Most people I know really do seem to believe that when a computer starts running slowly that is indicative of some sort of flaw that can only be repaired by a violent hardware change.
Actually, many people I know really do seem to believe that when a computer doesn't do what they expect it should that is indicative of some sort of flaw that can only be repaired by a violent hardware change.
"My email doesn't work anymore! Should I upgrade?" (saved wrong password)
"I can't find the buttons I used to have! Do I need to upgrade?" (accidentally hid toolbar)
"I can't hear any sounds on my computer anymore! Do I need a new one?" (volume on mute)
This is particularly true of older people, who don't really understand anything about how a computer functions. I've heard of someone recently who thought a new computer was necessary just because she wanted to change her email address.
So, yeah, when you have folks like this, there definitely is a much larger pool of people who would have no idea how to attempt an OS reinstall or how to "clean" their system to speed it up again.
That was not very good advice 10 years ago. While true that OEMs typically sold you a minimum of RAM, hobbling your customers by telling them to buy the oldest machine in the shop was poor advice.
That depends on what someone wants to do. (Also, I think the GP said the cheapest, not the "oldest.") If all you want is something to do basic word processing, email, web browsing, etc., why not? You can often get the cheapest computer for 1/2 or 1/3 the price of something moderately "up-to-date," and then if it gets slow in 2 or 3 years, you can just buy a new cheap one, and still be ahead in cost.
I build my own desktops, but for laptops, I just buy the cheapest thing I can find and have for many years. I have a 4.5-year-old netbook that cost $250 which I only recently retired from use because of a power connection issue. Aside from being choppy when used for high-quality video, there were very few times I noticed annoying slowness (and if I wanted to watch video, I'd just use a different device). I replaced it with another sub-$300 laptop which works great.
Modern advice is that you need at least a dual-core CPU (makes the O/S much more responsive) along with lots of RAM. For XP, my recommendation was a minimum of 2GB and once RAM got cheaper, 4GB. For Win7
Ah, I see the problem -- you're using Windows. With the flexibility of different Linux distributions, you could be running stuff with very light desktop environments. Heck, I have an 11-year-old laptop that was only low-to-mid range in specs at the time, but it still works well with a light Linux distribution. (The battery is long dead and not worth replacing, so I don't tend to use it much these days. But a year or so ago I needed a spare computer for a project, so I installed a light Linux distro, and it was quite responsive... probably more so than it was with the original XP version installed on it when I bought it.)
The drop in SSD prices also means that consumer SSDs are a strong recommendation for the primary O/S drive. Even on an older Vista/Win7 machine (that is at least dual-core), dropping in a SSD can breath new life into a machine that seems too slow to be useful.
Meh. While I agree that an SSD can make a newer system seem even more speedy, I don't know that it's going to fix some old clunker by itself. On an older machine, the bottleneck is most likely to be either RAM or processor or both if it feels "slow." Sure, you might see an improvement in loading times for applications, but for most normal everyday tasks, the SSD isn't going to result in a performance boost on an old computer for >90% of the time you're actually using it... unless you're doing something requiring heavy caching or something, in which case you'd be better off paying for more RAM rather than an SSD.
But I agree with you on a new system -- get the SSD if the cost is reasonable, though for many folks that will require two drives to get enough space (SSD for primary stuff and OS; traditional large HD for large data).
Do people actually believe that? We've had Bush and Obama lying through their teeth about things that actually matter, like reasons for going to war or the extent of spying on our own citizens, [snip] If the stated reason for his impeachment was the actual truth, we'd impeach every other president.
Umm, is there something wrong with that? Politicians lie to the public about unconstitutional actions -- and then get removed from office.
I think that's how the system is supposed to work. Why shouldn't we be impeaching most of the politicians in Washington today?
(And yes, I think the targeted reason for Clinton was silly -- there were plenty of worse actions he took in office. I also agree with you that our recent presidents have been worse. But perjury is serious, and someone who thinks you should just be given a pass on perjury -- "just because I'm a powerful man" -- probably keeps company with those who think it's also okay to lie to the public while committing unconstitutional acts.)
Its not a privacy issue, its a preserve my sanity issue. Last thing I need to do is have my brokerage accounts mixed in with my work accounts and my/. account. I don't really care that each of these companies know I'm the same dude.
But I never allow myself to believe I'm pulling any wool over anyone's eyes.
I think you may have missed the point of the GP a bit. Yes, I agree that his strategies for "privacy" may be a little flawed, depending on how much "privacy" he is actually expecting.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that he's trying to "pull any wool over anyone's eyes." This seems to be a common accusation whenever anyone says they want to have multiple online identities -- it's as if there's something "false" or "lying" or "hypocritical" or "fake" about this. (Zuckerberg, in particular, is on record for saying that people who want multiple online identities have some sort of fundamental "lack of integrity.")
But, come on. In real life, people always have "multiple identities." They talk differently to their kids than they do to the people at work. And they say different things to the guys at the bar than they do to the old ladies at church. There is nothing hypocritical or dishonest about this -- it just reflects different social conventions for different circumstances.
It makes sense to try to replicate this experience in an online environment, but many companies like Facebook and Google and others are making it increasingly difficult. I talk to people all the time who complain about how their boss friended them on Facebook or something, and now they have to be increasingly careful about what they say. It's not like they want to actually "hide" anything from their boss -- but being under constant surveillance by someone from work means that misunderstandings can happen or things could be misinterpreted... so it makes people nervous. This trend also sees to be leading teens away from Facebook, since they don't want their parents seeing what they do. (And yes, there are ways to manage posts and things so they aren't visible to everyone, but when you have the number of "multiple identities" to different people that a normal person does in real life, it can be unwieldy.)
Anyhow, the point is that keeping different parts of your life separate IS a "privacy issue." This is NOT about having secure walls around your private data -- just about keeping things reasonably separate, so your work and your home and your social life don't all necessarily have to blend into one thing. Or so you can have a "professional online presence," but also a place where you are slightly less formal. Some people may like having only one online identity; others may find it more convenient to have more than one. (Some actually find it necessary for their safety.)
(groan)... seems there are publications much slower than/. - this was supposed to be news one year and a half ago.
To be fair, ball lightning sightings and claims to have photographed it or caught it on video are quite frequent, with a very high rate of hoaxes or mistaking other phenomena for it. (Almost as bad as UFO sightings and "evidence.")
It wouldn't surprise me at all if a few extra months were added to the researchers' analysis and to the peer review just to substantiate that this is what it says it is, and all the analysis is correct. Ball lightning is just one of those things that so many people have claimed to see, and it seems odd that scientists have so much trouble catching evidence of natural occurrences... so when you finally think you've got it, you want to be sure.
Not saying it explains the whole delay, but maybe part of it.
There are some animals like pigs and cows that can be herded and bred easily -- they hardly try to escape, and they reproduce in captivity easily and in large numbers. You can basically just catch a few of them in the wild and build a fence around them, and provide food and water, and they'll be content until the day you kill them.
You've obviously never actually seen a wild pig, have you? I'd hardly say that they would "hardly try to escape," and you can just simply put them in captivity where they will be content.
You've overlooking hundreds or even thousands of generations where livestock were specifically bred to be docile and live within the constraints we put on them. If some of your livestock babies happen to be too "wild" or dangerous or don't do what humans want, guess what? They aren't bred. You only choose to breed the animals that have good traits. Even after a few generations of only breeding the most docile animals, experiments have shown that "wild" animals can be turned into pets. Take the Siberian fox breeding project, which only started about 50 years ago. Even in just a few generations, the foxes' behavior was changed from "wild" to something much more desireable from a human perspective.
I was just saying, the idea of preserving species based on our idea of what they think or feel doesn't really allow us to do the same for plants. Plants are so different from humans that we are unlikely to ever have much sympathy or empathy for their "thoughts" or "feelings," which from the human perspective don't really even exist.
