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Comment Re:Out of Body? (Score 1) 351

There is no such thing as a non-verifiable event.

Of course there is! Here's an easy example: My wife says she saw a mouse in the laundry room.

No mouse droppings, no gathered bits of fluff, no teeth marks on wires, boxes, etc, no smiling cats -- no evidence of mice or mouse-like activity could be found. It doesn't mean that there wasn't a mouse in the laundry room, only that her story could not be verified.

I know, it's probably not what you intended to say. It bugged me for some reason.

The rest of your post is spot on. I couldn't agree more.

Comment Re:Cool, But... (Score 1) 351

The tunnel effect I think was explained by neuro-scientists as the firing of the cells in the visual cortex.

As it turns out, that was just a bit of wild speculation offered by Susan Blackmore during an interview.

It's amazing how common that explanation is, and how firmly people believe it, even though there's absolutely no science behind it.

Comment Re:Hmmm .... (Score 1) 351

. crazy brain activity, which may or may not equate to something experiential ... or magic

And you came to this conclusion ... how? I'm guessing "these are the only two possibilities I can think of, therefore it must be one of these!"

You, apparently, have already made lots of assumptions about me.

Actually, I asked if I could make those assumptions. Those assumptions were made on previous experiences I've had with non-religious people who seem to desperately need to insert God in to the conversation at every opportunity.

Comment Re:Hmmm .... (Score 1) 351

It's interesting that you're offended by a large number of completely unfounded assumptions you've made about my opinions and beliefs based on a single sentence which carries no such implications.

Irrational nonsense like this is exactly what I expect from the self-described "rationalists", who assert reverence for logic, reason, and science yet understand nothing about the subjects nor how to apply them.

Can I make such an assumption about you?

Comment Re:reliability (Score 1) 139

BlackBerries not on BES conversely needed BIZ. The outage was devastating.

As I pointed out, the majority of their users were completely unaffected. Of those who were, most were out for less than a day. I should also point out, that many of those affected only experienced slowdowns.

iPhone works fine without Apple servers

The same was true for the Great BlackBerry Outage. The phone still functioned as a phone, as did apps. Messaging (Email and BBM) were really the only services significantly impacted, though every message was ultimately delivered. (The same can not be said for their competition.)

The infamous BlackBerry outage as really very similar to Apples MobileMe outage -- except it was significantly shorter and impacted a significantly smaller portion of their users. Well, and RIM didn't drop a single message -- I can't stress how important that fact is in terms of reliability.

The points? The "BlackBerry is unreliable" bit is absurd as they're dramatically more reliable than the competition. Your carrier is much more likely to be down than BlackBerry. Other companies regularly experience outages far worse and far more frequently than BlackBerry, yet still maintain a reputation for reliability.

There isn't much to argue about here. I contend that the outage hurt RIM far more than similar outages hurt other companies simply because of their absurd reliability. When they have an outage, it's big news. When Apple, Google, etc. have an outage, it's not surprising in the least and thus gets far less press coverage, if it's reported in the media at all.

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