The price is eventually set by what people will pay, not by any sum of the cost to manufacture, market, or distribute. If Intel owned a tree that sprouted Pentium IV's for free they'd still be able to sell for $600+. Because people will pay that much for them.
Of course I'm exagerating a bit -- companies often do mark up or down according to their costs, but that's just game playing. A good company's goal is to find the highest price that will still outsell their competitors and avoid creating a black market (watch the MPAA or RIAA for a vivid example of how not to do this). And if that price is higher than their total costs, then they're doing well. The greater the differential the better.
Thankfully we don't have this problem in the technical professions.
The readership here is too varied for me to clearly identify this as sarcasm, but that's my guess.
The technical professions have the same problem. As a development manager I get many resumes that are loaded with certifications and academic credentials and then they fail the simplest interview.
But there's two big differences 1) in many client-doctor relationships an interview isn't possible, and even if it were the client isn't knowledgable enough to properly distinguish the doctor's expertise. 2) most technical professions are not so life-and-death sensitive as being a doctor. Yes, being a doctor is friggin' hard. But they need to be friggin' good.
All I'm saying is that there needs to be some kind of shake-up in the medical community.
It is about time that the medical community was put in check. As far as I can tell there is a culture of protected ineptitude in the medical profession. There are many great doctors, and there are many poor doctors, and there isn't much a patient can do to determine which is which. The medical boards are more akin to a union or religion, and don't help to protect the public at all.
Most doctors I've seen practicing in recent years prescribe whatever new drugs that are promoted to them, usually in the form of free office pens and advertising leaflets. There doesn't seem to be much understanding of the patient or the underlying causes or anything like that. Maybe I'm confusing medical research with medical practice here, but there seems to be a bit of a disconnect. Some doctors I've encountered seem incapable of figuring things out. They can't explain their thought process or answer questions clearly. They're about as sophisticated as an average car mechanic. The medical community must be able to be improved.
If you have a terrible experience and you can't talk about it, then how will this ever get sorted out? If the claims were truly libelous (damaging and false) then the doctor's suit is reasonable... but I have a feeling that some doctors would like to avoid valid criticism. Sorry, but I think the patient's right's trump the doctor's. Hopefully enough of these anonymous sites can be successful that it shakes things up.
I don't think there's any hard physical limitation to a body living for millenia, barring extreme damage. I mean, there are living things that do that already. But obviously that's not how most creatures work.
One possible explanation is that it was just never important for a creature to live longer than it takes to rear it's young. So there's no evolutionary driver for it.
And the counter driver might be that living too long causes you to use resources that would otherwise be available to your young.
Sure, this study will cause an uproar and people will tear it apart. But what if... it's true?
How can I say that? How can I imply that any group could be tested to be superior to another in any way? All men (and women!) are created equal! There is nothing different about anyone! The world is fair and just!
The above paragraph is the consensus, it seems, but it is also just a religion, and has no basis in reality. There are notable differences between different groups. Women have a better sense of smell and color than men. Men are physically stronger than women. Women are more emotionally engaged then men. Men might be (as this study suggests) more intelligent than women.
I think one of the problems here is that people aren't good at distinguishing between individuals and groups (I think that weakness is to blame for most of the world's troubles, but I digress). Though I believe in my heart that an individual of any sex or race or creed can rise to be whatever they want, I am not afraid to admit that as a group they may be greater or lesser than another.
To be clear with an example: "men" are physically stronger than "women". This is well established. But not all men are stronger than all women. I am an average strength man but there are many women who are stronger than me. Maybe even the strongest man is stronger than the strongest woman, but if we're talking about individuals we could say something as meaningless as the strongest person with type O blood is stronger than the strongest person with type B blood. Oh horror!
It's the same thing with intelligence, I think. I am going to go out on a sexist limb and say that men are smarter than women. I am surely a sexist bastard now. But let me just say that the smartest person I happen to know is a woman. And I know many smart women who are smarter than most men. Still, if I was to average out the groups (an arguably useless excercise) I would say in my personal experience that it seems men are smarter than women.
