I don't see evidence of this in my life at all, state employees do everything for you constantly to keep your quality of life as high as possible, where would you get your water and what would you be doing with your excrement without them, would you wallow in and consume as you seem to now? I like Firefighters, cops, soldiers, and teachers a whole lot. You apparently think they are all "lying to and manipulating" you "with your[sic] own money, on behalf of hidden agendas". What hidden agendas? Putting out fires? Enforcing the laws of the state? Teaching people how to write? Are those the agendas? If that is what you do not want from society, you are simply an anarchists, and have nothing constructive to say about government. What about the people who clean up the garbage you have thrown on the ground? What about social workers? Have you ever been helped by someone? Did you teach yourself to read and write? Do you put out your own fires? Are you driving around dangerous neighborhoods to keep the innocent people that live there safe? Are you feeding someone before they start knocking on your door to beg for food? Is the world about being fair? Do you deserve everything you have in life? Are you more deserving than those who work much harder than you and have less anyway? Do you really think society could in any way function without public employees and the services they provide? And lastly, do you realize that public employees pay just as much taxes as you do, and trying to differentiate them in that manner makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever? If not, try just shutting the fuck up about them being paid by your tax money as a reason they must obey your personal will, because you sound pathetically naive and foolish beyond measure. Most people aren't that stupid, so it isn't convincing anyone but other fools of anything about the reality of life. I hear arguments like this among the 4th graders I work with, if that puts your developmental level in context (if you are a third grader, congrats) It's literally the stupidest fucking argument in history, it logically defeats itself in so many ways.

Apparently the new 'in' thing for fascists is to use the freedom of information act to obtain emails sent by their critics about them. Apparently, academic freedom seems to be dissolving. I don't understand how the freedom of information act can be used to invade the private transactions of professors, but it has happened several times over the last year or so, and has been entirely perpetrated by the increasingly more rabid conservative undertow in this nation, not all conservatives, but a specific group of highly politically (as opposed to socially or morally) motivated people. I had the displeasure of hearing what conservative talk radio sounds like these days while I was driving through the highly conservative '3-corners' region of Missouri (i.e. Limbaugh's homeland), and it is astoundingly racial charged and disturbingly desperate and angry. These people are truly scary, and we really should keep our eyes peeled (as intelligent and reasonable people) for the horrible emerging attitudes in this country. If you asked an average German citizen about their attitudes on putting Jewish people in ovens in 1938, it is likely they would think you were crazy. And if you asked them what National Socialism meant, they would say it had something to do with purity and sexual abstinence, the words like 'Jew' or 'camp' likely would have never come up. No to compare these people to Nazi's, but it illustrates how quickly the most infamous act of hatred in human history can emerge from the consent of a naive population. I guess, ultimately, I am trying to say, that it is our job as being vigilant and morally informed people to see things like McCarthyism and National Socialism before it becomes a problem.

I don't read a 5 word subject heading for a half sentence comment on slashdot, so I am with DNS-n-B on this one, it's a surefire way to make sure I and others completely ignore whatever you wrote, because it looks like non-sequiterial trollery.

I hate joining string variables! That's why I love my TI-82* more than my TI-89, but loving something and needing something are different things, unfortunately.

*no string variables to begin with

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.

So...

I should overthrow my government because a broken patent system?

Since when did anyone described as a 'government official' find a graceful solution to problem?

Aren't swastikas already in a lot of games on X-Box Live? Do Nazi characters in WW2 themed games have smiley faces on their arm band. I seem to recall wolfenstein 3d (this is seriously the most modern FPS games I have played) being loaded to the hilt with swastikas.

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.

#include "fail.h"

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.

What if you only write things (word for word) copyrighted by other people, but with your own hand?

This is why the idea of a copyright is impractical.

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.

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.

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