You're really reaching here, like someone who claims the warm hum and crackle of LPs makes them better. You can certainly claim that the objectively-worse aspects of books make them subjectively better for you, but you shouldn't expect anyone else to be convinced!
A physical book is what reminds us that not everything has to be available at an instant, that we can take our time to sit down and enjoy ourselves without the worry of glare off a screen, our batteries running out or spilling our Dew on the device and shorting it.
While books may be perishable, they are far more durable than any electronic device.
Whether a book is electronic has nothing to do with taking our time to enjoy it. You can sit down, take your time and read all the classic works of literature you want, at whatever pace you want, on an eReader. Modern eReaders do not have screen glare and have batteries that last for months. If you spill your Dew on a physical book you might have to throw away the actual book, whereas if you spill your dew on an eReader, the book itself is in perfect condition and always will be, safe on your hard drive and Amazon's backup servers. Just replace the device (not so expensive nowadays) and your entire library is restored for free.
Congratulations again. You've just excluded at least one third of the world's population, most likely closer to half, who don't have a net connection and will probably not have one in the foreseeable future for various reasons. Cost and infrastructure being the two biggest culprits.
If their conditions are that bad, do you think they're spending their money on libraries and textbooks? They're not going to have access to many books, electronic or not.
Most countries at least have cellular phone networks even if their other infrastructure is lacking, or they have one satellite internet access point. A few eReaders with cellular internet (or occasional access to satellite net) and months-long battery lives could be more valuable than an entire library, and wouldn't cost nearly as much to transport.
Most Americans are OK with spying on people in direct contact with terrorist organizations, or who are plotting an attack.
What about spying on anyone they want? I didn't even have to read TFA to find this gem:
the Patriot Act powers this approval includes would extend "to so-called 'lone wolf' suspects who aren't affiliated with any terrorist group."
If you take away the double speak, 'lone wolf suspect' just means 'anyone we want.' Anyone they want to spy on is automatically a 'suspect' by definition, and if they don't have any connections to terrorism, then I guess they are a 'lone wolf.'
If two people making the same query get different results, they are failing badly!
Bullshit. If I google "wine" I'm interested in the software project, and if my mother does she wants the drink. A search engine that knows that is better than one that doesn't (for the vast majority of users).
Messages using a non-trivial, it is running motion not seen the original, they will give interesting results if someone can figure it out yet.
That it was a message using the results of the first when I need to understand the use of the interesting examples can feel the pit, you do this your need to get you in the clear yet.
Do you have a smart phone? You'd love Swype. It's basically what you describe but for the soft-keyboard on a touchscreen. You put your finger down somewhere near the letter your word starts with, drag it around in the general direction and neighborhood of the rest of the letters in the word, and then lift it up. Swype calculates a probability of what word you were trying to type based on the shape, even if you didn't quite touch all the letters in the word. If it's confident enough, it inserts the word into the text field... otherwise it displays a list of words in order of confidence for you to pick from. (If you wanted the top word in the list you can just start typing your next word and it will insert it.) And of course it automatically learns any new words you type.
At first I thought it was just a gimmick but I've been VERY impressed by it on my Galaxy S phone... I specifically got a phone with a slide-out keyboard because I didn't like the idea of a soft-keyboard, but now I use both in different situations. The hardware keyboard is still nicer for entering symbols and other non-words conveniently (e.g. an SSH session or a web password), but for regular writing Swype is actually faster!
I also live in Minnesota and drive a Prius, and I haven't had any problems. My batteries have been working fine for 4.5 years, and the computer's always been able to start up the engine even at -15 degrees F last week.
I've been tracking my gas mileage since I bought the car (using actual gas receipts and odometer rather than the car's reported MPG), and I find that it drops from 45-50MPG in mid-summer to 35-40MPG in the coldest parts of winter. While that's definitely a decline, it's closer to 75% of the range than half and I doubt it's because of the battery. Everyone's MPG goes down somewhat in the winter, and the Prius moreso because it can't shut off its engine and go into electric mode as often.
Hah, good luck! My phone (Samsung Epic 4G for Sprint) was supposed to have Froyo at launch, then was going to get it in September. Then October. Then December. Still waiting with no indication of progress... I wouldn't count on the Intercept getting Froyo in 2011 if they are currently saying "spring."