Please realize that your view is only your own personal experience, in this instance. You cannot just state this as if it were an objective argument. My personal experience with tending plants, and those of many gardeners I know, says otherwise.
I did a lot of gardening when I was younger, and I'm gradually getting back into it. I have, over the years, also had a large supply of houseplants -- usually given to me, rather than something I sought out.
But even if you spend only limited time "taking care of" plants, you begin to notice their dynamic quality. Many plants will respond rather quickly when watered after being neglected for a while, only a day or two of a change in sun direction, and you see the new growth pointing in a different direction, and many plants will even respond negatively to being handled roughly (or at all) by humans... wilting or browning within a few days.
I never really thought deeply about this until I had a friend who would "torture" houseplants. I know a lot of people who just couldn't handle having them... they'd just forget about them and they'd dry up before they were even noticed.
But this friend would periodically remember that she had them... and try to nurse them back after they were half dead. The plant would spend years in a cycle of responding vigorously (yearningly?) when finally watered and tended, only to be dying again after a week of neglect.
Since then I've read many recent findings about plants' sensitivity and ability to respond in fairly complex ways to a variety of stimuli. It makes me think back on my friend's behavior and personify the plants -- imagine yourself in that sort of cycle of neglect, responding quickly and vigorously when someone gives you even the slightest attention, but then failing again and again and ending up fighting for your life on a weekly basis. It's a horrifying prospect.
I'm not at all claiming that a plant has anything like "conscious feelings" that we could understand in that sense. I'm certain that my sympathy can never quite understand what it "feels like" to be a plant in a situation like that. But from my experience seeing all the complex ways plants respond as they grow, I came to view my friend's behavior as a little sadistic. It made me somewhat sad to think of those plants being "tortured" like that.
I'm sure that if you haven't spent a lot of time observing the growth patterns of plants, you may not understand this perspective. But just because the plant doesn't come up and lick your hand or something immediately when you offer it food doesn't mean it doesn't respond to care -- the effects just happen on a slightly longer time scale.
And before you dismiss this all as some sort of craziness, consider that you have absolutely no freakin' idea what it "feels like" to be a chimp or a dog or a pig or a dolphin or whatever. In fact, you have no idea what it even feels like to be me. All you can do -- and we can ever do -- is observe behaviors and characteristics of other things, animals, plants, or even other people, and assume that analogous behaviors might mean that there could be some sort of commonality of experience. Sure, we can argue about brain structure or nervous system structure, but that tells us precious little about how it "feels" to be some other creature. New research comes out on a regular basis about how much of even humans' perception and behavior and "feeling" comes out of stuff beyond out basic nervous system and brain... our bodies have very complex interactions with the environment, and it's not all neatly quantified and run through our conscious brains to create our "feelin
Go back and read exactly what she said. Communist countries can pass rather extreme laws to deal with climate change.
Yes, and....?? Communist countries could also pass rather extreme laws that make climate change worse, particularly if by doing so it makes party leaders more powerful or more wealthy. (This is true in democracies as well.)
Also, even if by chance you have leaders who have selfless devotion to the population, there is still no guarantee that they will act in the long-term global interest. Having more power to pass draconian laws could mean that they pass laws that make the environment much worse globally, but benefit that particular country in the short term.
In any case this is a distraction from her real point. She was saying that democracies have difficulty dealing with climate change because people tend not to support things that cost them money. Being dirty is cheaper for the individual, at least superficially.
And you think governments like volunteering to "support things that cost them money" if they don't see a net benefit to the government or those in charge of it? It's not just individuals.
Besides, this whole discussion is bogus since there are precious few (any?) true large-scale democracies in the world. Almost every country that claims to be "democratic" is actually a republic.
Part of the rationale of having a republic rather than direct democracy (other than efficiency) is that people devoted to governing can see a bit more of the "big picture" and make decisions for their constituents that those constituents might not take individual action on. The same mechanisms that, for example, protect minorities in a republic, are the ones that can be used to protect other interests that may not always achieve a majority in a direct vote.
She made the rather obvious point that communist states find it easier to act for the collective good, while in democracies people tend to act in their own interests.
I wouldn't say this point is "obvious" at all. I have nothing against many of the general ideas of socialism or communism, but practical experience is not as clear-cut as your "obvious point" seems.
First, most people "act in their own interests" most of the time, regardless of what you call the government organizing principle.
In theory, communist states should be able to more easily "act for the collective good," but that's really only true for some sort of utopian ideal communist state.
In practice, most actual places that claimed to be "communist" in their government for the past century have often tended toward situations where power is concentrated among certain party leaders. And -- guess what -- many of those parties leaders tend to "act in their own interest" to retain power, control, accumulate goods, etc.
In essence, most of the "communist" experiments the world have seen so far have not successfully found it "easier to act for the collective good," if that collective good doesn't accord with whatever makes life better for the party leaders.
Socialism and communism do in fact make it easier for governments to implement certain kinds of changes because of decreased individual control over many things. But whether those changes are actually better "for the collective good" depends on who has the power and what their motivations are... just as it does in democratic states.
So, if we want to start comparing "ideal democracies" and "ideal communist states" and "ideal republics" and whatever else, I bet we could make claims that all of them would find better ways of functioning for the "collective good" (definied in slightly different ways). The problem is that none of these systems functions in these ideal ways in practice.
This works if you buy often, and only in small packages. This is expensive. I tend to buy stuff in large packages, they cost far less per unit of food.
As I mentioned, you can still buy in bulk. But also going to the store every other day or so will actually increase your likelihood of seeing good deals. There's a special today? Pick up some extra. New load of tomatoes just showed up? They probably taste better, so get some while they're fresh.
Sure, you can generally watch store flyers, etc. and plan your trips, but you're less likely to see daily specials or be able to take advantage of every deal when it's convenient. And for perishable food like produce or meats, shopping every day will often give you a sense of what is actually fresh and high quality, when is the peak time to buy (because shipments come in), etc. It's not just about saving money -- it's about quality too.
I know this sounds crazy but some people go to the market every day.
Yes, some people do that. Other people have better things to do with their life than to spend 30 minutes every day in a store.
No -- if you shop frequently, your average time in the store per visit is more like 5-10 minutes. You know exactly where everything is, since you go there so frequently, and you figure out ways to make it more efficient (like always using the "15 items or less" check-out lane when possible).
I know that you're probably also thinking -- "But I can't even walk through the store in 5 minutes -- it's huge!" Well, that's exactly what the U.S. system does to smaller specialty stores. In Europe, the typical "supermarket" is often a tiny fraction of the size of an American one. If you need something more specialized, you stop in at a different shop. You can plan your daily buying pattern to get the best goods from those small shops that specialize -- one day you get bread from the bakery, one day meat from the butcher, the next day do a "general shop" for miscellaneous at the supermarket, etc.
Plus, if you have a family, it can actually save you time to go to the store without kids in tow. If you just add 7 or 8 minutes to your commute time, you might not have to deal with other family responsibilities. If you're going to spend an hour in the store on a weekend or later in the evening (along with a 40-minute commute you mention), you may need to bring along a kid or two... and suddenly that trip gets longer and much less efficient. This may not be true for everyone, but shopping frequently may actually be significantly more efficient for some people.
The store is in about 40 minutes of driving from my home.
Yeah, this is the problem. So it's not feasible for you to go more frequently. Everyone has their own situation, but in the U.S. your situation is just more common because of the way cities are usually laid out. It's not that it's inherently more efficient or better.
This works if you buy often, and only in small packages. This is expensive. I tend to buy stuff in large packages, they cost far less per unit of food. But one gallon container will be pretty heavy.
What the heck do you think people did before cars? Do you think no one ever bought in bulk?
You just require a little planning. When you need to pick up some 10-pound or 15-pound item, you can't buy a lot of other stuff that day. You just plan to buy the big bag of flour every so often, or the giant jug of oil, or whatever. It's not that hard.
