You are clearly over-estimating your sample size. Unless you have very strange appetites, I really doubt you are eating at thousands of cafes and restaurants in a single year. Even at 3 squares a day, that's only just over a thousand meals, and that implies you never ever eat at home (yours or someone else's). I'm curious who would trust you on such Very Important Business that they'll pay for you to do all that Important International Travel to meet all these research labs, universities and corporations, if you are so weak with pretty basic maths.
Anyway, the evidence of your eyes leads you to one conclusion. The evidence of my emails ("Sent from my iPad") leads me in another -- cos I have had this message from at least a dozen colleagues and contacts, so they are clearly busy using their iPads.
God knows why this got modded up insightful. The truth is, what matters is meaningful choice. No-one wants to be bothered with making unnecessary choices, ie things they don't care about. And the other truth is, Apple has proved very very good at working out what choices people actually do care about and, guess what, endless configurability of minor specs turns out not to be sufficiently important to stop people preferring to buy Apple machines, which supposedly can never be perfect for consumers because of the limited choice available, by the millions.
All this is utterly unsurprising given that there is not only a cost to consumers of too much choice (frictional / transaction choices and more chance of ending up with the wrong thing, as anyone who's tried to understand Nokia's lineup will attest to), but also a cost to manufacturers, who are unable to focus effort on doing a few things really well.
For many many consumers (and business users too), they couldn't give a hairy monkeys about whether it's possible to swap out the spare battery pack for a DVD drive or whatever, when the machines offering that don't provide a huge glass trackpad and a solid metal body, etc.
I think you're spot on that they need to reduce the lag time. I don't think that gets solved just (just!) by putting the AI on a chip. The data is in the cloud and on the web, and that access takes some time too. Cutting latency will be super-critical, I'm sure.
Erm....voice control in a car is always going to be a secondary feature, because the prime purpose of a car is to get you from A to B. However, a smartphone is there to help you navigate and interact with information intuitively -- hence why voice control matters.
And of course, the amazing thing about new channels of communication is that they don't make the old channels disappear. So subways will remain a pretty unlikely place for people to use voice control, whereas it'll be very helpful in your car or as you walk out of the door.
I'm pretty sure that it wasn't a case of "oops we forgot the Netherlands" in Palo Alto -- more, "let's do this right for the US, our largest market, and then roll out elsewhere when we've got sufficient resource"
What about sales? And profits? You know, actual sales as opposed to channel stuffing? And actual profits, which is the reason for making a sale in the first place?
You really know absolutely fuck all about pharma development, don't you? The costs of the regulatory burden are effectively equivalent in Europe and the US. Pharmacos are no more pleased with NICE and the MCA et al than they are with the FDA. The costs in Russia and China are lower, but practically no drugs are developed in either country, despite the pharmacos all being giant transnationals with absolutely zero sense of loyalty to a particular country. Care to know why? Because the regulatory bar isn't high enough for people to trust any drugs developed there, and so the market isn't large enough. That's right, the market. Take that invisible hand and shove it up the proverbial.
Additionally, there's plenty of transnational regulation of the pharma industry (GMP etc), so you'll have to search a bit harder for your example of you popping an unregulated medical pill. Shame, really, as the rest of us could have done with the laugh.
Tell you what, no. For the absolutely fucking obvious point that the FDA is hardly the world's only government regulator of drug quality.
I meant, and I can't believe you're so fucking dim or deliberately obtuse that I'm having to spell this out, that a decent test of your commitment to your ideals would be if you were to consume a drug that purports to treat a serious condition -- diabetes, dementia, CHF, asthma -- that was made by an unregulated person or entity.
Not popping a tab of fucking MDMA or a medical pill made in another country that has its own regulation.
Tell you what, Roman, can you post a video of your trying out an exciting drug that's been developed in an area of the world that's refreshingly unencumbered by such silly nonsense as safety regulation and clinical trials? Do post it on YouTube, there'd be lots of people who'd love to watch.
I too recognise the tide rises and falls over time. Doesn't mean I like it. And doesn't mean that I'm thrilled if the levees aren't being well-maintained. As you say, we're supposed to be smart: not maintaining the levees is dumb.
What makes you think that you could decide in a free market? Cancer treatment is wildly expensive. Unless you're a multimillionaire, you'll run out of money. Then you can't decide any more. Not to point out the bleeding obvious, but that was the whole point of why insurance was invented -- to protect against rare but catastrophic losses by spreading the risk across a larger group. And also bleeding obvious, the minute there's any kind of risk-pooling, someone has to set rules for the risk pool, and it isn't the consumer who gets to do that.
