siglesias

I don't believe that killing living things for food is wrong. Of course you could be using the generic "you," in which case your point is irrelevant to the conversation.

so the only conceivable answer is to reason in such a way that it comes out with the answer you want

I don't disagree. If you find flaws in the reasoning by all means point them out.

- draw your arbitrary cutoff between important-living-things and not-important-living-things somewhere above plants and bacteria while staying comfortably below humans.

My cutoff isn't arbitrary (again I presume you are addressing me), and this is a mistaken presumption. If you endeavor to minimize suffering among things in the world capable of suffering, eliminating animal suffering is a net plus.

If you want to argue that since all living things suffer and therefore all of our food sources suffer and therefore any attempt to delimit an ethical food source is arbitrary, good luck. I eagerly await your finding that vegetables feel pain.

On the other hand, you can look at the vast similarities between our nervous systems and those of other vertebrates as well as their behavior under pain (squealing and so on) to reasonably conclude that these animals feel pain like we do.

Also: most disciplines require "general skill at persuasion," philosophy being no exception.

You can see that Kindle users have highlighted the passage here: https://kindle.amazon.com/work/in-the-plex-ebook/B003QJNVO4/...

What you take away is a very precise way to pose questions that make sense and to avoid questions that don't make sense.

You have a fascinating concept. Could you explain some of your thinking on why you think this particular paradigm is superior?

1) Content on post-PC devices is mediated through a central authority. You argue this is bad because presumably you cannot read whatever you want, but only what the central authority allows through. But reading whatever content you want is not enough, you also would have expected that any content you find out there that is optimized for a desktop browser be re-optimized by the tablet device for reading on it.

Response: A valid criticism of the Kindle, though in practice it seems that you are asking for an extension of what is already offered, implying a superset, not a sibling set of functionality. For example, the Kindle has always offered a browser but the technology didn't seem good enough to render a website quickly. Considering that Amazon had its pick of web-to-e-ink and books-to-e-ink, I can't immediately fault them for what they chose to throw their weight behind first--purely from the standpoint of practicality.

You criticized the iPad in your original post, but I don't see any of the iPad's existing functionality being at odds with choice of content provider or lack of optimization for reading web content (see Instapaper, Flipboard, built-in Readablility in iOS 5).

2) Your ability to "produce content" on these tablet devices is hindered.

Response: I addressed this point in my original post. This by and large is a result of the technology available for a holdable computer, not a nefarious choice on the part of the manufacturers. I think the ability to write blog posts on a plastic Kindle is asking a lot (would that even be enjoyable?), and that ability exists on an iPad today, in fact, since it was introduced.

1) A tablet is a computer you can hold. Books and magazines have over time become optimized for holding (see size and weight) precisely due to the ergonomics of reading. Thus one would expect that tablets, which can store a vast number of books and magazines, would be "optimized" for such content.

2) Due to (1) it makes sense to trade power for battery life and thus iPad-era tablets use ARM processors. Word processors, music editors, video editors do exist for tablets and each has full privileges to have any interface it wants by assuming the full screen. Over time that software will get more powerful as these low-power processors advance. It can't be argued that iOS itself hinders content creation, but it can be argued that slow processors do. Time will take care of this.

Also I don't see consumption--by which you mean reading--to be a bad thing to do with a computer. Amazon's stated purpose for the Kindle is to enable every book in every language ever printed to be available in under a minute. That's an extraordinary vision if you think about it, and we're getting there very quickly. Hardly a step backwards.

Update, via @arnoldkim: Jan 2008, Jobs did MWSF Keynote and introduced Webclips with home screen icons. twitpic.com/6aye3l

The best explanation I found was Chapter 2 of Apple's "Object-Oriented Programming with Objective-C":

Every object has both state (data) and behavior (operations on data). In that, they’re not much different from ordinary physical objects. It’s easy to see how a mechanical device, such as a pocket watch or a piano, embodies both state and behavior.

http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/cocoa/c...

Let's look at this from the perspective of the "brand." I make apps. What gets me pumped more than anything is an email in the morning from a customer who says they really enjoy my app and use it every day. Strong customer feedback and loyalty are what drive me to make better products.

If we were to take the opposite case, that customers saw brands as interchangeable cogs, then the only incentives out there for the people making products would be money, and that isn't what motivates creative people on a deep level.

A base of highly loyal customers creates, if you will, a very, very high bar of "social pressure" that makes it harder for managers to make decisions that screw them over.

Wittgenstein puts it this way:

I can play with the chessmen according to certain rules. But I can also invent a game in which I play with the rules themselves. The pieces in my game are now the rules of chess, and the rules of the game are, say, the laws of logic. In that case I have yet another game and not a metagame.

Apple are wizards though, and if they can do the impossible here then it will be a huge score for their hardware/software advantage.

1) Reading List is Safari only. 2) Many popular apps (such as Twitter for iOS) actually support Instapaper's Read Later, whereas I'm not sure that there is a Read Later API (someone correct me if I'm wrong). 3) Instapaper has social sharing built in.

Before clicking, take your guess. What percent of total American wealth does the top quintile control?

Summary: http://danariely.com/2010/09/30/wealth-inequality/

Paper: http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20pre...

The obscure device you found is on the left. iPad which is an actual product, is in the middle. Samsung's Tab is on the right. The iPad and Tab are practically identical.

The left two are only similar in that they are both rectangular. The bezel size, color, texture, and material are all different.

You can't argue a:b :: b:c.

As it is, my point regarding the level of similarity between the Tab and iPad still holds--it's not simply a matter of shape, size, and weight; even if it were, where does the assumption come from that Apple's form factor for the iPad was obvious?

I'm sure you could hire a creative team to come up with 100 iterations of tablets and icons (as I'm sure Apple did) that would look nothing like an iPad. In light of those 100 the similarities would look more apparent than ever.

And have also granted thousands entry into this profession by creating a few billion dollars in wealth.

Ex, a 60s era CBS documentary on rock--fair from and to both sides: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSq1ca__cRA