Back when my father was young, my grandparents didn't have a car -- most people in cities didn't. (This was in the U.S.) My grandmother baked often -- they'd go through a 50-pound bag of flour every few months. So, when it was time, my grandmother would tell my grandfather to pick one up at the store... and my grandfather would throw the thing over his shoulder and bring it home. I think it was maybe 3/4 of a mile or so. Not that hard in an era where everyone was used to carrying things everywhere. (My grandfather's father was a carpenter, who frequently carried his giant toolbox on one shoulder and a heavy wooden ladder on the other... sometimes for miles in a single day. He was not a big guy, either. That's just what you did in the era before cars.)
My point is: it's very easy to plan for buying in bulk and carrying items. Your argument makes little sense if you think about it logically: you still need to carry the same weight home, so you could either buy smaller containers more frequently, or you could plan to make larger bulk purchases on a schedule when you can carry the big things home. If you think about it for a second, it's actually more efficient to buy in bulk when you have to carry everything -- because packaging (especially jars and cans) will weigh less overall.
oh bullshit. You get an engine code, drive to autozone (except in the republic of california where the lawyers own everything) and the code scanner tells you what's wrong. No more "what's wrong with the carburetor and it's 1000 parts. It's now plug-in diagnostic computers. Oh, and they don't break as much, so you don't do that as much.
No, sorry, it is significantly harder. Particularly routine maintenance -- and I do think it's deliberate. On a recent car, I discovered that to change the oil, the only reasonable way to change the filter without a lift was to take a wheel off.
When my dad was changing oil in cars, he could crawl underneath, pull the plug, access the filter from some reasonable spot, and all was relatively simple. If I don't have access to a lift, I have to buy jack stands and take the wheel off -- just to change the oil and filter.
I could go on with other examples of basic maintenance -- like having batteries that require just the right length socket to get them out (too short, and you can't get to it, too long and you hit something), or making headlight replacement so annoying that you have to take half of the front quarter of the car apart -- and this is only with the few cars I've dealt with in the past few years... mainstream models
We're not talking about complicated repairs here. Basic maintenance has become a pain for many vehicles unless you're willing to go out and buy a special tool for each job or go through a ridiculously complex series of steps if you don't have access to the kind of stuff in a professional garage.
Every family is a single person family? Or every member can carry their own shopping?
How about we assume that it is better for a single person to do a family's shopping, and you can state how any of this is relevant.
Umm, you just go to the grocery store more often. Seriously, is this that hard to understand?
Just about every normal person in continental Europe goes to the store at least every other day, often every day. You get fresh food -- fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, fresh meats, fresh baked goods. Everything tastes a heck of a lot better, and you only have to pay for a refrigerator and pantry about 1/3 or 1/4 of the size of an American one.
I know you think this may take up a lot of time, but frankly it's worth it -- for the better quality of fresh food. Most Europeans simply plan their daily commute around making a trip to the store (many general stores are located near subway stops and such in major cities, so you can simply stop in on your way home during your commute).
In American supermarkets, the bonus is that you can almost always go through the "15 items or less" or whatever lane, so check-out is significantly faster if you shop often and carry your goods by hand.
When I was single (in the U.S.), I used to live a few blocks from a grocery store, and I only drove there maybe once per year -- the rest of the time, I'd just shop once or twice per week, which was enough for a single person carrying things home by hand. For a while with a family, I lived further from a major grocery store, but now I live within walking distance again and have taken to walking there fairly often... though not on a regular basis because I can't commute on foot. If I were commuting on foot, and the grocery store were near my stop, I would definitely buy groceries there many times per week and walk them home.
- a reasonable reader would conclude that this author is exaggerating for rhetorical effect, not claiming actual facts
- therefore, the defamation suit is without merit, and the rantings of this blogger are protected free speech
- You also, can say that the members of Duck Dynasty are liars committing fraud, even on a blog that many read, and have confidence the US courts will protect your right to say it. Provided you don't sound like anyone who's making factual statements.
I haven't read the court decision (yet), but if what you say is true, the story here and its portrayal in the media is a complete and utter distortion.
If the judge only ruled in favor of the blogger because she came across as a lunatic or that no reasonable person would believe her, then this is not at all a victory for "journalists," whether of the traditional kind or bloggers -- it's merely a victory for trolls and other people who say random crap that no one believes. I fail to see what that would have to do with "journalism" or freedom of the press at all.
These are the very reasons that the non-traditional press needs as much or more protection than the mundane, risk-averse mainstream media.
I absolutely agree with you. However, I'm not sure that this particular blogger is the best representative of the "non-traditional press." From TFA:
Cox's blogging activities have attracted their share of controversy. According to the court's opinion, Cox has a history of making allegations of fraud and other illegal activities "and seeking payoffs in exchange for retraction."
Further, if you start doing any basic internet searches, you'll find all sorts of sordid claims about this blogger. If stuff on this link is true, for example -- this blogger is the kind of person who registers the domain names of not only enemies, but the children of her enemies, and then posts horrible stuff about them (apparently sometimes made up), and then sends letters asking for money if they want it taken down.
I have no idea if all of this is true, but it's clear from a number of stories -- both on blogs and in the "institutional press" that you accuse of not asking the hard questions, like the NY Times -- that the blogger at the center of this case is not just a "non-traditional press" representative or journalist. This appears to be someone who deliberately posts offensive material about people in order to extort money.
So, is this really a victory for the "non-traditional press," or an invitation for a new kind of "shake-down" scheme where the mob comes after your business and acts for "protection" money? (I haven't been following this story, so I don't know the answer to this, but this is the kind of stuff I've found with a few quick searches, so it appears more complex than a simple "freedom of the press" victory.)
So far as deterance goes I don't think that it really works very well because that only works when people make logical decisions about what they are doing. When murder is involved there is rarely much sound reasoning happening.
I'm not a huge fan of the death penalty, but if you're allowing it at all, I think your points are actually addressed in part by many state laws. Namely, many states restrict death sentences to things like premeditated murder. You happen to kill someone in a random argument? Probably not death penalty worthy in many places. But you systematically plan the death of someone over weeks or months in advance? You may not be "rational" by many standards, but you certainly had time to duly consider the results of your actions.
All of this sounds good on paper, but what I would like to see is some detailed information on how to translate "comfort" into an algorithm that can be used to control a furnace and/or air conditioner.
Well, you can make it more complicated, but dew point is already a significantly better measure to correlate with comfort than temperature. For summer at least, I'd personally start there -- though you'd need a better humidity sensor than comes on most thermostats. Even something as simple as that would be a vast improvement.
It might say, "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth" is the first sentence of the Bible. In the section below, explain why you do or do not consider this to be a valid theory for how life came to Earth".
Meh. The hard part is realizing that you should NOT be trying to build a thermostat, period. Static temperature is relatively useless for comfort, which is why people end up moving the thing up and down all the time.
Our bodies don't sense temperature directly. They sense heat transfer, which involves evaporation rate of perspiration in addition to convection. This is the basis of "wind chill" (increased convection increases heat loss) and "heat index" (humidity reduces evaporation).
If there were actually a smart tech company out there designing such a thing, it would do something like keep a relatively constant dew point in the summer. The temperature is irrelevant. It can be 82 degrees and perfectly comfortable in my house, but on other days it can be 70 and unbearably stuffy. Cooling the house on hot non-humid days is stupid; having to adjust the thermostat down on cooler humid days just adds cost. (This is relevant in the winter as well. When it's really dry in the house, you often need a different temperature to maintain comfort than when humidity is at normal levels.)
It would be much more efficient to just stop the whole "thermostat" idea altogether... if we're really after "comfort" with least energy expenditure, why not program our houses to respond to what actually makes us comfortable (which is a more complicated formula taking humidity and temperature into account), rather than a scientific abstraction like temperature that has little human relevance?
He campaigned on a reduction of surveillance and spying. Then, once President, he did a 180.
As he did on many issues... wars, economic policy, etc.
