In engineering, a useful aproximation for pi is 3.
If yer buyin' by the yard I'd use 3 1/4 if I were you. It may have escaped your attention so far, but sooner or later you're bound to discover empirically that you just can't cut the part longer.
. ..they are probably going to ignore you and cite some study that says old people react well to stuffed animals.
Exactly! They may well find, however, that the old people they are studying are not the old people they are marketing too, which is what they purport to be about. The old people they are studying are people born before WWII, not the people born after, whose money it is they are after.
They may well find their capital already gone when they figure out that we're looking to buy built in wireless for our GPS enabled, laser guided (with or without sharks) Aeron by Segway wheelchairs, not beeping teddy bears. The network in the nursing home better be secure as well, because if it ain't we're going to get in and have some fun.
Does it run Linux? Well, it does now! And now when I tell the android candy stripper, er, striper "Yeah, right. Blow me," she's going to interpret it as a command. Hey, Jim, what do you think about clustering our wheelchairs?
Sure, not all of them. Just the ones that act like it. If someone wants to act like a child, then they can be treated like a child, whereas if they want to act like an adult, I am more than happy to treat them like one - and in both cases, this is regardless of age.
Thank you, I 'preciate that. You, however, are not typical.
When you were 8 you went to school and took sports/violin/whatever because your teachers/parents wanted you to, not because you wanted to. You will find as you grow older that most people start treating you in that manner again. In controled care situations like nursing home they treat pretty much every resident that way. You will get a teddy bear pill reminder because that is what they want you to have.
In the meantime a targeted rant now and again may be just the whack upside the head the people who will be marketing things to me and the people who will be caring for me need to remind that, like bad generals, they are thinking about the last generation when "solving" the problems of this generation, even though they may well be deluding themselves that they are thinking of this one.
Are you really going to go on a tirade and start knocking over shelves if they put the pill reminder teddy bears on the shelf next to your normal pill reminder?
I'm not a two year old. I don't go on tirades. I'm a curmudgeon. I post rants. In RL they come off as Billy Connelly type comedy routines and people laugh.
Clearly you have never seen some nice old lady all atwitter at one of those cute furry mouse-looking covers for a computer mouse.
I have, but she was born before the Wright Bros. flew under power.
On the other hand I know 20 year olds who knit doofey covers for Kleenex boxes, but they don't expect to get their email on their Kleenex box either.
In any case it's the 20 year old knitting Kleenex box covers who's going to grow old and go all atwitter over a teddy bear pill reminder. It isn't because she's old, it's because she's doofey. Patting me on the head because I'm old because she is doofey is condescending. I didn't put up with that crap as a child, I'm not going to put with it in my second childhood. Children are people too, they aren't just little adults, but they are people. Old people, likewise, aren't just big children even though some of them act like it.
Me, I was born before an artificial satellite orbited. I grew up knowing how to knit, but I also grew up with Erector Sets and electronic experiment sets. The biggest section in a toy department was likely to be the Gilbert science stuff and they let us buy real chemicals by the pound right over the counter. Warm and fuzzy meant rockets with tailfins and chrome.
In a lot of ways us baby boomers are far more comfortable with technology in its raw state than "you kids," because you mostly buy gadgets, we played around in the guts of stuff and invented the gadgets you play with. Hand us a teddy bear pill reminder and we're likely to rip its little brain out to see what we can do with it. I've got nothin' against teddy bears as teddy bears. I've got a couple. But I've also got a laptop; and I know how to use it to remind me of things.
But yeah, choice is good. Anyone who wants to be all doofey about it can go for it, just don't be bringin' that shit near me, because it's my choice not to be condescended to.
. ..they aren't supposed to make money. To quote from their website: "OSDL is a nonprofit organization
Nonprofit != without profit. Nonprofit designates the manner in which the profits are dispersed. A nonprofit business is a business, and if it don't make money from somewhere it's a business that's out of business.
I've sat on the board of nonprofits. About all we talk about is how to make more profit. Some nonprofits are the most profitable businesses known to man. Why do you think the March of Dimes didn't keep their promise to disband after conquering polio?
There was too much profit in it. Nobody runs away from that sort of money.
I can't think of any reason why he'd make something like that up.
He wasn't making it up. He was repeating it. Just as your pharamicist might tell you you caught a cold because you caught a chill; and you might well believe him, even though being a pharmacist doesn't make him any more expert in colds than yourself, because he's a medical authority figure.
A more correct way of putting it would be to say that your muscles are exerting too much force. This may well be done by a weak muscle. Also a muscle's ability to stretch is not innately connected to the force it applies when contracted. An overworked, strong muscle may lose stretchability, but so may an underworked, weak muscle; and either one might be extremely stretchable.
