Here's the biggest question: in an economic analysis of the effects of the Kyoto Treaty (and similar "environmental" efforts), why does the U.S. get raped economically, while no other countries do (certainly not to the degree the U.S. does)?
This is just a theory, I'll leave you to look for evidence about it, but perhaps countries are affected by such treaties roughly in proportion to the amount that they pollute and the U.S. pollutes more.
Sagan had plenty of experiance with the science of atmospheres from his work concerning other planets. The oil fires prediction was wrong because he overestimated the time the fires would be allowed to burn, he underestimated the effect that water in the atmosphere would have, and conditions do not always allow lofting smoke to rise to the levels needed for it to become suspended for long periods of time. Also, it always seems in the quotes I've read about it, that he could easily be intending a worse case sort of prediction.
I've got the cheaper version, 15-2103 (don't own so many things to control). I like it quite a bit. The programmabilty/learning is very good compared to everything else I've ever seen in the same price range (think I bought and returned 4 remotes looking for a good one). I particularly like the "hold the power button down" program that will turn on/off some sequence of devices. Very nice.
I do have one small complaint. The "play" button is right under the "0" and there is no shape difference or spacing between them that would allow one to tell them apart by touch. So I hit the wrong one a great many times before I developed the habbit of either pressing a known useless button (to light up the buttons in the dark) or feeling my way up from the bottom of that column (if I really don't want to look).
Oh, and to the parent poster, I'd love to see/hear about how your hack job went.
I have considered a similar but slightly less horrible idea before. Perhaps they don't do it for such a far reaching "take over the world" reason. However, by not putting a pop-up blocker in IE, Microsoft has generated revenue for tons of companies that have developed and sold them. Similarly, the lack of security helps the developer community for Microsoft's platform by giving them problems with easy solutions and a captive market of people with those problems.
If you solve all the customer's problems then you don't see that customer again.
I think I would rather see a worm that flashes the screen in some scary way and says, "Hi, you just got a worm...", then goes on to explain how they shouldn't be opening everything that they are sent, maybe refers them to some educational internet sites, and ends with a nice threat about the sort of evil things that the worm could be doing other than just ripping off the user's address book for further propagation.
Except that an application that is already running may be have been left in a desired state which is not the same as the startup state. I.e., when you want to look at the todo list you made this morning, not start a new list. That isn't an artificial distinction at all; it is a simple, functionally important one.
It isn't that modern interfaces should force you to use the mouse, but that modern interfaces should allow ways to do any task with either the keyboard or the mouse. Choice, you see, it is about choice.
A cow is not made entirely of meat. If you ever saw one, you obviously weren't paying any attention at all. If you had paid attention, you would have noticed things like hair, skin, hooves, eyes, and teeth (plus a great deal of other non-meat things inside).
You feel that getting Something for Nothing is not immoral?
WTF? Getting something for nothing, in and of itself, is not immoral. If it were, then all those who have recieved charity would be immoral, and that is patently absurd.
... I've been trying to train my new cell phone to recognize whistles for the voice commands. Very, very little luck. Small shifts (to my perception) of pitch from one sample to another completely throw it off. For the same reason, when I tell it "calculator", I have to adjust my voice to the deeper end of my normal speech tones (like I was using when bored with training it). It is far more difficult for me to reproduce the pitch of some whistle I did yesterday than the tone of voice.
I also tried single phonemes with some success but not as much as I had hoped. Maybe I'll try clicks next.
Also, by taking the place of the "old"/philosophy-class meaning, it hurts the reasoning process by reducing the salience of a common reasoning mistake. If the name of the reasoning mistake is corrupted and people thus don't know/think about that mistake they often make, then they are unable to watch for that mistake in their thinking and try to correct for it.
... to have a rechargable battery charger that could suck energy out of near-dead non-rechargables and put it (well, most or some) into the rechargables. I have several gadgets that don't drain batteries of all their energy before they stop working (probably picky with the voltage level or something), and running all my other stuff on "near-dead"s from the pile I have accumulated has its own annoyances.
I might look into making such a thing myself someday, if I get sufficiently bored or I could use it for credit in some lab class. As it is, I'll more likely switch to all rechargables and accept the hit in mean time before power loss in those picky devices.
... is that Mr. Coat tells someone else that you have crashed. You know, someone that can check to see if you are hurt, unconscious, face down in the snow, bleeding to death, etc.
...but if I'm trying to look up something and can't find it online in a couple minutes I generally just blow it off, as if there's no other place to look. This realization seems sort of stunning.
I have a very different interpretation for those times. One that isn't stunning.
The question you have to ask yourself is this: "would you have even started looking that up (whatever you couldn't find on the internet), if you hadn't had access to the internet?" For me the answer to this question in most all of those situations is a clear no.
If I had been curious about the same thing 40 years ago, I would have thought, "Gee, I haven't the time or willingness to bother going to the library to look that up; I guess I may never know." In the present I think, "Gee, I bet I can find that in less than a couple of minutes." The internet lowers the workfunction of finding many things, and I think this leads those of us who are used to it being around to allow our curiosity much more freedom. We stop thinking "I guess I may never know" so easily. We have the urge to tap a few keys to actually look. However, if the keys weren't there, it isn't that we would have looked elsewhere, but that we never would have looked at all.