But go back and listen to some of those campaign speeches sometime, though. You'll find a lot of "YES WE CAN" and a lot of "we can do better" and "this needs to be fixed," but a lot of vagueness about detailed policies. I still remember talking to fans after the election (and that's what many of them were: fans), and they thought ANYTHING was possible. I kept saying, "Well, I'll believe it when I see it... everything was kept so vague except for the cheerleading speeches," but I was told that I was just being cynical. And I should shut up because I was ruining the party-time atmosphere and celebration.
There were already a lot of clues in the campaign that the actual content was TBD when it came to what Obama would do in office.
Something happened to make him change his mind. Was he corrupted by power? Are the monied interests that powerful that they made him deny what he'd been teaching for years? Or is there something else afoot?
Nah. There's no grand conspiracy. This happens with most politicians when they get elected. Obama was mostly a "blank slate" that just kept cheering "YES WE CAN," which allowed his fans to believe anything they wanted to believe about him. We heard a lot more about problems that needed to be solved than details about the solutions.
And it turns out the details were pretty much similar to any other politicians from the two-party oligarchy.
Obama is a very smart man. He's a scholar who taught Constitutional Law for twelve years.
I do not dispute that he's a very smart man. I've always found calling him a "scholar" to be stretching it a bit: yes, he was a lecturer who taught Constitutional law for a number of years, but he wasn't permanent faculty at a law school. He didn't spend his days writing scholarly articles for legal journals. He was -- first and foremost -- a politician... and still is.
This is not at all to disparage his knowledge of the Constitution. I'm sure he can read it just as well as most of us can, and -- regardless of whether he's a Constitutional "scholar or not -- if he merely passed the bar, I would hope that he could understand the plain meaning of things like the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
But the Bush administration clearly didn't, and they had a lot of lawyers working for them too. So... why should it be different again?? If we just keep saying "YES WE CAN" enough times over and over, will things magically get better?
You damn well should be concerned about random medical devices made in someone's garage. You're ridiculously stupid if you aren't.
Or you can read TFA, and see some examples of devices which likely won't kill someone or even significantly harm them if they malfunction, yet they help people in need, who otherwise could not afford standard medical devices.
Take, for example the woman from TFA who needed a special type of hearing aid for an unusual condition:
The surgery costs from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars, and is not always covered by insurance. Insurers rarely, if ever, cover the snap-on hearing aid, which is fragile, has a price tag that can range from $4,000 to $7,000, and requires replacement every several years.
âoeI realized it sounded like something I could build in my living room,â Marzec says, and thatâ(TM)s exactly what she did, attaching electronics from Radio Shack to a standard construction hardhat.
Is it really going to be armageddon if someone builds a hearing aid? Even if it malfunctions, what is the likely downside? The person takes off the helmet. How is this any worse than an "approved" medical hearing aid with a failing battery or something?
And contrast that against the upside: without the DIY hack, the person would either have potentially shell out tens of thousands of dollars which is not reimbursed by insurance. Or, they could just not hear. Is this really such a terrible third choice -- to pay a few hundreds dollars and be able to hear again, with little downside?
I absolutely agree with you that there are a lot of medical devices that should NOT be made by random DIYers. You need a reliable tool for surgery or a piece of diagnostic equipment to look for life-threatening conditions... obviously, you need it to work or people could die or be severely injured. But there are also plenty of things that could be hugely beneficial, and they are unlikely to have terrible consequences even if they fail. Yet they could mean the difference for some people between hearing or not hearing.
TFA has a number of examples that fall into this category -- "medical devices" that provide significant benefit but would be unlikely to cause dangerous results if they failed. What's wrong with investigating such things for potential DIY applications?
First, let me be clear that I do not consider myself associated with the "maker" movement. When I first read about it (mostly in skewed media accounts), I too had a negative impression -- since the media reports I happened upon tended to focus on people who get a lot of attention for ambitious and overly broad goals, but little practical results or expertise. But I don't think that's a fair characterization of the whole idea.
"Makers" in my view are predominately a bunch of wannabes; excited and enthusiastic but lacking in real capabilities. They may have an idea for something, but often they have no idea how to go about designing and building it,
I think you're talking about idealist idiots who don't actually do anything, rather than people who actually participate in making things. Sure, there are plenty of the former in the world, but the main driving force of the "maker" movement (as I understand it) is to transition more people into the latter category.
have to rely on the manufacturing expertise and trades of others, and yet think that they're really accomplishing something.
There's nothing wrong with people collaborating, or even relying on pre-existing manufactured goods which are combined or tweaked in some way. Or would you have everyone all go out and mine their own ore with their bare hands and build a forge so they can act as blacksmiths to make tools that would then allow them to start producing things? We all relying on expertise and labors of others in civilized society. If you can add some value by doing something more with the work of others, what is wrong with that?
This is only going to be worse in medical spheres. "People" shouldn't play with nuclear materials
Okay, I know the GP mentioned nuclear materials, but I don't think that's at all a fair comparison for the kinds of medical devices primarily mentioned in TFA. Go read it. The examples they give are things like modified construction helmets with added electronics that work as a kind of "hearing aid" for people with particular auditory problems. Otherwise, these people would have to buy ridiculously expensive devices or have surgery. Also from TFA -- some prosthetics... which are just as effective (or more so) compared to expensive standard "medical" ones. Some of the things mentioned in TFA have even been approved by government organizations because they proved to be better than or useful in different ways from existing technology.
I absolutely agree with you that there are many medical devices which should NOT be a DIY job. If you need a tool during surgery, or you need diagnostic equipment that gives reliable results, people's lives will be on the line when something fails. But a specialized DIY hearing aid?? What's the worst that's going to happen if it malfunctions? The person just takes the thing off. It's probably no worse than some sort of "approved" device having its battery go dead or something.
TFA for the most part outlines a lot of situations for medical devices that won't be likely to kill or even significantly harm someone if they malfunction. Instead, the choice for these people often is -- live without hearing or a hand or whatever because they can't afford the "approved" device, or get the DIY one for a tiny fraction of the cost.
You really think this is that bad? We're not talking about people playing around with nuclear materials in their basement.
I'm not deluding myself that somehow my tinkering or puttering around will affect anyone besides myself. Applying a label besides "hobbyist" is stupid.
Yeah, see I think you're missing a critical distinction. I associate the term "hobbyist" with exactly the kind of thing you describe: someone who works on stuff that doesn't really provide a significant benefit to anyone, other than perhaps entertainment or a sense of "accomplishment" for the individual doin
That depends on your bank. A lot of reasonable institutions don't have different policies regarding credit/debit regarding fraud. If your bank sucks like this, time for a new bank.
A lot of banks CLAIM to have the same policy (zero liability for debits cards, etc.), the reality of the matter is that getting the money back into your account with debit card fraud can be a significant hassle (and can take awhile). With credit, the money has never officially left YOUR account yet.
Absolutely no reason to use a debit card unless you're literally taking cash out of your account at an ATM. The protections just aren't as good as credit cards, plus if you always pay them off, it doesn't cost anything (in fact, it often pays you with rewards).
And since everybody (except statisticians) think SD is the average deviation from the mean,
Who the heck thinks standard deviation is that? I mean, seriously... I understood the definition of standard deviation in middle school. More importantly, I understood a few of its uses, and I wouldn't have confused it with a mean deviation. And I'm nowhere near a statistician... heck, I was officially taught the definition in high school math class too.
This is like someone thinking that the factorial sign (!) means a number is important or surprising or something, rather than what it's actually defined as. It's absolute idiocy. If someone is doing analysis where mean deviation is more appropriate, by all means, do it. But the idea the "most people" who aren't statisticians don't understand... well, I'd hope that anyone who is doing research and using it would. And if not, they should literally be sentenced to a statistics course where they compute everything by hand until they understand what the heck the numbers they are using mean.
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Most people I know really do seem to believe that when a computer starts running slowly that is indicative of some sort of flaw that can only be repaired by a violent hardware change.
