Further, OnStar can currently be used to unlock vehicles. Why isn't that an "irresistible target for hackers"?
Because it's much easier to use a slim jim or break a window?
Disabling cars as they're driving is a pretty novel ability. Heck, I'd pay to be able to force the next inconsiderate asshole driver I encounter to pull over.
Ah yes... the works of William Sleator. For my junior high years, no sci-fi author captured my imagination better. Favorites were Singularity, Interstellar Pig, The Boy Who Reversed Himself, and The Duplicate. At some point after becoming a fan, my school got him to come by and give a talk -- a cool guy, too. I made my first female friend based on us both liking his stuff.
This is not the cause of type 2 diabetes. It's just a slightly earlier item in the chain of effects. The cause would explain why type 2 diabetics have more of this enzyme, or why they respond to it differently. I'd be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that when the true cause is discovered, it will be a lifestyle change and not a drug.
I have several type 2 diabetics in my family and so any drug developed from this discovery could be helpful, but I still feel medical science is a bit off track with this whole "make a drug to block a symptom" methodology.
My mother recently got her early-stage diabetes completely under control: blood glucose was floating from 180-200. Now with dietary changes that almost completely contradict the ADA's recommendations, she's always between 90-110. Thankfully we figured things out ourselves before putting her on meds, where the only path seems to be higher and higher insulin resistance over time. I'm not saying we understand why she has diabetes; why foods that are okay for me, and used to be okay for her, now cause her trouble. But we have kept it under control for months now.
I don't know... I just feel some disappointment with medical research in many areas.
Having had success installing late 80's era black and white Macintosh computers in South Africa, I'm going to say that you don't understand the issue. The needs are very different there and here. A rugged underpowered machine is much preferable to anything you can buy in the stores.
I'd have to disagree -- people live in different areas of the earth where days are of vastly different lengths. And while it's not super healthy, many people live on all manner of strange day cycles with artificial light. I have read that without any clues as to time, people don't naturally settle into a 24 hour day anyways, and that in fact they vary their sleeping cycles longer and shorter over time.
On the other hand, low gravity wreaks havoc with bones and blood vessel walls and such. Hot and cold we can control pretty well, so that's not a huge concern, though it certainly makes it more expensive. Radiation and such may also be a concern for planets without a strong magnetic field. And then there's the whole sustainable artificial ecosystem thing we've yet to work out to any real degree:)
Overall I think living on another planet is going to be a lot harder than we generally expect. We take for granted how well adapted we are to the specifics of planet Earth, and how much we depend on millions of other things that are also well adapted for the specifics of planet Earth. As someone suggested: it would be much easier to build a colony on the bottom of Earth's ocean than another planet, but we haven't even done that yet because it's cost prohibitive and the benefits aren't clear.
Sorry, I was being sarcastic, and it didn't come through properly!
It's impractical because of greed
Yes -- that's exactly what I'm saying. As much as I wish it wasn't so, people are not generous enough to fund a healthy modern state. Some of the money needs to be extracted by forced taxes. You are totally right that greed bites us again when politicians use our money wrongly, and that is something we should try to do better at. But I just try to keep that from making me so cynical that I resent all social services.
As to your situation, obviously I don't actually know anything about it. Though I would guess if you're online much you have access to conveniences that many in the world would envy. Your disability payments would seem to be exactly the type of social service that forced pooling of money allows. And I think that's a great thing: it is better for everyone that disabled folks are not left to fend for themselves, which is probably what would happen under a purely voluntary social service system.
As much as we try to deny it, we do depend to a large degree on each other.
Sorry, I meant "wouldn't take as much of your money". It's not easy to compare tax rates because of their complexity, but for example Mexico has a lower tax rate as compared to GDP at about 18%. The US usually comes in around 25%. India comes in around 7%. My question would be that if you think that the lower tax burden in such countries is an advantage, then why not live there? And if I assume that your reason is because you like America better (as I do), I would ask how sure are you the things you like here aren't to some degree a result of spending our money on social programs?
The US has a fairly low tax/GDP ratio for such a developed country, and this is as it should be. I'm for a government that is as small as practical. And we could make numerous improvements in that regard. But if you go lower on taxes from where we're at, things don't generally get better.
