It depends a lot on where you go, how you get there[2] and many other factors:).
But yeah, eating out or in a workplace cafeteria[1] can actually be more efficient than doing grocery shopping and cooking for yourself - you might even waste more food on average than a well-run cafeteria (I know people who buy lots of stuff on sale, and have to throw a lot of it away because they are way past expiry, lose track, or lose the desire to eat the same thing, or the purchased portions just don't match well with "healthy serving portions").
In many high density cities, having your own kitchen is a luxury. If you're single you wouldn't be using your kitchen that much. In contrast a workplace cafeteria's kitchens would be in use many times a day or even night (for 24/7 places).
[2] for some figures: The average sedentary person needs about 2000 Calories = 8 megajoules a day. 1 litre of petrol has 34 megajoules, and a car can travel about 8-10 km on one litre.
I assume it costs more than 8 megajoules of petroleum to farm, transport, cook that 2000 Calories worth of food for you (boiling 1 litre of water already costs 314 kilojoules). So your own transportation costs might not be that bad in comparison.
No need to waste time, space and resources to have the workers go shopping for different stuff, cook their own meals and storing surpluses in their own refrigerators and stores.
You have: farms -> cafeteria fridge/store -> cafeteria kitchen -> consumption point
When done right, this way will be less polluting than the "western suburban method". It may not make for a better lifestyle, but if efficiency is the goal, this is what you do.
FWIW, if you live in a city (normal not factory) that's suitable for pedestrians it might actually not be so inefficient to eat out assuming you go to restaurants that are similar in efficiencies as hypermarkets.
This means that you can put in a network path, rather than having to have the path mapped as a drive.
Uh, in XP and W2K while in the open/save dialog, you can type \\hostname\sharename in the file field, and Windows will try to open the relevant share.
The only benefits from Windows 7 to me are: 1) you can have task buttons of the same app uncombined as separate buttons but still all automatically grouped together (would be nice if you could arrange the button positioning within the group). 2) you can control sound for apps independently (but not so useful with my work machine that has sound muted most of the time;) ). 3) it supports higher versions of Direct X.
Other than that it's not an improvement over XP. The file search is broken - can't find simple text in text files. The start menu search only seems to work if I type the entire word, my usual XP setup for launching stuff works faster.
From what I see, Windows 7 is good for inexperienced users, but it adds very little for experienced/expert users. The Windows 95 UI on the other hand at least added a number of features that expert users could use to make things easier or faster to do (when compared to the Win 3.x interface).
I've nothing against helping and attracting new users, but after years and billions in R&D, Windows 7 and Vista are rather disappointing.
FWIW, even the KDE and Gnome bunch tend to focus on helping the noobs and don't bother adding features to help people who'd bother to learn how to do things faster. Yes I know you can always use terminals, "screen" and cli stuff to do things fast, but to me it's a rather damning indictment of a GUI if using screen to organize windows and tasks is easier and faster.
I've even had friends tell me OSX is great, they have no problems switching amongst stuff and multi-monitors. But it turns out they are using "screen" (the cli program) in OSX for most of their work (and using the various keyboard shortcuts). I have no idea why that somehow makes the OSX UI great. You could do the same thing with a decades old dumb terminal interface.
In the real world, children don't get much choice.
It is the duty of parents to domesticate their children in a manner they see fit (unless the laws of the land say otherwise).
And even if the parents don't brainwash their children, I'm sure MTV, Hollywood, advertisers, Steve Jobs (;) ), will be very happy to take over the job.
Not all religions and belief systems are good. But not all would be detrimental to society even in the long term.
Having a widely-established "syllabus" or programme that biases more people (children or adults) into "doing good" would tend to be more beneficial in the long term than not having one, or having one that doesn't work as well[1].
[1] If atheism is the default for animals, then religion is likely a recent emergent phenomenon. I would then suggest that over the millennia the current surviving religions have outcompeted other religions and atheism, and proven themselves evolutionarily fitter. Many different societies and tribes grew on top of many different religions and many died out.