Actually, many people I know really do seem to believe that when a computer doesn't do what they expect it should that is indicative of some sort of flaw that can only be repaired by a violent hardware change.
"My email doesn't work anymore! Should I upgrade?" (saved wrong password)
"I can't find the buttons I used to have! Do I need to upgrade?" (accidentally hid toolbar)
"I can't hear any sounds on my computer anymore! Do I need a new one?" (volume on mute)
This is particularly true of older people, who don't really understand anything about how a computer functions. I've heard of someone recently who thought a new computer was necessary just because she wanted to change her email address.
So, yeah, when you have folks like this, there definitely is a much larger pool of people who would have no idea how to attempt an OS reinstall or how to "clean" their system to speed it up again.
That was not very good advice 10 years ago. While true that OEMs typically sold you a minimum of RAM, hobbling your customers by telling them to buy the oldest machine in the shop was poor advice.
That depends on what someone wants to do. (Also, I think the GP said the cheapest, not the "oldest.") If all you want is something to do basic word processing, email, web browsing, etc., why not? You can often get the cheapest computer for 1/2 or 1/3 the price of something moderately "up-to-date," and then if it gets slow in 2 or 3 years, you can just buy a new cheap one, and still be ahead in cost.
I build my own desktops, but for laptops, I just buy the cheapest thing I can find and have for many years. I have a 4.5-year-old netbook that cost $250 which I only recently retired from use because of a power connection issue. Aside from being choppy when used for high-quality video, there were very few times I noticed annoying slowness (and if I wanted to watch video, I'd just use a different device). I replaced it with another sub-$300 laptop which works great.
Modern advice is that you need at least a dual-core CPU (makes the O/S much more responsive) along with lots of RAM. For XP, my recommendation was a minimum of 2GB and once RAM got cheaper, 4GB. For Win7
Ah, I see the problem -- you're using Windows. With the flexibility of different Linux distributions, you could be running stuff with very light desktop environments. Heck, I have an 11-year-old laptop that was only low-to-mid range in specs at the time, but it still works well with a light Linux distribution. (The battery is long dead and not worth replacing, so I don't tend to use it much these days. But a year or so ago I needed a spare computer for a project, so I installed a light Linux distro, and it was quite responsive... probably more so than it was with the original XP version installed on it when I bought it.)
The drop in SSD prices also means that consumer SSDs are a strong recommendation for the primary O/S drive. Even on an older Vista/Win7 machine (that is at least dual-core), dropping in a SSD can breath new life into a machine that seems too slow to be useful.
Meh. While I agree that an SSD can make a newer system seem even more speedy, I don't know that it's going to fix some old clunker by itself. On an older machine, the bottleneck is most likely to be either RAM or processor or both if it feels "slow." Sure, you might see an improvement in loading times for applications, but for most normal everyday tasks, the SSD isn't going to result in a performance boost on an old computer for >90% of the time you're actually using it... unless you're doing something requiring heavy caching or something, in which case you'd be better off paying for more RAM rather than an SSD.
But I agree with you on a new system -- get the SSD if the cost is reasonable, though for many folks that will require two drives to get enough space (SSD for primary stuff and OS; traditional large HD for large data).
Do people actually believe that? We've had Bush and Obama lying through their teeth about things that actually matter, like reasons for going to war or the extent of spying on our own citizens, [snip] If the stated reason for his impeachment was the actual truth, we'd impeach every other president.
Umm, is there something wrong with that? Politicians lie to the public about unconstitutional actions -- and then get removed from office.
I think that's how the system is supposed to work. Why shouldn't we be impeaching most of the politicians in Washington today?
(And yes, I think the targeted reason for Clinton was silly -- there were plenty of worse actions he took in office. I also agree with you that our recent presidents have been worse. But perjury is serious, and someone who thinks you should just be given a pass on perjury -- "just because I'm a powerful man" -- probably keeps company with those who think it's also okay to lie to the public while committing unconstitutional acts.)
Its not a privacy issue, its a preserve my sanity issue. Last thing I need to do is have my brokerage accounts mixed in with my work accounts and my /. account. I don't really care that each of these companies know I'm the same dude.
But I never allow myself to believe I'm pulling any wool over anyone's eyes.
I think you may have missed the point of the GP a bit. Yes, I agree that his strategies for "privacy" may be a little flawed, depending on how much "privacy" he is actually expecting.
On the other hand, I'm not sure that he's trying to "pull any wool over anyone's eyes." This seems to be a common accusation whenever anyone says they want to have multiple online identities -- it's as if there's something "false" or "lying" or "hypocritical" or "fake" about this. (Zuckerberg, in particular, is on record for saying that people who want multiple online identities have some sort of fundamental "lack of integrity.")
But, come on. In real life, people always have "multiple identities." They talk differently to their kids than they do to the people at work. And they say different things to the guys at the bar than they do to the old ladies at church. There is nothing hypocritical or dishonest about this -- it just reflects different social conventions for different circumstances.
It makes sense to try to replicate this experience in an online environment, but many companies like Facebook and Google and others are making it increasingly difficult. I talk to people all the time who complain about how their boss friended them on Facebook or something, and now they have to be increasingly careful about what they say. It's not like they want to actually "hide" anything from their boss -- but being under constant surveillance by someone from work means that misunderstandings can happen or things could be misinterpreted... so it makes people nervous. This trend also sees to be leading teens away from Facebook, since they don't want their parents seeing what they do. (And yes, there are ways to manage posts and things so they aren't visible to everyone, but when you have the number of "multiple identities" to different people that a normal person does in real life, it can be unwieldy.)
Anyhow, the point is that keeping different parts of your life separate IS a "privacy issue." This is NOT about having secure walls around your private data -- just about keeping things reasonably separate, so your work and your home and your social life don't all necessarily have to blend into one thing. Or so you can have a "professional online presence," but also a place where you are slightly less formal. Some people may like having only one online identity; others may find it more convenient to have more than one. (Some actually find it necessary for their safety.)
(groan) ... seems there are publications much slower than /. - this was supposed to be news one year and a half ago.
To be fair, ball lightning sightings and claims to have photographed it or caught it on video are quite frequent, with a very high rate of hoaxes or mistaking other phenomena for it. (Almost as bad as UFO sightings and "evidence.")
It wouldn't surprise me at all if a few extra months were added to the researchers' analysis and to the peer review just to substantiate that this is what it says it is, and all the analysis is correct. Ball lightning is just one of those things that so many people have claimed to see, and it seems odd that scientists have so much trouble catching evidence of natural occurrences... so when you finally think you've got it, you want to be sure.
Not saying it explains the whole delay, but maybe part of it.
There are some animals like pigs and cows that can be herded and bred easily -- they hardly try to escape, and they reproduce in captivity easily and in large numbers. You can basically just catch a few of them in the wild and build a fence around them, and provide food and water, and they'll be content until the day you kill them.
You've obviously never actually seen a wild pig, have you? I'd hardly say that they would "hardly try to escape," and you can just simply put them in captivity where they will be content.
You've overlooking hundreds or even thousands of generations where livestock were specifically bred to be docile and live within the constraints we put on them. If some of your livestock babies happen to be too "wild" or dangerous or don't do what humans want, guess what? They aren't bred. You only choose to breed the animals that have good traits. Even after a few generations of only breeding the most docile animals, experiments have shown that "wild" animals can be turned into pets. Take the Siberian fox breeding project, which only started about 50 years ago. Even in just a few generations, the foxes' behavior was changed from "wild" to something much more desireable from a human perspective.
I was just saying, the idea of preserving species based on our idea of what they think or feel doesn't really allow us to do the same for plants. Plants are so different from humans that we are unlikely to ever have much sympathy or empathy for their "thoughts" or "feelings," which from the human perspective don't really even exist.
Please realize that your view is only your own personal experience, in this instance. You cannot just state this as if it were an objective argument. My personal experience with tending plants, and those of many gardeners I know, says otherwise.
