And why is it that Obama can't get anything done? Is it because his plans are all wrong-headed? Or is it because no matter what he attempts, there is a group of reactionaries that going to be against no matter what and no matter what lies and other indecencies they need to commit?
What exactly has Obama tried to do as far as net neutrality goes? Most of the FCC commissioners, including the chairman, were appointed by him. Obama's political party still controls both houses of Congress for another month. So why this FCC ruling? The "reactionaries" didn't want this FCC ruling, they dispute the authority of the FCC to regulate the Internet at all.
Maybe, just maybe, Obama's just another politician who will tell voters what they want to hear in election years and pay the most attention to whoever has the most money the rest of the time. Just a notion.
And this FCC ruling is the worst of all possible worlds - it gives Time-Warner, Comcast, etc. the regulatory cover to turn their overpriced, inadequate "broadband" services into the same walled-gardens of fail that the mobile carriers currently inflict on their customers. And since we've gotten the FCC involved in Internet regulation, we can look forward to more meddling in the years to come to support anti-piracy and "anti-terrorism" efforts.
BTW, I can only laugh at my post being modded a troll because the questions apparently couldn't be answered. They were serious questions and I don't see anything approaching a serious answer - your content-free sneering is, on the other hand, a troll attempt.
I see, so your game, here, is to ignore all the studies and assume your gutfeel is right.
Uhuh.
How *very* compelling...
What studies? The poster I replied to didn't cite any study - he simply claimed that "studies show...".
Could you provide some specifics from "all the studies" to back up the claims made by the poster I responded to? I mean, it would certainly be more convincing that a huffy attitude.
Better ban talking to people in the car with you as well.
As it turns out, talking over a phone is more distracting than talking with someone sitting in the car.
There are multiple reasons:
1. Someone in the car with you can and will respond to the dynamically-changing environment as you do. If something unexpected happens, they will usually stop talking.
2. In fact, someone in the car may notice something important, and notify the driver (either by shutting up or pointing it out), thereby partially mitigating the distraction they cause by talking.
Why would someone in the car with you, engrossed in conversation with you and without the responsibility of driving, react to the situation faster than you? This doesn't sound at all realistic.
3. A phone conversation requires more of your attention because you have to make up for the deficiencies of the data channel (phones have lower audio quality than real life, you can't read their body language (even out of the corner of your eye, you can get a feel for a person's mood), etc.).
You can usually get a feel for a person's mood by the tone of their voice as well - I'd say a much better feel than you can get by whatever information leaks in through your peripheral vision.
4. Shared context makes communication more efficient, thus requiring less mental effort (this is why, even in this day and age, people generally want to meet face-to-face).
While this is undoubtedly true, you still haven't made any case that people can't share a context equally as well over the phone as they can with some person sitting next to them while they drive.
5. Studies have shown that it takes humans more mental effort to think/interact with people/data they believe is remote as compared to people/things they think are local. In one study, they measured reaction times and errors in a driving simulator when people were either using an "in-car GPS" giving them instructions or a "satellite data-feed" giving them instructions. Even though both sets of instructions were identical (including latency, etc.), the mere perception that the "satellite data-feed" was non-local caused people to devote more mental effort to it, which increased driving accidents. A non-intuitive result, perhaps, but human mental machinery is finely tuned not for the tasks we currently expect it to perform.
I can't argue with this, since I have no study to prove otherwise. But I know that I've been involved in conversations while driving that consumed so much of my attention that afterward I couldn't recall the process of driving home. The same has occurred when I've found something interesting on the radio. I'd like to see some studies comparing how all of these activities, which aren't outlawed, impact driving and how they compare to the impact of phone usage while driving.
6. Initiating and finishing a phonecall requires much more attention than stopping/starting a conversation with someone sitting beside you. (Unlike fidgeting with a radio, answering a phonecall requires immediate action not at a moment of the driver's choosing.)
Voice commands. "Dial wife". How hard is that? And answering a phonecall doesn't require immediate action - if I'm shifting from first to second as I accelerate from a stop, I'm certainly not going to interrupt that to answer a call. Most people who use phones while driving do so in precisely the same situations in which they fidget with a radio - cruising along, with no anticipated interruptions.
This is not a question about rights. No one is denying this man has a right to do what he says he will do.
What we are saying is that he is a fucking lunatic for exercising this right. Yes it will act as a recruiting sergeant for the Taliban (who must be laughing their heads off about this). Yes it will be used by demagogues to whip up mobs to attack Christians in many countries. Yes it is really just fucking rude and unnecessary.
If we were talking about cartoons of Mohammed then I might agree with you - there is an important principle about parody there - but this guy has just picked the most offensive thing he could do to the world's 1.3 billion Muslims
Believe it or not, most of the world's Muslims aren't robots programmed to go insane when someone happens to burn a Koran or draws a cartoon of their prophet, and are actually capable of nuance in their thinking. The kind of hyper-sensitivity you want does no one any good - Western societies jumping to condemn and vilify members who actually choose to exercise the rights those societies brag about are simply showing their lack of commitment to their own principles. The West's supposed support for free-speech and free-expression is just a silly joke if any controversial or hateful forms are immediately shouted down and repressed. And casting all Muslims as potential nut-jobs with hair-triggers who must be humored like spoiled, dangerous children is offensively patronizing and only breeds more ill-will toward Muslims. When we act like fundamentalist Muslims are all Muslims, we only harm the mainstream Muslims who despise and resist the theocratic impulses of those fundamentalists.