By this logic, ordinary TV and movies could be even more damaging to children's eyesight and related neural pathways. On TV and on the movie screen, objects are depicted at all sorts of "distances" from the viewer, but the eyes always focus at the screen at the same depth! They are always directed at the same angle relative to each other, and never cross or uncross at all like they would when viewing the actual scene the movie depicts.
With a 3d movie, the eyes do cross and uncross like you'd expect in order to view closer or farther objects. This actually stimulates the muscles more dynamically than a regular movie would. Of course your eyes have their own individual focus which still doesn't change since the movie screen is actually at a constant depth, but that's true of regular movies as well.
I'm not saying that we should ignore any potential problems. It just seems like a lot of uninformed hand wringing at this point, similar to what every generation does about the new technology and culture their kids get. After all, there have been 3d games and movies and kids toys for decades. If there were any actual cases of stunted development, I assume these articles would be pointing to them instead of making unsupported claims like "users of all ages can succumb to the perils of 3D experience." (Although the article paints a pretty reasonable picture overall, quoting an ophthalmologist who says it's overblown.)
Thanks for the interesting post. I went to Washington University in St. Louis (enrolled 2002) for the same reason: It seemed like the most likely to have highly-motivated students. Since Wash U was still rising in the rankings at that time, I figured the student body would be even more motivated than at one of the Ivies since there'd be fewer lazy "legacy" rich kids. (Not that all legacy kids are lazy, but some are.) I was very happy with my choice. When you're looking for a school, see which ones have only recently risen into the top ranks at that time because those ones are probably fostering a challenging academic environment and attracting the ambitious and intelligent applicants.
Timecode is a 97-minute movie where the screen is split in four sections, each one following one character in a single take.
It was shot 15 times total, and the director apparently insisted that the actors wear different clothes each time so there wouldn't be any temptation to edit any two takes together!
This is not intended to be a package manager replacement. In fact, keeping older possibly-buggy versions of libraries around is a good thing in some of the expected use cases, e.g.:
Giving other academic researchers your code that will reproduce your results exactly, even if your code was triggering a bug in a specific library version you have
A professor distributing a class assignment in executable form, and not having to worry about how many flavors of linux his students are running
There are many more use cases illustrated on the website, which you obviously did not read or else you wouldn't have compared CDE to a package manager. Almost all the examples he uses are ad-hoc transfers where the CDE package will only be used on a temporary basis, or where the effort required to bundle a package for each OS would be unwarranted, or where the lack of library upgrades is actually an advantage.
Okay, so in the cases where you don't install the CDE-packaged library into the chroot, when you upgrade your system library to an incompatible version you will lose the ability to run the stored program (because the package manager doesn't know its dependencies). That bit-rot is exactly the problem CDE is trying to solve!
You've nailed it without realizing. The trick is that the blade pitch is already reversed from the direction most people expect when seeing pictures or diagrams of this sort of vehicle. The faster the car goes, the faster the blades spin "into" the tail wind, so they pick up a constant force from the wind.
As others have mentioned throughout the discussion, having an engine that drives the wheel directly complicates the design and reduces modularity. It's not terrible (it sounds almost the same as the Prius but with a larger battery pack), but it's different than the revolutionary design people were expecting, so it's more of a disappointment relative to expectations.
Because of this feature, the Volt has to have a transmission (another source of required maintenance), and the engine has to be designed to run at different RPMs instead of always running at optimal. Also, if the engine were simply a way to charge the batteries, then it could conceivably be swapped out for something else that produces electricity (like more batteries or a fuel cell) if someone wanted to change the balance between maximum total range and max electric range. Like I said, it's not the worst, but it's also nothing new.
I think you have the terms a bit mixed up. "Decriminalize" means it is still illegal for anyone to possess the substance, but that the penalties for smaller amounts are fines rather than jail time. "Legalize" includes a status like alcohol or tobacco, with sales restricted to those above a certain age. Proposition 19 would set that age at 21. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_19_(2010)#Authorization_of_criminal_and_civil_penalties).
I think most supporters of Prop 19 and THC legalization in general would agree that THC should not be available for sale to children. Implying otherwise is a strawman argument that makes opposition to the Proposition seem more reasonable by re-framing the terms involved.