It is missleading to think that the internet has prevented you from having finding out something in these cases. You probably wouldn't have found it out before the internet. And just consider all the things you do find in a couple of minutes. All those peaks of curiosity that are sated.
Maybe I'm just a little old-fashioned, but I still mostly believe in the internet dreams.
Personally, I would make a pact with myself. If I ever felt like giving up the immortality and offing myself, I would give it another 500 years. If in that time I never found anything to make me think living longer was worth it, then I might give up.
Immortality may give you a lot of time to get bored, but it would also give you a lot of time to develop patience in the search for cool things.
Look, if they want to find the optimal layout, great, sure, whatever (I doubt it would even need that many keys then). I'll be a bit annoyed when learning it, but I can, of course, see how that is nice, and I'm even the type to go through the hassle.
But, what I'm saying is that alphabetical order is worse than basing the layout on qwerty. It is a new layout that I would have to train my motion-control centers on and it isn't even a good one to make it worth it. If they aren't going to go for the super optimal layout, it is better to use one that people already have some skill with.
Plus, basing it on qwerty allows people other than the main user to pick it up and quickly use it well. I don't know about you, but loaning my phone to someone isn't all that uncommon.
Paycheck is an excellent short story, and has more potiential for movie goodness than Minority Report, which translated quite well.
In fact, some of the things that the audiences I watched MR with really loved were inspired more from the story Paycheck than the story Minority Report. The precog doing just the right things in the mall to escape capture against all odds. Straight from Paycheck.
Is it that we require parents to do something, i.e. provide for the welfare of their children? Or is it that we require parents not to do something, i.e. neglect the welfare of their children?
When I clap my hands, is it the right hand touching the left, or the left hand touching the right?
I don't see the difference between requiring that citizens vote and requiring that citizens not neglect the democratic process.
Slashdot Mirror
I do have one small complaint. The "play" button is right under the "0" and there is no shape difference or spacing between them that would allow one to tell them apart by touch. So I hit the wrong one a great many times before I developed the habbit of either pressing a known useless button (to light up the buttons in the dark) or feeling my way up from the bottom of that column (if I really don't want to look).
Oh, and to the parent poster, I'd love to see/hear about how your hack job went.
If you solve all the customer's problems then you don't see that customer again.
Rocks? Maybe a couple of shipments would be worth the cost to a few groups, but the market just isn't that large.
Except that an application that is already running may be have been left in a desired state which is not the same as the startup state. I.e., when you want to look at the todo list you made this morning, not start a new list. That isn't an artificial distinction at all; it is a simple, functionally important one.
It isn't that modern interfaces should force you to use the mouse, but that modern interfaces should allow ways to do any task with either the keyboard or the mouse. Choice, you see, it is about choice.
I also tried single phonemes with some success but not as much as I had hoped. Maybe I'll try clicks next.
I might look into making such a thing myself someday, if I get sufficiently bored or I could use it for credit in some lab class. As it is, I'll more likely switch to all rechargables and accept the hit in mean time before power loss in those picky devices.
The question you have to ask yourself is this: "would you have even started looking that up (whatever you couldn't find on the internet), if you hadn't had access to the internet?" For me the answer to this question in most all of those situations is a clear no.
If I had been curious about the same thing 40 years ago, I would have thought, "Gee, I haven't the time or willingness to bother going to the library to look that up; I guess I may never know." In the present I think, "Gee, I bet I can find that in less than a couple of minutes." The internet lowers the workfunction of finding many things, and I think this leads those of us who are used to it being around to allow our curiosity much more freedom. We stop thinking "I guess I may never know" so easily. We have the urge to tap a few keys to actually look. However, if the keys weren't there, it isn't that we would have looked elsewhere, but that we never would have looked at all.
It is missleading to think that the internet has prevented you from having finding out something in these cases. You probably wouldn't have found it out before the internet. And just consider all the things you do find in a couple of minutes. All those peaks of curiosity that are sated.
Maybe I'm just a little old-fashioned, but I still mostly believe in the internet dreams.
Immortality may give you a lot of time to get bored, but it would also give you a lot of time to develop patience in the search for cool things.
But, what I'm saying is that alphabetical order is worse than basing the layout on qwerty. It is a new layout that I would have to train my motion-control centers on and it isn't even a good one to make it worth it. If they aren't going to go for the super optimal layout, it is better to use one that people already have some skill with.
Plus, basing it on qwerty allows people other than the main user to pick it up and quickly use it well. I don't know about you, but loaning my phone to someone isn't all that uncommon.
Would have been better to pick this layout
In fact, some of the things that the audiences I watched MR with really loved were inspired more from the story Paycheck than the story Minority Report. The precog doing just the right things in the mall to escape capture against all odds. Straight from Paycheck.
I'm looking forward to this one.
When I clap my hands, is it the right hand touching the left, or the left hand touching the right?
I don't see the difference between requiring that citizens vote and requiring that citizens not neglect the democratic process.