Many religions were/are too costly to society, but I claim at least some of the surviving religions have provided _net_ benefits to their adherents (and even nonadherents). There have been very many religious scientists, so not all religions prevent rational thinking and its resulting benefits to society.
Atheism on the other hand, provides little in terms of net benefits to their adherents (many who'd say that's not the point:) ).
If atheism is not the default for animals, then that makes things even more interesting right?;).
I admit I do have a "stereotype" category for certain atheists, and many of the alleged atheists on Slashdot and elsewhere have helped create and reinforce that stereotype[1]. Not all atheists fall into this stereotype (just like not all christians fall into the "Southern Baptist" stereotype, fortunately for all of us;) ). Nor does my stereotype assume that atheists are automatically immoral people.
So perhaps it was indeed a jab at Atheists, subconscious or otherwise. But is it that false a stereotype? I'll be happy to let the atheists prove me wrong by their actions and deeds.
As for whether the jab was needed or deserved, from the various responses I got, I think at most my mistake was starting the sentence with "Even". Sometimes a group deserves a jab. I'll go jab the muslims another time OK?
[1] Just look at the usual responses from atheists whenever a religion related thread or story crops up. A large number will fall into a neat stereotype (so much so, that I've seen some other atheists get rather annoyed or even offended:) ).
Atheists do not want to take away freedom of religion. (I don't know of any that do...)
Lenin, Marx, Mao did. The reasonable atheists don't.
As for removing God from government, in my opinion all the current governments (I'm aware of) can very well take full responsibility for what they do and not claim it as an "act of God";).
What if someone decided to put the Flying Spaghetti Monster on money? Would you complain?
I don't see a big difference between that and the other symbols people put on money.
That's why many Christians disagree with infant baptism.
So if a dog or gorilla understood the implications of baptism and wanted to be baptised, then I personally see no reason why the dog or gorilla shouldn't.
Even a reasonable Atheist should allow such a creature the freedom to do so, despite disagreeing with it.
FWIW, I think it may not be such a great idea to keep creating more and more transgenic animals (or even very advanced AI). It looks like society wouldn't be able to handle/treat such creatures appropriately.
Just because it can be done now doesn't mean it should.
In the future, the OS should prompt the user that an application wants to do something (eg. accessing your address book) at the point it wants to do it
This would be annoying, and normal users are likely to still not make the right decisions.
For people who can't be bothered to read and understand the big long list of things that an app wants to do, what Google or whoever should do is to allow 3rd parties to audit and certify a given app for a given big long list of things it wants to do. To make it easy, Google could add a site/service/app that allows such 3rd parties to audit and certify/vouch for apps.
That way, you can say "I trust X to check the apps for me". You should also be able to optionally whitelist everything signed by X, so if an app and its list is certified by X, you don't get any prompts.
Say your parents, relatives and friends might trust you about these "IT" stuff, and so you go to the android app site, and check a particular app for them (going through the long list to see if its reasonable), or a bunch of apps.
Or employees of Company B might get corporate phones which can only run apps certified by Company B (whose cert is installed in the phones/computers). Or people might choose to trust apps certified by some IT security firm.
The benefit to Google? Google gets to know who are the informal "IT advisors" for various groups of people. This can be useful for advertisers.
Google might even allow entities to charge subscription for access to the certification advice, and take a cut from it.
This security model is definitely better than the current security model which antivirus software and normal people have to cope with:
The current model is: "given a computer program, without it's source code or full inputs, figure out whether it would screw you or not".
Computer scientists should notice that at least with the "Halting Problem" you are given the source code and the full inputs, and even then it is still considered unsolvable for the general case.
That's funny coz the "pirates" in my country don't need this key to copy stuff.
They just copy the entire disks as is, and any player that can play the original can play the copy.
It's like making a photocopy of a book in a language you don't understand. It doesn't matter if you can't understand it, all that matters is the end-user (player) can.
The problem is nuclear power stations are very expensive to build.
If the USA doesn't want to lead in this, maybe China can bring the prices down and hopefully not the reliability too;). Many nuclear reactors are being built in China - I think their leaders are well aware of the problems with using coal and are actually doing something about it.
