Comment Re:Best Script Ever? (Score 1) 299
I think it's plausible it's the best script he's ever read.
After all, how often does he get to read the script before it gets rewritten multiple times to appeal to all the target demographics.
I think it's plausible it's the best script he's ever read.
After all, how often does he get to read the script before it gets rewritten multiple times to appeal to all the target demographics.
The reason for this is fairly simple, I can easily make my Linux boxes work and interact the way I want, but with Apple... not so much.
For someone who uses Linux and OS X, I spend a lot of time using command line in OS X. I have no problems using Unix commands. Some of the options vary with OS X but most of the commands are the same. How is it different for you?
By default OS X groups windows by application, so if I have 5 terminals open (quite common) it's a pain to find the one I want. Similarly the lack of multiple desktops is a pain. I'm sure there's a way to change both these things (I've installed stuff for multiple desktops before) but it's not as easy as I've found in Linux.
Plus the application management systems like ports and fink have fewer packages and aren't as well integrated into the system.
It's not that it's impossible to go outside the box, it's just that the system works best if you stay in the box.
I think that's integral to the Apple philosophy of the walled garden. They figure out what they want the product to do, they figure out the workflows, then they build the product so that the given workflow works really well and seamlessly. If you want to do something a little different it's not great, but it works. If you want to do something real different like play oggs or use a different client then there's a very simple solution, don't bother.
Maybe for the iOS products not their computers.
Then go to the store, but a Toshiba laptop, and install OS X on it.
The garden is more pronounced for their iOS products but the history of Apple is one of rigorously limiting their products to ensure a good user experience.
I don't think the aim is necessarily anti-competitive, I think they're just trying to protect their walled garden. If Realplayer has a buggy client that screws up syncing that's Realplayer's problem, if they have a buggy client that screws up the sync to the iPod that's suddenly Apple's problem. If you want to understand why all the Apple fanboys go around bragging that Apple just works it's because Apple doesn't let them do any of the things that don't work.
Because Apple never promised their customers that they would play RealPlayer's Harmony music. They promised they could play MP3s which are the standard, AAC which is the successor to MP3 and at the time FairPlay which was AAC with their DRM. Nowhere did they promise PlaysForSure or Harmony (AAC with RealPlayer's DRM).
No argument here, but I think the reason they only promised that narrow range is because they thought their user experience would be best with that narrow range.
'intended to block 100% of non-iTunes clients' [...] to improve iTunes, not curb competition.
In what universe does this statement make sense?
In the Apple universe sadly enough.
I'm one of the rare people who finds Linux (and popular Linux Desktop Environments) to be much more user friendly than OS X. The reason for this is fairly simple, I can easily make my Linux boxes work and interact the way I want, but with Apple... not so much.
I think that's integral to the Apple philosophy of the walled garden. They figure out what they want the product to do, they figure out the workflows, then they build the product so that the given workflow works really well and seamlessly. If you want to do something a little different it's not great, but it works. If you want to do something real different like play oggs or use a different client then there's a very simple solution, don't bother.
I don't think the aim is necessarily anti-competitive, I think they're just trying to protect their walled garden. If Realplayer has a buggy client that screws up syncing that's Realplayer's problem, if they have a buggy client that screws up the sync to the iPod that's suddenly Apple's problem. If you want to understand why all the Apple fanboys go around bragging that Apple just works it's because Apple doesn't let them do any of the things that don't work.
You're not really defending blatant douche-baggery based on the notion that other people have been douche-bags in the past, are you?
Actually I think he might have a point.
Squatters have started raising pigs on the site of Peru's Nazca lines - the giant designs best seen from an airplane that were mysteriously etched into the desert more than 1,500 years ago.
"We get 120-180 reports or alerts about encroachments every year," Alva said. "For my colleagues in the rest of Latin America, who get two or maybe five cases per year, that figure is unbelievable."
It's not like they unsealed a tomb, careless people have been tromping around these things for millenia from early European explorers to various locals to backpacking douchbags who look up the location on google maps.
And yes it caused damage, but they didn't wreck the figure anymore than any of those previous groups wreaked it. It's like touching a painting in a gallery, your individual poke won't leave a mark, but if a bunch of people do it the painting will be ruined.