Though I haven't discussed this with my intelligent female friends, I think that they might agree -- as several of them have a hard time making female friends themselves because there is a lacking of intelligent females. At least, that is what they have implied.
I think the same thing applies to race and creed and any other group division. You may find a tendancy in the group, but you will find plenty of individual exceptions. So I don't think these group tendancies are limiting or all that important. Everyone has a shot to be what they want to be, nature or nurture aside.
I think iTunes just uses AES, no? The only secret is the key, which is how most security is usually done. ITunes isn't open source, but the DRM is not obfuscated in any way.
And since I'm posting, let me say that DRM sucks in all forms. I don't believe in mas copyright theft for little bratty kids, but sharing music and cultivating mutual respect between artists and the majority of their fans is good for business (see Grateful Dead for a test case). DRM will always get in the way of some legitimate uses and it will always be crackable by the hardcore thief. DRM sucks and always will.
Well that's cool then. I guess the small cars don't have much advantage on the highway, but a little edge in the city. I think my Celica was real world 23 city and 27 highway. That makes sense to some degree, once you've got that weight moving it doesn't really matter a lot how much there is.
I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers, but there's no way a Caddy or Crown Vic gets 30mpg. My little 94 Celica a few years ago got a real world 27mpg on a cross country trip (all highway). But sure, a switch from a H2 to a recent Caddy would be a notable improvement.
And I never said the choice was between an SUV and a Prius. I understand the world is gray and I take advantage of that. I don't use a water regulator on my shower, for example, because I like it. I try to compensate by saving water elsewhere.
Whatever, there is no "problem with folks like me". I don't slash the tires on SUV's or preach on the street corners that people should switch to bicycles. I'm just saying that there will always be people that regardless of gasoline prices will flaunt the fact that they waste. And I think it looks stupid. That is all.
Maybe I shouldn't have said majority, but there are a substantial percentage of people who will buy an SUV for image sake and pay a ridiculously high price for gas. Even at double or triple where it is now. Anyone who owns a Hummer, for instance. Anyone who owns an SUV for over $30K, probably. Paying that much for one, unless you really need it, is a sign that you have money to burn for your image. I'm within the 60-95% income range you mention and I would certainly have the money to blow if it was important to me (instead, I own a Prius and blow my disposable income elsewhere).
Also, if you think poor people shifting to econo-boxes is going to make them "cool", I'd have to disagree. The rappers on MTV are not going to suddenly start driving different cars because of gas prices.
I agree the market is cyclical and the indulgence of gasoline waste will wax and wane. But I think you are wrong: there are portions of society that are immune to all but the most extreme market forces. And the most extreme market forces are usually averted by the economy as a whole before these people are effected.
Unfortunately I doubt it... if you read the parent post I was replying to, you'll see that most people who bought SUV's have the money to pay for gas at high prices. If you've got the money, you can abuse the system. Like corps who pay multi-million-dollar fines for destroying a public river and just mark it under operating expenses.
Unfortunately I doubt they will. I've rarely seen any wasteful person clean up their act even because of economic reasons. They usually just max out their credit card and piss and moan and try to save in other less effortful areas. Well, in my family anyways.
if they had come up with something that allows you to charge the batteries while the vehicles in use (such as the brake-chargers that the Honda hybrids used)
Um, the Prius does regenerative braking. I think all Hybrids do. That's the majority of the saved energy. Without that I don't think they'd be doing anything useful at all.
Hey! I'm a millionaire and I can afford to buy tanker loads of gasoline and burn it in my backyard for fun. I don't give a flying shit that it's dangerous to my neighborhood, ruins my neighbor's air, and funds the fuck-uppedness of the middle east.
Aren't I cool?
Why hasn't the market taken care of any of this? Or any of the other countless examples from our screwed up society? Oh yeah: because pure libertarian capitalism doesn't work, or it would already exist somewhere.
