... is that the one-button mentality mandated the "click once to select, twice to open" mentality that still drags down both Mac and Windows OS design. And no matter how much easier people say it is to teach neophytes one button rather than context menus, that is more than compensated for how hard it is to tesch them that the precise amount of delay in clicking controls what happens.
One previous reply lamented how his father after six years still right-clicks and opens things rather than just (double) clicking on them. And I say, Why is that a fault? Double-clicking is just a lazy default; context menus make clear that sometimes you want to do something different with a file than open it.
As for why Apple sticks with the one-button mouse, I think it's pretty clear: Apple is constitutionally incapable of admiting a design mistake. Their selling point is their hipness and their superior design, and they must maintain that image no matter what. So designs might evolve -- and bad features quietly expire -- but only if something "revolutionary" can take their place. Learning from their competitors would undercut the whole Apple mentality.
I hate to speak for another person, but from the tone of the grandfather post, I'm pretty sure this was meant sardonically (sarcastically? I always get the two confused). He/she wasn't advocating this position but rather speaking like one of the "overlord" people would.
Social Security seems efficient now, but imagine how much more efficient it would be if it didn't exist. That would be an even better 0% administrative cost and the removal of a vast inefficiency in the US economic system which steals from the young to bribe old voters.
Well, I strongly disagree that Social Securiy has been a net drain on this society or its economy. But I admire your honesty in admitting that the actual goal is the elimination of the program, not just a "reform". Most people coming after it do not have the same forthrightness.
If any corporate pension plan were run the way SS is they'd be doing the perp walk.
Yes, my heart went out to all those corporate officers over the holidays, as they were "perp-walked" out of their offices after essentially negating the pension plans of employees that had put in for years... Oh, wait a minute. The perp walk never happened. UAL was able to just say "Oops. Guess we won't be paying out after all" and no one got arrested or even fired.
Look at the European economic growth in comparison to the US.
OK. Now look at the disastrous experience the Brits have had since Maggie Thathcer, et al, forced them to privatize retirement. The European example swings both ways, my friend.
For people under 35, the most important number is the number of dollars in an employee's pocket on payday after deductions. As things stand right now, there's at least 30 years - at least seven presidential terms - between now and when those people start collecting. Chances are some politician is going to wreck social security between now and then even if the gloom and doom predictions don't come true.
I agree exactly. And that's why the system crashed in 1964, on its 30th anniversary. Oh, wait, it didn't. But surely it crashed soon after. No? Hmmm. I wonder what went "wrong"? Perhaps it's not as easy to "wreck" as right-wingers want to say. In fact, the Social Security program is exactly what they hate: A large, effective, well-administered government program that services a huge population and accomplishes its goals. It's extremely hard to rail against, especially when you remember that the administrative cost is below 1%.
The thing that twists my spine is that Bush is basically using the current Social Security budget to hide the devestating deficits his tax cuts created -- and now he wants to kill the program for the future.
Womens claims tend to be less expensive than men's, and involve more damage to property (lamp posts etc).
Ah, now that's the bit that was missing earlier. Thank you. That can distinguish between having fewer accidents and merely submitting fewer claims... not perfectly but suggestively.
Lest we forget, Newton's discoveries did not come from a vacuum.
Indeed and without question. The Principia was consciously modelled on, among other things, Euclid's Elements. But science in the modern sense is a recent invention and it is something new under the sun. Most "advanced" (using the word with caution) ancient systems wrestled with the problem of the motion of the stars and planets. Newton and his contemporaries solved. I am happy to put Newton in the company of Hooke, Galileo, the Bernoullis, and Kepler. I think it ridiculous to act as if any ancient astronomy outstripped their results.
Ah, but such is the toxicity of the current environment. If you proposed that women have a genetic disposition to be more empathic, you would not be roasted like this guy is. And yet what he actually said is: There are persistent gaps between male and female representation in sicence and math. We've worked pretty hard for several decades now to reduce that gap. It is fair, at least, to wonder where it originates -- and a candidate is in the genes. He wasn't saying it is so... he was saying, we should study to see if it is so.
Hmmm. That's called science.
The critics have all begun with their "truth" firmly in mind: There are no genetic origins to the gender discrepancy. They're not interested in knowing if this is so or in showing that it is so. They don't have to... they already have The Truth in their possession. Investigation could, at best, confirm The Truth and might just call it into question, so inquiry is dangerous and must be avoided -- and those seeking to inquire must be shouted down and silenced.