I think that's probably the main motivation for the comments, first they're rightfully offended by Greenpeace attempting to expropriate their heritage to try and make a viral video. But moreover they're worried that Greenpeace will inspire copycats to visit the sites, and it won't take a lot of that before you start seeing visible damage.
The trashing of the Gulf was an accident and a mistake. This was a malicious ignoring of Peruvian law to access a sacred site to further their own egos. There was no mistake involved here.
Accessing the sacred site and co-opting it for their message was not a mistake.
Damaging the sacred site was a mistake.
I'm not saying they don't deserve criticism. Feeling so entitled that you try to hijack someone else's cultural heritage for your own cause is offensive. Being so careless that you cause permanent damage while doing so is extremely offensive.
But I don't think they ever imagined that they'd damage the site.
So that's the standard now? "At least we're not as bad as Russia?"
No, it's "the US doing bad things doesn't provide license for other countries to do horrible things (or vice versa)"
Who are the big three actually pushing the anti-vax message?
Wakefield, a disgraced con-artist doctor.
McCarthy, a former playboy model.
Carrey, a formerly big comic actor.
It's not exactly the A-list of public thinkers.
The only reason they're successful is because they're the only ones willing to pull out the rhetorical big guns (think of the children! big bad pharma!), and everyone on the side of science is so damn respectful.
It's time to start calling them out. Wakefield is a fraud who not only experimented on children and fabricated evidence for money but continues to build a career based on lying to keep people away from life-saving medicine.
Carrey and McCarthy are the pinnacle of arrogance and ignorance. So confident in their own brilliance that they're willing to ignore thousands and thousands of scientists who are doing nothing but trying to help people.
Things should be nasty, they should be treated with open and consistent scorn and mockery in the media every time they poke their heads up.
Do that and this anti-vax BS goes away very quickly.
Google is leaving russia due to data security and intrusive legislation that harms the internet, but sees no problem maintaining an office in the United States, where the government has created secret courts to warrantlessly wiretap what ostensibly amounts to the entire country. Google is just fine with a corporate office in a country that uses state sponsored terrorism and maintains a torture prison. Its Fine with opening offices in a country that jailed Chelsea Manning for whistleblowing or rather spreading "false information" and subsequently ensured 2 years of her forcible detention under suicide watch stripped nude and prevented from sleeping. Google has no problem with a country that runs secret torture prisons and "targeted killings." but whenever Russia passes legislation to force Internet sites that store the personal data of Russian citizens to do so inside the country, it closes shop because it doesnt want to maintain a russian datacenter? or rather is it because in America its not a requirement thanks to a rendition network that just takes people and servers regardless of the country.
For every thing Russia does you can pull up something from the US that sounds similarly bad unless you go into some nuanced detail.
But there's one big difference. In the US you have the luxury of this stuff being debated in government, in the media, on talk radio, on the Internet, and in person. Active censorship or oppression of these discussions is extremely rare.
Do you think you could do the same in Russia?
I'm not saying the US is great, it's done, and continues to do, some really awful things. But the worst things done by the US government are absolutely routine in Russia.
Cue all the thin people claiming that healthy eating and willpower are the keys to being thin and the fat people responding that weight is dominated by genetics.
Classy. I'm really glad for wikileaks and all, but christ, what an asshole.
He's basically been under house arrest for the last two years, I wonder if it isn't starting to take its toll.
It seems we agree on many things - and I understand that you aren't going to agree that this is a big political show and has nothing at all to do with our being moral, or just, or civilized. It's just political theater by a party that's about to be out of power, nothing more.
But Obama has been protecting the CIA all along and is still defending the CIA and members of the Bush administration. And McCain is well on board with going against the CIA. Moreover the CIA report actually defends Bush by finding that he was in the dark too, and when he found out about it in 2006 most of the worst stuff stopped.
True the Fox Republicans seem to be solidly in favour of the CIA and torture, but Fox takes politicized positions on almost everything, that doesn't mean the non-Fox actors are motivated by politics. Torture is unambiguously illegal by international law and US law, even politicians sometimes do things because they're the right things to do.
