I think the main difference between elections in the US and Europe is not the amount of regulation, but the amount of shit the electors tolerate.
The amount of shit most of the UK electorate is willing to take appears to be however much the media tells them to, and I'd guess it's the same in the USA. Glad to hear that it isn't so in France.
The company has a patent on controlling the sprinkler system remotely. This kind of patent is stupid and evil.
You're only jealous because you didn't have the idea of taking out a patent on remotely controlling a sprinkler system by means of a manually operated rotary or other valve within the fluid delivery system at a position other than the sprinkler apparatus itself (=a tap at the other end of the hosepipe).
And there is no way that lobbyists could get around this by lobbying the opinion formers (eg, the press) rather than by directly funding the political campaigns, is there?
You are there to represent the people and your country. If you find yourself having to subvert the will of your public, your constitution, your own justice system etc., then take that as a big fucking clue that YOU ARE WRONG and the best way for you to help is to STFU.
Wrong.
De jure they are there to represent the people. De facto they are there to represent their own self-interest. When these come into conflict (which is the normal state), de facto will win. The politicians are not "retarted" or "wrong", they're doing exactly what is built into the system. No, I don't know of a better system, but at least regognising that this behaviour is built-in leads to less political surprises, and gives (some) politicians credit for intelligence if not honour.
The rest of Europe (indeed, the rest of the world) should have no say in the democratic election, but is free to have an opinion on the resulting democratically elected official. After all (checking carefully for Godwin), the fact of his initial democratic election did not prevent much of the rest of the world taking a view of Adolf Hitler, did it?
Seems to be a few new studies that simply find that women want to talk, not communicate.
It's more subtle than that. Men tend to communicate mainly ideationally, in other words what they communicate is straightforward facts contained directly in the words. Women are much more inclined to communicate phatically, which is to say that the direct meaning of the words is less important, but the nature of the utterance is communicating a lot about relationships. So when women talk they are communicating, but when men look at the simple meaning of the words they are sometimes looking in the wrong place to find the communication.
Key words in this posting are, of course, "tend", "inclined" and "sometimes".
I've done enough thinking to be an epistemic solipsist, which is about as far as a rationalist position can go.
About as far, or about as far out?
My understanding (25 years out of date, I admit) is that epistemic solipsicm implies that there is one true source of knowledge, and that it is written down.
No, the epistemic solipsist believes that there is no source of knowledge; we never actually know anything. Christian fundies tend not to get on well with it (or me). Nor do scientific fundies, or any other sort of fundie (maybe an agnostic fundie would, if such a thing exists).
I don't think there are many people who doubt that the scientific approach is useful in some (even many) cases. The debate is about whether that is the only valid way of approacing the universe, and about whether that can tell us everything we need to know about the universe.
I've done enough thinking to be an epistemic solipsist, which is about as far as a rationalist position can go. And I've also done enough thinking to be aware that just because a proposition has undesirable consequences (such as raising a lot of questions -- which as it happens I don't see as necessarily undesirable) it doesn't make the proposition false.
Most significantly, I've done enough thinking to realise that the scientific position, being away back from solipsism, is essentially a socially negotiated position of convenience, with no particular claim to "truth".
You can say that all you want, but there's always modus ponens, and (the related) modus tollens.
Don't dispute that. But that's bordering on philosophy.
But without philosophy you don't have science. Without at least rules of inference (such as modus ponens and modus tollens) you can't make inferences -- any inferences -- from observations, and falsifiability goes out of the window. That's just wading in the ankle-deep levels of philosophy, before you even get to the knee-depths of asking whether there really is a world being observed or whether it's an illusion (Occam's Razor would seem to favour solipsism -- no reality is fewer entities than one reality -- but science is selective in the way it applies Occam's razor). Of course, the existence of an objective reality is not falsifiable, but science is dependent on it. Science hasn't got rid if metaphysics, it just hides it.
scientific critical thinking is the only way to go.
So critical thinking about the basis of the scientific method itself, and claims made for science are to be excluded from the critical thinking?
No, critical thinking has to be critical thinking, not some subset of critical thinking that exempts science from examination. Otherwise, science becomes just another religion, with claims exempt from examination.