I've not been to Brazil, but I imagine it will be great. I have only briefly visited Chile in Latin America, and I loved it. Good luck!
I don't intend this as a "love it or leave it" statement, as I think it's good to question if the US is doing the right things. But as a mental exercise: there are places where you can go that wouldn't take your money. Why don't you choose to live in those places?
You shouldn't pay, road building and maintenance should be paid for by a tax on fuel.
Better yet, I only want to pay for the roads _I_ actually use. Why should my fuel taxes be higher just because other people want to drive interstate? Let's just make everything a toll road. And if you live in a section of town without roads, and so nobody has cars, too bad. Build them yourself or we don't need you in the economy anyways.
There are countries like that... I'm guessing you don't live in one?
With few exceptions civil society has a better track record than government does
That is true on a case by case basis. But that doesn't mean anything in the big picture. Show me a functioning nation that works entirely by civil society principles. I am unaware of any. I take this as a pretty strong indication of it being impractical as a whole solution.
Guessing from your statement, I guess you can't survive on your own.
Oh, I imagine I'd do better than average, but that's not the point:
I could have survived there on my own without help.
I believe you. Yet here you are partaking in society to the fullest, benefitting from an economy that only arises under a program of balanced social services. You could survive on your own, but you don't want to. Few do. Because the benefits of society are so great.
What do you think people did throughout history without technology?
I'm not talking about technology (unless you're calling social services technology, which I suppose it is). But to answer the question of what they did before technology: they invented technologies so that their lives could be more comfortable, so that down the road people like you and I who may know how to scrape up food and shelter in the wild wouldn't have to, and instead could sit around in royal comfort and complain about the fact that some percentage of our relatively enormous income goes to keep the societal machinery working.
True enough -- I agree that free broadband is a borderline case at best as a justifiable public service. I guess my main point originally was just that social services get too much of a bad rap because we see them as being for the recipient and not for ourselves. But generally they are for ourselves in an indirect way.
I admit I can't make a super strong case for free broadband. But at points throughout history there have been some pretty amazing benefits to bringing public services to the masses. Libraries and paved roads would be examples. By changing the economics in this way, in certain situations it is possible to bring about positive change. People still would need to buy computers and maintain them, it's not a total handout. It just reduces the TCO, and that means more people will get involved. And generally that is a positive thing for the economy.
Also, on the rich end, I think most roaming computer users today would appreciate 'free' wireless, based on the way they congregate around coffee shops that provide such access. What are the long term effects of encouraging greater roaming computer use? How does it effect the way people do business? What kind of devices will become possible with ubiquitous wireless broadband? What effect will they have on our economy? I don't know, but sometimes little things make a big difference. Considering this kind of project is exactly what the government should do -- no business can think over such timescales and so certain useful projects would never happen otherwise.
In the end, it's a democracy... I have access at home and I can usually find it on the road. If the people want "free" wireless, I'm in. If not, I'll deal.
Well...THAT was the wrong argument to make. I'm really not thrilled to have some of my money 'taken' to give to slackers.
See, I'm saying that's _exactly_ the argument to make. And your response indicates to me a misunderstanding of the real choice here. Try going to a country without any social services sometime and see how things are. (Also, too many social services are a problem... the key is finding the balance)
The point is not what you or I would do on welfare -- we'll never be there. The question is what people at the bottom would do. I am certainly _not_ claiming they are noble souls or hard luck cases. Who knows? All I know for sure is that there will always be a portion of people who are not going to work for one reason or another, and it is in your and my best interest that these people are made just comfortable enough that they don't lash out, but not so comfortable that people who would otherwise work would choose to take that path. Call it extortion by the poor, but in a pragmatic sense it makes our lives better. Does that make sense?
Is wifi for the common good? I don't know... but South Korea's government pushed the nation to 100% broadband (a somewhat similar proposition) and it has done quite well for their economy and technical relevance. I think it's something to consider.