India actually did get hit recently by Muslim terrorists who received intelligence, coordination and orders from neighboring Pakistan over mobile phones for several days as they moved through Mumbai targeting non-Muslims and racking up a body count of 166.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE didn't suffer any recent attacks coordinated and made possible by mobile phone technology, and both have historically been far more willing to curtail free speech than India (which isn't anywhere near US standards for free speech itself).
RIM should have hung tough and refused India's request, but at least India had a legitimate reason to ask. "All about spin" - yeah, darn that annoying reality and how it gets in the way of the narrative you prefer.
Old people resisted this particular change when they were young. 3D has been showing up every 10 or 15 years for decades, realizes that no one wants it, and wanders off. Only difference this time is that Cameron used it on a film that would have been an equally huge hit without it and now we have the creative masterminds in Hollywood pushing to film all of their comic book adaptations in 3D.
If you are proficient in as many languages as you state, then learning "modern" languages will be no problem.
This is very true. If you know how to code, you know how to code. Especially if you have some familiarity with C, it simply isn't very hard to become productive in Java, C#, Javascript, ActionScript, etc. And even if you don't have familiarity with structured programming languages, you'll find the "modern" languages much easier to learn than COBOL or FORTRAN ever were.
Just start writing code - the ability to program matters more than the language used. Same as it's always been.
Anyone else notice how Lucas tends to just shit all over anything remotely reminiscent of Star Wars?
Well, yeah - those new Star Wars movies he put out this decade were vaguely reminiscent of Star Wars.
My fiancee is convinced it's because Star Wars prevented him from having any other successful films for the rest of this life, and he resents the series because of that.
My own suspicion is that George Lucas prevents George Lucas from having any other successful films for the rest of this life. I can't even begin to conceive the amount of long-term insulation from reality and the layers of yes-man sycophancy that it took to keep the man from realizing just how bad his attempts at movie-making had become. Just MHO of course.
Death is sometimes the only thing that puts an end to accumulation of wealth and power. The ability to continue accumulating across generations through primogeniture has a well understood negative effect on society.
I don't doubt that a number of people would agree with you that no attempt to prevent the consequences of aging should ever be made - for religious reasons or societal concerns such as yours.
I also don't doubt that nearly all of those people would sign up for any proven anti-aging treatment if available. Years of debility and/or senility followed by death seem acceptable in the abstract, not so much when it's happening to you. The symptoms of aging will be resolved over the course of decades or centuries (the whole point of this thread is that the rest of the world doesn't play by the FDA's rules), and society will adjust to deal with that happy development.
Are there also legitimate treatments that the U.S. FDA just doesn't recognize yet? Of course.
Can you give us some examples?
I'm not doubting you, I'm just curious which ones come to mind.
Here's a non-life-threatening example: in the mid-90s, fresh out of college and armed with my new developer's salary, I got my eyes operated on to fix the horrible vision I'd had since childhood. The procedure was something known as ALK, and the outcome was a hideous, star-spangled fun-house mirror perspective on the world every time I opened my eyes. The procedure known as LASIK, now common, became available in the US about a year later as an experimental procedure via a single type of laser approved for off-label use by the FDA. I was told the laser's primary use was etching circuit boards. At that time, LASIK was practiced in many other parts of the world using far more modern devices made specifically for eye surgery, operated by surgeons with much more experience than anyone in the US.
So I did a lot of research, flew to the nation of Colombia, got my eyes fixed with LASIK despite the severe complication of my FDA-approved ALK surgery, and obtained perfect vision - three years before LASIK was finally approved by the FDA. I still send the Colombian doctor a Christmas card every year. This is obviously not an example of a major health issue, but I don't know how you assign a value to three years of good vision vs. three years of near blindness. For me, it was beyond price.
The FDA serves a very necessary purpose and saves lives. But they are cautious to a fault, and their caution costs patients time and - in the worst cases - lives. In the case of experimental treatments by large, reputable pharmaceutical firms, informed adult patients should be able to sign waivers of liability and obtain treatment, FDA-approved or not.
I like what the brits have tone with the BBC. I could get behind that kind of government support. I don't want to see Ruport Murdoch sucking at the public teat while putting out his bullshit.
We all could get behind the government supporting news organizations that slant the news the way we like it, and we're all opposed to the government supporting news organizations that slant the news in a way we don't like. Since the objective truth is that every single news organization out there has a slant, either government supports all of them or none of them. I strongly favor the latter.
Sweden is the almost complete opposite, there the working and middle class (the majority voter) believe that the best system for themselves is a system where you can take a year off from work, or not work at all and be supported by the state.