How well does that self cleaning thing work? I'd thought you'd just end up with lots of hard to remove carbon (and other) deposits, and still have to clean it...
If it's "Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet" we're talking about, I don't think he suicided because of the loss of his own savings. He lost OTHER people's life savings too. So he felt remorse about that, and killed himself.
Losing your own life savings is one thing, but losing the life savings of your own friends and clients is another thing.
He was an exception in a world where people screw up big time and then take bonuses, golden handshakes and ask for bailouts.
FWIW many of Madoff's investors regarded Madoff as their friend. What he did was a betrayal in more than one level.
I suggest you do the reverse of what the other person suggested.
Run Windows, run linux in a virtual machine if you need it:).
If you can, get two computers, run Windows on one for your "desktop" stuff (no matter what the linux fans say, desktop linux still sucks - they still haven't got sound right, keep changing their mind on where the close, OK etc buttons, menus should be[1], multi-monitor support is worse or was anyway), and use Linux for your server stuff- web, virtual machine hosting, file serving, DB, traffic shaping, etc - no matter what the windows fans say, windows still sucks as a server, yes it can be done, but Microsoft still can't even get basic stuff right - like useful error logging for instance.
[1] Yes I know I can customize stuff and modify the source, but at the end of the day it's too much trouble and work, Windows XP SP3 is just a better desktop environment for me than Gnome/KDE, some things are just worse on Gnome/KDE/OSX (like having very many tasks+windows open at once).
Yeah for stuff like streetfighter, many of those special moves would be easier for me if the joystick was on the right.
FWIW, I can control the mouse with my left hand for normal office stuff (some people even thought I was left-handed), but for games my right hand still is better.
In some countries right-handers have to drive stick shift using their left hands to control the gears and they manage, left foot for clutch control too.
So yes it may be harder, but I doubt it's impossible for most.
I think in most people specialize their hands for different tasks - you might use the dominant hand for one thing so you only have your other hand free for other stuff - scratching your back/nose.
The real ambidextrous people are those who can learn one task with one hand and near-immediately do that task with the other hand with about the same skill/finesse. The rest of us have to learn it anew, so most of us don't bother.
I honestly think you might be hobbling these young professionals in a sense. Have them show their work at least. Most free solutions to math problems never show the work, you have to shell out hundreds of dollars for that.
Slashdot Mirror
Regularly super-sizing your McD meals can help prevent Alzheimer's. Heck it even reduces your chances of getting cancer.
Slashdot moderation sometimes forces you to use "weasel words" to avoid punishment for being opinionated.
Many Slashdotters are very particular about getting things correct, and there are those who have Aspergers, OCD, etc.
So some of us would only leave out the "I think" weaseling for stuff like "1+1=2" (others might still add disclaimers ;) ).
It's not just restricted to Slashdot - look at all those scientific _theories_ out there.
It depends a lot on where you go, how you get there[2] and many other factors :).
But yeah, eating out or in a workplace cafeteria[1] can actually be more efficient than doing grocery shopping and cooking for yourself - you might even waste more food on average than a well-run cafeteria (I know people who buy lots of stuff on sale, and have to throw a lot of it away because they are way past expiry, lose track, or lose the desire to eat the same thing, or the purchased portions just don't match well with "healthy serving portions").
In many high density cities, having your own kitchen is a luxury. If you're single you wouldn't be using your kitchen that much. In contrast a workplace cafeteria's kitchens would be in use many times a day or even night (for 24/7 places).
[1] workplace cafeterias don't have to be bad:
Apparently Google has some decent ones: http://www.neatorama.com/2009/02/24/googles-cafeteria-doesnt-suck/
And Microsoft too: http://buckleyplanet.typepad.com/cafetour/cafeteria_tour_2006/
[2] for some figures:
The average sedentary person needs about 2000 Calories = 8 megajoules a day.
1 litre of petrol has 34 megajoules, and a car can travel about 8-10 km on one litre.
I assume it costs more than 8 megajoules of petroleum to farm, transport, cook that 2000 Calories worth of food for you (boiling 1 litre of water already costs 314 kilojoules). So your own transportation costs might not be that bad in comparison.