As to your bad luck with computer donations -- I hear you and I'm very much familiar with that. Earlier this year I spent six weeks in South Africa setting up computers in disadvantaged schools. The project has been ongoing for ten years and it is extremely difficult to pull off. Theft and damage are not uncommon. But interestingly it has gotten better over that ten year period. Slowly the project is seeing progress take hold. They now manage over 700 computers in 35 schools. Easy? No. Perfect? No. Good? Yes, unequivocally.
Because free wifi encourages broader computer use, communication, and (don't laugh) learning? And therefore it's good for your community and the economy, of which you are a part?
Why should you be thrilled to pay for roads you don't actually use? Because it lets other people get to work so your community runs properly.
Why should you be thrilled to pay for welfare? Because otherwise you'd have higher crime and you'd have to step over starving people in the streets.
I realize wireless internet access is a minor thing compared to these, but I get tired of this "everyone for themselves" attitude. It's a fallacy. Nobody who espouses it has ever actually lived in a place where everyone had to do everything for themselves. There's a reason we form communities and do things for the common good: because it benefits _you_.
Of course there's limits, and some things are best done "everyone for themselves". I'd be willing to entertain arguments that wifi is such a thing, but to broadly dismiss it with what seems like "why should i contribute to the common good" is very shortsighted.
Your specifics are true, but I hope you don't mean to imply that efficiency is wasted effort? If the goal is "more energy" than efficiency improvements are certainly part of the path, because the less you waste the more you have. Alone this isn't enough, but it can alleviate some of the burn we feel with increasing production to keep up with growth.
It reminds me of people who say that optimizing code is a waste of time because hardware will get faster. Which is true to an extent, but as a result most of our software today is dog slow.
Excel still had a 65K row limit, which was very annoying. Whenever we generated detail reports for Excel users we had to break things up into sub-files which often introduced all sorts of errors as people manually combined the results from separate sheets. I never understood why they would have such a limit in place. Using a 16 bit number for most anything in modern apps seems a bit foolish.
I sort of get the idea that if you need more than 65K rows then you should move up to something else besides Excel, but still. It just seemed that the business users always asked for reports that were larger than Excel could handle, then they'd have trouble with them.
I'm a geek, sure. And I can fit in geek culture. But what bothers me about it is that it is so ridiculously exclusive. If someone doesn't get a certain class of jokes or references, they are quickly labeled and outsider. Maybe it's some kind of retribution for what geeks perceived as being excluded in school? Whatever it is, it sucks. Surrounding yourself with only one type of person is a great way to get your head completely up your ass.
As to females in tech -- they are few and far between for sure. When I managed a development team, I got almost no resumes from females. But interestingly, the few that I interviewed were particularly good. Specifically, I'd say that 3 out of 4 tech males don't know what the hell they're talking about. But it's only 1 out of 5 tech females are similarly clueless. I suppose the rude exclusivity pushes all but the very best into another field.
I also notice that generally speaking, tech ladies survive _in_spite_ of the culture, not because they find a way to fit in. Which is an unfortunate way to have to live. But the friction is not so much because they're female, but because they don't fit in with the other aspects of geek culture, and as I mentioned earlier, geek culture is overly exclusive.
I think there are different natural tendencies for women and men, and I think that even without any culture problems there would probably be fewer tech ladies than tech guys. But I think the ratio we see today is way off from that, and everyone would benefit if geek culture was a little more open to different types of people.
Meh. To keep me safer I want the police to do random strip searches all day throughout my city. And outlaw sticks and stones.
I agree that it was pretty naive for her to wear that thing to an airport. But let's stop with the "keep me safe" justification. Fact is you are almost surely going to die from some "harmless" thing you do to yourself (bad health, driving, choking, falling). It is so unlikely that you are going to be killed by a terrorist (or intentional act, for that matter) that it makes no sense to overrun the country with paranoia.
I suppose waterboarding, while generally safe, is too much a risk in this era of bleeding heart snoops. You know, the ones that would claim we can't do whatever we want to whomever we want whenever we want.
Oh the pride of being an American under the Bush administration.
How are they losing money? Meaning that they aren't charging their customers (i.e. adwords advertisers) for the fraudulent clicks? That's not losing money, that's not taking part in fraud. Am I losing money by not helping rob the liquor store down the street?