Ah, the shortsighted "used vs. new" trope again. Actually it doesn't make much difference overall once you actually consider the effect you have by buying used.
Economics: If you buy used, then there is one less used car in the market for others to buy. Increasing the demand and decreasing the supply of used cars increases the price, which shifts people's demand toward new cars. (Although the total shift in price from buying one car isn't much, it actually does push an average of one more person to buy new instead of used, maybe by giving that much more encouragement to the lifestyle of buying new every 5 years and selling the older one.) Assuming people don't change their decision about whether or not to drive at all*, buying a used or a new car has exactly the same effect on the number that get produced and sold as new.
In other words, as long as you're driving, the marginal impact of buying used vs. new is effectively zero.** Your comments about carpooling, busing or biking are much more appropriate... stick to those ones in the future.
*There is a slight effect on total driver population from buying up cheap used cars to push the prices up and force poor people to bike/bus simply because they can't afford a car anymore, but I think it's a second-order effect unless carried to the extreme, and I assume it's not what you meant.
**The real thing that affects new car production is the total lifespan of the car before it gets scrapped, so if you're the sort of person who takes better care of a car and makes it last longer, or if you somehow buy it from someone who would otherwise have scrapped it, then you're doing some good as far as saving resources on new cars. Of course you'll do just as much good buying new and taking good care of that one to make it last 20+ years, so once again used vs. new is mostly irrelevant from an environmental standpoint.
Disclosure in case anyone cares: I bought a Prius new in 2006 and I plan to make it last as long as possible.
In short, Dell's right: if you're new to computing, install Ubuntu.
Actually, they recommended the opposite! They gave three reasons to choose Windows, one of which was "if you are new to using computers." I agree with you that this point should have been on the Ubuntu side, or at the very least left off the comparison.
In short: CIA learns that USSR is planning to steal sophisticated SCADA software that's not available to them due to export restrictions. CIA inserts trojan that will make pipeline fail catastrophically. Boom. Now that's cyber-warfare!
First-hand experience is not appropriate for Wikipedia at all, regardless of how good it is. That's because there's no way for anyone later to verify your friend's level of experience. All information on Wikipedia is supposed to be cited (or common knowledge). Do you really think it would be a good idea to just trust all contributors who claim to have knowledge of some subject?
The official name of this policy is No Original Research. "The term 'original research' refers to material--such as facts, allegations, ideas, and stories--not already published by reliable sources."
Disclaimer: I don't know about the particulars of your friend's edits, nor do I have any particular association with Wikipedia (beyond having an account with a handful of trivial edits).
You've gotten a number of replies already but I'll say two things that I didn't see covered:
The Prius physically cannot have a manual transmission. It is a "continuously variable" transmission (for efficiency purposes), so there are no discrete gears to shift between. More details here, including cool interactive animations: http://eahart.com/prius/psd/
You can still shift an automatic transmission car into neutral and coast to a stop on the side of the road. It just requires driver awareness and presence of mind in an emergency situation. On a related note, deaths due to "sudden acceleration" seem to disproportionately affect older drivers: http://overlawyered.com/2010/03/toyota-acceleration-why-im-skeptical/
it can be to share risk, it can be to shift risk to another party
Exactly. There is very little risk associated with pre-existing conditions, just cost.
I agree with the GP's reply to another post: that doesn't mean it's a bad thing for the government to mandate or provide coverage for such conditions. It's just not "insurance" at that point.
IAAA (Actuary), so my training is largely in insurance and risk.
Slashdot Mirror
You're really reaching here, like someone who claims the warm hum and crackle of LPs makes them better. You can certainly claim that the objectively-worse aspects of books make them subjectively better for you, but you shouldn't expect anyone else to be convinced!
A physical book is what reminds us that not everything has to be available at an instant, that we can take our time to sit down and enjoy ourselves without the worry of glare off a screen, our batteries running out or spilling our Dew on the device and shorting it.
While books may be perishable, they are far more durable than any electronic device.