No one really knows what causes myopia, thus "explanations" abound, based on anecdote and pseudoplausability. It's interesting to note, however, that it typically onsets during the developmental stage from child to adult (and may even go away again by the end of the stage) and runs in families.
You may well be shortsighted simply because you were born to be that way.
The biggest problem with reading (and computers, also) is CONTRAST.
And the lack thereof. You want as much contrast as possible. The problem is BRIGHTNESS. Paper "works" by reflected light. Keep the light source moderate and black on white is just fine (but, yeah, with cream paper you'll reduce reflected light while maintaining decent contrast with black ink), but people tend to go the wrong way there. They have the idea that too little light is bad for their eyes when reading, but that's backwards from the way things actually are. Nobody has ever burned out their retinas by staring straight into a dark closet. The headache you might get from trying to read in light that's too low is simply muscle strain from tensing. Relax.
The problem with a computer is that the light is direct, not reflected. You're staring straight into a lightbulb when you display black on white. Off white on black gives you enough contrast for easy reading, but keeps the photon ray gun to a reasonable output level.
seeing how reading books for extended periods of time will deteriorate your eye sight, since you are putting too much straign on your eyes by focusing so close. ..
Absolute nonsense. Stressing muscles makes them stronger in the long run and degredation of the lens and/or retina are aging effects having nothing to do with "strain."
Yeah, you and me both, followed by a big yawn, but you have to remember that in the mind of Microsoft the release of a new OS defines the hardware upgrade cycle. It's the heat source behind the engine that drives the computer techonology economic "miracle."
If people start reacting to a major release with "Right, Bill. Blow me," the whole ediface starts to unravel, including Microsoft's ability to dictate to the hardware folk.
I'm not keen on Roman/Egyptian history but I think that the Egyptian society and race are a bit older than the Romans.
And thus the Romans had access to Egyptian knowledge. The Romans were, on the whole, technology borrowers, not innovators (the primary exception being military organization).
Go look at some of the adobe structures that have lasted for hundreds upon hundreds of years in the Southwest of the United States.
I've lived in adobe structures. They require sheltering from the elements and/or annual upkeep.
It was just speculation on my part but I highly doubt the Romans were the sole originators of the formula for the aqueducts.
The Romans had access to an abundent supply of a material the Egyptians did not. Pumice.
He has only a high school degree so it's not like he was a scholar on this material.
Bucky Fuller only had a high school degree, so it's not like he was a scholar on building geodesic domes.
Cut out blocks of paper from a notebook without making marks and try to make a perfect angled edge between them. Pretty difficult. Now try it in three dimensions with 2000 year old tools.
Euclid: circa 365-275 BC. I might also note that the ancient Egyptians were so adept at making marks directly on stone that some of those marks still survive and that they invented the surveyor's wheel. They weren't cave men (now, don't get up on the wrong side of the rock. I didn't mean anything by it).
Emulate Churchill, but then he was trying to protect his nation from an overtly agressive tyrant, not induce tyranny from the inside.
You cannot win, in these situations, if it's your job to watch for this stuff. No matter what does, or does not happen, you're going to be pilloried for saying, or not saying what you knew when you knew it.
"Winning" in this case does not mean covering your poltical ass.
How do you draw the line, each and every time, when hundreds of millions of people are going to have different opinions about your thought process?
By allowing them to. Without putting them in cages for it. Maybe even let them face me directly so I can put my argument to them directly.
Seriously, you deal with terrorism by NOT being afraid.
You do NOT deal with it by hyping every single fantasy that they can post.
Bingo! You have a clue, now it's time to unwrap it. If it isn't the way to deal with terrorism, but it is what they are doing, what are they actually up to, hmmmmmmmmmmmm?
Slashdot Mirror
The definitions of pi was a joke
So are school boards.
KFG
. . .for an engineer, pi is 3
No; pi is three for a school board.
KFG
In engineering, a useful aproximation for pi is 3.
If yer buyin' by the yard I'd use 3 1/4 if I were you. It may have escaped your attention so far, but sooner or later you're bound to discover empirically that you just can't cut the part longer.
KFG
You are not the market.
No kidding. Most people my age actually take pills. What's wit dat?
KFG
>I'm not a two year old. I don't go on tirades.
>
>>It doesn't stop Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly.
Touche!
KFG
. . .they are probably going to ignore you and cite some study that says old people react well to stuffed animals.
Exactly! They may well find, however, that the old people they are studying are not the old people they are marketing too, which is what they purport to be about. The old people they are studying are people born before WWII, not the people born after, whose money it is they are after.