I did a lot of gardening when I was younger, and I'm gradually getting back into it. I have, over the years, also had a large supply of houseplants -- usually given to me, rather than something I sought out.
But even if you spend only limited time "taking care of" plants, you begin to notice their dynamic quality. Many plants will respond rather quickly when watered after being neglected for a while, only a day or two of a change in sun direction, and you see the new growth pointing in a different direction, and many plants will even respond negatively to being handled roughly (or at all) by humans... wilting or browning within a few days.
I never really thought deeply about this until I had a friend who would "torture" houseplants. I know a lot of people who just couldn't handle having them... they'd just forget about them and they'd dry up before they were even noticed.
But this friend would periodically remember that she had them... and try to nurse them back after they were half dead. The plant would spend years in a cycle of responding vigorously (yearningly?) when finally watered and tended, only to be dying again after a week of neglect.
Since then I've read many recent findings about plants' sensitivity and ability to respond in fairly complex ways to a variety of stimuli. It makes me think back on my friend's behavior and personify the plants -- imagine yourself in that sort of cycle of neglect, responding quickly and vigorously when someone gives you even the slightest attention, but then failing again and again and ending up fighting for your life on a weekly basis. It's a horrifying prospect.
I'm not at all claiming that a plant has anything like "conscious feelings" that we could understand in that sense. I'm certain that my sympathy can never quite understand what it "feels like" to be a plant in a situation like that. But from my experience seeing all the complex ways plants respond as they grow, I came to view my friend's behavior as a little sadistic. It made me somewhat sad to think of those plants being "tortured" like that.
I'm sure that if you haven't spent a lot of time observing the growth patterns of plants, you may not understand this perspective. But just because the plant doesn't come up and lick your hand or something immediately when you offer it food doesn't mean it doesn't respond to care -- the effects just happen on a slightly longer time scale.
And before you dismiss this all as some sort of craziness, consider that you have absolutely no freakin' idea what it "feels like" to be a chimp or a dog or a pig or a dolphin or whatever. In fact, you have no idea what it even feels like to be me. All you can do -- and we can ever do -- is observe behaviors and characteristics of other things, animals, plants, or even other people, and assume that analogous behaviors might mean that there could be some sort of commonality of experience. Sure, we can argue about brain structure or nervous system structure, but that tells us precious little about how it "feels" to be some other creature. New research comes out on a regular basis about how much of even humans' perception and behavior and "feeling" comes out of stuff beyond out basic nervous system and brain... our bodies have very complex interactions with the environment, and it's not all neatly quantified and run through our conscious brains to create our "feelin
Go back and read exactly what she said. Communist countries can pass rather extreme laws to deal with climate change.
Yes, and....?? Communist countries could also pass rather extreme laws that make climate change worse, particularly if by doing so it makes party leaders more powerful or more wealthy. (This is true in democracies as well.)
Also, even if by chance you have leaders who have selfless devotion to the population, there is still no guarantee that they will act in the long-term global interest. Having more power to pass draconian laws could mean that they pass laws that make the environment much worse globally, but benefit that particular country in the short term.
In any case this is a distraction from her real point. She was saying that democracies have difficulty dealing with climate change because people tend not to support things that cost them money. Being dirty is cheaper for the individual, at least superficially.
And you think governments like volunteering to "support things that cost them money" if they don't see a net benefit to the government or those in charge of it? It's not just individuals.
Besides, this whole discussion is bogus since there are precious few (any?) true large-scale democracies in the world. Almost every country that claims to be "democratic" is actually a republic.
Part of the rationale of having a republic rather than direct democracy (other than efficiency) is that people devoted to governing can see a bit more of the "big picture" and make decisions for their constituents that those constituents might not take individual action on. The same mechanisms that, for example, protect minorities in a republic, are the ones that can be used to protect other interests that may not always achieve a majority in a direct vote.
She made the rather obvious point that communist states find it easier to act for the collective good, while in democracies people tend to act in their own interests.
I wouldn't say this point is "obvious" at all. I have nothing against many of the general ideas of socialism or communism, but practical experience is not as clear-cut as your "obvious point" seems.
First, most people "act in their own interests" most of the time, regardless of what you call the government organizing principle.
In theory, communist states should be able to more easily "act for the collective good," but that's really only true for some sort of utopian ideal communist state.
In practice, most actual places that claimed to be "communist" in their government for the past century have often tended toward situations where power is concentrated among certain party leaders. And -- guess what -- many of those parties leaders tend to "act in their own interest" to retain power, control, accumulate goods, etc.
In essence, most of the "communist" experiments the world have seen so far have not successfully found it "easier to act for the collective good," if that collective good doesn't accord with whatever makes life better for the party leaders.
Socialism and communism do in fact make it easier for governments to implement certain kinds of changes because of decreased individual control over many things. But whether those changes are actually better "for the collective good" depends on who has the power and what their motivations are... just as it does in democratic states.
So, if we want to start comparing "ideal democracies" and "ideal communist states" and "ideal republics" and whatever else, I bet we could make claims that all of them would find better ways of functioning for the "collective good" (definied in slightly different ways). The problem is that none of these systems functions in these ideal ways in practice.
One other thought:
This works if you buy often, and only in small packages. This is expensive. I tend to buy stuff in large packages, they cost far less per unit of food.
As I mentioned, you can still buy in bulk. But also going to the store every other day or so will actually increase your likelihood of seeing good deals. There's a special today? Pick up some extra. New load of tomatoes just showed up? They probably taste better, so get some while they're fresh.
Sure, you can generally watch store flyers, etc. and plan your trips, but you're less likely to see daily specials or be able to take advantage of every deal when it's convenient. And for perishable food like produce or meats, shopping every day will often give you a sense of what is actually fresh and high quality, when is the peak time to buy (because shipments come in), etc. It's not just about saving money -- it's about quality too.
I know this sounds crazy but some people go to the market every day.
Yes, some people do that. Other people have better things to do with their life than to spend 30 minutes every day in a store.
No -- if you shop frequently, your average time in the store per visit is more like 5-10 minutes. You know exactly where everything is, since you go there so frequently, and you figure out ways to make it more efficient (like always using the "15 items or less" check-out lane when possible).
I know that you're probably also thinking -- "But I can't even walk through the store in 5 minutes -- it's huge!" Well, that's exactly what the U.S. system does to smaller specialty stores. In Europe, the typical "supermarket" is often a tiny fraction of the size of an American one. If you need something more specialized, you stop in at a different shop. You can plan your daily buying pattern to get the best goods from those small shops that specialize -- one day you get bread from the bakery, one day meat from the butcher, the next day do a "general shop" for miscellaneous at the supermarket, etc.
Plus, if you have a family, it can actually save you time to go to the store without kids in tow. If you just add 7 or 8 minutes to your commute time, you might not have to deal with other family responsibilities. If you're going to spend an hour in the store on a weekend or later in the evening (along with a 40-minute commute you mention), you may need to bring along a kid or two... and suddenly that trip gets longer and much less efficient. This may not be true for everyone, but shopping frequently may actually be significantly more efficient for some people.
The store is in about 40 minutes of driving from my home.
Yeah, this is the problem. So it's not feasible for you to go more frequently. Everyone has their own situation, but in the U.S. your situation is just more common because of the way cities are usually laid out. It's not that it's inherently more efficient or better.
This works if you buy often, and only in small packages. This is expensive. I tend to buy stuff in large packages, they cost far less per unit of food. But one gallon container will be pretty heavy.
What the heck do you think people did before cars? Do you think no one ever bought in bulk?
You just require a little planning. When you need to pick up some 10-pound or 15-pound item, you can't buy a lot of other stuff that day. You just plan to buy the big bag of flour every so often, or the giant jug of oil, or whatever. It's not that hard.