What language are you working with in which ergatives arise? Basque? I'm fascinated that you've found an ergative language in which major US political issues are discussed.
English. To quote The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2003), "An ergative verb can be either transitive or intransitive, with the same word used as both the object of the transitive form and as the subject of the intransitive form, such as 'cooked' in the sentences 'he cooked the potatoes' and 'the potatoes cooked quickly'"
Why do you say that the terminology is misleading, and what should I call the forms that all my final year linguistics degree course texts call "ergative", when I do my assignments and exam?
Thanks for that. For a final year linguistics project I have to work at a rather deeper level than just seeing whether something is named -- I have to look at lots of other structures that can be indicators of bias (use of the ergative or short passive forms, who is in the Agent role and so on) but it's an interesting start.
Power users generally tend to adapt themselves to whatever tool they're given to work with. If you need the tool to adapt to you it means that you're a power user of that tool, not a power user. I would disagree. The power user is not the one who expects the tool to adapt nor the one who adapts to the tool. I would call the power user the one who adapts the tool.
Besides, if you're that annoyed about using your mouse, why not use a non-wysiwyg editor? For complex non-work documents, that's what I do -- I use laTeX. For simple documents such as letters and memos I've always been content with Word, and still am. The trouble is, it used to be only a little bit worse than laTeX for complex documents, so I didn't mind when I had to use it. Now it's devastatingly worse, and I do mind. Simple documents are now, in my opinion, all that it's good for.
Not to mention that you could try to stick to the previous version of MS Office. Unless this is in your working place where you don't have the power to decide that. Got it in one.
These are still Alt-ES and Alt-EF, just don't release Alt key
I actually do that for those two, although of course I get nagged about using an obsolete sequence so I'm going to have to get out of the habit sooner or later.
and all the shortcuts work exactly the same. Not all the shortcuts. "<alt>FI" (or "<alt>F<alt>I)"doesn't bring up the file properties for instance.
I don't mind learning new keystrokes (I had to do that between Word 2000 and Word 2003, for instance); my problem is that some of the Word2007 keystrokes are incredibly long, non-intuitive, and the length seems to have no correlation to the frequency of use.
Well, if you only want to cite personal anecdotal evidence, I'll counter your argument by stating that I quite like it.
I didn't intend to offer evidence, I questioned the evidence for the original claim.
Commonly used functions have been moved to the toolbar, rather than buried in menus. Commonly used functions I used keystrokes for, without having to take my hands off the keyboard, so it didn't matter where they were in the noise at the top of the screen. Stuff that I was likely to have to mouse around for I put onto the toolbar, so the toolbar contained what I needed on it, and nothing else. The ribbon doesn't allow that; I have to work in the way Microsoft dictates.
The toolbars are also based around more of a task-oriented approach, which better suits the habits and mindset of most users. But with the loss of flexibility for anybody who has to do anything else (for instance, writing technical reports I need to do a lot of cross-references, but they're not on the home page which is supposed to be where the stuff for normal document writing should be).
Most people have never even heard of the functions you described, let alone learned their keystrokes. I would have thought more people would have done "edit | find" than changed the number of columns in the document or changed the hyphenation settings ("<alt>PH"), but I could be wrong.
I hate to say it, but users like yourself make up an infinitesimally small fraction of total users. A company needs to market/design their products for the masses, not the outliers. So what you mean is that it's only really for writing simple documents now, such as letters and memos, and for writing complex documents we need a different tool. Well, actually I agree with you, but I think my chances of getting my company to standardise on laTeX are slim, so I'm stuck with a tool that is no longer fit for the purpose, MS having abandoned that purpose.
(once they got used to it, people also quite liked the 2007 interface) I'd like to know your evidence for that -- I've been using it for months, and still loathe it.
The keystrokes for common actions used to be short, and for infrequent actions used to be longer -- a standard UI design principle. But in Word 2007? "Edit | Paste Special" used to be "<alt>ES"; now it's "<alt>HVS" ("V"??? Where did that come from?). "Edit | Find" used to be "<alt>EF", now it's <alt>FDF. "File | Properties" used to be "<alt>FI", now (for all but a couple that I don't use) it's "<alt>FEP"[click "document properties"][click "advanced properties..."]. I can't find any way to get there without the mouse, and I can't find any way to get rid of the properties ribbon without using the mouse, and I don't see the point of needing the two mouse clicks because "advanced properties..." is the only entry under "document properties".