Actually it only sounds good if you put an EPCOT spin on it, otherwise it just sounds like Soylent Green.
Well you could put a Google spin on it:
http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2006/11/new_google_cafeteria_crushes_c.html
http://www.neatorama.com/2009/02/24/googles-cafeteria-doesnt-suck/
Basically Google staff can work, eat at Google. All Google needs is to add decent living quarters and they can do a "less evil Foxconn" :).
If efficiency is your goal, you should do it the Foxconn way.
Basically you live, work and eat in the factory-city (some even die there ;) ). The factory-city even has its own chicken farm producing eggs for the factory cafeterias: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_38/b4195058423479_page_3.htm
No need to waste time, space and resources to have the workers go shopping for different stuff, cook their own meals and storing surpluses in their own refrigerators and stores.
Instead of:
farms -> hypermarkets -> shopping commutes -> fridge/store -> kitchen -> consumption point
You have:
farms -> cafeteria fridge/store -> cafeteria kitchen -> consumption point
When done right, this way will be less polluting than the "western suburban method". It may not make for a better lifestyle, but if efficiency is the goal, this is what you do.
FWIW, if you live in a city (normal not factory) that's suitable for pedestrians it might actually not be so inefficient to eat out assuming you go to restaurants that are similar in efficiencies as hypermarkets.
farms -> restaurant fridge/store -> restaurant kitchen -> consumption point.
This means that you can put in a network path, rather than having to have the path mapped as a drive.
Uh, in XP and W2K while in the open/save dialog, you can type \\hostname\sharename in the file field, and Windows will try to open the relevant share.
The only benefits from Windows 7 to me are: ;) ).
1) you can have task buttons of the same app uncombined as separate buttons but still all automatically grouped together (would be nice if you could arrange the button positioning within the group).
2) you can control sound for apps independently (but not so useful with my work machine that has sound muted most of the time
3) it supports higher versions of Direct X.
Other than that it's not an improvement over XP. The file search is broken - can't find simple text in text files. The start menu search only seems to work if I type the entire word, my usual XP setup for launching stuff works faster.
From what I see, Windows 7 is good for inexperienced users, but it adds very little for experienced/expert users. The Windows 95 UI on the other hand at least added a number of features that expert users could use to make things easier or faster to do (when compared to the Win 3.x interface).
I've nothing against helping and attracting new users, but after years and billions in R&D, Windows 7 and Vista are rather disappointing.
FWIW, even the KDE and Gnome bunch tend to focus on helping the noobs and don't bother adding features to help people who'd bother to learn how to do things faster. Yes I know you can always use terminals, "screen" and cli stuff to do things fast, but to me it's a rather damning indictment of a GUI if using screen to organize windows and tasks is easier and faster.
I've even had friends tell me OSX is great, they have no problems switching amongst stuff and multi-monitors. But it turns out they are using "screen" (the cli program) in OSX for most of their work (and using the various keyboard shortcuts). I have no idea why that somehow makes the OSX UI great. You could do the same thing with a decades old dumb terminal interface.
How about replacing the tiny windows with decent cameras and screens?
No need for transparent planes and cargo etc.
In the real world, children don't get much choice.
;) ), will be very happy to take over the job.
:) ).
;).
It is the duty of parents to domesticate their children in a manner they see fit (unless the laws of the land say otherwise).
And even if the parents don't brainwash their children, I'm sure MTV, Hollywood, advertisers, Steve Jobs (
Not all religions and belief systems are good. But not all would be detrimental to society even in the long term.
Having a widely-established "syllabus" or programme that biases more people (children or adults) into "doing good" would tend to be more beneficial in the long term than not having one, or having one that doesn't work as well[1].
[1] If atheism is the default for animals, then religion is likely a recent emergent phenomenon. I would then suggest that over the millennia the current surviving religions have outcompeted other religions and atheism, and proven themselves evolutionarily fitter. Many different societies and tribes grew on top of many different religions and many died out.
Many religions were/are too costly to society, but I claim at least some of the surviving religions have provided _net_ benefits to their adherents (and even nonadherents). There have been very many religious scientists, so not all religions prevent rational thinking and its resulting benefits to society.