That's not science. That's religion.
Put a different way: For a moment, imagine that there is a genetic origin for the gender discrepancy. Isn't that the sort of thing we should know and face? Or is it racist for us to know that African Americans have a genetic predisposition for sickle-cell anemia?
The truth cannot be racist. Facts cannot be racist. How they are used can be -- but when has a free society ever benefitted from an a priori decision to close down a line of inquiry?
It strikes me that everyone who has raised the arm seems not to believe in the scientific method or, in fact, the Enlightenment. We all want to fruits of scientific endeavour but we don't want to respect its fundaments.
Whatever chances he had of becoming Treasury secretary are now shot forever.
Yeah. In retrospect he should have just written a memo outlining the high return-on-investment of using torture in interrogations. Then his nomination would have sailed through....
In places with only a few insurance companies, thie divergence might become significant. If the entry barrier is low, then costs will be actually less for the company that follows the true statistics -- and they'll have every incentive to undercut the other companies. If company A is charging population P too much (compated to their actual rates of claims), then company B will come in and charge P less. Meanwhile, if company A is artificially charging population Q too little (for whatever reason), then A loses money on every Q customer; whereas B, following the true stats, does not.
So the answer here, of course, is to make sure that entry into the insurance market is not artificially difficult.
In summary, men have fewer, more serious accidents and women have more less serious ones
No. In summary, men tend to have more serious accidents. The other bit could easily be that women are more likely to file an insurance claim for a minor mishap. Maybe men figure they can fix or have someone else fix the problem. Maybe men feel more embarassment over having accidents and thus only file claims when there's no way they can pay for the repairs. Or of course maybe they really do have fewer minor accidents.
Beats the story of Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton.
Ah, yes, yet another tale wherein the ancient peoples outdo their modern imitators. Except for the whole "found a system of the world wherein the mode of learning is a self-correcting, self-perpetuating mechanism that leads to heights, depths, and breadths of knowledge undreamt of four centuries ago, much less twenty."
I don't know much about the Chaldeans' observations, so I'll concede that they might have outstripped Tycho. But I'm fairly certain that they did not point out that the planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus, or that the orbits of any planet sweeps out equal areas in equal time, or that the period of a planet's orbit is proportional to the 3/2 power of its distance from the Sun (OK, technically, its semi-major axis). So, advantage: Kepler.
And I am absolutely certain that they did not then note that a universal attraction of each planet for the others actually pulls them off said ellipses and causes a more complex motion -- let alone actually providing a method to correct for this -- oh, and incidentally, crafting a system of mechanics that not only allows one to build skyscrapers and suspension bridges but leads to investigations and methods that eventually discover electromagnetism, relativty, and quantum mechanics.
So I think advantage: Newton, as well.
The ancients were not idiots. They were just as smart as we are today. But they knew less than we do about the physical universe and they didn't have a system even remotely similar to science, that allowed a steady and self-correcting accumulation of knowledge. I can honestly not understand the apparently fervent need of many to worship at the altar of mist-enshrouded nameless ancestors, who "have" to be better than the well-documented founders of the modern world.
And what business would these people have distributing illegal wares on peer-to-peer networks in the first place?
If it's illegal, as the author readily admits, then why should not the law crack down on such activities?
From the actual article:
[The BSA] said Internet service providers like America Online should be required to reveal the names of customers who may be distributing copyright software through "peer to peer" networks like Kazaa.
Internet service providers have argued that investigators should be required to file a lawsuit to get customer names, an extra legal step that they say protects customer privacy and cuts down on frivolous requests.
Because the BSA isn't arguing that actual lawbreakers should face harsher penalties. They're arguing that the BSA, RIAA, MPAA, etc. should have unfettered access to customer data, just in case said customer might be breaking copyright laws.
Now, you see, in a nation under the rule of law, there are judicial protections that prevent governmental or corporate "fishing expeditions". Put more quaintly, as a nation the US follows the presumption of innocence -- or at least, it has traditionally.
my point is that for all the looking backwards at disasters and saying "if only..." we always end up walking into new, novel disasters.
Yeah... but in part because we're not walking into the old ones any more. Why have fire departments? Fires are inevitable. Why have smoke detectors? CO can kill you just as well... The point is, while recognizing there might be things we don't anticipate, let's take care of the things we can.
