I did not have a cell phone, then I got a no-contract Androind smartphone (Virgin Mobile has decent deals for this). I cannot drive, so I walk and bus everywhere. Just being able to know when the bus will arrive and have Google maps calculate how to get places while out and about was a huge and instant life improvement. And I have yet to use more than 40 minutes in a given month. The phone part is a nice extra feature, but the real win is internet in my pocket.
Muscles are expensive to maintain. They require lots of calories. In the wild, these mice might not be able to find enough food to support their muscle needs (because extra strength may not translate directly into enough increase in calorie acquisition ability). Also, they live in little underground tunnels, which they dig themselves. More muscular mice are probably bigger-cross-section mice, which means a lot more work to dig out tunnels.
Even getting FedEx Ground to divulge the address of the location where they are holding your package can be difficult. You may have to call several times before you get somebody who is sympathetic enough to just tell you where you can do a pick-up. And it's kind of no wonder . . . the facilities seem under-staffed and under-secured.
I will never drive. I'm lacking depth perception and missing enough peripheral vision that I should not be in control of a machine that will collide with other objects at deadly speeds. I am hoping for a (near) future where I am emphatically not in control of the car, so that the car can drive me places without the help of another human to operate it.
Seems kind of spooky, sitting in the passenger seat, flying along at 60mph, nobody in the driver's seat. Oh well, if it works, I'll get used to it.
American here -- the problem is that while public universities certainly have lower tuition than private universities, you're still looking at fairly high tuition prices that are climbing every year (they usually have to get permission from the state legislature, which dithers a bit and then raises the cap).
Add to this the fact that in order to get the good courses (and an actual degree), you have to be matriculated (officially enrolled in a degree-granting program), and in order to stay stay matriculated to you have to stay above a certain course load threshold, . . . and it means that people who are getting degrees mostly can't have full-time jobs at the same time. Most people don't have the stamina to have part-time jobs year-round while also taking enough courses. Which means the schools are requiring a rate of schooling that is inconsistent with staying out of debt.
If OWS was a crowd that thought through cause-and-effect sorts of relationships, they might have pointed out that this is a major reason why students graduate with mountains of debt and degrees that can't pay it back.
Long distance is not free because there are per-minute federal taxes on inter-state calls. Long distance is just about free over the internet because packets dodge the per-minute fee that voice gets. In this case, it's the government, not corrupt corporations, turning something of almost-no-cost into something that costs per minute. And thus, the US is moving to VoIP as fundamentally a tax dodge.
Sadly, many trains have not gotten with the times. I considered a train for my round trip from Seattle to Minneapolis and back. Problems:
1. Somehow, they run out of rooms months in advance. Because I guess they can't add some more cars onto the end of the train.
2. I need refrigerated medication. Their solution? A bucket of ice. And they had no provisions for freezing my ice packs, so I would arrive at the train station at the other end with a bucket of melty ice, ice packs, and meds, and would have to bring that bucket to my final destination. Nope. Not happening.
3. The long runs don't have wifi. If you get out of urban areas, they just don't have it.
4. Wow, 36 hours each way is a long time for travel. That would mean a full 3 days of vacation just for travel, as opposed to a combined day or day and a half (part of which is driving with family).
5. Quite a bit more expensive than air travel. Plus, add in that extra vacation time.
When the trains get fast and get with this century's tech, I'll try them.
Sure, we need accrediting agencies. The problem with having the government be the accrediting agency is that you aren't free to take or leave their advice.
Ah, I am realizing there are 3 purposes here: (A) space is militarily Advantageous, (C) space is Commercially useful, and (F) space is Fun. And by 'space', I guess I mean being there, getting there, and the offshoots from the work to get there.
NASA became what it is because of A, got so popular in part because of F, and had the really nice side-bonus of C. Because it's a kind of narrowly focused government agency, it ended up giving away a lot of C for free, so it's not directly self-sustaining. If A had not been so urgent, C and F might well have gotten us there without NASA, but much, much slower. At this point, as far as I can tell, the Air Force is doing the actual execution of A (and a lot of what NASA centered around was a little more like F anyway); and NASA is trying to survive with a lot of F and the related dreams of people who are excited by space, and claims that it is not the drag on the economy that it looks like because it's giving away C. But rich guys can use their own money largely based on F and dreams of C, and the ventures that actually get C will continue on with more F, C, and probably some A (hello, Howard Hughes). People complain about individuals getting rich(er) off of war, but quite possibly they are also making war less costly in dollars and lives. 'Course, we should still all just find a way to get along:-)
This makes sense to me at 00:16; it's probably just babbling with goofy substitution.
At this point, a number of the rich are working on buying luxury space yachts, and that will be all sorts of benefit to technology. It will also get the prices down to more reasonable ranges, something that has not been a strong enough driver in the NASA way of doing things.
Thank you for that; I had not thought about the possibility of Connections being on YouTube (silly me). These things are still surprisingly enthralling . . .
Solar collectors that beam down concentrated energy so we can power the world without burning stuff.
