If you just promise big enough implications for your "science" and make the explanation sound complicated enough that people don't understand it, you will always have some suckers going "Even if there is just a 0.1% chance it works, the benefits will be a quazillion dollars." This logic is perfectly sound, though. The total expected return on an investment is the return you get on success multiplied by the probability of success. If you can invest $1 million in a technology that has a 0.1% chance of returning $10 billion then logically speaking this is a sound investment. (Practically speaking, unless you have a whole lot more than $1 million lying around, the risk of losing that much money outweighs the fact that the total expected return is high. This is why we have venture capitalists and stock markets and all the rest.)
The problem, of course, is that 0.1% is a very high estimate for the probability of success for this sort of project. But the logic embodied in "If there's just a 0.1% chance of success, then you'll get a bazillion bucks!" is perfectly sound.
Two details should be considered before judging the situation and blaming random people:
The document was found in a computer by university staff, it was not intercepted by the police
It was the University that requested police action
This is a gross mistake anyway, but it's a quite a bit less 1984-ish than one might think from the summary. I disagree. It's an essential of any police state to get a good piece of the populace involved in helping you suppress the population. This was as true of the fictional state in 1984 as it has been of all real-world police states, it's just that in 1984 they had more technological help than is usual.
The fact that university staff was behind it is worse than if it were just the police. If the government is evil but the populace is pure then you have hope. If the populace is complicit in the evil then it becomes vastly harder to get rid of it.
In most moral systems, the mere fact of breaking a law does not mean that such a person deserves death. The fact that you think something as harmless as trespassing means that this person should die says a lot about your character, and not a single bit of what it says is good.
Funny how the US likes to keep foreign competition out of its markets in most industries, but hates protectionism everywhere else. Wow, just like every other country that does or ever did exist!
United is doing exactly what you're looking for. They call it Economy Plus. You get five inches more legroom than they usually give you, and of course charge you more money. I don't see United suddenly taking over the airline business.
There's plenty of middle ground out there. Aside from United, the different airlines vary quite a bit in terms of how much room they give you. They may not advertise this fact strongly, and the various travel web sites may not make it easy to search for this, but it's not hard to find out on your own and adjust your decision accordingly. But the simple fact remains that most people don't care enough to make it a major competitive advantage to lose a bunch of seating capacity in exchange for more passenger comfort.
There's plenty of competition within the US as it is. You have to ask yourself why none of them have wised up and started offering better service. In fact the one that are doing the best tend to offer the worst amenities.
The reason is that airline customers care about price above all else. I recall a study (no, I don't have a cite, sorry) where people would ignore significant differences in amenities for as little as a $5 difference in price.
This is why service sucks everywhere. If an airline cuts food from a price and this allows them to undercut their competitor by some trivial amount, they get a significant influx of new customers. It becomes a race to the bottom, with costs cut on amenities everywhere to allow for reduced ticket prices.
Because of this it's unlikely that Singapore Airlines or QANTAS would make much of a difference in the US market. They'd either have to do the same stuff in order to compete or they would get priced out of the market.
Exactly. Your ability to eject people from your property is the only thing provided by law. All the rest is built upon that. A policy of "You must let us search your bags" is unenforceable. But a policy of "You must let us search your bags, or else leave and never come back" is completely enforceable. Likewise, the amusement park in question is perfectly within their rights to ask any customer to leave if he doesn't fork over his cell phone for the duration.
On a more practical note, any store which bans customers for not letting them search their bags is setting themselves up to go out of business in a swift manner.
Although the civil liberties purist would insist that the park modify the policy to eject the people who use PDAs rather than attempt to confiscate. Only if that purist were a moron.
Leaving is always a choice. There's no real need to state it explicitly. If they come up to you and say, "You can't use that here, please give it to me for safekeeping," then there is always an implied "or you are free to leave our property" at the end of the sentence.
It's not so much dismissing an idea because of the language used. It's really more like dismissing the person. (I know, ad hominem, etc.) Almost invariably, someone who goes on about "chemicals" doesn't know what they're talking about, because the people who do know what they're talking about generally know that "chemicals" include a far wider range of substances than just the nasty artificial stuff. For example, it's very difficult to see how any person caught uttering "all the chemicals in our food" when decrying artificial preservatives or what have you can possibly be approaching this subject from anything other than ignorance.
