I'm sure you've heard this and dismissed it, but I'll mention that I also hated iTunes for not doing things my way when I first got it. I'm a tech guy, and I came from a Linux background when I first toyed with OSX. But... now I admit that the iTunes way is better than my way. It's not 100% perfect, but if I let iTunes work as designed I find that I spend almost zero time messing around with file management. It's so much better than xmms or winamp and a file browser.
I record my own music and have over 8000 songs in my library, so I push iTunes harder than most people. It works great. You just have to use it instead of doing things yourself. It's a little like letting bash handle your interaction with the filesystem instead of doing raw reads on/dev/ad0s1a. You give up some flexibility to gain a huge amount of convenience.
I'm curious what your specific complaints are? What things can't you do that you want to do?
I agree nuclear is our best current technology. We should use it as best we can, and continue to improve it. But I don't see how that means we should stop looking at other technologies, too. Diversity is good. Different technologies might apply better in certain situations. There is no silver bullet.
Harvesting sun energy is a no-brainer -- supplementing power with (as of yet uninvented) efficient rooftop solar panels would be beneficial even for a primarily nuclear based system. Research into geothermal is also interesting: after visiting Iceland and seeing what they do with it there I was pretty impressed. There's a field in California that puts out as much power as a nuclear plant, so it is viable. But we aren't very good at extracting energy from the earth's core yet. Because it's to much energy at once... kind of like fusion.
There's a lot of interesting things to figure out and improve upon. Don't close the book yet.
On a balance scale, not a force scale. It seems a trivial difference if gravity is always the same, but it's not. A spring loaded scale will read differently here and on the moon, while a balance scale will not. Kilograms are supposed to be measured using a balance scale. Though I see lots of force scales used to measure kilos anyways... they just calibrate them for earth gravity, which is reasonably constant. But I figure the folks doing this measurement are familiar enough to know all that:)
How the hell did this get modded "Insightful"? By what crystal ball do you determine that we've already discovered the best way to do everything? I'm sorry, but I call bullshit, though I'm sure people have been shouting the similar things in fear since before we had oil, coal, and nuclear, too. "NOTHING is better than what we've got" indeed.
Here's the deal: mankind needs more and more energy to continue growing. Some of our sources are not sustainable or if they are, won't grow to keep up. So in each case they need to be supplemented or replaced, whichever is more appropriate. So we've got to keep looking at ways to increase our energy sources and use energy more efficiently. Simple as that. Sorry to be so closeminded about this, but if you don't agree with the preceding statements, you're woefully ignorant.
And I believe we are looking for more energy sources, and ways to use energy more efficiently. And to the degree that such efforts aren't hampered by fear and ignorance, we have a pretty good chance of staving off the collapse of humanity for a good long while.
Of course not everyone is interested in making computer games, but most people are interested in... something. I guess it would be ideal if we could identify those interests and benevolently exploit them in the interest of learning.
For the people who aren't interested in anything at all, they can take the standard classes and have 10% retention like everyone does at the moment.
I guess I'm just saying that a little optimization of learning might be good, as opposed to the lowest common denominator approach we have now.
Being an artist, no, I don't value shares and property more than creativity. You can leave the fruits of your work to your children in the form of money and opportunity, both of which can source from creative work. The idea that copyright extends so far as to provide income long after no new value is added to the marketplace seems odd.
The key point here is that even as an artist, I don't believe that I should be able to sell the same one-time effort over and over forever. I generally don't think it makes sense for income to result from no new value. That is why copyrights and patents were set up as limited-time monopolies.
I've never used uTorrent, but my favorite torrent app for Mac by far is Transmission. Just thought I'd mention it since it took me a while to find a torrent app I liked on OSX.