You have to compare them to a car in the same size & performance range. The 2004+ Prius is a comfortable mid-sized car -- around the size of the Toyota Camry (which gets EPA 22/32 or therabouts) . And it has excellent accelleration (except on the rare occasions where the battery is totally drained).
I love my Prius, but I agree the hype around hybrids is blown out of proportion. Basically, using hybrid technology you can bump up any given car's mileage by, say, 15%. That's nice, and if every car in the country employed it, that would be substantial. But we're nowhere near utopia.
Still, please don't compare a car like the 2004+ Prius to the Geo metro. They're just not in the same class. Most people won't buy a car like the metro. I know it well, a friend of mine did own one.
Also, I don't know where you're getting your mileage numbers, but EPA numbers are completely bogus in the real world. They're useful for comparison (except with hybrids), but I've rarely achieved the full EPA numbers over any length of time on any car I've owned.
I feel the article (at least the slashdot blurb) is a bit misleading. The Prius batteries store energy, they don't create energy. And every bit of energy they store comes from the gasoline engine -- yes, even the regenerative braking is just capturing energy that originally came from gasoline. The aparent gain with the Prius is that some of this energy is wasted in a conventional car. That, combined with other basic efficiency features (light, low drag tires, aerodynamic, etc) are why it gets good mileage.
Increasing the battery size only makes sense if under normal usage the Prius runs out of storage room for capturing energy. But it doesn't. Only very rarely have I seen my Prius battery be totally full. On those very rare occasions, then yes, a larger battery would have allowed me to capture a little more energy. But I would imagine the weight of the batteries would offset this small, rare gain.
I think the main thing to realize about Hybrids, which is why their EPA ratings are so inaccurately high, is that they can achieve incredibly high mileage for short periods of time. My meter only goes up to 100 mpg, but I've achieved that for five minute stretches (and not just going down hill). Still, my lifetime average is ~42mpg.
Think of it like this: it's a gasoline car with an energy cache system. Like any caching system you can get amazing performance when you have a cache hit -- but in the real world you don't always have a cache hit, so you have to test it in a way that will simulate the real-world challenges, causing hits and misses.
Specifically in this article, he talks about getting 80 MPG for shorter trips. The 250 number is from an unrelated concept car for which they give no details... I'll believe that when I can buy it. He gets this 80 MPG average by plugging into the wall and thus relying more on the electrical side for the first 20 miles or so until that boost wears out.
Yes, that will work, except that now you're powering the car with coal most likely, and wasting energy as it is lost in the transmission lines and whatnot. I haven't done a formal study but this has to be even worse than gasoline for polution?
(If you're electricity comes from nuclear, solar, or wind, well, then that might be cool.)
People need to learn the difference between energy sources (fossil fuel, nuclear, solar.) and energy storage mediums (batteries, hydrogen, etc).
Speaking of which, has anyone determined which one biodiesel is?
Anyways, just my thoughts. I love my Prius and recommend it as a great car that gets excellent mileage. But it is not the savior of the world.
I often ask a very similar question about marijuana use (though I don't smoke myself). They don't make money off the drug war -- it costs a fortune in fact, but it seems to get people elected.
You're not an African American. Racism is terrible, and I have experienced it, being half African American myself. Any judgement you render can't possibly make up for the feelings of having bottles thrown at you, being beaten up simply because you are of a different race. Maybe you should be a little more considerate.
How can he be considerate if you don't think people can understand something unless they've actually been through it?
I'm the whitest guy you've ever seen, yet I've experienced some racism. Can I be let into your club of enlightened individuals who know how bad racism is? Or do I actually have to be African American?
Obviosly someone who has had a given experience will know more than someone who has not. But if you're honestly implying that the only way to have any knowledge on a topic is to have lived it, then you've just eliminated any reason for anyone to ever try to understand another. What a lame world that would be.
