slightly less restrictive as BSD. Anyone can use SQLite for any purpose. If I'm developing proprietary software and I need a lightweight database engine I know SQLite is available. It saves me time and money, and the software is going to be better as a result. That's why drh chose to make it available so freely: It's the best there is, and if someone can improve on it good luck to them.
Both licenses have their purposes of course, but I hope you can at least see why someone would prefer the BSD license.
So if it's supposed to be extra free then what's wrong with relicensing it as open source? Well there are two possible outcomes of releasing GPL changes to a BSD/MIT/public domain project:
The developers which wrote the software take the changed code and start using the GPL; the code can no longer be used in proprietary software. Whether you think that's a good thing or not it's a decision made against the original developer's will.
The developers which wrote the software continue developing their code and ignore the changes; the software is now either forked, causing compatibility issues, or changes are made in parallel, causing duplicated efforts. BSD is chosen so that no-one has to duplicate efforts, because the code is free.
Both of these outcomes just don't help. They don't help the software improve, they don't help anything. Rather than ask "Why choose BSD?" (which I hope I explained well enough earlier) why not ask "Why relicense BSD code under a different open source license?" Does he think that the developers of the BSD licensed code will start using his modified code along with the GPL license?
Take SQLite for example. Imagine if someone took SQLite and made some nice updates to it, but released the changes under the GPL. Now there are either duplicate efforts and compatibility worries, or the developer of SQLite is forced to use GPL and his software can't be used everywhere like he intended. A stable piece of code that used to be universal no longer is universal.
Using the GPL to close the original developers out is using a share-alike license to avoid sharing, and using an open collaboration license to prevent collaboration.
And Linux shouldn't have been released until 2.4, and Mozilla shouldn't have been released until Firefox, and OS X shouldn't have been released until Panther, etc.. It would be great if software was perfect before it got released, but that's just a dream, especially for software that's so widely used.
Most apps I run into will install as a user. I also don't see how I'm missing the point; where did I start talking about the difficulty of installing things? Macs might make organizing wedding photos, and editing videos of attractive young people sporting or laughing, very easy; but the GP and myself were talking about security, not how easy it is to install things.
Run in an underprivileged account, don't open e-mail attachments, don't turn off your firewall, don't turn off automatic updates, use some common sense when browsing the web.
Linux users think Abraham was ordered to sacrifice Linus as a burnt offering, GNU users think Abraham was ordered to sacrifice Stallman as a burnt offering. Linux users believe in the holy trinity of GNU/Linux/NvidiaBlobs, BSD users believe in the one and only UNIX. Linux users are fine with Tux toys and stickers, BSD users believe in no graven images. Linux users are subdivided into those that argue about interpretations of freedom and whether the establishment is corrupt, BSD users are subdivided according to which BSD is the true descendant of UNIX(pbuh).
Yeah, not being able to install Office as a non-admin is a real usability issue.. About as much of a usability issue as not being able to install Parallels as a non-admin.
I'm guessing in the next breath you'll be saying "Windows makes it too easy to install things; that's how spyware spreads". I've heard both arguments used against Windows; it's too easy to install apps, it's too hard to install apps.
Clearly spoken by someone who doesn't use Windows as a non-admin. I do, and it's perfectly usable. It has a sudo equivalent ("Run as") for admin tasks, just like UNIX, you can configure it to allow writes only to your home folder, just like UNIX, you can install untrusted applications within your home folder, just like UNIX.
People really need to stop using Win9x arguments against WinNT.
Well if you're the kind of guy who clicks on "hit the monkey" or "free smileys" then maybe a Mac would be better. If you understand how to create a non-admin user account and know the difference between a picture and an executable you're perfectly safe on WinNT 5.x
Most of us manage to run Windows on the net confidently. If you prefer OS X or Linux that's fine, but don't act like security is the reason you're not on Windows and that you have to keep it separate from the net; I've had the same Windows XP install running for over a year and it runs as well as when I installed it, and there's no spyware.