Yeah, this is an interesting thing with much Apples software... you have to trust it and follow its lead. As a programmer and former LInux user, you can imagine this was hard for me at first. I struggled against the Apple software and it fought back. But at some point I decided to just give myself over to the world of Steve (a little like surrendering your life to Jesus, I suppose), and I must admit that you're right: it is better. Most of the things that I was frustrated I couldn't do well in iTunes, for example, was because I didn't need to do them at all. Like managing folders, something many of my non-iTunes friends still futz around with. I haven't even thought about organization of my music or images in years now. iTunes and iPhoto are really just amazing file browsers for those tasks, leaving the finder and the command line in the dust. It was hard to trust, but now I trust, and it is good.
That thing about Harold Loyd's granddaughter as an example for extension is odd. I would think that would be a perfect reason to _not_ extend copyrights. Why in the world is it an social advantage to let someone live off the work of their ancestors, beyond their ancestors savings? Shouldn't they have to contribute something of their own to society to get paid?
I just want to mention an unpopular fact: there is a point in every project I've worked on where table-based layout is either the only way to get a particular detail to work properly in all common browsers, or the CSS solution is so convoluted and absurd as to make multiple nested tables seem proper.
I do like CSS, but it seemingly hasn't covered all bases yet.
I think category 2 is extremely important. I'm a devout atheist as well, but I think to operate effectively you've got to be able to act on things for which you have no evidence. Science itself is often expanded this way: someone gets an hypothesis, they have faith that they can demonstrate it, and if they do, it moves into category 1. I think that is a critical thing.
Even category 3 is useful. Think of how many concepts you have to work with in a given day that you can't be proven one way or the other. Yet you have to make choices. Any one-shot moment can qualify, but as an example, almost all subtleties of social interactions are too complex to meaningfully analyze in a scientific way (though this doesn't stop people from trying, see category 2). But we form beliefs about how these things work and live by those beliefs.
I completely agree that category 4 is harmful.
Maybe I am thinking something different when you say "observe" so perhaps my points don't apply to what you're thinking. But that was what came to mind reading your post.
Personally I am an atheist, but I want to voice my support for what you're saying here. The fact is that science and belief in a higher power are in wholly different domains. Science explains how things work, not why. And God, as an architect (not as a building manager) is completely compatible with scientific belief. Originally, science was in fact largely an effort to know the mind of God. So I find it sad and annoying when fellow atheists take pains to put down the notion of God. I think that most current religions are hopelessly illogical, but the belief in a master architect itself is not illogical. It's not logical either. It's just a feeling you either have or don't have about what you see.
To me, God the Architect doesn't answer any questions that are not answered by assuming the universe arose by itself. But I admit that "why" is not a scientific question, and so I accept that there are other methods by which we explore the world. I especially like your point that science itself is largely carried out on faith until the point of confirmation.
No, you're right, it costs a lot of money. And more to the point of this article it costs some customer good will as well. But the fact that companies are spending money on it doesn't mean it's the best solution. I worked at a place that once used "theft prevention" to help justify a $7mm purchase when there wasn't any way $7mm could be stolen in the lifetime of the theft prevention device. I often wonder how much money is spent trying to prevent shoplifting, and is it more expensive than the shoplifting itself?
Obviously some security is needed. But maybe after you've put a few extra employees on the floor the returns diminish?
I have learned more math and physics as a result of self-guided programming than I ever did in school. I remember a few years ago I was working on a simple vector graphics system for a video game I was making, and I finally understood the point of converting between cartesian and polar coordinates. Then I added physics to the program and picked up ideas like velocity along the angle of impact vs. the tangent. Recently I was working on a program to find color differences, and had to scale certain 0-1 values into a curve by using various exponents.
These are all simple things that I should have picked up in school. Things which I'm sure were explained but without any practical (or even impractical) application. So I only had the vaguest recollection that they were even possible. But the moment I encountered a programming problem that I wanted to solve, yet required this kind of knowledge, I vacuumed it up.