Getting out to the asteroids, pulling some in, and doing all of the messy, nasty refining in space so Earth can be clean.
Go read some sci-fi! There's lots of neat stuff, and some of it has really high start-up costs, but other stuff is relatively cheap and would be a license to print money (which would make some people rich, and also fund the more expensive stuff).
Wow. I had never seen that book before. At some point during the third page, I decided that it was exactly like Ira Glass had decide to write a Ruby guide.
No.
The problem with CFL lights is not just "temperature". It's that you lose a lot of color information when using them compared to incandescents, because they have only a few bands on the spectrum instead of the large swath of spectrum that you get by burning something. I have unusually good color vision (there's more to color perception ability than just whether you have red/green or not), and I can tell that I am working with a lot fewer colors under fluorescent than under incandescent lighting.
Also, they give my husband a headache in two minutes.
Yes. We need to have kids dreaming of jobs where the not-quite-super-star level is still a great job, not just a hobby. Heck, with science, even if you never get to the level of making a career at it, you still have the potential to have profound impact on society by just happening to think of something novel in your free time and having enough of the basics to pursue it.
This stuff happens a little less often with credit card numbers because the credit card processors take PCI (Payment Card Industry) standards pretty seriously, audit their big clients yearly, and give the real threat of cutting off companies that don't have enough security. On the other hand, PCI compliance is kind of loose, so I think the real effect of the PCI audits is that they make companies actually _think_ about security. Once you get thinking about security, you can probably do better than PCI requires. As far as I know, the banks as a collective aren't nearly as much into the whole computer security thing.
Oh my. I don't even watch TV, and I apparently have the typical problem with that website. Do they have a Trope for those few in the world who don't get sucked in for hours at a time? And . . . *sigh* now it isn't still Wednesday O_o
The problem with suspending a person's license in the US is that in most places in the country, it is a sentence to a life of extreme poverty. Most people have no way of getting to work via mass transit, and their only public transit option would be a really unreasonably expensive taxi ride twice a day. Most people can't afford to just not work, so not being able to drive is a pretty quick trip to the poverty. That's a big punishment for one mistake.
Still, that just suggests that we really ought to improve the infrastructure. Or get those automatamobiles invented right now:) .
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I did not have a cell phone, then I got a no-contract Androind smartphone (Virgin Mobile has decent deals for this). I cannot drive, so I walk and bus everywhere. Just being able to know when the bus will arrive and have Google maps calculate how to get places while out and about was a huge and instant life improvement. And I have yet to use more than 40 minutes in a given month. The phone part is a nice extra feature, but the real win is internet in my pocket.
Muscles are expensive to maintain. They require lots of calories. In the wild, these mice might not be able to find enough food to support their muscle needs (because extra strength may not translate directly into enough increase in calorie acquisition ability). Also, they live in little underground tunnels, which they dig themselves. More muscular mice are probably bigger-cross-section mice, which means a lot more work to dig out tunnels.
Even getting FedEx Ground to divulge the address of the location where they are holding your package can be difficult. You may have to call several times before you get somebody who is sympathetic enough to just tell you where you can do a pick-up. And it's kind of no wonder . . . the facilities seem under-staffed and under-secured.
I will never drive. I'm lacking depth perception and missing enough peripheral vision that I should not be in control of a machine that will collide with other objects at deadly speeds. I am hoping for a (near) future where I am emphatically not in control of the car, so that the car can drive me places without the help of another human to operate it.
Seems kind of spooky, sitting in the passenger seat, flying along at 60mph, nobody in the driver's seat. Oh well, if it works, I'll get used to it.
American here -- the problem is that while public universities certainly have lower tuition than private universities, you're still looking at fairly high tuition prices that are climbing every year (they usually have to get permission from the state legislature, which dithers a bit and then raises the cap).
Add to this the fact that in order to get the good courses (and an actual degree), you have to be matriculated (officially enrolled in a degree-granting program), and in order to stay stay matriculated to you have to stay above a certain course load threshold, . . . and it means that people who are getting degrees mostly can't have full-time jobs at the same time. Most people don't have the stamina to have part-time jobs year-round while also taking enough courses. Which means the schools are requiring a rate of schooling that is inconsistent with staying out of debt.
If OWS was a crowd that thought through cause-and-effect sorts of relationships, they might have pointed out that this is a major reason why students graduate with mountains of debt and degrees that can't pay it back.
This.
Keeping students from eating on the cheap is an obnoxious abuse of power by the housing & food department. The dorms are a trap.
And you have to be some religion. You can't be atheist.
Long distance is not free because there are per-minute federal taxes on inter-state calls. Long distance is just about free over the internet because packets dodge the per-minute fee that voice gets. In this case, it's the government, not corrupt corporations, turning something of almost-no-cost into something that costs per minute. And thus, the US is moving to VoIP as fundamentally a tax dodge.
Sadly, many trains have not gotten with the times. I considered a train for my round trip from Seattle to Minneapolis and back. Problems:
1. Somehow, they run out of rooms months in advance. Because I guess they can't add some more cars onto the end of the train.