As for writing code for Vista. Well I'd say give it time; people didn't write for XP the moment it came out either, it took a while for apps to stop supporting Win98, but as people update their computers and get Vista by default there'll be a transition, whether it's worthwhile or not.
But doesn't that mean you have to worry about correspondence from Lenovo making it onto your hard disk? In a high security system I just can't see that happening, and it does still rely on no encryption being used.
It would also be Lenovo's undoing, in the likely event that they got caught. It would also be a massive political mistake on the part of the Chinese government.
Also don't forget that China owns ~30%, a Texas company owns ~%10 and public shareholders own ~%50. It's hardly a business that's a puppet of the Chinese government.
I didn't know the US government trusted Seagate with their military systems and classified data. What "certain things" are you talking about here? What private information gets stored on a hard disk? Like the US government aren't going to bother with encryption.
And since when can hard disk manufacturers send out messages to specific hard disks?
Chief! We're intercepting a message from the Chinese! It's coming through now: "This is Red Dragon to SEAGTE-#1938-391283-2934; the US government's warranty has just run out. Crash Crash Crash! Over."
Dear God! It'll be like Pearl Harbor all over again, except with hard disk drives instead of our navy!
If people want encryption, they could have encryption. The problem is, people act as if they want to be bugged. Possibly so they have something to complain about. But --
The forbidden fruit is not making people smarter but telling good from evil (that is being capable of reflecting thought upon oneself, as in realizing one is naked). Before eating the fruit, whatever that means, man answers to istinct and/or is incapable of sinning because he can't tell. After, he is able to sin. That means getting out of the condition symbolized by eden automatically. I stand corrected. God came down from heaven to get his shit ruined by us, so he could forgive us for the sin of eating a fruit that gave us morality.
But we couldn't sin until after we ate the fruit though, so I guess the first bite was sinless, because we couldn't tell that we were sinning until we had eaten at least some. It's a problem if the fruit was eaten in one bite though, that'd get us off the hook completely (unless just chewing the fruit is enough, and the apple was swallowed after at least two munches).
Is this an explanation or is it just a rationalization of a myth randomly transmitted in a religious book? Impossible to say and irrelevant for my thesis. An explanation of morality? I don't think it's impossible to say whether or not the ancient forbidden fruit myth is a reasonable theory of morality.
My thesis is: you can easily make fun of a thing you didn't bother to analyze. My thesis is: you can find meaning in anything if you analyze for long enough.
I have read as much of the Bible as I could stomach though. I got a little further than the part where the donkey of a messenger of a something-ite (who's tribe was getting invaded by Moses, iirc) saw an invisible angel on the road ahead, and when the donkey tried to turn the messenger beat it, and God made the donkey talk, and the donkey said "Am I not your faithful donkey? Why do you beat me?", but the messenger was confused because the angel was invisible, and less so because his donkey was talking, but then the angel showed himself, and the messenger repented and apologized to the donkey.
And I never got out of a "logical mindset". Well then I hope you'll at least be consistent and analyze Alice in Wonderland thoroughly for messages from God.
They can't take a joke. Just like if you have a sensitive neurotic kid in your neighborhood, you wouldn't call him names in jest that you would call everyone else. I think people would have said the same thing about regular Christians a few decades ago. It was people pushing the barrier and asking "tell me why I shouldn't say this again?" that got things to a relatively sane state where "blasphemy" laws aren't enforced.
By the way this story comes as Afghanis are getting annoyed, to say the least, about having a verse from the Koran on donated "blasphemous" footballs.
Don't make a caricature of my faith; we've come a long way. Now we believe that the creator came down in human form to get his shit ruined by us, so that he could forgive us for the symbolic sin of eating some fruit that made us really smart. God didn't actually come down and wrestle with Israel, and he didn't actually make a donkey talk, it was just a symbol. If you can't figure out what a donkey talking symbolizes, well I feel sorry for you and your "logic" based mindset.