By itself, it's a lousy argument. If it really was a good argument, then there would be no reason for anyone who hadn't been a victim of racism to be against racism. In other words, there could be no progress, no society, nothing.
If someone oversteps their knowledge, then sure, but let's not make pretend there's no such thing as empathy, sympathy, or understanding in the world.
I had to have the MLB on my 17" powerbook replaced 3 times in the first six months I had it. But then one of the storee employees secretly told me on the third try that by California law they had to replace the whole thing if they couldn't repair it in 3 tries. Some kind of electronics lemon law?
Anyways, the "genius" did not offer this, but when I brought it up he said okay, and grabbed me a brand spankin' new one from out back. It happened to be a faster one with a larger hard drive too. And it's never busted on me since.
Check into the laws in your state (or country) about this.
In this way you may control the motion directly, not only by throwing someone off balance, but actually make each individual body part bend.
Yeah, a friend and I used to do this with an electronic barbeque ignition. You could find all sorts of points on the body to stick it and click it, resulting in a muscle twitch. We would compete to see who could get the most movement.
(We were bored working at an animation company waiting for our Amiga 4000 to render test frames).
Anyways, while that was cool, this is a bit different: even with perfect electronic control of all the muscles in the body, we couldn't coordinate efficient walking. But by working with just the balance organ you can take advantage of the human's built in walking algorithms, and just direct them. I think that's pretty neat.
At Zappos.com we're pretty straight with reviews. We reject anything that is irrelevant or vulgar, but let through positive, negative, even weird reviews. Because of this they're one of the most popular features of the site.
Vaguely related: there's been a huge increase in review spamming for online casinos recently... they never get through, but that bot just keeps on trying.
Slashdot Mirror
The price is eventually set by what people will pay, not by any sum of the cost to manufacture, market, or distribute. If Intel owned a tree that sprouted Pentium IV's for free they'd still be able to sell for $600+. Because people will pay that much for them.
Of course I'm exagerating a bit -- companies often do mark up or down according to their costs, but that's just game playing. A good company's goal is to find the highest price that will still outsell their competitors and avoid creating a black market (watch the MPAA or RIAA for a vivid example of how not to do this). And if that price is higher than their total costs, then they're doing well. The greater the differential the better.
Rock on, Intel.
I thought the pens were the big win?
;)
It was a successful attempt at what we call "failed humor".
Cheers
Thankfully we don't have this problem in the technical professions.
The readership here is too varied for me to clearly identify this as sarcasm, but that's my guess.
The technical professions have the same problem. As a development manager I get many resumes that are loaded with certifications and academic credentials and then they fail the simplest interview.
But there's two big differences 1) in many client-doctor relationships an interview isn't possible, and even if it were the client isn't knowledgable enough to properly distinguish the doctor's expertise. 2) most technical professions are not so life-and-death sensitive as being a doctor. Yes, being a doctor is friggin' hard. But they need to be friggin' good.
All I'm saying is that there needs to be some kind of shake-up in the medical community.
Cheers.
It is about time that the medical community was put in check. As far as I can tell there is a culture of protected ineptitude in the medical profession. There are many great doctors, and there are many poor doctors, and there isn't much a patient can do to determine which is which. The medical boards are more akin to a union or religion, and don't help to protect the public at all.
Most doctors I've seen practicing in recent years prescribe whatever new drugs that are promoted to them, usually in the form of free office pens and advertising leaflets. There doesn't seem to be much understanding of the patient or the underlying causes or anything like that. Maybe I'm confusing medical research with medical practice here, but there seems to be a bit of a disconnect. Some doctors I've encountered seem incapable of figuring things out. They can't explain their thought process or answer questions clearly. They're about as sophisticated as an average car mechanic. The medical community must be able to be improved.
If you have a terrible experience and you can't talk about it, then how will this ever get sorted out? If the claims were truly libelous (damaging and false) then the doctor's suit is reasonable... but I have a feeling that some doctors would like to avoid valid criticism. Sorry, but I think the patient's right's trump the doctor's. Hopefully enough of these anonymous sites can be successful that it shakes things up.
