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Comment Re:The State is the true source of these problems (Score 1) 150

I should overthrow my government because a broken patent system?

Yes. And your sentence missing a verb.

If you are going to be a grammar snob, learn about grammar first. "Overthrow" is a verb, the missing "of" is a preposition in this sentence. "Of" can be a verb when it is paired off with an auxiliary verb, but that is not the case with this sentence. A verb being added to the dependent clause at the end could 'fix' the sentence I guess, but I can't think of a verb to add that would in any way preserve the meaning of the the original thought. I am not sure if you are a prescriptive or descriptive linguist, but I am descriptive. If you were to ask one of my linguistics professors how necessary the "of" is to the meaning of that sentence they would tell you that it is a syntactic morpheme that has more to do with the inflectional morphology of the language then the actual meaning of the sentence.

Basically, you are nitpicking over a typo, you obviously understood the meaning of the sentence. Which means you had nothing better to rebuke my comment with.

However, if your point was to point out that I need to proof-read my posts better? Than point made, point taken, and your right. I will try harder to match the high standards set by internet message boards in the future.

Comment Re:The State is the true source of these problems (Score 1) 150

the whole Patent debacle is an excrescence of the predatory and mafia like state; the sooner we are rid of it the better.

In a single moment, when the State is removed, the Software Patent regime will cease to exist

Death to the State and its evil Patents!

So...

I should overthrow my government because a broken patent system?

Comment Re:does not compute (Score 1) 449

Really!?! that is the purpose of headphones! I have been trying to use them as ear muffs!

I turn it off in situations where it actually would bother anyone, since you are that worried about the comfort of people in close proximity to me (they never mind the Bach). As for the Autism, you don't know what you are talking about. I bring up the example of the children, not to shill any product or to pull at anyone's heartstrings (maybe you would do something like that). My point wasn't that you shoud buy an iPad because I use it to keep children who slam their heads into walls repeatedly from doing so, Instead, you should buy one if it makes sense for your needs. In my case, it is a valuable tool, because my entire career involves working with autism, and that is one of the better examples of what I use mine for. I wasn't trying to convince you that an iPad solves Autism or that it is intrinsically good because of that. But if you knew anything at all about Applied Behavior Analysis (the only scientifically proven treatment for ASD), of which I am a professional practitioner of, you may be able to understand why this thing is so useful for this profession, but I am fairly certain you don't.

What I was actually responding to, in the post, was the challenge that they had no or minimal use in business. My argument was that I have found endless uses for this thing in my life's work, and it's worth considering if you have complex business needs like I do. Most Behaviorists walk around with multiple buckets of toys and various paper-work all day, the iPad replaces pretty much all of that and it fits in a small bag. Much easier to carry around than a bunch of half broken toys you use as reinforcers. Plus it makes for an unusually strong positive reinforcer for behavior modification programs. It also works well as a data collection tool, which is part of my daily uses for it. I couldn't care less if you find a need for it, but I have plenty, and I am not the only person in the world with my specific set of business needs.

Comment Re:does not compute (Score 1) 449

I walk around with tablet, it's really good for counseling work, seriously. Not only is it the only way I can manage the dynamic complexity of my own schedule and informational needs (cloud documents, calendars, and the like, the ~50 person company I work for literally has no office or physical epicenter). Small screens are terrible for all of this, I have a lot of scanned pdf's of handwritten documents (thousands of them), I need to reference all day. Cell phones can't cut it, and laptop can't be used while walking around (I've tried). And walking around is exactly when I need to access most of that stuff, my day is full of 15-30 minutes end-to-end appointments with location changes every several hours. The GPS features has been good for this reason as well, I work in a different county than I live in, so I am often literally lost in corn fields looking for the rural schools I work in. I also heavily rely on email as a near synchronous form of communication.

The best part of these things is how much of 'nuclear option' it provides for distracting children or calming them down through behavioral quid-pro-quo situations. I work with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, and I keep these very serene, sensory-filled entertainment and learning apps on it that can literally bring a class of (stemming and swinging from the chandeliers) children to this completely calm state in about 20-40 seconds, that can be maintained for a long time. I am not sure how good they are for other types of businesses but they are excellent educational machines. Because of how it's designed, it's very easy to clean up, as well.