For cancer, specifically, and in the UK, specifically, there are plenty of high-cost drugs of dubious cost-benefit that are being prescribed due to public pressure when the money would be better spent on other things. NICE guidelines overturned, etc etc.
You say "Sure, whatever, that's obvious and wasn't my point anyways." But what's truly obvious is that you didn't get his point. His point was, you can't save much money by stopping people going to see the doctor about a cold. It's just not sufficiently wasteful of resources. If you want to save money in healthcare, there's only one way to do it: be more effective upstream. Prevention and active management are where it's at. Twatting about with the funding model is a waste of time.
Actually, going to see a specialist is *not* the right thing to do. Specialists are prone to over-treatment. What you want is a good generalist who has access to decent, evidence-based decision-support. Primary care is much more effective than secondary care in keeping a population healthy.
So....you're complaining about a lack of civility in a post entitled "Occam's motherfucking razor"....at least you are untroubled by consistency.
I asked why in principle the percentage concentration of CO2 would be relevant. You replied by saying: - because lots more things have no effect at low concentration than have some effect. That's fine as an ingoing hypothesis, but is hardly conclusive. - because CO2 is [chemically?] nonreactive - because CO2 is transparent - because CO2 is subject to depletion -- net presumably, as only a cretin would be interested in gross. Net depletion is an interesting contention, sadly not backed by any actual facts.
So it looks like you are trying to argue that CO2 doesn't actually act to warm the atmosphere -- because there's not much of it, because it doesn't react with other chemicals, is transparent and is depleting (except its not). This is an exciting twist, as most skeptics at least confine themselves to saying human-induced production of CO2 and other GHGs doesn't materially affect warming rates rather than arguing for the overturning of our knowledge of physics that's considered utterly uncontentious except outside the tiniest of minds. But then, most skeptics aren't dumb enough to think that transparency is relevant. Or chemical reactivity. Sheesh.
No, you do the research and then use that to inform the design of the screening including selection criteria. I think you'll find that the designers of such screening programmes are pretty eminent medical scientists dealing with very difficult problems. Triviaising it does not favours to anyone.
Hmm, I wonder if I can think of anything else different between this "pulse" and every other pulse that has ever happened, starting with the previous one, 120k years ago. Oh yes, that's right: global human civilisation. 7 billion people on a planet. It would be kinda nice if we could survive this pulse without hundreds of millions of people dying of relevant proximate causes, like flooding, starvation and war. Even if we do as a species survive comfortably, I'm personally a little bit more specific and selfish in my desires -- I'd kind of like me+mine to survive in relative comfort, where that's defined as an absence of the condition of humanity throughout prehistory -- rape, murder, starvation, disease, discomfort etc etc.
The follow-the-money thing is the thing I find really funny here....as if the money that Gore might make would add up to anything but the teeniest pimple on the gigantic money-making arse that is Koch+Big Oil+Big Construction etc etc. As if the financial incentives weren't enormously stronger for corporate behemoths such as Exxon than they are for sodding research scientists and a couple of hedgies making a speculative punt on some carbon futures (which the big energy players are of course already involved with as well)....
Why, in principle, would the percentage concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere be relevant? Obviously, there are plenty of things occurring in nature in tiny concentrations that have enormous physical effects on systems. Why would that be, in principle, not the case here?
And the UK is now reviewing the entire breast screening programme it runs to see whether the evidence continues to show that, on balance, good outweighs harm. Tough decisions for all concerned, and an excellent demonstration of just why science is hard to do right.
Among the options: 1) Continue as-is 2) Use more selective screening with (hopefully) greater specificity -- eg familial history, gene markers, etc 3) Stop screening
What evidence have you given that critical thinking isn't a skill that can be taught? Why do I have to give you evidence? Why don't you have to give me evidence? Who set you up as the person who gets to ask the questions while I run around trying to answer them?
I told you how I came to form my views in my very first post. I'm not going to repeat myself. How did you come to form your views?
Slashdot Mirror
You are clearly over-estimating your sample size. Unless you have very strange appetites, I really doubt you are eating at thousands of cafes and restaurants in a single year. Even at 3 squares a day, that's only just over a thousand meals, and that implies you never ever eat at home (yours or someone else's). I'm curious who would trust you on such Very Important Business that they'll pay for you to do all that Important International Travel to meet all these research labs, universities and corporations, if you are so weak with pretty basic maths.