Well, let's be honest - they aren't being supported by the state, since the state does no work and earns no income. They're being supported by their fellow Swedes - the ones who want to work or have to work, and who pay some very high income taxes. The reason their economy is still working is because Sweden imports so many workers from Africa and the Mideast. One of every five workers in Sweden was either born in another country or is the child of immigrants. If/when social pressures force Sweden to halt immigration, or when improving economic conditions at home draw many of these immigrants back to their countries of origin, the fantasy of taking year-long sabbaticals paid for by fellow tax-payers ends.
Reagan is the primary person to blame for the current economy. Basically he sold the world a pyramid scheme. Trickle down economy is EXACTLY what a pyramid scheme is. The idea that anyone who joins the scheme just pours some money into the top of the pyramid and then reaps his rewards as it trickles down to him. And it works, for the first few layers until to many people are needed to join to keep the system flowing and it all collapses.
Please explain how Reagan's economic policies make everyone "just pour some money into the top of the pyramid". Low tax rates mean you keep more of the money you make, and hand less of it over to the government to distribute to others for some greater good that they've decided on. How does me keeping more of my own money equate to pouring money into the top of a pyramid?
The pyramid scheme you describe is the exact opposite of Reaganomics - it's the essence of liberal government and wealth redistribution. And it fails because it discourages hard work, risk-taking and innovation. Trickle-down economics does work - people who keep more of their money invest and create new jobs. The economic expansion of the '80s and the dot-com boom of the '90s were directly fueled by exactly that. The economic hard times we've fallen on now don't refute trickle-down economics in any way - there is no way to abolish economic downturns or the business cycle, and the European economies which have maintained high tax rates are feeling the same pain and more, while they also failed to match the US economy during the good times.
Yeah time-shifting is nothing new. It has existed ever since the Sony Umatic VCR released circa 1969. That VCR was too expensive, so Sony went back and created the Betamax (anc JVC copied it to create VHS) in 1975. DVR is not even the first digital recording method - that was miniDV and Digital VHS in the early 1990s. ----- People have been time-shifting for decades. All the DVR did was replace the magnetic tape storage with magnetic disk storage. Nothing revolutionary... it was an evolutionary change.
I'd say replacing the sequential access of a tape drive with random access and the ability to write one portion of a program while reading earlier portions qualifies as revolutionary change. For most people, the "wow" factor of the DVR comes from the ability to continue program recording while they pause their viewing. This can't be done with a tape drive. Also, Tivo was the first service I know of to make this sort of programming manipulation easy to do, with a built in scheduling guide and a user-interface that's still the best I've seen in DVRs.
As for why Tivo is not more popular? Because there are tons of other options. I have a Panasonic ReplayTV that has no subscription fees whatsoever. Ditto my Dish DTVpal which cost $250 flat and no subscription fees. It seemed a no-brainer to buy these DVRs rather than buy a Tivo with a monthly rental.
Perhaps if Tivo eliminated the monthly fee, then they'd takeoff like iPod, but most people simply don't see the need to throw-away money like that. They have to budget their spending, which means they choose options without the fees (like I did).
The reason I finally gave up my TiVO is because DirecTV made it impossible to use DVR features with their HD programming unless you use DirecTV's DVRs. And this kind of lockout is a very big reason - perhaps the biggest reason - behind "why Tivo is not more popular". It wouldn't bother me nearly as much if DirecTV's DVRs were even close to Tivo's in terms of user-interface, responsiveness and ease of use.
Come on people -- when you think of clean water, clean air, and sustainable living, doesn't your mind immediately jump to India?
Nope. When I think of India I think of hundreds of millions of people finally making the climb out of poverty to a decent standard of living. Granted, that standard of living won't let the average Indian squander nearly as many resources as the average environmentally aware American, but it's still a huge accomplishment that deserves applause and support. I'm glad to see the Indian government is not prepared to slow down or stop that economic progress to please some self-appointed guardians of the earth in the US and Europe armed with questionable data and questionable science.
Perhaps their new research group could use this as a slogan: "India: #1 In Environmental Stewardship Since The Bhopal Disaster".
Very cheap shot. The Bhopal Disaster was a disaster caused by Union Carbide, an American company.
I see this keeps repeating, but this is utter bullshit. US military is needed just as much as a kick in the balls. Europe certainly doesn't need it.
LOL - fine, so have your democratically elected leaders let our democratically elected leaders know. The vast majority of Americans have no desire to spend billions protecting Europeans from threats they don't believe exist. The US certainly isn't occupying Europe, and when Rumsfeld made noises about reducing forces in Europe a few years ago your leaders screamed like they were all French. But I'm sure you know best.
Face reality, pal - the only utter bullshit is that emanating from your keyboard. Your leaders have no intention of letting the US go, much to my wallet's regret. Maybe your snottiness and grotesque ingratitude can convince them to stop freeloading on the US, raise your taxes and mount their own defenses, but I'm skeptical.
The only thing the US military does those days is war crimes. Lots of them.
Ah, nothing like the ungrateful whining of pampered idiots who won't pay for their own defense.
Obama is a man to be respected for his accomplishments during the past year.