The money they spend on actually detecting fraudulent clicks is lost, but it can't be $1 billion... and if it is I'd like to meet the handful of programmers that are pulling in $100mm a year. But really, whatever they're truly losing (maybe $1mm a year tops?) is just part of doing business in a world with a small percentage of dishonest people. It sucks, but all businesses have to deal with this.
And it's not altruistic of them to bother detecting and discarding those bad clicks -- if they didn't do this, conversion rates would be lower, adwords would appear less effective, and thus people would pay less for it. It's just good business.
I think you might be right... giving up arable land for industrial energy production seems a bit foolish. If we can get power elsewhere, we probably should.
Quick everyone, let's judge a billion Chinese people (a billion!) by the actions of this one guy! And while we're at it, let's throw in the rest of Asia too.
I'd hesitate to write off the OLPC just yet. It is not a general purpose machine and wasn't intended to be. Third world children need a different laptop than the rest of us do. If the technology works out to be a better fit, that's still a big win. Also, $11 isn't much difference in price, but $11 times 1 million units sure as hell is. As much as your cynicism wants to kick in and declare all good efforts to be worthless, I'd hold on for a few more years to see what actually shakes out of this endeavor.
Reading the responses, I became curious if a reverse placebo effect has ever been observed... that is, instead of an inert substance causing improvement because people believe they are on medicine, does a proven medicine work less well if the people believe they are being given a dummy pill? I'm not sure how you'd stage it, perhaps tell all the participants that they are part of a control group that is receiving no treatment, and then slip a little into their food or something?
The placebo effect is very interesting, and dare I say useful. I sometimes worry that my skeptical nature has precluded me from benefitting off it:)
Slashdot Mirror
Further, OnStar can currently be used to unlock vehicles. Why isn't that an "irresistible target for hackers"?
Because it's much easier to use a slim jim or break a window?
Disabling cars as they're driving is a pretty novel ability. Heck, I'd pay to be able to force the next inconsiderate asshole driver I encounter to pull over.
Cheers.
Ah yes... the works of William Sleator. For my junior high years, no sci-fi author captured my imagination better. Favorites were Singularity, Interstellar Pig, The Boy Who Reversed Himself, and The Duplicate. At some point after becoming a fan, my school got him to come by and give a talk -- a cool guy, too. I made my first female friend based on us both liking his stuff.
Anyways, great books for young (geeky) adults.
Cheers.
Wise advice... I am trying to model the diet that we found for her. It's a good healthy diet anyways, by most standards :)
This is not the cause of type 2 diabetes. It's just a slightly earlier item in the chain of effects. The cause would explain why type 2 diabetics have more of this enzyme, or why they respond to it differently. I'd be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that when the true cause is discovered, it will be a lifestyle change and not a drug.
I have several type 2 diabetics in my family and so any drug developed from this discovery could be helpful, but I still feel medical science is a bit off track with this whole "make a drug to block a symptom" methodology.
My mother recently got her early-stage diabetes completely under control: blood glucose was floating from 180-200. Now with dietary changes that almost completely contradict the ADA's recommendations, she's always between 90-110. Thankfully we figured things out ourselves before putting her on meds, where the only path seems to be higher and higher insulin resistance over time. I'm not saying we understand why she has diabetes; why foods that are okay for me, and used to be okay for her, now cause her trouble. But we have kept it under control for months now.
I don't know... I just feel some disappointment with medical research in many areas.
Cheers.
Having had success installing late 80's era black and white Macintosh computers in South Africa, I'm going to say that you don't understand the issue. The needs are very different there and here. A rugged underpowered machine is much preferable to anything you can buy in the stores.
Cheers.
Read Bimetallism. I think the comment was supposed to be funny.
I'd have to disagree -- people live in different areas of the earth where days are of vastly different lengths. And while it's not super healthy, many people live on all manner of strange day cycles with artificial light. I have read that without any clues as to time, people don't naturally settle into a 24 hour day anyways, and that in fact they vary their sleeping cycles longer and shorter over time.