As you appear to have a clue, I strongly encourage you to avoid this phrasing whenever possible, as it will tend to make other people think you're a nutjob.
Thanks for the pointer on NetLogo, looks like an interesting system.
The trouble is that most people who make this distinction are wildly inconsistent. They will accept a "natural" product with minimal testing. Meanwhile artificial products are unacceptable after years of study, or even after years or decades of actual use with no widescale health effects.
There are people out there who are perfectly comfortable smoking pot because it's "natural", but who think that cell phones will kill you. Out here in reality, dumping fine particulates into your lungs is a bad way to die peacefully of old age. It's this sort of behavior which makes the whole thing look silly. Really, there's no point in distinguishing between "natural" and "artificial", safety-wise. Test both to whatever rigor you think necessary.
More likely it was just screwing up the electronics which in turn was producing audible changes. Sounds like her hearing aid needs to be better shielded, or made more robust from interference.
A much more common case for this sort of thing is with GSM cell phones, which are all AT&T and T-Mobile phones in the US and basically any phone in the rest of the world. GSM operates at 800+MHz but each transmitter in the cell gets one window to transmit once about every 1/300th of a second. The transmitters are powerful enough to induce this ~300Hz hum directly into nearby speakers, with network traffic sounding a lot like somebody sending morse code. It can be amusing to tell someone that they have a call a second or two before the phone actually begins to ring because you heard the network negotiating first.
Oddly, she's never noticed that her cell phone and radio are not hampered in the least by the objects. Have you ever actually pointed this out to her? There's no need to be direct and mean and put her on the defensive. Just bring it up casually sometime, like you just thought of it. "Hey, I just thought of something... how come these things don't stop your radio from working?"
Of course it's possible that you tried and it didn't work, these people can be remarkably persistent in their silliness. But if you haven't, you should. The way to remove ignorance is by educating the ignorant. Nobody benefits from her being left to these ridiculous misconceptions, least of all her.
Yes, we're so compatible with beans that many varieties will kill you if not cooked. (Cooking is, of course, a highly unnatural process.)
We're so compatible with potatoes that many varieties will kill you if not cooked.
We're so compatible with the sun that being exposed to it for significant periods of time without artificial protection can cause painful skin conditions and life-threatening diseases.
Evolution is just a description of stuff that happens. It contains no statement or consciousness of any kind of purpose. Evolution has caused us to be able to digest certain kinds of nutrients. It has also caused us, mostly by coincidence, to be able to digest various kinds of plants but only when prepared by artificial methods. And finally, it has also caused us to die horrible deaths when ingesting the wrong substances, many of which have been around far longer than humans have been.
Please. The oceans are full of the stuff. In theory, yes, extreme fusion use boils the planet. But in theory, we all die with the heat death of the universe. 10% efficient fusion using seawater hydrogen could be the exclusive provider of all worldwide energy and it still wouldn't make a noticeable difference in sea level for thousands or even millions of years.
Refusing to use fusion because it might one day affect the oceans is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Our current energy usage is destroying the planet now. It would be utterly insane to refuse to use a clean, non-destructive alternative just because over-use will start having some small impact some kilo- or mega-years in the future. Nothing is perfect. If this works (and I am, as I said, quite skeptical) then it would be vastly better than any known alternative.
Your provider can screw up your address no matter who it is. Don't think that just because you're with a provider who gives you physical service at a location that they can't possibly screw it up.
A cold fusion reactor which is able to achieve 15% efficiency in transforming hydrogen to helium would be a civilization-changing invention, on par with practical electrical generation or the industrial extraction of oil from the ground. Don't think that just because the efficiency is low that it's impractical. You would be getting enormous amounts of energy from the most abundant element there is. Losing seven eights of that energy to system inefficiencies wouldn't matter. I'm skeptical about the whole deal, but this particular reason is just plain bogus.
That's a very good point. This is not like a perpetual motion machine, which is completely forbidden by the laws of physics as we know it. Cold fusion is only notorious because the people who originally publicized it were total publicity hounds and sacrificed science to get in the news, resulting in it all blowing up in their faces when it turned out that they didn't have anything. Aside from it being a notorious hoax or mistake, there's nothing that makes cold fusion inherently ridiculous or bad.
What bullshit. As if engineers never screw up. Tacoma Narrows. Hyatt Regency. Challenger. Pinto. Their provable mathematical models don't seem to get the job done 100% either.