Anyway, the evidence of your eyes leads you to one conclusion. The evidence of my emails ("Sent from my iPad") leads me in another -- cos I have had this message from at least a dozen colleagues and contacts, so they are clearly busy using their iPads.
God knows why this got modded up insightful. The truth is, what matters is meaningful choice. No-one wants to be bothered with making unnecessary choices, ie things they don't care about. And the other truth is, Apple has proved very very good at working out what choices people actually do care about and, guess what, endless configurability of minor specs turns out not to be sufficiently important to stop people preferring to buy Apple machines, which supposedly can never be perfect for consumers because of the limited choice available, by the millions.
All this is utterly unsurprising given that there is not only a cost to consumers of too much choice (frictional / transaction choices and more chance of ending up with the wrong thing, as anyone who's tried to understand Nokia's lineup will attest to), but also a cost to manufacturers, who are unable to focus effort on doing a few things really well.
For many many consumers (and business users too), they couldn't give a hairy monkeys about whether it's possible to swap out the spare battery pack for a DVD drive or whatever, when the machines offering that don't provide a huge glass trackpad and a solid metal body, etc.
Of *course* there's value, just not value you recognise. Cleaner lines, fewer powerplugs used, etc. You might not care, but plenty of other people do.
I think you're spot on that they need to reduce the lag time. I don't think that gets solved just (just!) by putting the AI on a chip. The data is in the cloud and on the web, and that access takes some time too. Cutting latency will be super-critical, I'm sure.
Erm....voice control in a car is always going to be a secondary feature, because the prime purpose of a car is to get you from A to B. However, a smartphone is there to help you navigate and interact with information intuitively -- hence why voice control matters.
And of course, the amazing thing about new channels of communication is that they don't make the old channels disappear. So subways will remain a pretty unlikely place for people to use voice control, whereas it'll be very helpful in your car or as you walk out of the door.
I'm pretty sure that it wasn't a case of "oops we forgot the Netherlands" in Palo Alto -- more, "let's do this right for the US, our largest market, and then roll out elsewhere when we've got sufficient resource"
What about sales? And profits? You know, actual sales as opposed to channel stuffing? And actual profits, which is the reason for making a sale in the first place?
Do you know if it works the other way round? ie
You: "Call my sister"
Siri: "What is your sister's name?"
You: "Ellen Jones"
That would be cool!
You really know absolutely fuck all about pharma development, don't you? The costs of the regulatory burden are effectively equivalent in Europe and the US. Pharmacos are no more pleased with NICE and the MCA et al than they are with the FDA. The costs in Russia and China are lower, but practically no drugs are developed in either country, despite the pharmacos all being giant transnationals with absolutely zero sense of loyalty to a particular country. Care to know why? Because the regulatory bar isn't high enough for people to trust any drugs developed there, and so the market isn't large enough. That's right, the market. Take that invisible hand and shove it up the proverbial.
Additionally, there's plenty of transnational regulation of the pharma industry (GMP etc), so you'll have to search a bit harder for your example of you popping an unregulated medical pill. Shame, really, as the rest of us could have done with the laugh.
Tell you what, no. For the absolutely fucking obvious point that the FDA is hardly the world's only government regulator of drug quality.
I meant, and I can't believe you're so fucking dim or deliberately obtuse that I'm having to spell this out, that a decent test of your commitment to your ideals would be if you were to consume a drug that purports to treat a serious condition -- diabetes, dementia, CHF, asthma -- that was made by an unregulated person or entity.
Not popping a tab of fucking MDMA or a medical pill made in another country that has its own regulation.
Tell you what, Roman, can you post a video of your trying out an exciting drug that's been developed in an area of the world that's refreshingly unencumbered by such silly nonsense as safety regulation and clinical trials? Do post it on YouTube, there'd be lots of people who'd love to watch.
I too recognise the tide rises and falls over time. Doesn't mean I like it. And doesn't mean that I'm thrilled if the levees aren't being well-maintained. As you say, we're supposed to be smart: not maintaining the levees is dumb.