I have similar accomplishments in the field of literature - namely, none. But I intend to do big things one day, just like Obama. Since the Nobel Comittee has wisely decided not to wait for any actual accomplishments, I'll expect my award and check soon.
Look, this is just embarrassing - obviously, the Nobel Committee feels it is punishing American voters for "wrong" decisions by awarding prizes to the likes of Jimmy Carter and Al Gore during the Bush administration, and now is rewarding Americans for "right" thinking by bestowing their award on Obama. The president should feel insulted and should decline.
"They have many children for a lot of different reasons but the primary reason is that children past the age of 5 or 6 can work and help the family to survive."
While I suppose this is partly true, to a certain extent, it seems to me, that more kids means more expenses like food, clothing, medicine, education (ok, I realize a lot of these kids might not get much education), etc. It seems to me that if you were just interested in improving your economic situation, you would have no kids, or very few kids, as that means you can spend more of your income on yourself and your spouse. Yes, kids *are* put to work, but I have a hard time believing the people actually choose to have more kids as a means of increasing their income (and, yes, I realize income might not be defined in terms of currency - it might be defined in terms of how many fruits or vegetables are harvested, how many cows milked or other livestock tended for, etc, but it still seems like with fewer mouths to feed, you need less food, less clothes, and so on)?
Note that until the Industrial Revolution and the growth of urban centers it wasn't much different in the US or England - people here had lots of children too. Rural farmers need children to help do the work, and much of the world's poor are subsistence farmers. I remember seeing some study in Bangladesh that showed children of impoverished families there represented a net gain in income by the time they were 10. Children allow them to plant and harvest more crops, tend more livestock, and know that someone will look after them if they fall ill, become injured or grow old.
Could you elaborate further, or provide links to discussions about this? I've heard this, but I've wondered what drives having lots of children among the poor? As a 'best guess', I would assume it's lack of access to birth control methods along with lots of free time with nothing better to do than, errr, 'recreate'?
Poor people don't typically have lots of time of free time with nothing better to do than have sex - they're usually too busy working harder than most of us can imagine, trying to scratch out a living. They have many children for a lot of different reasons but the primary reason is that children past the age of 5 or 6 can work and help the family to survive. The more children, the more income. Grown children are also the only Social Security rural farmers in Third World nations will ever have in their old age. Their lives depend on having many children.
Grow the economy, provide decent educations, let people move out of poverty, give women access to education and the workforce, and the birth rate goes down. In southern India, where Bangalore and other high-tech centers have sprung up, the birth rate is now below the replacement rate. In poor northern Indian states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh the birth rate is about twice the replacement rate.
Want to see the world's population go down in a meaningful way? Do things to help Third World nations grow their economies, like lowering US trade barriers to African and Asian imports.
Yes, that's a good point that has been well known for a long time. I've been hearing that 2.33 children number for pretty much my entire life (though I'm only 31 so I guess that's not saying too much). I'd say we should aim for 2 children, so that population does shrink, instead of 2.33 children . ..
No matter how many children you decide to have, the world's impoverished will have considerably more than two. The world's population growth isn't being driven by people in the industrialized West - they're either at or below replacement levels. It's being driven by people in the Third World. It makes economic sense for the poor of the world to have many children, and nothing short of economic improvement or coercion will stop them. If you really want to reduce the world's population, work to help the people of underdeveloped nations achieve wealth. It's happening in India right now - millions of people are moving from poverty to the economic middle class. And they're having fewer children as a result.
Homo sapiens may not be the ideal kind of advanced life form either. Otherwise it wouldn't destroy its own habitat on a global scale, nor cause avoidable mass extinction of other species.
As far as I know, homo sapiens is the only life form that even considers habitat destruction or species extinction and tries to prevent them. Someone has already posted about the fact that modern-day environmentalism serves as a belief system for many, starting with the assumption of man's inherent evil and guilt. This assumption is as irrational and tiresome in this new religion as it was in the old ones.
Obviously we haven't destroyed our habitat in any significant way, since there are more of us around than ever. And why would causing the mass extinction of other species make us less than ideal as an advanced life form anyway? Sure, we depend on a number of other species for our existence, but there are a lot of species whose existence means nothing to ours. I happen to share your belief that we must preserve these species, but it's a belief, not a law of physics. For all we know, the most advanced life form in the galaxy is heading this way after wiping out all other life in it's neighborhood.
I wish I had a dime for everytime I've been on 101 and there are 4 cars in front of me all going 65 (the limit) with nothing in front of them. Nobody seems to understand that the passing lane is for passing.
As someone living in CA, I agree that it's a nuisance (San Diego seems to be much better about this than LA), however, the left lane is NOT a passing lane in CA as it is in other states. All lanes of traffic are free for general travel, and it is expected that faster traffic moves left. In some states it is illegal to stay in the left lane, but not CA.
California Vehicle Code:
21654. (a) Notwithstanding the prima facie speed limits, any vehicle proceeding upon a highway at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic moving in the same direction at such time shall be driven in the right-hand lane for traffic or as close as practicable to the right-hand edge or curb, except when overtaking and passing another vehicle proceeding in the same direction or when preparing for a left turn at an intersection or into a private road or driveway.