Instead of using Software Update, download the update package from Apple and run it manually. When it gets to the end and asks you to restart, force quit the installer.
And no, you're not allowed to complain that this is non-obvious and more work. Selectively restarting the necessary applications after updating a core system component is a power user activity, and it is not expected to be simple or obvious. Apple provides the quick and easy way for the average Joe, and if you want something better then take a moment to figure out how to do it the way you want.
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The problem, of course, is that 0.1% is a very high estimate for the probability of success for this sort of project. But the logic embodied in "If there's just a 0.1% chance of success, then you'll get a bazillion bucks!" is perfectly sound.
This is a gross mistake anyway, but it's a quite a bit less 1984-ish than one might think from the summary. I disagree. It's an essential of any police state to get a good piece of the populace involved in helping you suppress the population. This was as true of the fictional state in 1984 as it has been of all real-world police states, it's just that in 1984 they had more technological help than is usual.
The fact that university staff was behind it is worse than if it were just the police. If the government is evil but the populace is pure then you have hope. If the populace is complicit in the evil then it becomes vastly harder to get rid of it.
Wow, what an asshole.
In most moral systems, the mere fact of breaking a law does not mean that such a person deserves death. The fact that you think something as harmless as trespassing means that this person should die says a lot about your character, and not a single bit of what it says is good.
United is doing exactly what you're looking for. They call it Economy Plus. You get five inches more legroom than they usually give you, and of course charge you more money. I don't see United suddenly taking over the airline business.
There's plenty of middle ground out there. Aside from United, the different airlines vary quite a bit in terms of how much room they give you. They may not advertise this fact strongly, and the various travel web sites may not make it easy to search for this, but it's not hard to find out on your own and adjust your decision accordingly. But the simple fact remains that most people don't care enough to make it a major competitive advantage to lose a bunch of seating capacity in exchange for more passenger comfort.
There's plenty of competition within the US as it is. You have to ask yourself why none of them have wised up and started offering better service. In fact the one that are doing the best tend to offer the worst amenities.
The reason is that airline customers care about price above all else. I recall a study (no, I don't have a cite, sorry) where people would ignore significant differences in amenities for as little as a $5 difference in price.
This is why service sucks everywhere. If an airline cuts food from a price and this allows them to undercut their competitor by some trivial amount, they get a significant influx of new customers. It becomes a race to the bottom, with costs cut on amenities everywhere to allow for reduced ticket prices.
Because of this it's unlikely that Singapore Airlines or QANTAS would make much of a difference in the US market. They'd either have to do the same stuff in order to compete or they would get priced out of the market.
Exactly. Your ability to eject people from your property is the only thing provided by law. All the rest is built upon that. A policy of "You must let us search your bags" is unenforceable. But a policy of "You must let us search your bags, or else leave and never come back" is completely enforceable. Likewise, the amusement park in question is perfectly within their rights to ask any customer to leave if he doesn't fork over his cell phone for the duration.
On a more practical note, any store which bans customers for not letting them search their bags is setting themselves up to go out of business in a swift manner.
Leaving is always a choice. There's no real need to state it explicitly. If they come up to you and say, "You can't use that here, please give it to me for safekeeping," then there is always an implied "or you are free to leave our property" at the end of the sentence.
It's not so much dismissing an idea because of the language used. It's really more like dismissing the person. (I know, ad hominem, etc.) Almost invariably, someone who goes on about "chemicals" doesn't know what they're talking about, because the people who do know what they're talking about generally know that "chemicals" include a far wider range of substances than just the nasty artificial stuff. For example, it's very difficult to see how any person caught uttering "all the chemicals in our food" when decrying artificial preservatives or what have you can possibly be approaching this subject from anything other than ignorance.
As you appear to have a clue, I strongly encourage you to avoid this phrasing whenever possible, as it will tend to make other people think you're a nutjob.
Thanks for the pointer on NetLogo, looks like an interesting system.
Check out MOOSE. Hell of a ride and never constructed, but there's no reason it couldn't have worked.
Well, as long as you're consistent.
The trouble is that most people who make this distinction are wildly inconsistent. They will accept a "natural" product with minimal testing. Meanwhile artificial products are unacceptable after years of study, or even after years or decades of actual use with no widescale health effects.