What makes you think that you could decide in a free market? Cancer treatment is wildly expensive. Unless you're a multimillionaire, you'll run out of money. Then you can't decide any more. Not to point out the bleeding obvious, but that was the whole point of why insurance was invented -- to protect against rare but catastrophic losses by spreading the risk across a larger group. And also bleeding obvious, the minute there's any kind of risk-pooling, someone has to set rules for the risk pool, and it isn't the consumer who gets to do that.
The irony of your suggestion is remarkable!
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17319805
Oh but you can.
For cancer, specifically, and in the UK, specifically, there are plenty of high-cost drugs of dubious cost-benefit that are being prescribed due to public pressure when the money would be better spent on other things. NICE guidelines overturned, etc etc.
I'd start with the babies personally. If they can't pay for their healthcare, let 'em fucking die.
Nobber.
You say "Sure, whatever, that's obvious and wasn't my point anyways." But what's truly obvious is that you didn't get his point. His point was, you can't save much money by stopping people going to see the doctor about a cold. It's just not sufficiently wasteful of resources. If you want to save money in healthcare, there's only one way to do it: be more effective upstream. Prevention and active management are where it's at. Twatting about with the funding model is a waste of time.
Actually, going to see a specialist is *not* the right thing to do. Specialists are prone to over-treatment. What you want is a good generalist who has access to decent, evidence-based decision-support. Primary care is much more effective than secondary care in keeping a population healthy.
So....you're complaining about a lack of civility in a post entitled "Occam's motherfucking razor"....at least you are untroubled by consistency.
I asked why in principle the percentage concentration of CO2 would be relevant. You replied by saying:
- because lots more things have no effect at low concentration than have some effect. That's fine as an ingoing hypothesis, but is hardly conclusive.
- because CO2 is [chemically?] nonreactive
- because CO2 is transparent
- because CO2 is subject to depletion -- net presumably, as only a cretin would be interested in gross. Net depletion is an interesting contention, sadly not backed by any actual facts.
So it looks like you are trying to argue that CO2 doesn't actually act to warm the atmosphere -- because there's not much of it, because it doesn't react with other chemicals, is transparent and is depleting (except its not). This is an exciting twist, as most skeptics at least confine themselves to saying human-induced production of CO2 and other GHGs doesn't materially affect warming rates rather than arguing for the overturning of our knowledge of physics that's considered utterly uncontentious except outside the tiniest of minds. But then, most skeptics aren't dumb enough to think that transparency is relevant. Or chemical reactivity. Sheesh.
No, you do the research and then use that to inform the design of the screening including selection criteria. I think you'll find that the designers of such screening programmes are pretty eminent medical scientists dealing with very difficult problems. Triviaising it does not favours to anyone.
Hmm, I wonder if I can think of anything else different between this "pulse" and every other pulse that has ever happened, starting with the previous one, 120k years ago. Oh yes, that's right: global human civilisation. 7 billion people on a planet. It would be kinda nice if we could survive this pulse without hundreds of millions of people dying of relevant proximate causes, like flooding, starvation and war. Even if we do as a species survive comfortably, I'm personally a little bit more specific and selfish in my desires -- I'd kind of like me+mine to survive in relative comfort, where that's defined as an absence of the condition of humanity throughout prehistory -- rape, murder, starvation, disease, discomfort etc etc.
The follow-the-money thing is the thing I find really funny here....as if the money that Gore might make would add up to anything but the teeniest pimple on the gigantic money-making arse that is Koch+Big Oil+Big Construction etc etc. As if the financial incentives weren't enormously stronger for corporate behemoths such as Exxon than they are for sodding research scientists and a couple of hedgies making a speculative punt on some carbon futures (which the big energy players are of course already involved with as well)....
Why, in principle, would the percentage concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere be relevant? Obviously, there are plenty of things occurring in nature in tiny concentrations that have enormous physical effects on systems. Why would that be, in principle, not the case here?
And the UK is now reviewing the entire breast screening programme it runs to see whether the evidence continues to show that, on balance, good outweighs harm. Tough decisions for all concerned, and an excellent demonstration of just why science is hard to do right.
Among the options:
1) Continue as-is
2) Use more selective screening with (hopefully) greater specificity -- eg familial history, gene markers, etc
3) Stop screening
What evidence have you given that critical thinking isn't a skill that can be taught? Why do I have to give you evidence? Why don't you have to give me evidence? Who set you up as the person who gets to ask the questions while I run around trying to answer them?
I told you how I came to form my views in my very first post. I'm not going to repeat myself. How did you come to form your views?