What format does Apple's Pages/Keynote save to? Is it an open standard? Would Apple apologists say that it isn't open because it allows them to innovate more freely?
Is MS Office really that bad to compare it to a guy that treats women as objects?! Personally I think MS Office is by far Microsoft's best application and they deserve credit for it.
MS Office 2007's UI revamp was also a big deal. It makes it much easier to make full use of all of Office, and I'll bet you anything that OpenOffice and iWork will end up copying it to some degree.
Isn't UI innovation what everyone loves about Apple, yet when Microsoft do it it's somehow sneaky and underhanded (like that creepy guy at the bar?!).
No-one is forcing them to create an open standard that will allow other software to interact with MS Office documents, but they are. Shouldn't they get credit for that?
Slashdot Mirror
There's also the fact that it's an iPhone with the phone taken out. The options page is blank, and they haven't changed anything about it except remove some iPhone features. The space is also poor if you're going to be storing those wide screen vids on there, and now the iPod classic seems like a mid-range iPod, and the iPod nano now looks like something you get out of a cereal box. I think they really had a much more solid line up before, and this new lot is a step back.
.Mac is great, it just works, it saves me so much time, and it's built right in. It's stunning and breathtaking, it's the ultimate reason to switch...
OMG Windows Live! More like Windows Death, those monopolistic tyrants!
Faith (in a religious context) is belief without evidence, by definition. Science is "belief" with evidence, by definition. They're exactly opposite. They co-exist like war and peace.
And to sneak "faith" in as playing a part in scientific discoveries is an insult to the work of every scientist.
On the ground.. S&$t.. We could use you on the search and rescue team; we were going on the theory that he was either still flying high on a full tank of fuel or hiding in an underground lair.
How could it not be subsidized? It's a widescreen iPod, a phone, and an internet communications device.
As Steve Jobs pointed out; a hi-fi system and widescreen TV are $2000, a high end smart-phone is $800, and an internet communications device like a high-end PC goes for $4,000.
If Jobs' figures are correct AT&T must be subsidizing at least $6,200 per iPhone, how else do you explain a widescreen iPod, a phone, and an internet communications device, starting at $499?
Source
Also read about the low amount of use China's submarine fleet gets, and the inexperience they have: Source
This basically amounts to China having never actually used their submarines as a nuclear deterrent, and since they have no ICBMs that can reach the US they have no nuclear deterrent against the US and a comparatively very limited navy. (Report)
The media loves to hype up China's military spending, but if you think China's grounded 1980's built subs, or the speculated five new Jin-class (Type 094) subs, are going to make the US Navy "ineffective", or if you think aircraft carriers (the most expensive ships of all) are just for intimidating small nations, then you're a few warheads short of a nuclear power.
I use Eclipse for PHP development using PDT, and it's great. Zend Studio Pro costs $299, and comes with debugging support, but you can get the same thing with Eclipse for free, and support various other languages as well.
.NET development, or developing specifically for the Windows platform using an MS supported language then of course VS.NET is the obvious choice, but Eclipse is good too.
If you're doing MFC, or
It's also encouraging that enhancements can be written for Eclipse easily without IBM worrying that your enhancement will stop people upgrading to the Pro edition.
I think that because IDEs for any language all share so many requirements, and because they're used by developers who will want to improve it, it makes a natural open source project, and I expect as time goes on it'll get better and better.
Contrast that with the GPL, where code written with the GPL has to be rewritten if you want to use it for proprietary purposes. If you want to end all proprietary code then that's obviously a good thing, but it's not so good if you want the best code to be used, and for no-one to have to needlessly rewrite the code you're writing.