There are people out there who are perfectly comfortable smoking pot because it's "natural", but who think that cell phones will kill you. Out here in reality, dumping fine particulates into your lungs is a bad way to die peacefully of old age. It's this sort of behavior which makes the whole thing look silly. Really, there's no point in distinguishing between "natural" and "artificial", safety-wise. Test both to whatever rigor you think necessary.
More likely it was just screwing up the electronics which in turn was producing audible changes. Sounds like her hearing aid needs to be better shielded, or made more robust from interference.
A much more common case for this sort of thing is with GSM cell phones, which are all AT&T and T-Mobile phones in the US and basically any phone in the rest of the world. GSM operates at 800+MHz but each transmitter in the cell gets one window to transmit once about every 1/300th of a second. The transmitters are powerful enough to induce this ~300Hz hum directly into nearby speakers, with network traffic sounding a lot like somebody sending morse code. It can be amusing to tell someone that they have a call a second or two before the phone actually begins to ring because you heard the network negotiating first.
Of course it's possible that you tried and it didn't work, these people can be remarkably persistent in their silliness. But if you haven't, you should. The way to remove ignorance is by educating the ignorant. Nobody benefits from her being left to these ridiculous misconceptions, least of all her.
If that's evolution, then so is producing and emitting "artificial" poisons.
Yes, we're so compatible with beans that many varieties will kill you if not cooked. (Cooking is, of course, a highly unnatural process.)
We're so compatible with potatoes that many varieties will kill you if not cooked.
We're so compatible with the sun that being exposed to it for significant periods of time without artificial protection can cause painful skin conditions and life-threatening diseases.
Evolution is just a description of stuff that happens. It contains no statement or consciousness of any kind of purpose. Evolution has caused us to be able to digest certain kinds of nutrients. It has also caused us, mostly by coincidence, to be able to digest various kinds of plants but only when prepared by artificial methods. And finally, it has also caused us to die horrible deaths when ingesting the wrong substances, many of which have been around far longer than humans have been.
That's because it takes longer than this.
Please. The oceans are full of the stuff. In theory, yes, extreme fusion use boils the planet. But in theory, we all die with the heat death of the universe. 10% efficient fusion using seawater hydrogen could be the exclusive provider of all worldwide energy and it still wouldn't make a noticeable difference in sea level for thousands or even millions of years.
Refusing to use fusion because it might one day affect the oceans is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Our current energy usage is destroying the planet now. It would be utterly insane to refuse to use a clean, non-destructive alternative just because over-use will start having some small impact some kilo- or mega-years in the future. Nothing is perfect. If this works (and I am, as I said, quite skeptical) then it would be vastly better than any known alternative.
Yeah, because this sort of thing never happens on land lines.
Your provider can screw up your address no matter who it is. Don't think that just because you're with a provider who gives you physical service at a location that they can't possibly screw it up.
If it took me years to get to my neighbors I probably wouldn't know them very well either.
A cold fusion reactor which is able to achieve 15% efficiency in transforming hydrogen to helium would be a civilization-changing invention, on par with practical electrical generation or the industrial extraction of oil from the ground. Don't think that just because the efficiency is low that it's impractical. You would be getting enormous amounts of energy from the most abundant element there is. Losing seven eights of that energy to system inefficiencies wouldn't matter. I'm skeptical about the whole deal, but this particular reason is just plain bogus.
That's a very good point. This is not like a perpetual motion machine, which is completely forbidden by the laws of physics as we know it. Cold fusion is only notorious because the people who originally publicized it were total publicity hounds and sacrificed science to get in the news, resulting in it all blowing up in their faces when it turned out that they didn't have anything. Aside from it being a notorious hoax or mistake, there's nothing that makes cold fusion inherently ridiculous or bad.
You, sir, are an asshole, and I am quite sure that you have never managed to do anything original in your life.
What bullshit. As if engineers never screw up. Tacoma Narrows. Hyatt Regency. Challenger. Pinto. Their provable mathematical models don't seem to get the job done 100% either.
The new SU is kind of annoying for power users, although I can certainly see the advantage of it for regular use. Glad to be of service in any case.
You are allowed to do that.
Instead of using Software Update, download the update package from Apple and run it manually. When it gets to the end and asks you to restart, force quit the installer.
And no, you're not allowed to complain that this is non-obvious and more work. Selectively restarting the necessary applications after updating a core system component is a power user activity, and it is not expected to be simple or obvious. Apple provides the quick and easy way for the average Joe, and if you want something better then take a moment to figure out how to do it the way you want.