Back when my father was young, my grandparents didn't have a car -- most people in cities didn't. (This was in the U.S.) My grandmother baked often -- they'd go through a 50-pound bag of flour every few months. So, when it was time, my grandmother would tell my grandfather to pick one up at the store... and my grandfather would throw the thing over his shoulder and bring it home. I think it was maybe 3/4 of a mile or so. Not that hard in an era where everyone was used to carrying things everywhere. (My grandfather's father was a carpenter, who frequently carried his giant toolbox on one shoulder and a heavy wooden ladder on the other... sometimes for miles in a single day. He was not a big guy, either. That's just what you did in the era before cars.)
My point is: it's very easy to plan for buying in bulk and carrying items. Your argument makes little sense if you think about it logically: you still need to carry the same weight home, so you could either buy smaller containers more frequently, or you could plan to make larger bulk purchases on a schedule when you can carry the big things home. If you think about it for a second, it's actually more efficient to buy in bulk when you have to carry everything -- because packaging (especially jars and cans) will weigh less overall.
There is also an issue of how fast ca
oh bullshit. You get an engine code, drive to autozone (except in the republic of california where the lawyers own everything) and the code scanner tells you what's wrong. No more "what's wrong with the carburetor and it's 1000 parts. It's now plug-in diagnostic computers. Oh, and they don't break as much, so you don't do that as much.
No, sorry, it is significantly harder. Particularly routine maintenance -- and I do think it's deliberate. On a recent car, I discovered that to change the oil, the only reasonable way to change the filter without a lift was to take a wheel off.
When my dad was changing oil in cars, he could crawl underneath, pull the plug, access the filter from some reasonable spot, and all was relatively simple. If I don't have access to a lift, I have to buy jack stands and take the wheel off -- just to change the oil and filter.
I could go on with other examples of basic maintenance -- like having batteries that require just the right length socket to get them out (too short, and you can't get to it, too long and you hit something), or making headlight replacement so annoying that you have to take half of the front quarter of the car apart -- and this is only with the few cars I've dealt with in the past few years... mainstream models
We're not talking about complicated repairs here. Basic maintenance has become a pain for many vehicles unless you're willing to go out and buy a special tool for each job or go through a ridiculously complex series of steps if you don't have access to the kind of stuff in a professional garage.
Every family is a single person family? Or every member can carry their own shopping? How about we assume that it is better for a single person to do a family's shopping, and you can state how any of this is relevant.
Umm, you just go to the grocery store more often. Seriously, is this that hard to understand?
Just about every normal person in continental Europe goes to the store at least every other day, often every day. You get fresh food -- fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, fresh meats, fresh baked goods. Everything tastes a heck of a lot better, and you only have to pay for a refrigerator and pantry about 1/3 or 1/4 of the size of an American one.
I know you think this may take up a lot of time, but frankly it's worth it -- for the better quality of fresh food. Most Europeans simply plan their daily commute around making a trip to the store (many general stores are located near subway stops and such in major cities, so you can simply stop in on your way home during your commute).
In American supermarkets, the bonus is that you can almost always go through the "15 items or less" or whatever lane, so check-out is significantly faster if you shop often and carry your goods by hand.
When I was single (in the U.S.), I used to live a few blocks from a grocery store, and I only drove there maybe once per year -- the rest of the time, I'd just shop once or twice per week, which was enough for a single person carrying things home by hand. For a while with a family, I lived further from a major grocery store, but now I live within walking distance again and have taken to walking there fairly often... though not on a regular basis because I can't commute on foot. If I were commuting on foot, and the grocery store were near my stop, I would definitely buy groceries there many times per week and walk them home.
- a reasonable reader would conclude that this author is exaggerating for rhetorical effect, not claiming actual facts
- therefore, the defamation suit is without merit, and the rantings of this blogger are protected free speech
- You also, can say that the members of Duck Dynasty are liars committing fraud, even on a blog that many read, and have confidence the US courts will protect your right to say it. Provided you don't sound like anyone who's making factual statements.
I haven't read the court decision (yet), but if what you say is true, the story here and its portrayal in the media is a complete and utter distortion.
If the judge only ruled in favor of the blogger because she came across as a lunatic or that no reasonable person would believe her, then this is not at all a victory for "journalists," whether of the traditional kind or bloggers -- it's merely a victory for trolls and other people who say random crap that no one believes. I fail to see what that would have to do with "journalism" or freedom of the press at all.
He holds the Lucasian chair of mathematics, as Newton did. *That's* the real prize.
Slight correction -- he held the Lucasian chair, but he retired in 2009. The current Lucasian professor at Cambridge is Michael Green.
These are the very reasons that the non-traditional press needs as much or more protection than the mundane, risk-averse mainstream media.
I absolutely agree with you. However, I'm not sure that this particular blogger is the best representative of the "non-traditional press." From TFA:
Cox's blogging activities have attracted their share of controversy. According to the court's opinion, Cox has a history of making allegations of fraud and other illegal activities "and seeking payoffs in exchange for retraction."
Further, if you start doing any basic internet searches, you'll find all sorts of sordid claims about this blogger. If stuff on this link is true, for example -- this blogger is the kind of person who registers the domain names of not only enemies, but the children of her enemies, and then posts horrible stuff about them (apparently sometimes made up), and then sends letters asking for money if they want it taken down.
I have no idea if all of this is true, but it's clear from a number of stories -- both on blogs and in the "institutional press" that you accuse of not asking the hard questions, like the NY Times -- that the blogger at the center of this case is not just a "non-traditional press" representative or journalist. This appears to be someone who deliberately posts offensive material about people in order to extort money.
So, is this really a victory for the "non-traditional press," or an invitation for a new kind of "shake-down" scheme where the mob comes after your business and acts for "protection" money? (I haven't been following this story, so I don't know the answer to this, but this is the kind of stuff I've found with a few quick searches, so it appears more complex than a simple "freedom of the press" victory.)
So far as deterance goes I don't think that it really works very well because that only works when people make logical decisions about what they are doing. When murder is involved there is rarely much sound reasoning happening.
I'm not a huge fan of the death penalty, but if you're allowing it at all, I think your points are actually addressed in part by many state laws. Namely, many states restrict death sentences to things like premeditated murder. You happen to kill someone in a random argument? Probably not death penalty worthy in many places. But you systematically plan the death of someone over weeks or months in advance? You may not be "rational" by many standards, but you certainly had time to duly consider the results of your actions.
All of this sounds good on paper, but what I would like to see is some detailed information on how to translate "comfort" into an algorithm that can be used to control a furnace and/or air conditioner.
Well, you can make it more complicated, but dew point is already a significantly better measure to correlate with comfort than temperature. For summer at least, I'd personally start there -- though you'd need a better humidity sensor than comes on most thermostats. Even something as simple as that would be a vast improvement.
It might say, "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth" is the first sentence of the Bible. In the section below, explain why you do or do not consider this to be a valid theory for how life came to Earth".
So, is the question loaded to endorse panspermia ?
The hard part isn't building a smart thermostat.
Meh. The hard part is realizing that you should NOT be trying to build a thermostat, period. Static temperature is relatively useless for comfort, which is why people end up moving the thing up and down all the time.
Our bodies don't sense temperature directly. They sense heat transfer, which involves evaporation rate of perspiration in addition to convection. This is the basis of "wind chill" (increased convection increases heat loss) and "heat index" (humidity reduces evaporation).
If there were actually a smart tech company out there designing such a thing, it would do something like keep a relatively constant dew point in the summer. The temperature is irrelevant. It can be 82 degrees and perfectly comfortable in my house, but on other days it can be 70 and unbearably stuffy. Cooling the house on hot non-humid days is stupid; having to adjust the thermostat down on cooler humid days just adds cost. (This is relevant in the winter as well. When it's really dry in the house, you often need a different temperature to maintain comfort than when humidity is at normal levels.)
It would be much more efficient to just stop the whole "thermostat" idea altogether... if we're really after "comfort" with least energy expenditure, why not program our houses to respond to what actually makes us comfortable (which is a more complicated formula taking humidity and temperature into account), rather than a scientific abstraction like temperature that has little human relevance?
He campaigned on a reduction of surveillance and spying. Then, once President, he did a 180.