On the other hand, changing the number of columns (which I would always do in a new document template, maybe once every couple of years) is just "<alt>PJ" -- really convenient.
The whole interface is geared to the beginner, who is mousing all over the place. Power users, who usually like to keep their hands on the keyboard, have been abandoned.
It depends on the bands outlook. I once heard Pete "Memory" Banks of 80s band After The Fire comment that they had a great time on expenses that were "reclaimable but not recoverable" (if I've got the term right) by the company. That means that the record company gets all profits from album sales until those expenses are paid off, but they can't go after the band for the money. So the band didn't come out of the deal with an income stream, but they came out with memories of good times on expenses. Sure, the labels are wise to that, but cents per song isn't the only way to work out the accounts.
I spend more, but most of what I spend is at gigs and festivals, and is mainly on obscure and often unsigned artists, and I usually put the cash directly in the artists hand. I don't have any illegal downloads but there are other ways to cut out the big companies.
PS. When I say "prove" I obviously mean in the sense "demonstrate the likelihood of X to a satisfactory degree" rather than 100% absolute proof -- which is unattainable outside of pure mathematics. There's quite a bit in the rest of the post that I would take issue with, but I think that's the really important bit that gets missed by both sides in the general argument (and it's a point where I agree with you). The key is the word "satisfactory". "Satisfactory" to whom? Different people are satisfied by different levels of proof, so unless we draw the line at the very end of the scale (extreme solipsism at one end, total gullibility at the other) the position we draw the line is subjective -- at best a social construct. The logical positivist (roughly speaking, the philosophical position taken by all the scientific atheists) draws the line at an arbitrary position and pretends that the arbitrary position is the only "rational" one. They then heap scorn on those who admit evidence that they exclude (such as those who admit "subjective" evidence -- and don't get me started on the problems of objectivity!) whilst at the same time heaping scorn on those (including me) who demand higher standards of evidence (when not criticising sloppy attempts to prove the non-existence of god I spend quite a bit of time criticising sloppy attempts to prove the existence of god), calling us unrealistic. The position that you place "satisfactory" is no more "rational" or "objective" than the position anybody else places it (it may or may not have a pragmatic advantage -- want to buy the Tower of London?). Yes, the things you describe do shift the probabilities around ("probabilites" in the Bayesian, not frequentist sense), but shove all the facts into the best Bayesian inference engine we have available -- the human brain -- and we get inconsistent results. Some people are convinced god exists, some are convinced that no god exixts, most admit more-or-less to a degree of uncertainty but often with an inclination one way or the other.
This does relate back to one other thing in your posting. The solipsist would point out that Occam's Razor favours their position over the materialist position (zero realities v. one reality) or dualist position (zero realities v. two realities). Funny how some scientists are keen to apply Occam's Razor when it suports their position, but not when it challenges it, isn't it? In case you hadn't worked it out, my own position inclines towards epistemological solipsism.
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I think the main difference between elections in the US and Europe is not the amount of regulation, but the amount of shit the electors tolerate.
The amount of shit most of the UK electorate is willing to take appears to be however much the media tells them to, and I'd guess it's the same in the USA. Glad to hear that it isn't so in France.
The company has a patent on controlling the sprinkler system remotely. This kind of patent is stupid and evil.
You're only jealous because you didn't have the idea of taking out a patent on remotely controlling a sprinkler system by means of a manually operated rotary or other valve within the fluid delivery system at a position other than the sprinkler apparatus itself (=a tap at the other end of the hosepipe).
And there is no way that lobbyists could get around this by lobbying the opinion formers (eg, the press) rather than by directly funding the political campaigns, is there?
Why are politicians so retarded?
You are there to represent the people and your country. If you find yourself having to subvert the will of your public, your constitution, your own justice system etc., then take that as a big fucking clue that YOU ARE WRONG and the best way for you to help is to STFU.