As for the entertainment uses...couldn't care less, except one feature is very impressive, and that's the speaker. I love the fact that I can walk around with J.S. Bach blasting the air around me, it makes the experience much different from walking around with headphones. You can hear the music echo off of the surfaces around you, it's creates a soundscape that is distinctive to wherever you are standing, it makes music sound very vivid in a way. Most of it's media features get a big thumbs-down-super-fail from me though because I hate iTunes more than I hate MS Word (that is saying a lot). But I do like podcasting, because most of the music and radio shows I listen to, and the way I prefer to listen to them is very well suited for it. I have a weird form of ludditism that makes me use high technology but with complete distrust and preference for restriction and simplicity. My relationship with technology can be complicated. But I honestly think the iPad is a great product, I am looking forward to what they are going to do with the next generation of them.

Comment Re:Makes popcorn (Score 1) 132

Yeah, except that series of holes that could be exploited by opening a webpage with a PDF that gave ANYONE ROOT ACCESS.

Tard. Or troll. Hard to tell the difference, maybe there is none.

The pdf root problem was an issue with adobe's viewer, not pdf's in general. A PDF is just a file format, it doesn't have special root powers. The iPhone doesn't run acrobat, it has it's own in-house pdf reader.

Comment Re:This is cool, but not revolutionary... (Score 1) 397

Was not one of the selling points of ethanol that it could reduce our dependency on foreign oil? That could be considered beneficial to society even if one gallon of ethanol had to be consumed to make another gallon of ethanol available.

If one gallon of domestic fuel is used to produce one gallon of identical domestic fuel, that does not in any way reduce our dependence on foreign oil. And it's unlikely the tractors and farming equipment are all 'flex-fuel', so if anything, it actually increases the consumption of oil, thus increasing our dependence on foreign oil. Use math, it works.

Comment Re:US Employment Rights (Score 1) 340

Basically, most people who think the biggest waste of tax-money is social welfare need to grow up, because the logic behind their reasons for that is typically something found on a pre-school playground more so than in a college level class.

Fixed that for you.

It was right the first time. Egocentric thought is egocentric thought. I generally would attach 'most' to statements like that, but in this case, selfishness is genuinely part of these people's weltanschauung, and as such, I will happily disqualify the entire philosophy. It's like trying to argue that National Socialism (i.e. the full name of NAZI-ism which has no philosophical connection to democratic socialism) has virtues. This may be true, the unemployment rate was low in NAZI Germany, but it hardly justifies the overarching philosophy behind it. Basically, Randian Objectivists are by many models of human development* still very much children in the way they think about others.

*Primarily the work of Kohlberg and his stages of moral development. Take note of level 1, Pre-Conventional, stage 2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg's_stages_of_moral_development/p

Comment Re:US Employment Rights (Score 2, Insightful) 340

But then, Europeans never seem to complain about "welfare moms,"

Because they know 'welfare moms' are basically a myth. People like that do exist, but it is extremely rare (as in much smaller than a minority), even among people who are forced to live off of welfare because the circumstances of their life were not as ideal as that of others. I work with disadvantaged children, and I meet lot of people that tea-baggers and mean-spirited conservatives would instantly describe as 'welfare mothers' because they are poor, and may even live off welfare. But among them, I have never met one who seemed to think welfare was something they wanted out of life, and when you have 3 children with severe disabilities due to birth defects or post-natal factors (like an auto accident), you hardly have time to take care of your children, much less hold down gainful employment in one of the coldest and most professionally unforgiving nations in the world. Welfare isn't the source of any problems, it is a symptom of a much bigger problem. It's not that a person having disadvantages is owed anything by anyone who didn't contribute to those problems, it's that being big boys and girls means that we have to use a metric that involves more than our own comfort as standard. Basically, people who think the biggest waste of tax-money is social welfare need to grow up, because the logic behind their reasons for that is typically something found on a pre-school playground more so than in a college level class.

Comment Re:What? (Score 1) 233

I don't think any style book used in natural science has very clear provisions on how you would include such a thing. Most authors are so intimidated by the process of getting published, that they do not want to risk including content that may get it rejected (it is hard to argue the scientific merit of a photograph, it usually involves a lot of metadata that wouldn't be available to a field biologist post-hoc). I often drop some of my best sentences in an article, simply because they have a slight chance of being misinterpreted as off-topic or unscientific. Unfortunately journals are not in any way meant to be entertaining, which makes research boring but easier to carry out because of the distilled nature of the information.

Comment Re:Prop 19 (Score 1) 205

I believe that it was Churchill who said that Britain and America are two countries separated by a common language.

Churchill may have said it, but he was quoting George Bernard Shaw, who was known for making similar types of quips and was significantly older than Churchill, allthough their lifespans somewhat overlapped.

Not to invalidate your point, I just thought I would clarify.

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