2. I need refrigerated medication. Their solution? A bucket of ice. And they had no provisions for freezing my ice packs, so I would arrive at the train station at the other end with a bucket of melty ice, ice packs, and meds, and would have to bring that bucket to my final destination. Nope. Not happening.
3. The long runs don't have wifi. If you get out of urban areas, they just don't have it.
4. Wow, 36 hours each way is a long time for travel. That would mean a full 3 days of vacation just for travel, as opposed to a combined day or day and a half (part of which is driving with family).
5. Quite a bit more expensive than air travel. Plus, add in that extra vacation time.
When the trains get fast and get with this century's tech, I'll try them.
Sure, we need accrediting agencies. The problem with having the government be the accrediting agency is that you aren't free to take or leave their advice.
Makes sense.
:-)
Ah, I am realizing there are 3 purposes here: (A) space is militarily Advantageous, (C) space is Commercially useful, and (F) space is Fun. And by 'space', I guess I mean being there, getting there, and the offshoots from the work to get there.
NASA became what it is because of A, got so popular in part because of F, and had the really nice side-bonus of C. Because it's a kind of narrowly focused government agency, it ended up giving away a lot of C for free, so it's not directly self-sustaining. If A had not been so urgent, C and F might well have gotten us there without NASA, but much, much slower. At this point, as far as I can tell, the Air Force is doing the actual execution of A (and a lot of what NASA centered around was a little more like F anyway); and NASA is trying to survive with a lot of F and the related dreams of people who are excited by space, and claims that it is not the drag on the economy that it looks like because it's giving away C. But rich guys can use their own money largely based on F and dreams of C, and the ventures that actually get C will continue on with more F, C, and probably some A (hello, Howard Hughes). People complain about individuals getting rich(er) off of war, but quite possibly they are also making war less costly in dollars and lives. 'Course, we should still all just find a way to get along
This makes sense to me at 00:16; it's probably just babbling with goofy substitution.
At this point, a number of the rich are working on buying luxury space yachts, and that will be all sorts of benefit to technology. It will also get the prices down to more reasonable ranges, something that has not been a strong enough driver in the NASA way of doing things.
Thank you for that; I had not thought about the possibility of Connections being on YouTube (silly me). These things are still surprisingly enthralling . . .
Oh I don't know, maybe:
Solar collectors that beam down concentrated energy so we can power the world without burning stuff.
Getting out to the asteroids, pulling some in, and doing all of the messy, nasty refining in space so Earth can be clean.
Go read some sci-fi! There's lots of neat stuff, and some of it has really high start-up costs, but other stuff is relatively cheap and would be a license to print money (which would make some people rich, and also fund the more expensive stuff).
And that quote makes me wonder about a synthetic bridge over nerve damage. Get the details right, and you have a cure for paralysis. Wow . . .
So ah . . . #3 has been in a product recall death spiral for more than a year, hasn't it?
One can hope . . .
Me! I also like working in Java.
Wow. I had never seen that book before. At some point during the third page, I decided that it was exactly like Ira Glass had decide to write a Ruby guide.
My husband has the same problem, and I simply hate the color depth under them.
What will we do? Stockpile incandescents and become reclusive, I guess. Contemplate anti-CFL rallies. Become Libertarians.
No.
The problem with CFL lights is not just "temperature". It's that you lose a lot of color information when using them compared to incandescents, because they have only a few bands on the spectrum instead of the large swath of spectrum that you get by burning something. I have unusually good color vision (there's more to color perception ability than just whether you have red/green or not), and I can tell that I am working with a lot fewer colors under fluorescent than under incandescent lighting.
Also, they give my husband a headache in two minutes.
Yes. We need to have kids dreaming of jobs where the not-quite-super-star level is still a great job, not just a hobby. Heck, with science, even if you never get to the level of making a career at it, you still have the potential to have profound impact on society by just happening to think of something novel in your free time and having enough of the basics to pursue it.
This stuff happens a little less often with credit card numbers because the credit card processors take PCI (Payment Card Industry) standards pretty seriously, audit their big clients yearly, and give the real threat of cutting off companies that don't have enough security. On the other hand, PCI compliance is kind of loose, so I think the real effect of the PCI audits is that they make companies actually _think_ about security. Once you get thinking about security, you can probably do better than PCI requires. As far as I know, the banks as a collective aren't nearly as much into the whole computer security thing.
Oh my. I don't even watch TV, and I apparently have the typical problem with that website. Do they have a Trope for those few in the world who don't get sucked in for hours at a time? And . . . *sigh* now it isn't still Wednesday O_o
The problem with suspending a person's license in the US is that in most places in the country, it is a sentence to a life of extreme poverty. Most people have no way of getting to work via mass transit, and their only public transit option would be a really unreasonably expensive taxi ride twice a day. Most people can't afford to just not work, so not being able to drive is a pretty quick trip to the poverty. That's a big punishment for one mistake.
:) .
Still, that just suggests that we really ought to improve the infrastructure. Or get those automatamobiles invented right now