Take SQLite for example. It's in the public domain which is only slightly less restrictive as BSD. Anyone can use SQLite for any purpose. If I'm developing proprietary software and I need a lightweight database engine I know SQLite is available. It saves me time and money, and the software is going to be better as a result. That's why drh chose to make it available so freely: It's the best there is, and if someone can improve on it good luck to them.
Both licenses have their purposes of course, but I hope you can at least see why someone would prefer the BSD license.
So if it's supposed to be extra free then what's wrong with relicensing it as open source? Well there are two possible outcomes of releasing GPL changes to a BSD/MIT/public domain project:
-
The developers which wrote the software take the changed code and start using the GPL; the code can no longer be used in proprietary software. Whether you think that's a good thing or not it's a decision made against the original developer's will.
- The developers which wrote the software continue developing their code and ignore the changes; the software is now either forked, causing compatibility issues, or changes are made in parallel, causing duplicated efforts. BSD is chosen so that no-one has to duplicate efforts, because the code is free.
Both of these outcomes just don't help. They don't help the software improve, they don't help anything. Rather than ask "Why choose BSD?" (which I hope I explained well enough earlier) why not ask "Why relicense BSD code under a different open source license?" Does he think that the developers of the BSD licensed code will start using his modified code along with the GPL license?Take SQLite for example. Imagine if someone took SQLite and made some nice updates to it, but released the changes under the GPL. Now there are either duplicate efforts and compatibility worries, or the developer of SQLite is forced to use GPL and his software can't be used everywhere like he intended. A stable piece of code that used to be universal no longer is universal.
Using the GPL to close the original developers out is using a share-alike license to avoid sharing, and using an open collaboration license to prevent collaboration.
And Linux shouldn't have been released until 2.4, and Mozilla shouldn't have been released until Firefox, and OS X shouldn't have been released until Panther, etc.. It would be great if software was perfect before it got released, but that's just a dream, especially for software that's so widely used.
Most apps I run into will install as a user. I also don't see how I'm missing the point; where did I start talking about the difficulty of installing things? Macs might make organizing wedding photos, and editing videos of attractive young people sporting or laughing, very easy; but the GP and myself were talking about security, not how easy it is to install things.
Run in an underprivileged account, don't open e-mail attachments, don't turn off your firewall, don't turn off automatic updates, use some common sense when browsing the web.
Is VMS really that easy?
Linux users think Abraham was ordered to sacrifice Linus as a burnt offering, GNU users think Abraham was ordered to sacrifice Stallman as a burnt offering. Linux users believe in the holy trinity of GNU/Linux/NvidiaBlobs, BSD users believe in the one and only UNIX. Linux users are fine with Tux toys and stickers, BSD users believe in no graven images. Linux users are subdivided into those that argue about interpretations of freedom and whether the establishment is corrupt, BSD users are subdivided according to which BSD is the true descendant of UNIX(pbuh).
Yeah, not being able to install Office as a non-admin is a real usability issue.. About as much of a usability issue as not being able to install Parallels as a non-admin.
I'm guessing in the next breath you'll be saying "Windows makes it too easy to install things; that's how spyware spreads". I've heard both arguments used against Windows; it's too easy to install apps, it's too hard to install apps.
Clearly spoken by someone who doesn't use Windows as a non-admin. I do, and it's perfectly usable. It has a sudo equivalent ("Run as") for admin tasks, just like UNIX, you can configure it to allow writes only to your home folder, just like UNIX, you can install untrusted applications within your home folder, just like UNIX.
People really need to stop using Win9x arguments against WinNT.
Well if you're the kind of guy who clicks on "hit the monkey" or "free smileys" then maybe a Mac would be better. If you understand how to create a non-admin user account and know the difference between a picture and an executable you're perfectly safe on WinNT 5.x
Most of us manage to run Windows on the net confidently. If you prefer OS X or Linux that's fine, but don't act like security is the reason you're not on Windows and that you have to keep it separate from the net; I've had the same Windows XP install running for over a year and it runs as well as when I installed it, and there's no spyware.