That may not be what you mean by "using technology" in the classroom, but it's what came to mind for me.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but based on how many people misunderstood my post, I wanted to respond in case you are: my goal in putting it in that context was to speak to those who are pure capitalist free market libertarians who think that everyone should make it on their own and all social services should be privatized. I was responding to a post about "socialism" failing. And I just wanted to remind people that extreme capitalism fails too: you need bits of both.
I have sympathy for the disadvantaged, but sympathy is not going to help convincing pure free-market people to part with their money and put it towards social services. What might make them consider it is to remind them of the fact that, whether they have sympathy or not, they don't want disadvantaged people getting so low that they lash out. Or live by hundreds in the street.
I know people personally who would abolish welfare because they don't like people freeloading. But since the other option is most likely to have these people living in the street and stealing (check countries that have no welfare program for demonstrations of this) they're better off with some amount of freeloading.
Anyways, if you weren't being sarcastic, I apologize for the pointless elaboration. But I was surprised by how a couple responses completely missed what I was getting at, and accused me of wanting to abolish welfare and make everything a pure free market. I was saying precisely the opposite, but saying it _to_ someone who might hold that position.
100% agreed. It seems my post has been gravely misunderstood based on some of the responses. As expected -- most everyone comes at the issue with an extreme view and canned answers, not even thinking about it. Doesn't give a lot of hope for progress, eh? But what you say is right on: despite all the complaints I hear about tax money going to things like welfare and social security, it is for the greater good. The taxpayer benefits enormously by having a healthier society.
The fact that you didn't read or comprehend my post, which is almost entirely opposite to what you're putting in my mouth here, doesn't inspire much confidence in your worldview.
My whole point was that the market is not 100% effective. That we need regulation (though not a lot). I mention this because the post I was replying to was trashing "socialism" which usually includes things like welfare, social security, health care, etc. And I specifically said those were things we needed to not lose sight of.
Agreed: pure socialism doesn't work well. But neither does pure capitalism. What is interesting to me is trying to find the balance. I tend far towards the capitalist side myself, even sympathizing with Libertarian ideas. But then I realize that all ideals are subject to their limitations when implemented in reality.
For example: welfare. In a perfect world there would be no such thing and everyone would make their own way or pay the price. So we abolish welfare. Problem is, there will always be a percentage of people who don't make it and who cause those who do to pay the price through theft and violence and being a general nuisance. So it is better for the people who make it to set aside some amount of their income to keep these people living at least at a level where crime upon others is minimized but so is freeloading. Make living at the bottom of the barrel nice enough to prevent crime yet uncomfortable enough that only the most serious hard cases would put up with it. There's no perfect solution, but there is an optimal balance point.
Call it extortion by the poor, but in a pragmatic sense your money that goes towards welfare stabilizes things in a way that benefits you more than just holding on to that money would. There are countries that go too far in that direction, redistributing wealth, and have serious problems. There are countries that don't do any wealth redistribution, and they have different serious problems. Finding that balance... which few talk about... is really the puzzle. But we just get caught up in arguing about which extreme is correct, holding on to impractical ideals.
The same balancing act applies to many areas; health care, government mitigating the tragedy of the commons, copyright. How much should the governement get involved in things? For a healthy society the answer is close to "none", but it's not "none".
Interesting... that's really a different show that you're describing. Maybe a good one, but not very Star Trek like. Still, give it a spin if you're ever on the business end of a camera;)
I haven't seen any of those, so sure maybe the guy's a terrible hack. But I still enjoyed the treatment. Maybe he just would have screwed it up if they had actually gone for it.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure you've heard this and dismissed it, but I'll mention that I also hated iTunes for not doing things my way when I first got it. I'm a tech guy, and I came from a Linux background when I first toyed with OSX. But... now I admit that the iTunes way is better than my way. It's not 100% perfect, but if I let iTunes work as designed I find that I spend almost zero time messing around with file management. It's so much better than xmms or winamp and a file browser.
/dev/ad0s1a. You give up some flexibility to gain a huge amount of convenience.