You mean, once people started seriously thinking about it? Not very long at all, actually. It took a while for the idea to percolate throughout all levels of society, but that was mostly because the vast majority of people would have no reason to even consider the question.
Territorial organization promotes prosperity for the little guys, self-esteem, and behavioral diversity.
Sure. Because it never happens that, as one accumulates "territory", one uses it to enforce dictates on those who don't have it, or have less. It never ever leads to a runaway concentration of power -- to higher prosperity for some combined with general misery for most.
Except of course that's exactly what happens.
Consensus decision making falls apart, true enough. It can lead to demagoguery and eventually dictatorship. But propoerty rights enthusiasts seem astoundingly able to delude themselves. Property-based systems fall apart, atoo. They can easily lead to oligarchy and stasis.
The flaw in your argument is the same subtlety that usually infects such debates. Even granting the dubious proposition that "only two non-violent ways have been found to settle such conflicts" (of interest), it's an error to assume that "the answer" is only one or the other. In fact, the Americna experience in its best light shows how creative tension among deliberately-opposed mechanisms, can lead to greater freedom and prosperity.
Put another way: History "shows" that you can have only one of two loci of power: Centralized or dispersed -- nationalism or feudalism, essentially. But in fact the American model (federalism) productively harnesses both. There's a tendency to drift to either extreme but during that part of our history where we understood and resisted such tendencies, progress was made.
It's nice to say that government's primary purpose is the securing of property rights (especially if you happen to have the property). It's easy. But it's incomplete.
I've never been allowed to use a calculator and I'm much better off for it.
How do you know you're better off for it? Maybe, if calculators had been allowed, you'd've been able to get to deeper concepts faster. Maybe you'd have been able to play with function and form and plots, and discovered chaos.
'Course, maybe not. But it seems to me that a blanket statement like yours is essentially unsupportable, and generally counterproductive. There's room for pen-and-paper, or even just brain work, but IMHO, there's room for integrators and plotters.
Put another way: When I took math in grade school, I had a teacher who also didn't believe in "high tech" -- like the pencil. We did everything in ink. Her theory was, if it was in ink, you couldn't correct a mistake -- so you wouldn't make any. It was an insane educational theory, of course, and bore no relation to what actually occured.
The networks would give a group permission to archive their content for use as evidence against them?
But that's how the tyranny of the "moral" works: If a network refuses, PTC launches a giant campaign about "What are they afraid of? What are they trying to hide?" as well as "They're picking on us, a right-minded fair group." News outlets would, hand-wringingly, report on the accusations because they are "news" (because other news outlets say they are). The network takes a real black eye, PR-wise. To avoid that, they'll pre-emptively knuckle under and grant the permission.
I think everyone should use the http://www.parentstv.org/ptc/fcc/fcccomplaint2.asp Complaint Form on the PTC website to send positive fead back about all of the shows in the PTC worst 10 list to the FCC.
No, no. We should all file indecency complaints about the shows theylike. Clutter up the FCC with millions of bad complaints and show how arbitrary the process is.
Slashdot Mirror
... is that the one-button mentality mandated the "click once to select, twice to open" mentality that still drags down both Mac and Windows OS design. And no matter how much easier people say it is to teach neophytes one button rather than context menus, that is more than compensated for how hard it is to tesch them that the precise amount of delay in clicking controls what happens.
One previous reply lamented how his father after six years still right-clicks and opens things rather than just (double) clicking on them. And I say, Why is that a fault? Double-clicking is just a lazy default; context menus make clear that sometimes you want to do something different with a file than open it.
As for why Apple sticks with the one-button mouse, I think it's pretty clear: Apple is constitutionally incapable of admiting a design mistake. Their selling point is their hipness and their superior design, and they must maintain that image no matter what. So designs might evolve -- and bad features quietly expire -- but only if something "revolutionary" can take their place. Learning from their competitors would undercut the whole Apple mentality.
Isn't it amazing how many people forget this?
I hate to speak for another person, but from the tone of the grandfather post, I'm pretty sure this was meant sardonically (sarcastically? I always get the two confused). He/she wasn't advocating this position but rather speaking like one of the "overlord" people would.
Weren't you paying attention in November? They are.
Well, I strongly disagree that Social Securiy has been a net drain on this society or its economy. But I admire your honesty in admitting that the actual goal is the elimination of the program, not just a "reform". Most people coming after it do not have the same forthrightness.