:)
On the other hand, low gravity wreaks havoc with bones and blood vessel walls and such. Hot and cold we can control pretty well, so that's not a huge concern, though it certainly makes it more expensive. Radiation and such may also be a concern for planets without a strong magnetic field. And then there's the whole sustainable artificial ecosystem thing we've yet to work out to any real degree
Overall I think living on another planet is going to be a lot harder than we generally expect. We take for granted how well adapted we are to the specifics of planet Earth, and how much we depend on millions of other things that are also well adapted for the specifics of planet Earth. As someone suggested: it would be much easier to build a colony on the bottom of Earth's ocean than another planet, but we haven't even done that yet because it's cost prohibitive and the benefits aren't clear.
But we'll get there someday, I suppose!
Cheers.
Privatize roads and create more monopolies?
Sorry, I was being sarcastic, and it didn't come through properly!
It's impractical because of greed
Yes -- that's exactly what I'm saying. As much as I wish it wasn't so, people are not generous enough to fund a healthy modern state. Some of the money needs to be extracted by forced taxes. You are totally right that greed bites us again when politicians use our money wrongly, and that is something we should try to do better at. But I just try to keep that from making me so cynical that I resent all social services.
As to your situation, obviously I don't actually know anything about it. Though I would guess if you're online much you have access to conveniences that many in the world would envy. Your disability payments would seem to be exactly the type of social service that forced pooling of money allows. And I think that's a great thing: it is better for everyone that disabled folks are not left to fend for themselves, which is probably what would happen under a purely voluntary social service system.
As much as we try to deny it, we do depend to a large degree on each other.
Cheers.
Sorry, I meant "wouldn't take as much of your money". It's not easy to compare tax rates because of their complexity, but for example Mexico has a lower tax rate as compared to GDP at about 18%. The US usually comes in around 25%. India comes in around 7%. My question would be that if you think that the lower tax burden in such countries is an advantage, then why not live there? And if I assume that your reason is because you like America better (as I do), I would ask how sure are you the things you like here aren't to some degree a result of spending our money on social programs?
The US has a fairly low tax/GDP ratio for such a developed country, and this is as it should be. I'm for a government that is as small as practical. And we could make numerous improvements in that regard. But if you go lower on taxes from where we're at, things don't generally get better.
I've not been to Brazil, but I imagine it will be great. I have only briefly visited Chile in Latin America, and I loved it. Good luck!
Cheers.
I don't intend this as a "love it or leave it" statement, as I think it's good to question if the US is doing the right things. But as a mental exercise: there are places where you can go that wouldn't take your money. Why don't you choose to live in those places?
Cheers.
You shouldn't pay, road building and maintenance should be paid for by a tax on fuel.
Better yet, I only want to pay for the roads _I_ actually use. Why should my fuel taxes be higher just because other people want to drive interstate? Let's just make everything a toll road. And if you live in a section of town without roads, and so nobody has cars, too bad. Build them yourself or we don't need you in the economy anyways.
There are countries like that... I'm guessing you don't live in one?
With few exceptions civil society has a better track record than government does
That is true on a case by case basis. But that doesn't mean anything in the big picture. Show me a functioning nation that works entirely by civil society principles. I am unaware of any. I take this as a pretty strong indication of it being impractical as a whole solution.
Guessing from your statement, I guess you can't survive on your own.
Oh, I imagine I'd do better than average, but that's not the point:
I could have survived there on my own without help.
I believe you. Yet here you are partaking in society to the fullest, benefitting from an economy that only arises under a program of balanced social services. You could survive on your own, but you don't want to. Few do. Because the benefits of society are so great.
What do you think people did throughout history without technology?
I'm not talking about technology (unless you're calling social services technology, which I suppose it is). But to answer the question of what they did before technology: they invented technologies so that their lives could be more comfortable, so that down the road people like you and I who may know how to scrape up food and shelter in the wild wouldn't have to, and instead could sit around in royal comfort and complain about the fact that some percentage of our relatively enormous income goes to keep the societal machinery working.
Cheers.
True enough -- I agree that free broadband is a borderline case at best as a justifiable public service. I guess my main point originally was just that social services get too much of a bad rap because we see them as being for the recipient and not for ourselves. But generally they are for ourselves in an indirect way.