I record my own music and have over 8000 songs in my library, so I push iTunes harder than most people. It works great. You just have to use it instead of doing things yourself. It's a little like letting bash handle your interaction with the filesystem instead of doing raw reads on
I'm curious what your specific complaints are? What things can't you do that you want to do?
Cheers.
I agree nuclear is our best current technology. We should use it as best we can, and continue to improve it. But I don't see how that means we should stop looking at other technologies, too. Diversity is good. Different technologies might apply better in certain situations. There is no silver bullet.
Harvesting sun energy is a no-brainer -- supplementing power with (as of yet uninvented) efficient rooftop solar panels would be beneficial even for a primarily nuclear based system. Research into geothermal is also interesting: after visiting Iceland and seeing what they do with it there I was pretty impressed. There's a field in California that puts out as much power as a nuclear plant, so it is viable. But we aren't very good at extracting energy from the earth's core yet. Because it's to much energy at once... kind of like fusion.
There's a lot of interesting things to figure out and improve upon. Don't close the book yet.
Cheers.
On a balance scale, not a force scale. It seems a trivial difference if gravity is always the same, but it's not. A spring loaded scale will read differently here and on the moon, while a balance scale will not. Kilograms are supposed to be measured using a balance scale. Though I see lots of force scales used to measure kilos anyways... they just calibrate them for earth gravity, which is reasonably constant. But I figure the folks doing this measurement are familiar enough to know all that :)
Cheers.
They better not try to lock them down like with the ink cartridges... I want to be able to refill with the drugs of my choice!
There's a guy on the street corner who says he'll load it with zizzyjuice for $25 or a blowjob...
How the hell did this get modded "Insightful"? By what crystal ball do you determine that we've already discovered the best way to do everything? I'm sorry, but I call bullshit, though I'm sure people have been shouting the similar things in fear since before we had oil, coal, and nuclear, too. "NOTHING is better than what we've got" indeed.
Here's the deal: mankind needs more and more energy to continue growing. Some of our sources are not sustainable or if they are, won't grow to keep up. So in each case they need to be supplemented or replaced, whichever is more appropriate. So we've got to keep looking at ways to increase our energy sources and use energy more efficiently. Simple as that. Sorry to be so closeminded about this, but if you don't agree with the preceding statements, you're woefully ignorant.
And I believe we are looking for more energy sources, and ways to use energy more efficiently. And to the degree that such efforts aren't hampered by fear and ignorance, we have a pretty good chance of staving off the collapse of humanity for a good long while.
Cheers.
Of course not everyone is interested in making computer games, but most people are interested in... something. I guess it would be ideal if we could identify those interests and benevolently exploit them in the interest of learning.
For the people who aren't interested in anything at all, they can take the standard classes and have 10% retention like everyone does at the moment.
I guess I'm just saying that a little optimization of learning might be good, as opposed to the lowest common denominator approach we have now.
Cheers.
Being an artist, no, I don't value shares and property more than creativity. You can leave the fruits of your work to your children in the form of money and opportunity, both of which can source from creative work. The idea that copyright extends so far as to provide income long after no new value is added to the marketplace seems odd.
The key point here is that even as an artist, I don't believe that I should be able to sell the same one-time effort over and over forever. I generally don't think it makes sense for income to result from no new value. That is why copyrights and patents were set up as limited-time monopolies.
Cheers.
Here here! Pine is all you need!
Why did this get modded "Funny" and not "Insightful" I wonder?
I've never used uTorrent, but my favorite torrent app for Mac by far is Transmission. Just thought I'd mention it since it took me a while to find a torrent app I liked on OSX.
Cheers.