They may well find their capital already gone when they figure out that we're looking to buy built in wireless for our GPS enabled, laser guided (with or without sharks) Aeron by Segway wheelchairs, not beeping teddy bears. The network in the nursing home better be secure as well, because if it ain't we're going to get in and have some fun.
Does it run Linux? Well, it does now! And now when I tell the android candy stripper, er, striper "Yeah, right. Blow me," she's going to interpret it as a command. Hey, Jim, what do you think about clustering our wheelchairs?
It's going to be a Brave New Nursing Home.
KFG
Sure, not all of them. Just the ones that act like it. If someone wants to act like a child, then they can be treated like a child, whereas if they want to act like an adult, I am more than happy to treat them like one - and in both cases, this is regardless of age.
Thank you, I 'preciate that. You, however, are not typical.
When you were 8 you went to school and took sports/violin/whatever because your teachers/parents wanted you to, not because you wanted to. You will find as you grow older that most people start treating you in that manner again. In controled care situations like nursing home they treat pretty much every resident that way. You will get a teddy bear pill reminder because that is what they want you to have.
In the meantime a targeted rant now and again may be just the whack upside the head the people who will be marketing things to me and the people who will be caring for me need to remind that, like bad generals, they are thinking about the last generation when "solving" the problems of this generation, even though they may well be deluding themselves that they are thinking of this one.
Are you really going to go on a tirade and start knocking over shelves if they put the pill reminder teddy bears on the shelf next to your normal pill reminder?
I'm not a two year old. I don't go on tirades. I'm a curmudgeon. I post rants. In RL they come off as Billy Connelly type comedy routines and people laugh.
KFG
Clearly you have never seen some nice old lady all atwitter at one of those cute furry mouse-looking covers for a computer mouse.
I have, but she was born before the Wright Bros. flew under power.
On the other hand I know 20 year olds who knit doofey covers for Kleenex boxes, but they don't expect to get their email on their Kleenex box either.
In any case it's the 20 year old knitting Kleenex box covers who's going to grow old and go all atwitter over a teddy bear pill reminder. It isn't because she's old, it's because she's doofey. Patting me on the head because I'm old because she is doofey is condescending. I didn't put up with that crap as a child, I'm not going to put with it in my second childhood. Children are people too, they aren't just little adults, but they are people. Old people, likewise, aren't just big children even though some of them act like it.
Me, I was born before an artificial satellite orbited. I grew up knowing how to knit, but I also grew up with Erector Sets and electronic experiment sets. The biggest section in a toy department was likely to be the Gilbert science stuff and they let us buy real chemicals by the pound right over the counter. Warm and fuzzy meant rockets with tailfins and chrome.
In a lot of ways us baby boomers are far more comfortable with technology in its raw state than "you kids," because you mostly buy gadgets, we played around in the guts of stuff and invented the gadgets you play with. Hand us a teddy bear pill reminder and we're likely to rip its little brain out to see what we can do with it. I've got nothin' against teddy bears as teddy bears. I've got a couple. But I've also got a laptop; and I know how to use it to remind me of things.
But yeah, choice is good. Anyone who wants to be all doofey about it can go for it, just don't be bringin' that shit near me, because it's my choice not to be condescended to.
KFG
. . .they aren't supposed to make money. To quote from their website: "OSDL is a nonprofit organization
Nonprofit != without profit. Nonprofit designates the manner in which the profits are dispersed. A nonprofit business is a business, and if it don't make money from somewhere it's a business that's out of business.
I've sat on the board of nonprofits. About all we talk about is how to make more profit. Some nonprofits are the most profitable businesses known to man. Why do you think the March of Dimes didn't keep their promise to disband after conquering polio?
There was too much profit in it. Nobody runs away from that sort of money.
KFG
I can't think of any reason why he'd make something like that up.
He wasn't making it up. He was repeating it. Just as your pharamicist might tell you you caught a cold because you caught a chill; and you might well believe him, even though being a pharmacist doesn't make him any more expert in colds than yourself, because he's a medical authority figure.
A more correct way of putting it would be to say that your muscles are exerting too much force. This may well be done by a weak muscle. Also a muscle's ability to stretch is not innately connected to the force it applies when contracted. An overworked, strong muscle may lose stretchability, but so may an underworked, weak muscle; and either one might be extremely stretchable.
No one really knows what causes myopia, thus "explanations" abound, based on anecdote and pseudoplausability. It's interesting to note, however, that it typically onsets during the developmental stage from child to adult (and may even go away again by the end of the stage) and runs in families.
You may well be shortsighted simply because you were born to be that way.
