Ridiculous.

RIM's BlackBerry killed the PDA market. They were long dead before the iPhone was even a rumor.

As for the merging of PDA and cell phone, A Handspring Visor + VisorPhone Springboard module from 2001 is, well, a lot like an iPhone. To see the failure of a product like the Newton (a poor dynabook imitation) as pioneering is to ignore a lot of history.

Not from a UI design perspective. From the ridiculously clunky suite of gestures to the overloaded home button, the iPhone UI is a giant pile of failure. It succeeds at doing very few simple, but common, tasks well: selecting an application and quitting the same. It's a gigantic mess from that point on.

I'll grant you "responsive" but the display was average at best -- and quickly became one of the worst on the market due to some really stupid UI decisions on Apple's part.

I love the "mainstream" qualifier here -- with a subjective term like that, you'll never be wrong. Ignoring the long history of multitouch and the incredibly poor use of multitouch gestures in iOS (poor then, worse now), are you sure that's a place you want to praise Apple?

Apples on-screen keyboard is exactly what you found on low-end PDAs 10 years ago. I should note that Apple's keyboard was, and continues to be, one of the worst on the market. I don't know that I've ever seen anyone defend it against the (clearly superior) alternatives past and present.

Sure about that? You're giving Bonch, BasilBrush, and SuperKendall a run for the biggest Apple fanboi title here.

Revisionist history

Over the past few weeks, it seems like some evangelist comes along every 10 minutes to let use know that salvation is right around the corner.

The trouble, of course, is that their lowest price was higher than the previous lowest price.

Well said.

It's bad science and bad philosophy all around.

I was hoping for the story of Mel, a real programmer.

On the article, it's fantastic. It puts me in mind of First & Third almost FORTH and the recent Fixing E.T. hack.

Yeah, accessibility is for losers!

Don't be stupid. Real life example: On a work trip, a colleague of mine needed to send a few spreadsheets back to his office. He had an iPhone and a laptop. I had a laptop and a BlackBerry. We pulled over at the nearest town, hoping for wifi at one of the big chain restaurants. Well, no wifi was available at the first couple places we tried and he was running out of time. The obvious solution would be to copy the file to his iPhone and send the email from there. That was clearly impossible for him, given the absurd FS limitations imposed by iOS. I connected my BB via USB to his laptop, copied the files and send the email on his behalf.

This is just one of zillions of examples of where iOS's fear that users might be confused by having access to the file system leads to simple tasks becoming unnecessarily difficult or impossible.

I could tap out a novel with a telegraph key too, that doesn't mean it's just as good as a full-sized keyboard. I don't have the time nor the inclination to force a pitifully inadequate tool into to my workflow. See, "can be done" is not the same as "can be done well". Of course, with the iPad you don't even get to "can be done" for many common tasks!

Are sure about at? You should read this thread!

I'll bet that you're forcing ti in to your workflow, rather than it being an "indispensable" part. Tablets are wretched for research (which requires lots of writing and text manipulation) and design (in every way I can think of, at least. You left this ambiguous) The iPad is even less suitable than other offerings due to it's piss-poor multitasking facilities and the file system issues I mentioned earlier.

I'd urge you to think long and hard about that. Is your tablet actually better for the tasks your using it for than alternatives or are you seeking out places you can use it to justify the cost or just because you like tablets and want to integrate their use in to your work?

You're confused

Perhaps you're confused about what determinism means? There's no choice at all in the parent's world. The commitment made to that course of action is, as far as the parent is concerned, beyond my control.

That's determinism, though you seem to have an odd idea about what the word "choice" means. If I drop a coin, would you use the term "choice" to describe its orientation upon landing? Of course not! In the wacky world of the proud determinist, you, like the coin, are incapable of choosing. To have the ability to choose is to have agency, which the parent flat-out denies.

Okay, philosophy 101. An element of randomness doesn't buy you freedom. See any undergraduate textbook.