Atheism on the other hand, provides little in terms of net benefits to their adherents (many who'd say that's not the point
If atheism is not the default for animals, then that makes things even more interesting right?
I admit I do have a "stereotype" category for certain atheists, and many of the alleged atheists on Slashdot and elsewhere have helped create and reinforce that stereotype[1]. Not all atheists fall into this stereotype (just like not all christians fall into the "Southern Baptist" stereotype, fortunately for all of us ;) ). Nor does my stereotype assume that atheists are automatically immoral people.
:) ).
So perhaps it was indeed a jab at Atheists, subconscious or otherwise. But is it that false a stereotype? I'll be happy to let the atheists prove me wrong by their actions and deeds.
As for whether the jab was needed or deserved, from the various responses I got, I think at most my mistake was starting the sentence with "Even". Sometimes a group deserves a jab. I'll go jab the muslims another time OK?
[1] Just look at the usual responses from atheists whenever a religion related thread or story crops up. A large number will fall into a neat stereotype (so much so, that I've seen some other atheists get rather annoyed or even offended
Atheists do not want to take away freedom of religion. (I don't know of any that do...)
Lenin, Marx, Mao did. The reasonable atheists don't.
As for removing God from government, in my opinion all the current governments (I'm aware of) can very well take full responsibility for what they do and not claim it as an "act of God" ;).
What if someone decided to put the Flying Spaghetti Monster on money? Would you complain?
I don't see a big difference between that and the other symbols people put on money.
In my opinion, from a Christian perspective money shouldn't be treasured in the first place: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206:19-24&version=NIV
What should be treasured is stuff that lasts forever, and from a Christian POV at least some people will last forever, therefore one should "store up" friends: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2016&version=NIV
I'm definitely not doing a good job of it (as you can see ;) ). Hopefully I'll improve :).
Of course! I have some very big numbers, that you can license from me for only USD9.99.
You're just holding it wrong!
I'm not confused at all. In fact I think the tone and content of your response is good evidence why the sentence I wrote was justified.
Many journalists and "wannabe journalists" are biased against religion, and/or they like to troll (to get more hits/views/purchases).
So they sensationalize stuff.
That's why Michael Reiss lost his job- the media kept claiming that he wanted to teach creationism in schools:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Reiss
With headlines like "Call for creationism in science" and "Leading scientist urges teaching of creationism in schools"
As the guy said: "only if they asked".
That's why many Christians disagree with infant baptism.
So if a dog or gorilla understood the implications of baptism and wanted to be baptised, then I personally see no reason why the dog or gorilla shouldn't.
Even a reasonable Atheist should allow such a creature the freedom to do so, despite disagreeing with it.
FWIW, I think it may not be such a great idea to keep creating more and more transgenic animals (or even very advanced AI). It looks like society wouldn't be able to handle/treat such creatures appropriately.
Just because it can be done now doesn't mean it should.
Better wait till we grow up first.
The problem is that when you install an application, Android gives you a big long list of things that the app wants to do.
This is not a problem. This is a good thing. Google should perhaps group some of the more common lists and call them by friendlier names.
I have proposed a similar thing for ubuntu and other linux distros: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/156693
In the future, the OS should prompt the user that an application wants to do something (eg. accessing your address book) at the point it wants to do it
This would be annoying, and normal users are likely to still not make the right decisions.
For people who can't be bothered to read and understand the big long list of things that an app wants to do, what Google or whoever should do is to allow 3rd parties to audit and certify a given app for a given big long list of things it wants to do. To make it easy, Google could add a site/service/app that allows such 3rd parties to audit and certify/vouch for apps.
That way, you can say "I trust X to check the apps for me". You should also be able to optionally whitelist everything signed by X, so if an app and its list is certified by X, you don't get any prompts.
Say your parents, relatives and friends might trust you about these "IT" stuff, and so you go to the android app site, and check a particular app for them (going through the long list to see if its reasonable), or a bunch of apps.