As for writing code for Vista. Well I'd say give it time; people didn't write for XP the moment it came out either, it took a while for apps to stop supporting Win98, but as people update their computers and get Vista by default there'll be a transition, whether it's worthwhile or not.
But doesn't that mean you have to worry about correspondence from Lenovo making it onto your hard disk? In a high security system I just can't see that happening, and it does still rely on no encryption being used.
It would also be Lenovo's undoing, in the likely event that they got caught. It would also be a massive political mistake on the part of the Chinese government.
Also don't forget that China owns ~30%, a Texas company owns ~%10 and public shareholders own ~%50. It's hardly a business that's a puppet of the Chinese government.
Sounds like the US needs to start using encryption then. I live in Australia not Europe by the way, but whatever.
I didn't know the US government trusted Seagate with their military systems and classified data. What "certain things" are you talking about here? What private information gets stored on a hard disk? Like the US government aren't going to bother with encryption.
And since when can hard disk manufacturers send out messages to specific hard disks?
Chief! We're intercepting a message from the Chinese! It's coming through now: "This is Red Dragon to SEAGTE-#1938-391283-2934; the US government's warranty has just run out. Crash Crash Crash! Over."
Dear God! It'll be like Pearl Harbor all over again, except with hard disk drives instead of our navy!
Wh--
**blinking and mouth dropping**
But we couldn't sin until after we ate the fruit though, so I guess the first bite was sinless, because we couldn't tell that we were sinning until we had eaten at least some. It's a problem if the fruit was eaten in one bite though, that'd get us off the hook completely (unless just chewing the fruit is enough, and the apple was swallowed after at least two munches). Is this an explanation or is it just a rationalization of a myth randomly transmitted in a religious book? Impossible to say and irrelevant for my thesis. An explanation of morality? I don't think it's impossible to say whether or not the ancient forbidden fruit myth is a reasonable theory of morality. My thesis is: you can easily make fun of a thing you didn't bother to analyze. My thesis is: you can find meaning in anything if you analyze for long enough.
I have read as much of the Bible as I could stomach though. I got a little further than the part where the donkey of a messenger of a something-ite (who's tribe was getting invaded by Moses, iirc) saw an invisible angel on the road ahead, and when the donkey tried to turn the messenger beat it, and God made the donkey talk, and the donkey said "Am I not your faithful donkey? Why do you beat me?", but the messenger was confused because the angel was invisible, and less so because his donkey was talking, but then the angel showed himself, and the messenger repented and apologized to the donkey. And I never got out of a "logical mindset". Well then I hope you'll at least be consistent and analyze Alice in Wonderland thoroughly for messages from God.
By the way this story comes as Afghanis are getting annoyed, to say the least, about having a verse from the Koran on donated "blasphemous" footballs.
Don't make a caricature of my faith; we've come a long way. Now we believe that the creator came down in human form to get his shit ruined by us, so that he could forgive us for the symbolic sin of eating some fruit that made us really smart. God didn't actually come down and wrestle with Israel, and he didn't actually make a donkey talk, it was just a symbol. If you can't figure out what a donkey talking symbolizes, well I feel sorry for you and your "logic" based mindset.
What format does Apple's Pages/Keynote save to? Is it an open standard? Would Apple apologists say that it isn't open because it allows them to innovate more freely?
Is MS Office really that bad to compare it to a guy that treats women as objects?! Personally I think MS Office is by far Microsoft's best application and they deserve credit for it.
MS Office 2007's UI revamp was also a big deal. It makes it much easier to make full use of all of Office, and I'll bet you anything that OpenOffice and iWork will end up copying it to some degree.
Isn't UI innovation what everyone loves about Apple, yet when Microsoft do it it's somehow sneaky and underhanded (like that creepy guy at the bar?!).
No-one is forcing them to create an open standard that will allow other software to interact with MS Office documents, but they are. Shouldn't they get credit for that?