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And why is it that Obama can't get anything done? Is it because his plans are all wrong-headed? Or is it because no matter what he attempts, there is a group of reactionaries that going to be against no matter what and no matter what lies and other indecencies they need to commit?
What exactly has Obama tried to do as far as net neutrality goes? Most of the FCC commissioners, including the chairman, were appointed by him. Obama's political party still controls both houses of Congress for another month. So why this FCC ruling? The "reactionaries" didn't want this FCC ruling, they dispute the authority of the FCC to regulate the Internet at all.
Maybe, just maybe, Obama's just another politician who will tell voters what they want to hear in election years and pay the most attention to whoever has the most money the rest of the time. Just a notion.
And this FCC ruling is the worst of all possible worlds - it gives Time-Warner, Comcast, etc. the regulatory cover to turn their overpriced, inadequate "broadband" services into the same walled-gardens of fail that the mobile carriers currently inflict on their customers. And since we've gotten the FCC involved in Internet regulation, we can look forward to more meddling in the years to come to support anti-piracy and "anti-terrorism" efforts.
BTW, I can only laugh at my post being modded a troll because the questions apparently couldn't be answered. They were serious questions and I don't see anything approaching a serious answer - your content-free sneering is, on the other hand, a troll attempt.
I see, so your game, here, is to ignore all the studies and assume your gutfeel is right.
Uhuh.
How *very* compelling...
What studies? The poster I replied to didn't cite any study - he simply claimed that "studies show...".
Could you provide some specifics from "all the studies" to back up the claims made by the poster I responded to? I mean, it would certainly be more convincing that a huffy attitude.
As it turns out, talking over a phone is more distracting than talking with someone sitting in the car. There are multiple reasons: 1. Someone in the car with you can and will respond to the dynamically-changing environment as you do. If something unexpected happens, they will usually stop talking. 2. In fact, someone in the car may notice something important, and notify the driver (either by shutting up or pointing it out), thereby partially mitigating the distraction they cause by talking.
Why would someone in the car with you, engrossed in conversation with you and without the responsibility of driving, react to the situation faster than you? This doesn't sound at all realistic.
3. A phone conversation requires more of your attention because you have to make up for the deficiencies of the data channel (phones have lower audio quality than real life, you can't read their body language (even out of the corner of your eye, you can get a feel for a person's mood), etc.).
You can usually get a feel for a person's mood by the tone of their voice as well - I'd say a much better feel than you can get by whatever information leaks in through your peripheral vision.
4. Shared context makes communication more efficient, thus requiring less mental effort (this is why, even in this day and age, people generally want to meet face-to-face).
While this is undoubtedly true, you still haven't made any case that people can't share a context equally as well over the phone as they can with some person sitting next to them while they drive.
5. Studies have shown that it takes humans more mental effort to think/interact with people/data they believe is remote as compared to people/things they think are local. In one study, they measured reaction times and errors in a driving simulator when people were either using an "in-car GPS" giving them instructions or a "satellite data-feed" giving them instructions. Even though both sets of instructions were identical (including latency, etc.), the mere perception that the "satellite data-feed" was non-local caused people to devote more mental effort to it, which increased driving accidents. A non-intuitive result, perhaps, but human mental machinery is finely tuned not for the tasks we currently expect it to perform.
I can't argue with this, since I have no study to prove otherwise. But I know that I've been involved in conversations while driving that consumed so much of my attention that afterward I couldn't recall the process of driving home. The same has occurred when I've found something interesting on the radio. I'd like to see some studies comparing how all of these activities, which aren't outlawed, impact driving and how they compare to the impact of phone usage while driving.
6. Initiating and finishing a phonecall requires much more attention than stopping/starting a conversation with someone sitting beside you. (Unlike fidgeting with a radio, answering a phonecall requires immediate action not at a moment of the driver's choosing.)
Voice commands. "Dial wife". How hard is that? And answering a phonecall doesn't require immediate action - if I'm shifting from first to second as I accelerate from a stop, I'm certainly not going to interrupt that to answer a call. Most people who use phones while driving do so in precisely the same situations in which they fidget with a radio - cruising along, with no anticipated interruptions.
Or are we all going to keep on pretending that this is 1960, and that the average American man is still about 5'7 and weighs around 150 lbs?
This is not a question about rights. No one is denying this man has a right to do what he says he will do. What we are saying is that he is a fucking lunatic for exercising this right. Yes it will act as a recruiting sergeant for the Taliban (who must be laughing their heads off about this). Yes it will be used by demagogues to whip up mobs to attack Christians in many countries. Yes it is really just fucking rude and unnecessary. If we were talking about cartoons of Mohammed then I might agree with you - there is an important principle about parody there - but this guy has just picked the most offensive thing he could do to the world's 1.3 billion Muslims
Believe it or not, most of the world's Muslims aren't robots programmed to go insane when someone happens to burn a Koran or draws a cartoon of their prophet, and are actually capable of nuance in their thinking. The kind of hyper-sensitivity you want does no one any good - Western societies jumping to condemn and vilify members who actually choose to exercise the rights those societies brag about are simply showing their lack of commitment to their own principles. The West's supposed support for free-speech and free-expression is just a silly joke if any controversial or hateful forms are immediately shouted down and repressed. And casting all Muslims as potential nut-jobs with hair-triggers who must be humored like spoiled, dangerous children is offensively patronizing and only breeds more ill-will toward Muslims. When we act like fundamentalist Muslims are all Muslims, we only harm the mainstream Muslims who despise and resist the theocratic impulses of those fundamentalists.