Yeah, this is an interesting thing with much Apples software... you have to trust it and follow its lead. As a programmer and former LInux user, you can imagine this was hard for me at first. I struggled against the Apple software and it fought back. But at some point I decided to just give myself over to the world of Steve (a little like surrendering your life to Jesus, I suppose), and I must admit that you're right: it is better. Most of the things that I was frustrated I couldn't do well in iTunes, for example, was because I didn't need to do them at all. Like managing folders, something many of my non-iTunes friends still futz around with. I haven't even thought about organization of my music or images in years now. iTunes and iPhoto are really just amazing file browsers for those tasks, leaving the finder and the command line in the dust. It was hard to trust, but now I trust, and it is good.
:)
And I still use vim as my text editor of choice
Cheers.
That thing about Harold Loyd's granddaughter as an example for extension is odd. I would think that would be a perfect reason to _not_ extend copyrights. Why in the world is it an social advantage to let someone live off the work of their ancestors, beyond their ancestors savings? Shouldn't they have to contribute something of their own to society to get paid?
Cheers.
I just want to mention an unpopular fact: there is a point in every project I've worked on where table-based layout is either the only way to get a particular detail to work properly in all common browsers, or the CSS solution is so convoluted and absurd as to make multiple nested tables seem proper.
I do like CSS, but it seemingly hasn't covered all bases yet.
Cheers.
I think category 2 is extremely important. I'm a devout atheist as well, but I think to operate effectively you've got to be able to act on things for which you have no evidence. Science itself is often expanded this way: someone gets an hypothesis, they have faith that they can demonstrate it, and if they do, it moves into category 1. I think that is a critical thing.
Even category 3 is useful. Think of how many concepts you have to work with in a given day that you can't be proven one way or the other. Yet you have to make choices. Any one-shot moment can qualify, but as an example, almost all subtleties of social interactions are too complex to meaningfully analyze in a scientific way (though this doesn't stop people from trying, see category 2). But we form beliefs about how these things work and live by those beliefs.
I completely agree that category 4 is harmful.
Maybe I am thinking something different when you say "observe" so perhaps my points don't apply to what you're thinking. But that was what came to mind reading your post.
Cheers.
Personally I am an atheist, but I want to voice my support for what you're saying here. The fact is that science and belief in a higher power are in wholly different domains. Science explains how things work, not why. And God, as an architect (not as a building manager) is completely compatible with scientific belief. Originally, science was in fact largely an effort to know the mind of God. So I find it sad and annoying when fellow atheists take pains to put down the notion of God. I think that most current religions are hopelessly illogical, but the belief in a master architect itself is not illogical. It's not logical either. It's just a feeling you either have or don't have about what you see.
To me, God the Architect doesn't answer any questions that are not answered by assuming the universe arose by itself. But I admit that "why" is not a scientific question, and so I accept that there are other methods by which we explore the world. I especially like your point that science itself is largely carried out on faith until the point of confirmation.
Cheers.
No, you're right, it costs a lot of money. And more to the point of this article it costs some customer good will as well. But the fact that companies are spending money on it doesn't mean it's the best solution. I worked at a place that once used "theft prevention" to help justify a $7mm purchase when there wasn't any way $7mm could be stolen in the lifetime of the theft prevention device. I often wonder how much money is spent trying to prevent shoplifting, and is it more expensive than the shoplifting itself?
Obviously some security is needed. But maybe after you've put a few extra employees on the floor the returns diminish?
Cheers.
Is there really no other way to reduce theft than to treat all customers as potential criminals?
I have learned more math and physics as a result of self-guided programming than I ever did in school. I remember a few years ago I was working on a simple vector graphics system for a video game I was making, and I finally understood the point of converting between cartesian and polar coordinates. Then I added physics to the program and picked up ideas like velocity along the angle of impact vs. the tangent. Recently I was working on a program to find color differences, and had to scale certain 0-1 values into a curve by using various exponents.
These are all simple things that I should have picked up in school. Things which I'm sure were explained but without any practical (or even impractical) application. So I only had the vaguest recollection that they were even possible. But the moment I encountered a programming problem that I wanted to solve, yet required this kind of knowledge, I vacuumed it up.