KFG
That's a good question.
Damned if I know a good answer.
KFG
Do we soon replace all judgment on humans and human interaction with computers'?
Yes.
How long until someone is flagged by this and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because he feels trapped?
A week from Thursday.
This whole anti-social project shouldn't even have started. What a waste.
That response is correlated with feeling traped. If you will please come with me, sir, we have a room for people to get pithed off in.
KFG
No I would not give you false hope,
on this strange and mournful day.
But the mother and child reunion,
is only a motion away.
KFG
I was told this by my optician.
Optician: specially trained professional (not a medical doctor or optometrist) who can fill prescriptions.
KFG
The biggest problem with reading (and computers, also) is CONTRAST.
And the lack thereof. You want as much contrast as possible. The problem is BRIGHTNESS. Paper "works" by reflected light. Keep the light source moderate and black on white is just fine (but, yeah, with cream paper you'll reduce reflected light while maintaining decent contrast with black ink), but people tend to go the wrong way there. They have the idea that too little light is bad for their eyes when reading, but that's backwards from the way things actually are. Nobody has ever burned out their retinas by staring straight into a dark closet. The headache you might get from trying to read in light that's too low is simply muscle strain from tensing. Relax.
The problem with a computer is that the light is direct, not reflected. You're staring straight into a lightbulb when you display black on white. Off white on black gives you enough contrast for easy reading, but keeps the photon ray gun to a reasonable output level.
KFG
seeing how reading books for extended periods of time will deteriorate your eye sight, since you are putting too much straign on your eyes by focusing so close. . .
Absolute nonsense. Stressing muscles makes them stronger in the long run and degredation of the lens and/or retina are aging effects having nothing to do with "strain."
KFG
If you have the original you can still always compress it yourself if you want; in whatever format you want.
Would I pay more? No. Downloads are already overpriced.
KFG
Yeah, you and me both, followed by a big yawn, but you have to remember that in the mind of Microsoft the release of a new OS defines the hardware upgrade cycle. It's the heat source behind the engine that drives the computer techonology economic "miracle."
If people start reacting to a major release with "Right, Bill. Blow me," the whole ediface starts to unravel, including Microsoft's ability to dictate to the hardware folk.
KFG
what do people do who don't have them sitting right there in the top compartment of the toolbox in a corner of their living room?
I'm looking for a woman with a chainsaw. Please send picture . . . of chainsaw.
KFG
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!
KFG
I'm not keen on Roman/Egyptian history but I think that the Egyptian society and race are a bit older than the Romans.
And thus the Romans had access to Egyptian knowledge. The Romans were, on the whole, technology borrowers, not innovators (the primary exception being military organization).
Go look at some of the adobe structures that have lasted for hundreds upon hundreds of years in the Southwest of the United States.
I've lived in adobe structures. They require sheltering from the elements and/or annual upkeep.
It was just speculation on my part but I highly doubt the Romans were the sole originators of the formula for the aqueducts.
The Romans had access to an abundent supply of a material the Egyptians did not. Pumice.
KFG
He has only a high school degree so it's not like he was a scholar on this material.
Bucky Fuller only had a high school degree, so it's not like he was a scholar on building geodesic domes.
Cut out blocks of paper from a notebook without making marks and try to make a perfect angled edge between them. Pretty difficult. Now try it in three dimensions with 2000 year old tools.
Euclid: circa 365-275 BC. I might also note that the ancient Egyptians were so adept at making marks directly on stone that some of those marks still survive and that they invented the surveyor's wheel. They weren't cave men (now, don't get up on the wrong side of the rock. I didn't mean anything by it).
KFG
Ok, what would you do?
Emulate Churchill, but then he was trying to protect his nation from an overtly agressive tyrant, not induce tyranny from the inside.
You cannot win, in these situations, if it's your job to watch for this stuff. No matter what does, or does not happen, you're going to be pilloried for saying, or not saying what you knew when you knew it.
"Winning" in this case does not mean covering your poltical ass.
How do you draw the line, each and every time, when hundreds of millions of people are going to have different opinions about your thought process?
By allowing them to. Without putting them in cages for it. Maybe even let them face me directly so I can put my argument to them directly.
Ya know, lead.
KFG
What good name?
1985 called and wants its story back.
KFG
Seriously, you deal with terrorism by NOT being afraid.
You do NOT deal with it by hyping every single fantasy that they can post.
Bingo! You have a clue, now it's time to unwrap it. If it isn't the way to deal with terrorism, but it is what they are doing, what are they actually up to, hmmmmmmmmmmmm?
Now be afraid. Be very afraid.
KFG