India actually did get hit recently by Muslim terrorists who received intelligence, coordination and orders from neighboring Pakistan over mobile phones for several days as they moved through Mumbai targeting non-Muslims and racking up a body count of 166.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE didn't suffer any recent attacks coordinated and made possible by mobile phone technology, and both have historically been far more willing to curtail free speech than India (which isn't anywhere near US standards for free speech itself).
RIM should have hung tough and refused India's request, but at least India had a legitimate reason to ask. "All about spin" - yeah, darn that annoying reality and how it gets in the way of the narrative you prefer.
Old people resist change, news at 11.
Old people resisted this particular change when they were young. 3D has been showing up every 10 or 15 years for decades, realizes that no one wants it, and wanders off. Only difference this time is that Cameron used it on a film that would have been an equally huge hit without it and now we have the creative masterminds in Hollywood pushing to film all of their comic book adaptations in 3D.
If you are proficient in as many languages as you state, then learning "modern" languages will be no problem.
This is very true. If you know how to code, you know how to code. Especially if you have some familiarity with C, it simply isn't very hard to become productive in Java, C#, Javascript, ActionScript, etc. And even if you don't have familiarity with structured programming languages, you'll find the "modern" languages much easier to learn than COBOL or FORTRAN ever were.
Just start writing code - the ability to program matters more than the language used. Same as it's always been.
Anyone else notice how Lucas tends to just shit all over anything remotely reminiscent of Star Wars?
Well, yeah - those new Star Wars movies he put out this decade were vaguely reminiscent of Star Wars.
My fiancee is convinced it's because Star Wars prevented him from having any other successful films for the rest of this life, and he resents the series because of that.
My own suspicion is that George Lucas prevents George Lucas from having any other successful films for the rest of this life. I can't even begin to conceive the amount of long-term insulation from reality and the layers of yes-man sycophancy that it took to keep the man from realizing just how bad his attempts at movie-making had become. Just MHO of course.
Death is sometimes the only thing that puts an end to accumulation of wealth and power. The ability to continue accumulating across generations through primogeniture has a well understood negative effect on society.
I don't doubt that a number of people would agree with you that no attempt to prevent the consequences of aging should ever be made - for religious reasons or societal concerns such as yours.
I also don't doubt that nearly all of those people would sign up for any proven anti-aging treatment if available. Years of debility and/or senility followed by death seem acceptable in the abstract, not so much when it's happening to you. The symptoms of aging will be resolved over the course of decades or centuries (the whole point of this thread is that the rest of the world doesn't play by the FDA's rules), and society will adjust to deal with that happy development.
Can you give us some examples?
I'm not doubting you, I'm just curious which ones come to mind.
Here's a non-life-threatening example: in the mid-90s, fresh out of college and armed with my new developer's salary, I got my eyes operated on to fix the horrible vision I'd had since childhood. The procedure was something known as ALK, and the outcome was a hideous, star-spangled fun-house mirror perspective on the world every time I opened my eyes. The procedure known as LASIK, now common, became available in the US about a year later as an experimental procedure via a single type of laser approved for off-label use by the FDA. I was told the laser's primary use was etching circuit boards. At that time, LASIK was practiced in many other parts of the world using far more modern devices made specifically for eye surgery, operated by surgeons with much more experience than anyone in the US.
So I did a lot of research, flew to the nation of Colombia, got my eyes fixed with LASIK despite the severe complication of my FDA-approved ALK surgery, and obtained perfect vision - three years before LASIK was finally approved by the FDA. I still send the Colombian doctor a Christmas card every year. This is obviously not an example of a major health issue, but I don't know how you assign a value to three years of good vision vs. three years of near blindness. For me, it was beyond price.
The FDA serves a very necessary purpose and saves lives. But they are cautious to a fault, and their caution costs patients time and - in the worst cases - lives. In the case of experimental treatments by large, reputable pharmaceutical firms, informed adult patients should be able to sign waivers of liability and obtain treatment, FDA-approved or not.
I like what the brits have tone with the BBC. I could get behind that kind of government support. I don't want to see Ruport Murdoch sucking at the public teat while putting out his bullshit.
We all could get behind the government supporting news organizations that slant the news the way we like it, and we're all opposed to the government supporting news organizations that slant the news in a way we don't like. Since the objective truth is that every single news organization out there has a slant, either government supports all of them or none of them. I strongly favor the latter.
going to lose some job opportunities as a result of getting outed. Real dick move by Gizmodo.
Sweden is the almost complete opposite, there the working and middle class (the majority voter) believe that the best system for themselves is a system where you can take a year off from work, or not work at all and be supported by the state.