Or employees of Company B might get corporate phones which can only run apps certified by Company B (whose cert is installed in the phones/computers).
Or people might choose to trust apps certified by some IT security firm.
The benefit to Google? Google gets to know who are the informal "IT advisors" for various groups of people. This can be useful for advertisers.
Google might even allow entities to charge subscription for access to the certification advice, and take a cut from it.
This security model is definitely better than the current security model which antivirus software and normal people have to cope with:
The current model is: "given a computer program, without it's source code or full inputs, figure out whether it would screw you or not".
Computer scientists should notice that at least with the "Halting Problem" you are given the source code and the full inputs, and even then it is still considered unsolvable for the general case.
That's funny coz the "pirates" in my country don't need this key to copy stuff.
They just copy the entire disks as is, and any player that can play the original can play the copy.
It's like making a photocopy of a book in a language you don't understand. It doesn't matter if you can't understand it, all that matters is the end-user (player) can.
Actually it sounds pretty good for 70 years of electrical power for the whole world (at french levels). The Wembley stadium isn't that big.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Wembley+Stadium,+United+Kingdom&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=42.716829,95.888672&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Wembley+Stadium,+Brent,+Greater+London+HA9+6,+United+Kingdom&ll=51.557009,-0.279465&spn=0.262978,0.74913&t=h&z=11
The problem is nuclear power stations are very expensive to build.
If the USA doesn't want to lead in this, maybe China can bring the prices down and hopefully not the reliability too ;). Many nuclear reactors are being built in China - I think their leaders are well aware of the problems with using coal and are actually doing something about it.
How well does that self cleaning thing work? I'd thought you'd just end up with lots of hard to remove carbon (and other) deposits, and still have to clean it...
If it's "Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet" we're talking about, I don't think he suicided because of the loss of his own savings. He lost OTHER people's life savings too. So he felt remorse about that, and killed himself.
Losing your own life savings is one thing, but losing the life savings of your own friends and clients is another thing.
He was an exception in a world where people screw up big time and then take bonuses, golden handshakes and ask for bailouts.
FWIW many of Madoff's investors regarded Madoff as their friend. What he did was a betrayal in more than one level.
I suggest you do the reverse of what the other person suggested.
:).
Run Windows, run linux in a virtual machine if you need it
If you can, get two computers, run Windows on one for your "desktop" stuff (no matter what the linux fans say, desktop linux still sucks - they still haven't got sound right, keep changing their mind on where the close, OK etc buttons, menus should be[1], multi-monitor support is worse or was anyway), and use Linux for your server stuff- web, virtual machine hosting, file serving, DB, traffic shaping, etc - no matter what the windows fans say, windows still sucks as a server, yes it can be done, but Microsoft still can't even get basic stuff right - like useful error logging for instance.
[1] Yes I know I can customize stuff and modify the source, but at the end of the day it's too much trouble and work, Windows XP SP3 is just a better desktop environment for me than Gnome/KDE, some things are just worse on Gnome/KDE/OSX (like having very many tasks+windows open at once).
Yeah for stuff like streetfighter, many of those special moves would be easier for me if the joystick was on the right.
FWIW, I can control the mouse with my left hand for normal office stuff (some people even thought I was left-handed), but for games my right hand still is better.
In some countries right-handers have to drive stick shift using their left hands to control the gears and they manage, left foot for clutch control too.
So yes it may be harder, but I doubt it's impossible for most.
I think in most people specialize their hands for different tasks - you might use the dominant hand for one thing so you only have your other hand free for other stuff - scratching your back/nose.
The real ambidextrous people are those who can learn one task with one hand and near-immediately do that task with the other hand with about the same skill/finesse. The rest of us have to learn it anew, so most of us don't bother.
I was just making the same assumption the post I was replying to: no scarcity.
Maybe singing silly stuff has been a way for impressing the girls for longer than the concept of "rent is due" :)?
I honestly think you might be hobbling these young professionals in a sense. Have them show their work at least. Most free solutions to math problems never show the work, you have to shell out hundreds of dollars for that.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=integrate+(1%2Bx%5E3)%2F2%5Ex
Click on "show steps".