Cheers.
I don't think there's any hard physical limitation to a body living for millenia, barring extreme damage. I mean, there are living things that do that already. But obviously that's not how most creatures work.
One possible explanation is that it was just never important for a creature to live longer than it takes to rear it's young. So there's no evolutionary driver for it.
And the counter driver might be that living too long causes you to use resources that would otherwise be available to your young.
That kind of puts life in perspective.
Just a thought. Cheers.
Sure, this study will cause an uproar and people will tear it apart. But what if... it's true?
How can I say that? How can I imply that any group could be tested to be superior to another in any way? All men (and women!) are created equal! There is nothing different about anyone! The world is fair and just!
The above paragraph is the consensus, it seems, but it is also just a religion, and has no basis in reality. There are notable differences between different groups. Women have a better sense of smell and color than men. Men are physically stronger than women. Women are more emotionally engaged then men. Men might be (as this study suggests) more intelligent than women.
I think one of the problems here is that people aren't good at distinguishing between individuals and groups (I think that weakness is to blame for most of the world's troubles, but I digress). Though I believe in my heart that an individual of any sex or race or creed can rise to be whatever they want, I am not afraid to admit that as a group they may be greater or lesser than another.
To be clear with an example: "men" are physically stronger than "women". This is well established. But not all men are stronger than all women. I am an average strength man but there are many women who are stronger than me. Maybe even the strongest man is stronger than the strongest woman, but if we're talking about individuals we could say something as meaningless as the strongest person with type O blood is stronger than the strongest person with type B blood. Oh horror!
It's the same thing with intelligence, I think. I am going to go out on a sexist limb and say that men are smarter than women. I am surely a sexist bastard now. But let me just say that the smartest person I happen to know is a woman. And I know many smart women who are smarter than most men. Still, if I was to average out the groups (an arguably useless excercise) I would say in my personal experience that it seems men are smarter than women.
Though I haven't discussed this with my intelligent female friends, I think that they might agree -- as several of them have a hard time making female friends themselves because there is a lacking of intelligent females. At least, that is what they have implied.
I think the same thing applies to race and creed and any other group division. You may find a tendancy in the group, but you will find plenty of individual exceptions. So I don't think these group tendancies are limiting or all that important. Everyone has a shot to be what they want to be, nature or nurture aside.
Cheers.
Is "spinfusor" a purely Tribes reference, or does it come from somewhere else? I only know it from Tribes... a great and underappreciated game.
Cheers.
I think iTunes just uses AES, no? The only secret is the key, which is how most security is usually done. ITunes isn't open source, but the DRM is not obfuscated in any way.
And since I'm posting, let me say that DRM sucks in all forms. I don't believe in mas copyright theft for little bratty kids, but sharing music and cultivating mutual respect between artists and the majority of their fans is good for business (see Grateful Dead for a test case). DRM will always get in the way of some legitimate uses and it will always be crackable by the hardcore thief. DRM sucks and always will.
Cheers.
Well that's cool then. I guess the small cars don't have much advantage on the highway, but a little edge in the city. I think my Celica was real world 23 city and 27 highway. That makes sense to some degree, once you've got that weight moving it doesn't really matter a lot how much there is.
Thanks for the info.
I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers, but there's no way a Caddy or Crown Vic gets 30mpg. My little 94 Celica a few years ago got a real world 27mpg on a cross country trip (all highway). But sure, a switch from a H2 to a recent Caddy would be a notable improvement.
And I never said the choice was between an SUV and a Prius. I understand the world is gray and I take advantage of that. I don't use a water regulator on my shower, for example, because I like it. I try to compensate by saving water elsewhere.
Whatever, there is no "problem with folks like me". I don't slash the tires on SUV's or preach on the street corners that people should switch to bicycles. I'm just saying that there will always be people that regardless of gasoline prices will flaunt the fact that they waste. And I think it looks stupid. That is all.