I admit I can't make a super strong case for free broadband. But at points throughout history there have been some pretty amazing benefits to bringing public services to the masses. Libraries and paved roads would be examples. By changing the economics in this way, in certain situations it is possible to bring about positive change. People still would need to buy computers and maintain them, it's not a total handout. It just reduces the TCO, and that means more people will get involved. And generally that is a positive thing for the economy.
Also, on the rich end, I think most roaming computer users today would appreciate 'free' wireless, based on the way they congregate around coffee shops that provide such access. What are the long term effects of encouraging greater roaming computer use? How does it effect the way people do business? What kind of devices will become possible with ubiquitous wireless broadband? What effect will they have on our economy? I don't know, but sometimes little things make a big difference. Considering this kind of project is exactly what the government should do -- no business can think over such timescales and so certain useful projects would never happen otherwise.
In the end, it's a democracy... I have access at home and I can usually find it on the road. If the people want "free" wireless, I'm in. If not, I'll deal.
Cheers.
Well...THAT was the wrong argument to make. I'm really not thrilled to have some of my money 'taken' to give to slackers.
See, I'm saying that's _exactly_ the argument to make. And your response indicates to me a misunderstanding of the real choice here. Try going to a country without any social services sometime and see how things are. (Also, too many social services are a problem... the key is finding the balance)
The point is not what you or I would do on welfare -- we'll never be there. The question is what people at the bottom would do. I am certainly _not_ claiming they are noble souls or hard luck cases. Who knows? All I know for sure is that there will always be a portion of people who are not going to work for one reason or another, and it is in your and my best interest that these people are made just comfortable enough that they don't lash out, but not so comfortable that people who would otherwise work would choose to take that path. Call it extortion by the poor, but in a pragmatic sense it makes our lives better. Does that make sense?
Is wifi for the common good? I don't know... but South Korea's government pushed the nation to 100% broadband (a somewhat similar proposition) and it has done quite well for their economy and technical relevance. I think it's something to consider.
As to your bad luck with computer donations -- I hear you and I'm very much familiar with that. Earlier this year I spent six weeks in South Africa setting up computers in disadvantaged schools. The project has been ongoing for ten years and it is extremely difficult to pull off. Theft and damage are not uncommon. But interestingly it has gotten better over that ten year period. Slowly the project is seeing progress take hold. They now manage over 700 computers in 35 schools. Easy? No. Perfect? No. Good? Yes, unequivocally.
Cheers.
Because free wifi encourages broader computer use, communication, and (don't laugh) learning? And therefore it's good for your community and the economy, of which you are a part?
Why should you be thrilled to pay for roads you don't actually use? Because it lets other people get to work so your community runs properly.
Why should you be thrilled to pay for welfare? Because otherwise you'd have higher crime and you'd have to step over starving people in the streets.
I realize wireless internet access is a minor thing compared to these, but I get tired of this "everyone for themselves" attitude. It's a fallacy. Nobody who espouses it has ever actually lived in a place where everyone had to do everything for themselves. There's a reason we form communities and do things for the common good: because it benefits _you_.
Of course there's limits, and some things are best done "everyone for themselves". I'd be willing to entertain arguments that wifi is such a thing, but to broadly dismiss it with what seems like "why should i contribute to the common good" is very shortsighted.
Cheers.
Your specifics are true, but I hope you don't mean to imply that efficiency is wasted effort? If the goal is "more energy" than efficiency improvements are certainly part of the path, because the less you waste the more you have. Alone this isn't enough, but it can alleviate some of the burn we feel with increasing production to keep up with growth.
It reminds me of people who say that optimizing code is a waste of time because hardware will get faster. Which is true to an extent, but as a result most of our software today is dog slow.
Cheers.
Excel still had a 65K row limit, which was very annoying. Whenever we generated detail reports for Excel users we had to break things up into sub-files which often introduced all sorts of errors as people manually combined the results from separate sheets. I never understood why they would have such a limit in place. Using a 16 bit number for most anything in modern apps seems a bit foolish.