See, it doesn't matter whether or not the parents actions are wholly or partially (by the introduction of some random element) determined. If he's right, they're 100% outside his control in either case. Back on topic ... the missed point:

The parent denies his own agency, yet takes credit for actions by which he was no more than a passive observer. Imagine watching a live news broadcast where the police safely end a dangerous stand-off with some bank robbers. Now imagine that you take credit for saving the hostages. That's essentially what the parent is doing. It's funny because it's so absurd. That's why I was poking fun at him.

I find it funny that people are proud of the fact that they don't believe in free will -- as if they believed they had anything to do with it! So proud, in fact, that they brag about how superior they for coming to such a conclusion, even though they claim it was well outside their nonexistent influence!

In a bizarre contradiction, they take credit for all their accomplishments and the cultivation of their positive traits and beliefs even though they claim to believe they were involved only as a passive observer!

Don't like this post? Don't complain to me. Lacking free will, I had no choice but to write it. Like all things I've ever said or done, it was beyond my control.

Did everyone forget their basic computer science?

The RNG is irrelevant, as it's just another input. The computer acts deterministically, given the same input (which includes the data from the RNG), and you'll get the same output.

Changing the level of description to better suit your intuitions doesn't change that simple fact.

This might help: Remember when you were first learning about Turing machines and wondered (or had a classmate wonder out-loud) how they could cope with something like a GUI where the computer is constantly responding to new input from the user? Remember realizing that those user inputs could be prerecorded on the tape and it wouldn't make a lick of difference? It's the same idea.

The alternative is to embrace Solipsism! You're welcome to go there if you like, but then I'd have to wonder (not that you'd believe it!) as to why you've bothered to participate on a forum.

You haven't quite thought that one through. See Descartes, if you're really stuck.

False? You'd better let someone know right away! Apparently, the whole world's missed out on that bit. Just think of the diversity of new fields you'll start with what is, to you, an obvious concept!

Ah, I see. You're just confused. That's okay, you won't be the first tricked by intuition.

Some other stuff ... look up multiple realizability, etc.

You know what, forget all this. We're in Philo 101 territory here, and I'm not terribly interested to a long and boring discussion where I essentially tell you to look up this or that in a text book. If you couldn't tell, I've been in a rather foul mood for the past few days. I'm clearly incapable of writing anything that isn't dismissive or snarky in that condition. (I'm assuming that you deserve better treatment than I'm prepared to offer.)

If you're genuinely interested in the subject, there are better options than wikipedia and the slashdot comments section. I did a search for you and found a couple complete undergrad lecture series from Searle and Kihlstrom (both at UC Berkeley ) which should get you up to speed. Well, at least past all the boring beginner stuff.

Philosophy of Mind
Scientific Approaches to Consciousness

Hope that helps.

Wow, you have absolutely no idea!

The core of the argument is that you can't get semantic content from purely syntactic content. Ultimately, it's an attack on computationalism, and a damn good one.

You'll find tons of nonsense attacking the CRA (as it's obvious that you have!) Yet you'll find very little that attempts to address the core of the argument. I can think of exactly one paper, by the famous David Chalmers, yet it gets practically no attention because the argument is pitifully flawed.

Now, if you float in "skeptical" or AI circles, you'll find a wealth of total nonsense on various internet forums about the CRA, which is exactly what you seem to ahve done here.

No, no, no, no, no! You're just spouting absurd nonsense! (FYI, Epiphenomenalism is an entirely different topic, quite unrelated to the CRA. It's as dead as computationalism, sure, but for different reasons.)

Anyhow, Searle concludes, if you've read and understand any of his relevant papers, that whatever it is that the brain does to bring about consciousness, it cannot be mere computation. That is, there must be something else the brain does. There is no appeal to magic; he assumes mind=brain from the get-go.

The CRA the simplest damn thing you'll find in philosophy of mind. Why is it so difficult for people to understand?

I guess Searle doesn't understand his own argument? My flippant tone notwithstanding, I'm all but plagiarizing him!

As for "common" you're very mistaken. What's common is total nonsense like what you've presented here. I blame a mixture of ignorance and fear for that.