Well, let's be honest - they aren't being supported by the state, since the state does no work and earns no income. They're being supported by their fellow Swedes - the ones who want to work or have to work, and who pay some very high income taxes. The reason their economy is still working is because Sweden imports so many workers from Africa and the Mideast. One of every five workers in Sweden was either born in another country or is the child of immigrants. If/when social pressures force Sweden to halt immigration, or when improving economic conditions at home draw many of these immigrants back to their countries of origin, the fantasy of taking year-long sabbaticals paid for by fellow tax-payers ends.
Reagan is the primary person to blame for the current economy. Basically he sold the world a pyramid scheme. Trickle down economy is EXACTLY what a pyramid scheme is. The idea that anyone who joins the scheme just pours some money into the top of the pyramid and then reaps his rewards as it trickles down to him. And it works, for the first few layers until to many people are needed to join to keep the system flowing and it all collapses.
Please explain how Reagan's economic policies make everyone "just pour some money into the top of the pyramid". Low tax rates mean you keep more of the money you make, and hand less of it over to the government to distribute to others for some greater good that they've decided on. How does me keeping more of my own money equate to pouring money into the top of a pyramid?
The pyramid scheme you describe is the exact opposite of Reaganomics - it's the essence of liberal government and wealth redistribution. And it fails because it discourages hard work, risk-taking and innovation. Trickle-down economics does work - people who keep more of their money invest and create new jobs. The economic expansion of the '80s and the dot-com boom of the '90s were directly fueled by exactly that. The economic hard times we've fallen on now don't refute trickle-down economics in any way - there is no way to abolish economic downturns or the business cycle, and the European economies which have maintained high tax rates are feeling the same pain and more, while they also failed to match the US economy during the good times.
Yeah time-shifting is nothing new. It has existed ever since the Sony Umatic VCR released circa 1969. That VCR was too expensive, so Sony went back and created the Betamax (anc JVC copied it to create VHS) in 1975. DVR is not even the first digital recording method - that was miniDV and Digital VHS in the early 1990s. ----- People have been time-shifting for decades. All the DVR did was replace the magnetic tape storage with magnetic disk storage. Nothing revolutionary... it was an evolutionary change.
I'd say replacing the sequential access of a tape drive with random access and the ability to write one portion of a program while reading earlier portions qualifies as revolutionary change. For most people, the "wow" factor of the DVR comes from the ability to continue program recording while they pause their viewing. This can't be done with a tape drive. Also, Tivo was the first service I know of to make this sort of programming manipulation easy to do, with a built in scheduling guide and a user-interface that's still the best I've seen in DVRs.
As for why Tivo is not more popular? Because there are tons of other options. I have a Panasonic ReplayTV that has no subscription fees whatsoever. Ditto my Dish DTVpal which cost $250 flat and no subscription fees. It seemed a no-brainer to buy these DVRs rather than buy a Tivo with a monthly rental.
Perhaps if Tivo eliminated the monthly fee, then they'd takeoff like iPod, but most people simply don't see the need to throw-away money like that. They have to budget their spending, which means they choose options without the fees (like I did).
The reason I finally gave up my TiVO is because DirecTV made it impossible to use DVR features with their HD programming unless you use DirecTV's DVRs. And this kind of lockout is a very big reason - perhaps the biggest reason - behind "why Tivo is not more popular". It wouldn't bother me nearly as much if DirecTV's DVRs were even close to Tivo's in terms of user-interface, responsiveness and ease of use.
Come on people -- when you think of clean water, clean air, and sustainable living, doesn't your mind immediately jump to India?
Nope. When I think of India I think of hundreds of millions of people finally making the climb out of poverty to a decent standard of living. Granted, that standard of living won't let the average Indian squander nearly as many resources as the average environmentally aware American, but it's still a huge accomplishment that deserves applause and support. I'm glad to see the Indian government is not prepared to slow down or stop that economic progress to please some self-appointed guardians of the earth in the US and Europe armed with questionable data and questionable science.
Perhaps their new research group could use this as a slogan: "India: #1 In Environmental Stewardship Since The Bhopal Disaster".
Very cheap shot. The Bhopal Disaster was a disaster caused by Union Carbide, an American company.
I see this keeps repeating, but this is utter bullshit. US military is needed just as much as a kick in the balls. Europe certainly doesn't need it.
LOL - fine, so have your democratically elected leaders let our democratically elected leaders know. The vast majority of Americans have no desire to spend billions protecting Europeans from threats they don't believe exist. The US certainly isn't occupying Europe, and when Rumsfeld made noises about reducing forces in Europe a few years ago your leaders screamed like they were all French. But I'm sure you know best.
Face reality, pal - the only utter bullshit is that emanating from your keyboard. Your leaders have no intention of letting the US go, much to my wallet's regret. Maybe your snottiness and grotesque ingratitude can convince them to stop freeloading on the US, raise your taxes and mount their own defenses, but I'm skeptical.
The only thing the US military does those days is war crimes. Lots of them.
Ah, nothing like the ungrateful whining of pampered idiots who won't pay for their own defense.