Terrorists should be tried. But not using the U.S. legal system. Doing this would create a perfect political opportunity they would not get a fair trial at all. Enemy combatants have never been tried in U.S. courts.
Maybe, but indefinite detention in Guantanamo isn't a solution.
I respectfully disagree. You can't say out of one side of your mouth that we are noble and don't torture while ordering killings of people in countries we are not at war with, from afar, with no legal process in place. It's complete and utter double speak bullshit.
I never said the drone killings were good or justified, I've always opposed them and know many on the left who agree.
But they are justifiable in a different way than the torture (and the countries the US performs drone strikes in have generally agreed to it).
And then we walk around wondering why so many people hate us. The drone killings have doubled down under Mr. Nobel Peace Prize and they get little coverage. Nothing to see here, we're just killing anybody we have a possible shred of evidence for. But the terrorists in Gitmo, they deserve trials! Bullshit...
I guess you're reading the different sources because I've seen lots of coverage and criticism. And why shouldn't there be trials for the terrorists, isn't terrorism a crime?
Every civilized society? What about Russia? China? Spain? South American Countries? Are they not "civilized"? The whole argument has more holes in it than a cheese grater. Typical doublespeak. All pigs are equal, but some pigs, well, you see, they are more equal than others.
I'm not sure about Spain. But as for any other society that endorses torture, I'll happily call them uncivilized. Cvilized vs uncivilized is generally understood as a moral judgement, not something measured on the human development index.
Yes, absolutely. But the use of drones to kill people from afar without any due process is also a rather large crime that this administration has increased not decreased. But you don't see any outcry about that. No, just whipping up of the base so they remember how excited they were hating Bush.
Actually I've heard continuous outcry about the drone killings, but this specific thing is about torture.
There's also a difference in the degree to which the two things can be rationalized.
For the drones it's really hard to fight a conflict without killing anyone, so you can discuss the validity of the conflict and civilians casualties and other factors, but the fundamental idea that you can kill your enemies is fairly well established.
But the idea you can torture? Almost every civilized society has said a blanket no.
I'm not sure if Oren Etzioni is any more qualified to speculate about strong AI than Galileo was to speculate about the surface of Mars.
If we ever create strong AI it will be because we've discovered a lot of big new stuff, and some of that stuff will overturn the assumptions that guide Etzioni's judgement.
Your metaphor is off. It isn't about the court compelling you to produce the document, it's about compelling the foreign confederate to produce the document.
But in this case it's not a confederate that has the data. The servers in Ireland belong to Microsoft, not another company. Let's reduce it to a simpler case: A sues B in state court in state 1 (A lives in state 1, B is based there and the offense involved occurred there so state 1 has jurisdiction over the case). B stores older documents in a warehouse it owns in state 2. A shows that B has documents relevant to the case and that they're in that warehouse. Can the state court judge order B to produce those documents even though the documents aren't in the judge's physical jurisdiction, or must the judge punt the case to Federal court or a court in state 2 and have them handle that? My sense is that the judge can order B to produce the documents and B would be obliged to comply. If B refuses to comply then A would probably have to go through a court in state 2 if they wanted deputies to go in and seize the documents, but wouldn't if they merely wanted B sanctioned for failure to comply with the court's order.
I suspect the situation here would turn on whether or not Microsoft's operations in Ireland are a legally independent entity that could legally refuse to do what Microsoft tells it to do. I suspect Microsoft's Irish operations walk a very fine line, trying to be independent enough not to be subject to US tax laws but without being independent enough to actually be able to act independently of Microsoft.
The problem with this model is you're trying to determine if MS is an American company, an Irish company, or something else. A difficult question considering the games that corporations play with their charters.
And the chain of command doesn't necessarily resolve things. If every subdivision has someone with the authority to view the emails do courts from every country get to access them? Does it matter where the CEO or the relevant VP lives? And while MS is incorporated in the US a lot of big corporations aren't.
The US state example doesn't really apply because although states have different laws they're all under the same ultimate legal system.
Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable, and three parts which are still under development.