I sort of get the idea that if you need more than 65K rows then you should move up to something else besides Excel, but still. It just seemed that the business users always asked for reports that were larger than Excel could handle, then they'd have trouble with them.
Cheers.
I'm a geek, sure. And I can fit in geek culture. But what bothers me about it is that it is so ridiculously exclusive. If someone doesn't get a certain class of jokes or references, they are quickly labeled and outsider. Maybe it's some kind of retribution for what geeks perceived as being excluded in school? Whatever it is, it sucks. Surrounding yourself with only one type of person is a great way to get your head completely up your ass.
As to females in tech -- they are few and far between for sure. When I managed a development team, I got almost no resumes from females. But interestingly, the few that I interviewed were particularly good. Specifically, I'd say that 3 out of 4 tech males don't know what the hell they're talking about. But it's only 1 out of 5 tech females are similarly clueless. I suppose the rude exclusivity pushes all but the very best into another field.
I also notice that generally speaking, tech ladies survive _in_spite_ of the culture, not because they find a way to fit in. Which is an unfortunate way to have to live. But the friction is not so much because they're female, but because they don't fit in with the other aspects of geek culture, and as I mentioned earlier, geek culture is overly exclusive.
I think there are different natural tendencies for women and men, and I think that even without any culture problems there would probably be fewer tech ladies than tech guys. But I think the ratio we see today is way off from that, and everyone would benefit if geek culture was a little more open to different types of people.
Cheers.
Meh. To keep me safer I want the police to do random strip searches all day throughout my city. And outlaw sticks and stones.
I agree that it was pretty naive for her to wear that thing to an airport. But let's stop with the "keep me safe" justification. Fact is you are almost surely going to die from some "harmless" thing you do to yourself (bad health, driving, choking, falling). It is so unlikely that you are going to be killed by a terrorist (or intentional act, for that matter) that it makes no sense to overrun the country with paranoia.
Cheers.
Now we can torture people without the inconvenience of a trial and they won't be able to prove a thing.
I suppose waterboarding, while generally safe, is too much a risk in this era of bleeding heart snoops. You know, the ones that would claim we can't do whatever we want to whomever we want whenever we want.
Oh the pride of being an American under the Bush administration.
Cheers.
How are they losing money? Meaning that they aren't charging their customers (i.e. adwords advertisers) for the fraudulent clicks? That's not losing money, that's not taking part in fraud. Am I losing money by not helping rob the liquor store down the street?
The money they spend on actually detecting fraudulent clicks is lost, but it can't be $1 billion... and if it is I'd like to meet the handful of programmers that are pulling in $100mm a year. But really, whatever they're truly losing (maybe $1mm a year tops?) is just part of doing business in a world with a small percentage of dishonest people. It sucks, but all businesses have to deal with this.
And it's not altruistic of them to bother detecting and discarding those bad clicks -- if they didn't do this, conversion rates would be lower, adwords would appear less effective, and thus people would pay less for it. It's just good business.
Cheers.
Fair enough.
I think you might be right... giving up arable land for industrial energy production seems a bit foolish. If we can get power elsewhere, we probably should.
Cheers.
Quick everyone, let's judge a billion Chinese people (a billion!) by the actions of this one guy! And while we're at it, let's throw in the rest of Asia too.
Cheers.
I'd hesitate to write off the OLPC just yet. It is not a general purpose machine and wasn't intended to be. Third world children need a different laptop than the rest of us do. If the technology works out to be a better fit, that's still a big win. Also, $11 isn't much difference in price, but $11 times 1 million units sure as hell is. As much as your cynicism wants to kick in and declare all good efforts to be worthless, I'd hold on for a few more years to see what actually shakes out of this endeavor.
Cheers.
Reading the responses, I became curious if a reverse placebo effect has ever been observed... that is, instead of an inert substance causing improvement because people believe they are on medicine, does a proven medicine work less well if the people believe they are being given a dummy pill? I'm not sure how you'd stage it, perhaps tell all the participants that they are part of a control group that is receiving no treatment, and then slip a little into their food or something?
:)
The placebo effect is very interesting, and dare I say useful. I sometimes worry that my skeptical nature has precluded me from benefitting off it
Cheers.