Cheers.
Maybe I shouldn't have said majority, but there are a substantial percentage of people who will buy an SUV for image sake and pay a ridiculously high price for gas. Even at double or triple where it is now. Anyone who owns a Hummer, for instance. Anyone who owns an SUV for over $30K, probably. Paying that much for one, unless you really need it, is a sign that you have money to burn for your image. I'm within the 60-95% income range you mention and I would certainly have the money to blow if it was important to me (instead, I own a Prius and blow my disposable income elsewhere).
Also, if you think poor people shifting to econo-boxes is going to make them "cool", I'd have to disagree. The rappers on MTV are not going to suddenly start driving different cars because of gas prices.
I agree the market is cyclical and the indulgence of gasoline waste will wax and wane. But I think you are wrong: there are portions of society that are immune to all but the most extreme market forces. And the most extreme market forces are usually averted by the economy as a whole before these people are effected.
Cheers.
Unfortunately I doubt it... if you read the parent post I was replying to, you'll see that most people who bought SUV's have the money to pay for gas at high prices. If you've got the money, you can abuse the system. Like corps who pay multi-million-dollar fines for destroying a public river and just mark it under operating expenses.
Cheers.
Unfortunately I doubt they will. I've rarely seen any wasteful person clean up their act even because of economic reasons. They usually just max out their credit card and piss and moan and try to save in other less effortful areas. Well, in my family anyways.
Cheers.
if they had come up with something that allows you to charge the batteries while the vehicles in use (such as the brake-chargers that the Honda hybrids used)
Um, the Prius does regenerative braking. I think all Hybrids do. That's the majority of the saved energy. Without that I don't think they'd be doing anything useful at all.
Cheers.
Hey! I'm a millionaire and I can afford to buy tanker loads of gasoline and burn it in my backyard for fun. I don't give a flying shit that it's dangerous to my neighborhood, ruins my neighbor's air, and funds the fuck-uppedness of the middle east.
Aren't I cool?
Why hasn't the market taken care of any of this? Or any of the other countless examples from our screwed up society? Oh yeah: because pure libertarian capitalism doesn't work, or it would already exist somewhere.
Cheers.
something is very wrong with these hybrids.
You have to compare them to a car in the same size & performance range. The 2004+ Prius is a comfortable mid-sized car -- around the size of the Toyota Camry (which gets EPA 22/32 or therabouts) . And it has excellent accelleration (except on the rare occasions where the battery is totally drained).
I love my Prius, but I agree the hype around hybrids is blown out of proportion. Basically, using hybrid technology you can bump up any given car's mileage by, say, 15%. That's nice, and if every car in the country employed it, that would be substantial. But we're nowhere near utopia.
Still, please don't compare a car like the 2004+ Prius to the Geo metro. They're just not in the same class. Most people won't buy a car like the metro. I know it well, a friend of mine did own one.
Also, I don't know where you're getting your mileage numbers, but EPA numbers are completely bogus in the real world. They're useful for comparison (except with hybrids), but I've rarely achieved the full EPA numbers over any length of time on any car I've owned.
Cheers.
I feel the article (at least the slashdot blurb) is a bit misleading. The Prius batteries store energy, they don't create energy. And every bit of energy they store comes from the gasoline engine -- yes, even the regenerative braking is just capturing energy that originally came from gasoline. The aparent gain with the Prius is that some of this energy is wasted in a conventional car. That, combined with other basic efficiency features (light, low drag tires, aerodynamic, etc) are why it gets good mileage.
Increasing the battery size only makes sense if under normal usage the Prius runs out of storage room for capturing energy. But it doesn't. Only very rarely have I seen my Prius battery be totally full. On those very rare occasions, then yes, a larger battery would have allowed me to capture a little more energy. But I would imagine the weight of the batteries would offset this small, rare gain.