As he did on many issues... wars, economic policy, etc.
But go back and listen to some of those campaign speeches sometime, though. You'll find a lot of "YES WE CAN" and a lot of "we can do better" and "this needs to be fixed," but a lot of vagueness about detailed policies. I still remember talking to fans after the election (and that's what many of them were: fans), and they thought ANYTHING was possible. I kept saying, "Well, I'll believe it when I see it... everything was kept so vague except for the cheerleading speeches," but I was told that I was just being cynical. And I should shut up because I was ruining the party-time atmosphere and celebration.
There were already a lot of clues in the campaign that the actual content was TBD when it came to what Obama would do in office.
Something happened to make him change his mind. Was he corrupted by power? Are the monied interests that powerful that they made him deny what he'd been teaching for years? Or is there something else afoot?
Nah. There's no grand conspiracy. This happens with most politicians when they get elected. Obama was mostly a "blank slate" that just kept cheering "YES WE CAN," which allowed his fans to believe anything they wanted to believe about him. We heard a lot more about problems that needed to be solved than details about the solutions.
And it turns out the details were pretty much similar to any other politicians from the two-party oligarchy.
Obama is a very smart man. He's a scholar who taught Constitutional Law for twelve years.
I do not dispute that he's a very smart man. I've always found calling him a "scholar" to be stretching it a bit: yes, he was a lecturer who taught Constitutional law for a number of years, but he wasn't permanent faculty at a law school. He didn't spend his days writing scholarly articles for legal journals. He was -- first and foremost -- a politician... and still is.
This is not at all to disparage his knowledge of the Constitution. I'm sure he can read it just as well as most of us can, and -- regardless of whether he's a Constitutional "scholar or not -- if he merely passed the bar, I would hope that he could understand the plain meaning of things like the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
But the Bush administration clearly didn't, and they had a lot of lawyers working for them too. So... why should it be different again?? If we just keep saying "YES WE CAN" enough times over and over, will things magically get better?
You damn well should be concerned about random medical devices made in someone's garage. You're ridiculously stupid if you aren't.
Or you can read TFA, and see some examples of devices which likely won't kill someone or even significantly harm them if they malfunction, yet they help people in need, who otherwise could not afford standard medical devices.
Take, for example the woman from TFA who needed a special type of hearing aid for an unusual condition:
The surgery costs from thousands to tens of thousands of dollars, and is not always covered by insurance. Insurers rarely, if ever, cover the snap-on hearing aid, which is fragile, has a price tag that can range from $4,000 to $7,000, and requires replacement every several years.
âoeI realized it sounded like something I could build in my living room,â Marzec says, and thatâ(TM)s exactly what she did, attaching electronics from Radio Shack to a standard construction hardhat.
Is it really going to be armageddon if someone builds a hearing aid? Even if it malfunctions, what is the likely downside? The person takes off the helmet. How is this any worse than an "approved" medical hearing aid with a failing battery or something?
And contrast that against the upside: without the DIY hack, the person would either have potentially shell out tens of thousands of dollars which is not reimbursed by insurance. Or, they could just not hear. Is this really such a terrible third choice -- to pay a few hundreds dollars and be able to hear again, with little downside?
I absolutely agree with you that there are a lot of medical devices that should NOT be made by random DIYers. You need a reliable tool for surgery or a piece of diagnostic equipment to look for life-threatening conditions... obviously, you need it to work or people could die or be severely injured. But there are also plenty of things that could be hugely beneficial, and they are unlikely to have terrible consequences even if they fail. Yet they could mean the difference for some people between hearing or not hearing.
TFA has a number of examples that fall into this category -- "medical devices" that provide significant benefit but would be unlikely to cause dangerous results if they failed. What's wrong with investigating such things for potential DIY applications?
First, let me be clear that I do not consider myself associated with the "maker" movement. When I first read about it (mostly in skewed media accounts), I too had a negative impression -- since the media reports I happened upon tended to focus on people who get a lot of attention for ambitious and overly broad goals, but little practical results or expertise. But I don't think that's a fair characterization of the whole idea.
"Makers" in my view are predominately a bunch of wannabes; excited and enthusiastic but lacking in real capabilities. They may have an idea for something, but often they have no idea how to go about designing and building it,
I think you're talking about idealist idiots who don't actually do anything, rather than people who actually participate in making things. Sure, there are plenty of the former in the world, but the main driving force of the "maker" movement (as I understand it) is to transition more people into the latter category.
have to rely on the manufacturing expertise and trades of others, and yet think that they're really accomplishing something.
There's nothing wrong with people collaborating, or even relying on pre-existing manufactured goods which are combined or tweaked in some way. Or would you have everyone all go out and mine their own ore with their bare hands and build a forge so they can act as blacksmiths to make tools that would then allow them to start producing things? We all relying on expertise and labors of others in civilized society. If you can add some value by doing something more with the work of others, what is wrong with that?
This is only going to be worse in medical spheres. "People" shouldn't play with nuclear materials
Okay, I know the GP mentioned nuclear materials, but I don't think that's at all a fair comparison for the kinds of medical devices primarily mentioned in TFA. Go read it. The examples they give are things like modified construction helmets with added electronics that work as a kind of "hearing aid" for people with particular auditory problems. Otherwise, these people would have to buy ridiculously expensive devices or have surgery. Also from TFA -- some prosthetics... which are just as effective (or more so) compared to expensive standard "medical" ones. Some of the things mentioned in TFA have even been approved by government organizations because they proved to be better than or useful in different ways from existing technology.
I absolutely agree with you that there are many medical devices which should NOT be a DIY job. If you need a tool during surgery, or you need diagnostic equipment that gives reliable results, people's lives will be on the line when something fails. But a specialized DIY hearing aid?? What's the worst that's going to happen if it malfunctions? The person just takes the thing off. It's probably no worse than some sort of "approved" device having its battery go dead or something.
TFA for the most part outlines a lot of situations for medical devices that won't be likely to kill or even significantly harm someone if they malfunction. Instead, the choice for these people often is -- live without hearing or a hand or whatever because they can't afford the "approved" device, or get the DIY one for a tiny fraction of the cost.
You really think this is that bad? We're not talking about people playing around with nuclear materials in their basement.
I'm not deluding myself that somehow my tinkering or puttering around will affect anyone besides myself. Applying a label besides "hobbyist" is stupid.
Yeah, see I think you're missing a critical distinction. I associate the term "hobbyist" with exactly the kind of thing you describe: someone who works on stuff that doesn't really provide a significant benefit to anyone, other than perhaps entertainment or a sense of "accomplishment" for the individual doin
That depends on your bank. A lot of reasonable institutions don't have different policies regarding credit/debit regarding fraud. If your bank sucks like this, time for a new bank.
A lot of banks CLAIM to have the same policy (zero liability for debits cards, etc.), the reality of the matter is that getting the money back into your account with debit card fraud can be a significant hassle (and can take awhile). With credit, the money has never officially left YOUR account yet.
Absolutely no reason to use a debit card unless you're literally taking cash out of your account at an ATM. The protections just aren't as good as credit cards, plus if you always pay them off, it doesn't cost anything (in fact, it often pays you with rewards).
And since everybody (except statisticians) think SD is the average deviation from the mean,
Who the heck thinks standard deviation is that? I mean, seriously... I understood the definition of standard deviation in middle school. More importantly, I understood a few of its uses, and I wouldn't have confused it with a mean deviation. And I'm nowhere near a statistician... heck, I was officially taught the definition in high school math class too.
This is like someone thinking that the factorial sign (!) means a number is important or surprising or something, rather than what it's actually defined as. It's absolute idiocy. If someone is doing analysis where mean deviation is more appropriate, by all means, do it. But the idea the "most people" who aren't statisticians don't understand... well, I'd hope that anyone who is doing research and using it would. And if not, they should literally be sentenced to a statistics course where they compute everything by hand until they understand what the heck the numbers they are using mean.