Wrong.
De jure they are there to represent the people. De facto they are there to represent their own self-interest. When these come into conflict (which is the normal state), de facto will win. The politicians are not "retarted" or "wrong", they're doing exactly what is built into the system. No, I don't know of a better system, but at least regognising that this behaviour is built-in leads to less political surprises, and gives (some) politicians credit for intelligence if not honour.
The rest of Europe (indeed, the rest of the world) should have no say in the democratic election, but is free to have an opinion on the resulting democratically elected official. After all (checking carefully for Godwin), the fact of his initial democratic election did not prevent much of the rest of the world taking a view of Adolf Hitler, did it?
http://www.the-brights.net/
It seems some moderators are not aware of the way some atheists use the term "bright"...
Seems to be a few new studies that simply find that women want to talk, not communicate.
It's more subtle than that. Men tend to communicate mainly ideationally, in other words what they communicate is straightforward facts contained directly in the words. Women are much more inclined to communicate phatically, which is to say that the direct meaning of the words is less important, but the nature of the utterance is communicating a lot about relationships. So when women talk they are communicating, but when men look at the simple meaning of the words they are sometimes looking in the wrong place to find the communication.
Key words in this posting are, of course, "tend", "inclined" and "sometimes".
At our keyboards, in our studies/bedrooms, right?
(Checks local time: 12:30 am, and I'm at my keyboard checking /. [sigh]).
About as far, or about as far out?
My understanding (25 years out of date, I admit) is that epistemic solipsicm implies that there is one true source of knowledge, and that it is written down.
No, the epistemic solipsist believes that there is no source of knowledge; we never actually know anything. Christian fundies tend not to get on well with it (or me). Nor do scientific fundies, or any other sort of fundie (maybe an agnostic fundie would, if such a thing exists).
I don't think there are many people who doubt that the scientific approach is useful in some (even many) cases. The debate is about whether that is the only valid way of approacing the universe, and about whether that can tell us everything we need to know about the universe.
I've done enough thinking to be an epistemic solipsist, which is about as far as a rationalist position can go. And I've also done enough thinking to be aware that just because a proposition has undesirable consequences (such as raising a lot of questions -- which as it happens I don't see as necessarily undesirable) it doesn't make the proposition false.
Most significantly, I've done enough thinking to realise that the scientific position, being away back from solipsism, is essentially a socially negotiated position of convenience, with no particular claim to "truth".
You can say that all you want, but there's always modus ponens, and (the related) modus tollens.
Don't dispute that. But that's bordering on philosophy.
But without philosophy you don't have science. Without at least rules of inference (such as modus ponens and modus tollens) you can't make inferences -- any inferences -- from observations, and falsifiability goes out of the window. That's just wading in the ankle-deep levels of philosophy, before you even get to the knee-depths of asking whether there really is a world being observed or whether it's an illusion (Occam's Razor would seem to favour solipsism -- no reality is fewer entities than one reality -- but science is selective in the way it applies Occam's razor). Of course, the existence of an objective reality is not falsifiable, but science is dependent on it. Science hasn't got rid if metaphysics, it just hides it.
scientific critical thinking is the only way to go.
So critical thinking about the basis of the scientific method itself, and claims made for science are to be excluded from the critical thinking?
No, critical thinking has to be critical thinking, not some subset of critical thinking that exempts science from examination. Otherwise, science becomes just another religion, with claims exempt from examination.
What language are you working with in which ergatives arise? Basque? I'm fascinated that you've found an ergative language in which major US political issues are discussed.
English. To quote The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2003), "An ergative verb can be either transitive or intransitive, with the same word used as both the object of the transitive form and as the subject of the intransitive form, such as 'cooked' in the sentences 'he cooked the potatoes' and 'the potatoes cooked quickly'"Why do you say that the terminology is misleading, and what should I call the forms that all my final year linguistics degree course texts call "ergative", when I do my assignments and exam?
Thanks for that. For a final year linguistics project I have to work at a rather deeper level than just seeing whether something is named -- I have to look at lots of other structures that can be indicators of bias (use of the ergative or short passive forms, who is in the Agent role and so on) but it's an interesting start.