Yes, my heart went out to all those corporate officers over the holidays, as they were "perp-walked" out of their offices after essentially negating the pension plans of employees that had put in for years... Oh, wait a minute. The perp walk never happened. UAL was able to just say "Oops. Guess we won't be paying out after all" and no one got arrested or even fired.
OK. Now look at the disastrous experience the Brits have had since Maggie Thathcer, et al, forced them to privatize retirement. The European example swings both ways, my friend.
I agree exactly. And that's why the system crashed in 1964, on its 30th anniversary. Oh, wait, it didn't. But surely it crashed soon after. No? Hmmm. I wonder what went "wrong"? Perhaps it's not as easy to "wreck" as right-wingers want to say. In fact, the Social Security program is exactly what they hate: A large, effective, well-administered government program that services a huge population and accomplishes its goals. It's extremely hard to rail against, especially when you remember that the administrative cost is below 1%.
The thing that twists my spine is that Bush is basically using the current Social Security budget to hide the devestating deficits his tax cuts created -- and now he wants to kill the program for the future.
Ah, now that's the bit that was missing earlier. Thank you. That can distinguish between having fewer accidents and merely submitting fewer claims... not perfectly but suggestively.
Indeed and without question. The Principia was consciously modelled on, among other things, Euclid's Elements. But science in the modern sense is a recent invention and it is something new under the sun. Most "advanced" (using the word with caution) ancient systems wrestled with the problem of the motion of the stars and planets. Newton and his contemporaries solved. I am happy to put Newton in the company of Hooke, Galileo, the Bernoullis, and Kepler. I think it ridiculous to act as if any ancient astronomy outstripped their results.
Ah, but such is the toxicity of the current environment. If you proposed that women have a genetic disposition to be more empathic, you would not be roasted like this guy is. And yet what he actually said is: There are persistent gaps between male and female representation in sicence and math. We've worked pretty hard for several decades now to reduce that gap. It is fair, at least, to wonder where it originates -- and a candidate is in the genes. He wasn't saying it is so ... he was saying, we should study to see if it is so.
... they already have The Truth in their possession. Investigation could, at best, confirm The Truth and might just call it into question, so inquiry is dangerous and must be avoided -- and those seeking to inquire must be shouted down and silenced.
Hmmm. That's called science.
The critics have all begun with their "truth" firmly in mind: There are no genetic origins to the gender discrepancy. They're not interested in knowing if this is so or in showing that it is so. They don't have to
That's not science. That's religion.
Put a different way: For a moment, imagine that there is a genetic origin for the gender discrepancy. Isn't that the sort of thing we should know and face? Or is it racist for us to know that African Americans have a genetic predisposition for sickle-cell anemia?
The truth cannot be racist. Facts cannot be racist. How they are used can be -- but when has a free society ever benefitted from an a priori decision to close down a line of inquiry?
It strikes me that everyone who has raised the arm seems not to believe in the scientific method or, in fact, the Enlightenment. We all want to fruits of scientific endeavour but we don't want to respect its fundaments.
Yeah. In retrospect he should have just written a memo outlining the high return-on-investment of using torture in interrogations. Then his nomination would have sailed through....
In places with only a few insurance companies, thie divergence might become significant. If the entry barrier is low, then costs will be actually less for the company that follows the true statistics -- and they'll have every incentive to undercut the other companies. If company A is charging population P too much (compated to their actual rates of claims), then company B will come in and charge P less. Meanwhile, if company A is artificially charging population Q too little (for whatever reason), then A loses money on every Q customer; whereas B, following the true stats, does not.
So the answer here, of course, is to make sure that entry into the insurance market is not artificially difficult.
No. In summary, men tend to have more serious accidents. The other bit could easily be that women are more likely to file an insurance claim for a minor mishap. Maybe men figure they can fix or have someone else fix the problem. Maybe men feel more embarassment over having accidents and thus only file claims when there's no way they can pay for the repairs. Or of course maybe they really do have fewer minor accidents.
Ah, yes, yet another tale wherein the ancient peoples outdo their modern imitators. Except for the whole "found a system of the world wherein the mode of learning is a self-correcting, self-perpetuating mechanism that leads to heights, depths, and breadths of knowledge undreamt of four centuries ago, much less twenty."
I don't know much about the Chaldeans' observations, so I'll concede that they might have outstripped Tycho. But I'm fairly certain that they did not point out that the planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus, or that the orbits of any planet sweeps out equal areas in equal time, or that the period of a planet's orbit is proportional to the 3/2 power of its distance from the Sun (OK, technically, its semi-major axis). So, advantage: Kepler.