I think the main thing to realize about Hybrids, which is why their EPA ratings are so inaccurately high, is that they can achieve incredibly high mileage for short periods of time. My meter only goes up to 100 mpg, but I've achieved that for five minute stretches (and not just going down hill). Still, my lifetime average is ~42mpg.
Think of it like this: it's a gasoline car with an energy cache system. Like any caching system you can get amazing performance when you have a cache hit -- but in the real world you don't always have a cache hit, so you have to test it in a way that will simulate the real-world challenges, causing hits and misses.
Specifically in this article, he talks about getting 80 MPG for shorter trips. The 250 number is from an unrelated concept car for which they give no details... I'll believe that when I can buy it. He gets this 80 MPG average by plugging into the wall and thus relying more on the electrical side for the first 20 miles or so until that boost wears out.
Yes, that will work, except that now you're powering the car with coal most likely, and wasting energy as it is lost in the transmission lines and whatnot. I haven't done a formal study but this has to be even worse than gasoline for polution?
(If you're electricity comes from nuclear, solar, or wind, well, then that might be cool.)
People need to learn the difference between energy sources (fossil fuel, nuclear, solar.) and energy storage mediums (batteries, hydrogen, etc).
Speaking of which, has anyone determined which one biodiesel is?
Anyways, just my thoughts. I love my Prius and recommend it as a great car that gets excellent mileage. But it is not the savior of the world.
Cheers.
Because it makes money?
I often ask a very similar question about marijuana use (though I don't smoke myself). They don't make money off the drug war -- it costs a fortune in fact, but it seems to get people elected.
Cheers.
You look a bit like Jesus yourself :)
OT but great reply :)
You're not an African American. Racism is terrible, and I have experienced it, being half African American myself. Any judgement you render can't possibly make up for the feelings of having bottles thrown at you, being beaten up simply because you are of a different race. Maybe you should be a little more considerate.
How can he be considerate if you don't think people can understand something unless they've actually been through it?
I'm the whitest guy you've ever seen, yet I've experienced some racism. Can I be let into your club of enlightened individuals who know how bad racism is? Or do I actually have to be African American?
Obviosly someone who has had a given experience will know more than someone who has not. But if you're honestly implying that the only way to have any knowledge on a topic is to have lived it, then you've just eliminated any reason for anyone to ever try to understand another. What a lame world that would be.
By itself, it's a lousy argument. If it really was a good argument, then there would be no reason for anyone who hadn't been a victim of racism to be against racism. In other words, there could be no progress, no society, nothing.
If someone oversteps their knowledge, then sure, but let's not make pretend there's no such thing as empathy, sympathy, or understanding in the world.
Cheers.
I had to have the MLB on my 17" powerbook replaced 3 times in the first six months I had it. But then one of the storee employees secretly told me on the third try that by California law they had to replace the whole thing if they couldn't repair it in 3 tries. Some kind of electronics lemon law?
Anyways, the "genius" did not offer this, but when I brought it up he said okay, and grabbed me a brand spankin' new one from out back. It happened to be a faster one with a larger hard drive too. And it's never busted on me since.
Check into the laws in your state (or country) about this.
Cheers.
In this way you may control the motion directly, not only by throwing someone off balance, but actually make each individual body part bend.
Yeah, a friend and I used to do this with an electronic barbeque ignition. You could find all sorts of points on the body to stick it and click it, resulting in a muscle twitch. We would compete to see who could get the most movement.
(We were bored working at an animation company waiting for our Amiga 4000 to render test frames).
Anyways, while that was cool, this is a bit different: even with perfect electronic control of all the muscles in the body, we couldn't coordinate efficient walking. But by working with just the balance organ you can take advantage of the human's built in walking algorithms, and just direct them. I think that's pretty neat.
Cheers.
At Zappos.com we're pretty straight with reviews. We reject anything that is irrelevant or vulgar, but let through positive, negative, even weird reviews. Because of this they're one of the most popular features of the site.
Vaguely related: there's been a huge increase in review spamming for online casinos recently... they never get through, but that bot just keeps on trying.
Cheers.