These are still Alt-ES and Alt-EF, just don't release Alt key
I actually do that for those two, although of course I get nagged about using an obsolete sequence so I'm going to have to get out of the habit sooner or later. and all the shortcuts work exactly the same. Not all the shortcuts. "<alt>FI" (or "<alt>F<alt>I)"doesn't bring up the file properties for instance.I don't mind learning new keystrokes (I had to do that between Word 2000 and Word 2003, for instance); my problem is that some of the Word2007 keystrokes are incredibly long, non-intuitive, and the length seems to have no correlation to the frequency of use.
Well, if you only want to cite personal anecdotal evidence, I'll counter your argument by stating that I quite like it.
I didn't intend to offer evidence, I questioned the evidence for the original claim. Commonly used functions have been moved to the toolbar, rather than buried in menus. Commonly used functions I used keystrokes for, without having to take my hands off the keyboard, so it didn't matter where they were in the noise at the top of the screen. Stuff that I was likely to have to mouse around for I put onto the toolbar, so the toolbar contained what I needed on it, and nothing else. The ribbon doesn't allow that; I have to work in the way Microsoft dictates. The toolbars are also based around more of a task-oriented approach, which better suits the habits and mindset of most users. But with the loss of flexibility for anybody who has to do anything else (for instance, writing technical reports I need to do a lot of cross-references, but they're not on the home page which is supposed to be where the stuff for normal document writing should be). Most people have never even heard of the functions you described, let alone learned their keystrokes. I would have thought more people would have done "edit | find" than changed the number of columns in the document or changed the hyphenation settings ("<alt>PH"), but I could be wrong. I hate to say it, but users like yourself make up an infinitesimally small fraction of total users. A company needs to market/design their products for the masses, not the outliers. So what you mean is that it's only really for writing simple documents now, such as letters and memos, and for writing complex documents we need a different tool. Well, actually I agree with you, but I think my chances of getting my company to standardise on laTeX are slim, so I'm stuck with a tool that is no longer fit for the purpose, MS having abandoned that purpose.
The keystrokes for common actions used to be short, and for infrequent actions used to be longer -- a standard UI design principle. But in Word 2007?
"Edit | Paste Special" used to be "<alt>ES"; now it's "<alt>HVS" ("V"??? Where did that come from?). "Edit | Find" used to be "<alt>EF", now it's <alt>FDF. "File | Properties" used to be "<alt>FI", now (for all but a couple that I don't use) it's "<alt>FEP"[click "document properties"][click "advanced properties..."]. I can't find any way to get there without the mouse, and I can't find any way to get rid of the properties ribbon without using the mouse, and I don't see the point of needing the two mouse clicks because "advanced properties..." is the only entry under "document properties".
On the other hand, changing the number of columns (which I would always do in a new document template, maybe once every couple of years) is just "<alt>PJ" -- really convenient.
The whole interface is geared to the beginner, who is mousing all over the place. Power users, who usually like to keep their hands on the keyboard, have been abandoned.
Interesting -- I have to choose a project soon for a linguistics course, and you've just given me an idea...
But "working with livestock" can be included in either.
It depends on the bands outlook. I once heard Pete "Memory" Banks of 80s band After The Fire comment that they had a great time on expenses that were "reclaimable but not recoverable" (if I've got the term right) by the company. That means that the record company gets all profits from album sales until those expenses are paid off, but they can't go after the band for the money. So the band didn't come out of the deal with an income stream, but they came out with memories of good times on expenses. Sure, the labels are wise to that, but cents per song isn't the only way to work out the accounts.
I spend more, but most of what I spend is at gigs and festivals, and is mainly on obscure and often unsigned artists, and I usually put the cash directly in the artists hand. I don't have any illegal downloads but there are other ways to cut out the big companies.
This does relate back to one other thing in your posting. The solipsist would point out that Occam's Razor favours their position over the materialist position (zero realities v. one reality) or dualist position (zero realities v. two realities). Funny how some scientists are keen to apply Occam's Razor when it suports their position, but not when it challenges it, isn't it? In case you hadn't worked it out, my own position inclines towards epistemological solipsism.