And I am absolutely certain that they did not then note that a universal attraction of each planet for the others actually pulls them off said ellipses and causes a more complex motion -- let alone actually providing a method to correct for this -- oh, and incidentally, crafting a system of mechanics that not only allows one to build skyscrapers and suspension bridges but leads to investigations and methods that eventually discover electromagnetism, relativty, and quantum mechanics.
So I think advantage: Newton, as well.
The ancients were not idiots. They were just as smart as we are today. But they knew less than we do about the physical universe and they didn't have a system even remotely similar to science, that allowed a steady and self-correcting accumulation of knowledge. I can honestly not understand the apparently fervent need of many to worship at the altar of mist-enshrouded nameless ancestors, who "have" to be better than the well-documented founders of the modern world.
Well, "a" is for "anchor" -- though the term never quite caught on.
Also, I've always thought that it benefitted from being close to "goggle", a device for preserving your sight.
From the actual article:
Because the BSA isn't arguing that actual lawbreakers should face harsher penalties. They're arguing that the BSA, RIAA, MPAA, etc. should have unfettered access to customer data, just in case said customer might be breaking copyright laws.
Now, you see, in a nation under the rule of law, there are judicial protections that prevent governmental or corporate "fishing expeditions". Put more quaintly, as a nation the US follows the presumption of innocence -- or at least, it has traditionally.
Yeah... but in part because we're not walking into the old ones any more. Why have fire departments? Fires are inevitable. Why have smoke detectors? CO can kill you just as well... The point is, while recognizing there might be things we don't anticipate, let's take care of the things we can.
You mean, once people started seriously thinking about it? Not very long at all, actually. It took a while for the idea to percolate throughout all levels of society, but that was mostly because the vast majority of people would have no reason to even consider the question.
Nah, I'm sure everyone gooogling "britney spears" were really looking for "Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics" and not just pictures of the singer...
Our freedoms shouldn't be contingent on an ability to pay...
Sure. Because it never happens that, as one accumulates "territory", one uses it to enforce dictates on those who don't have it, or have less. It never ever leads to a runaway concentration of power -- to higher prosperity for some combined with general misery for most.
Except of course that's exactly what happens.
Consensus decision making falls apart, true enough. It can lead to demagoguery and eventually dictatorship. But propoerty rights enthusiasts seem astoundingly able to delude themselves. Property-based systems fall apart, atoo. They can easily lead to oligarchy and stasis.
The flaw in your argument is the same subtlety that usually infects such debates. Even granting the dubious proposition that "only two non-violent ways have been found to settle such conflicts" (of interest), it's an error to assume that "the answer" is only one or the other. In fact, the Americna experience in its best light shows how creative tension among deliberately-opposed mechanisms, can lead to greater freedom and prosperity.
Put another way: History "shows" that you can have only one of two loci of power: Centralized or dispersed -- nationalism or feudalism, essentially. But in fact the American model (federalism) productively harnesses both. There's a tendency to drift to either extreme but during that part of our history where we understood and resisted such tendencies, progress was made.
It's nice to say that government's primary purpose is the securing of property rights (especially if you happen to have the property). It's easy. But it's incomplete.
How do you know you're better off for it? Maybe, if calculators had been allowed, you'd've been able to get to deeper concepts faster. Maybe you'd have been able to play with function and form and plots, and discovered chaos.
'Course, maybe not. But it seems to me that a blanket statement like yours is essentially unsupportable, and generally counterproductive. There's room for pen-and-paper, or even just brain work, but IMHO, there's room for integrators and plotters.
Put another way: When I took math in grade school, I had a teacher who also didn't believe in "high tech" -- like the pencil. We did everything in ink. Her theory was, if it was in ink, you couldn't correct a mistake -- so you wouldn't make any. It was an insane educational theory, of course, and bore no relation to what actually occured.
But that's how the tyranny of the "moral" works: If a network refuses, PTC launches a giant campaign about "What are they afraid of? What are they trying to hide?" as well as "They're picking on us, a right-minded fair group." News outlets would, hand-wringingly, report on the accusations because they are "news" (because other news outlets say they are). The network takes a real black eye, PR-wise. To avoid that, they'll pre-emptively knuckle under and grant the permission.
No, no. We should all file indecency complaints about the shows they like. Clutter up the FCC with millions of bad complaints and show how arbitrary the process is.