Obama is a man to be respected for his accomplishments during the past year.
I have similar accomplishments in the field of literature - namely, none. But I intend to do big things one day, just like Obama. Since the Nobel Comittee has wisely decided not to wait for any actual accomplishments, I'll expect my award and check soon.
Look, this is just embarrassing - obviously, the Nobel Committee feels it is punishing American voters for "wrong" decisions by awarding prizes to the likes of Jimmy Carter and Al Gore during the Bush administration, and now is rewarding Americans for "right" thinking by bestowing their award on Obama. The president should feel insulted and should decline.
"They have many children for a lot of different reasons but the primary reason is that children past the age of 5 or 6 can work and help the family to survive."
While I suppose this is partly true, to a certain extent, it seems to me, that more kids means more expenses like food, clothing, medicine, education (ok, I realize a lot of these kids might not get much education), etc. It seems to me that if you were just interested in improving your economic situation, you would have no kids, or very few kids, as that means you can spend more of your income on yourself and your spouse. Yes, kids *are* put to work, but I have a hard time believing the people actually choose to have more kids as a means of increasing their income (and, yes, I realize income might not be defined in terms of currency - it might be defined in terms of how many fruits or vegetables are harvested, how many cows milked or other livestock tended for, etc, but it still seems like with fewer mouths to feed, you need less food, less clothes, and so on)?
Note that until the Industrial Revolution and the growth of urban centers it wasn't much different in the US or England - people here had lots of children too. Rural farmers need children to help do the work, and much of the world's poor are subsistence farmers. I remember seeing some study in Bangladesh that showed children of impoverished families there represented a net gain in income by the time they were 10. Children allow them to plant and harvest more crops, tend more livestock, and know that someone will look after them if they fall ill, become injured or grow old.
Could you elaborate further, or provide links to discussions about this? I've heard this, but I've wondered what drives having lots of children among the poor? As a 'best guess', I would assume it's lack of access to birth control methods along with lots of free time with nothing better to do than, errr, 'recreate'?
Poor people don't typically have lots of time of free time with nothing better to do than have sex - they're usually too busy working harder than most of us can imagine, trying to scratch out a living. They have many children for a lot of different reasons but the primary reason is that children past the age of 5 or 6 can work and help the family to survive. The more children, the more income. Grown children are also the only Social Security rural farmers in Third World nations will ever have in their old age. Their lives depend on having many children.
Grow the economy, provide decent educations, let people move out of poverty, give women access to education and the workforce, and the birth rate goes down. In southern India, where Bangalore and other high-tech centers have sprung up, the birth rate is now below the replacement rate. In poor northern Indian states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh the birth rate is about twice the replacement rate.
Want to see the world's population go down in a meaningful way? Do things to help Third World nations grow their economies, like lowering US trade barriers to African and Asian imports.
Yes, that's a good point that has been well known for a long time. I've been hearing that 2.33 children number for pretty much my entire life (though I'm only 31 so I guess that's not saying too much). I'd say we should aim for 2 children, so that population does shrink, instead of 2.33 children . . .
No matter how many children you decide to have, the world's impoverished will have considerably more than two. The world's population growth isn't being driven by people in the industrialized West - they're either at or below replacement levels. It's being driven by people in the Third World. It makes economic sense for the poor of the world to have many children, and nothing short of economic improvement or coercion will stop them. If you really want to reduce the world's population, work to help the people of underdeveloped nations achieve wealth. It's happening in India right now - millions of people are moving from poverty to the economic middle class. And they're having fewer children as a result.
Homo sapiens may not be the ideal kind of advanced life form either. Otherwise it wouldn't destroy its own habitat on a global scale, nor cause avoidable mass extinction of other species.
As far as I know, homo sapiens is the only life form that even considers habitat destruction or species extinction and tries to prevent them. Someone has already posted about the fact that modern-day environmentalism serves as a belief system for many, starting with the assumption of man's inherent evil and guilt. This assumption is as irrational and tiresome in this new religion as it was in the old ones.
Obviously we haven't destroyed our habitat in any significant way, since there are more of us around than ever. And why would causing the mass extinction of other species make us less than ideal as an advanced life form anyway? Sure, we depend on a number of other species for our existence, but there are a lot of species whose existence means nothing to ours. I happen to share your belief that we must preserve these species, but it's a belief, not a law of physics. For all we know, the most advanced life form in the galaxy is heading this way after wiping out all other life in it's neighborhood.
As someone living in CA, I agree that it's a nuisance (San Diego seems to be much better about this than LA), however, the left lane is NOT a passing lane in CA as it is in other states. All lanes of traffic are free for general travel, and it is expected that faster traffic moves left. In some states it is illegal to stay in the left lane, but not CA.
California Vehicle Code: 21654. (a) Notwithstanding the prima facie speed limits, any vehicle proceeding upon a highway at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic moving in the same direction at such time shall be driven in the right-hand lane for traffic or as close as practicable to the right-hand edge or curb, except when overtaking and passing another vehicle proceeding in the same direction or when preparing for a left turn at an intersection or into a private road or driveway.