That may not be what you mean by "using technology" in the classroom, but it's what came to mind for me.
Cheers.
I'm curious how you are so sure of all that. this post, which carries a bit more detail seems to play against your last two points.
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but based on how many people misunderstood my post, I wanted to respond in case you are: my goal in putting it in that context was to speak to those who are pure capitalist free market libertarians who think that everyone should make it on their own and all social services should be privatized. I was responding to a post about "socialism" failing. And I just wanted to remind people that extreme capitalism fails too: you need bits of both.
I have sympathy for the disadvantaged, but sympathy is not going to help convincing pure free-market people to part with their money and put it towards social services. What might make them consider it is to remind them of the fact that, whether they have sympathy or not, they don't want disadvantaged people getting so low that they lash out. Or live by hundreds in the street.
I know people personally who would abolish welfare because they don't like people freeloading. But since the other option is most likely to have these people living in the street and stealing (check countries that have no welfare program for demonstrations of this) they're better off with some amount of freeloading.
Anyways, if you weren't being sarcastic, I apologize for the pointless elaboration. But I was surprised by how a couple responses completely missed what I was getting at, and accused me of wanting to abolish welfare and make everything a pure free market. I was saying precisely the opposite, but saying it _to_ someone who might hold that position.
Cheers.
100% agreed. It seems my post has been gravely misunderstood based on some of the responses. As expected -- most everyone comes at the issue with an extreme view and canned answers, not even thinking about it. Doesn't give a lot of hope for progress, eh? But what you say is right on: despite all the complaints I hear about tax money going to things like welfare and social security, it is for the greater good. The taxpayer benefits enormously by having a healthier society.
Cheers.
The fact that you didn't read or comprehend my post, which is almost entirely opposite to what you're putting in my mouth here, doesn't inspire much confidence in your worldview.
My whole point was that the market is not 100% effective. That we need regulation (though not a lot). I mention this because the post I was replying to was trashing "socialism" which usually includes things like welfare, social security, health care, etc. And I specifically said those were things we needed to not lose sight of.
Cheers.
Wow, what a weak response. If you're going to try and flamebait me at least give me something substantial to bite on.
Cheers
Agreed: pure socialism doesn't work well. But neither does pure capitalism. What is interesting to me is trying to find the balance. I tend far towards the capitalist side myself, even sympathizing with Libertarian ideas. But then I realize that all ideals are subject to their limitations when implemented in reality.
For example: welfare. In a perfect world there would be no such thing and everyone would make their own way or pay the price. So we abolish welfare. Problem is, there will always be a percentage of people who don't make it and who cause those who do to pay the price through theft and violence and being a general nuisance. So it is better for the people who make it to set aside some amount of their income to keep these people living at least at a level where crime upon others is minimized but so is freeloading. Make living at the bottom of the barrel nice enough to prevent crime yet uncomfortable enough that only the most serious hard cases would put up with it. There's no perfect solution, but there is an optimal balance point.
Call it extortion by the poor, but in a pragmatic sense your money that goes towards welfare stabilizes things in a way that benefits you more than just holding on to that money would. There are countries that go too far in that direction, redistributing wealth, and have serious problems. There are countries that don't do any wealth redistribution, and they have different serious problems. Finding that balance... which few talk about... is really the puzzle. But we just get caught up in arguing about which extreme is correct, holding on to impractical ideals.
The same balancing act applies to many areas; health care, government mitigating the tragedy of the commons, copyright. How much should the governement get involved in things? For a healthy society the answer is close to "none", but it's not "none".
Cheers.
Interesting... that's really a different show that you're describing. Maybe a good one, but not very Star Trek like. Still, give it a spin if you're ever on the business end of a camera ;)
Cheers.
I haven't seen any of those, so sure maybe the guy's a terrible hack. But I still enjoyed the treatment. Maybe he just would have screwed it up if they had actually gone for it.
Cheers.