Whether a book is electronic has nothing to do with taking our time to enjoy it. You can sit down, take your time and read all the classic works of literature you want, at whatever pace you want, on an eReader. Modern eReaders do not have screen glare and have batteries that last for months. If you spill your Dew on a physical book you might have to throw away the actual book, whereas if you spill your dew on an eReader, the book itself is in perfect condition and always will be, safe on your hard drive and Amazon's backup servers. Just replace the device (not so expensive nowadays) and your entire library is restored for free.
Congratulations again. You've just excluded at least one third of the world's population, most likely closer to half, who don't have a net connection and will probably not have one in the foreseeable future for various reasons. Cost and infrastructure being the two biggest culprits.
If their conditions are that bad, do you think they're spending their money on libraries and textbooks? They're not going to have access to many books, electronic or not.
Most countries at least have cellular phone networks even if their other infrastructure is lacking, or they have one satellite internet access point. A few eReaders with cellular internet (or occasional access to satellite net) and months-long battery lives could be more valuable than an entire library, and wouldn't cost nearly as much to transport.
I'm not sure she wants a real man. Can you say "marriage of convenience?"
If only there were some easy way to find out whether Google will be doing that. But I guess you can't be expected to read the summary nowadays.
Bill Coughran, Google senior vice president said in his blog that from now on, Google will redirect users that visit google.kz to google.com in Kazakh
Most Americans are OK with spying on people in direct contact with terrorist organizations, or who are plotting an attack.
What about spying on anyone they want? I didn't even have to read TFA to find this gem:
the Patriot Act powers this approval includes would extend "to so-called 'lone wolf' suspects who aren't affiliated with any terrorist group."
If you take away the double speak, 'lone wolf suspect' just means 'anyone we want.' Anyone they want to spy on is automatically a 'suspect' by definition, and if they don't have any connections to terrorism, then I guess they are a 'lone wolf.'
If two people making the same query get different results, they are failing badly!
Bullshit. If I google "wine" I'm interested in the software project, and if my mother does she wants the drink. A search engine that knows that is better than one that doesn't (for the vast majority of users).
Messages using a non-trivial, it is running motion not seen the original, they will give interesting results if someone can figure it out yet.
That it was a message using the results of the first when I need to understand the use of the interesting examples can feel the pit, you do this your need to get you in the clear yet.
http://translationparty.com/#8959550
The iPhone and iPod touch weren't even introduced 4 years ago.
Actually, "the first iPhone was introduced on January 9, 2007." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/iPhone)
This has been your regularly scheduled Slashdot pedantry. You may now return to your discussion.
Do you have a smart phone? You'd love Swype. It's basically what you describe but for the soft-keyboard on a touchscreen. You put your finger down somewhere near the letter your word starts with, drag it around in the general direction and neighborhood of the rest of the letters in the word, and then lift it up. Swype calculates a probability of what word you were trying to type based on the shape, even if you didn't quite touch all the letters in the word. If it's confident enough, it inserts the word into the text field... otherwise it displays a list of words in order of confidence for you to pick from. (If you wanted the top word in the list you can just start typing your next word and it will insert it.) And of course it automatically learns any new words you type.
At first I thought it was just a gimmick but I've been VERY impressed by it on my Galaxy S phone... I specifically got a phone with a slide-out keyboard because I didn't like the idea of a soft-keyboard, but now I use both in different situations. The hardware keyboard is still nicer for entering symbols and other non-words conveniently (e.g. an SSH session or a web password), but for regular writing Swype is actually faster!
I also live in Minnesota and drive a Prius, and I haven't had any problems. My batteries have been working fine for 4.5 years, and the computer's always been able to start up the engine even at -15 degrees F last week.
I've been tracking my gas mileage since I bought the car (using actual gas receipts and odometer rather than the car's reported MPG), and I find that it drops from 45-50MPG in mid-summer to 35-40MPG in the coldest parts of winter. While that's definitely a decline, it's closer to 75% of the range than half and I doubt it's because of the battery. Everyone's MPG goes down somewhat in the winter, and the Prius moreso because it can't shut off its engine and go into electric mode as often.
Hah, good luck! My phone (Samsung Epic 4G for Sprint) was supposed to have Froyo at launch, then was going to get it in September. Then October. Then December. Still waiting with no indication of progress... I wouldn't count on the Intercept getting Froyo in 2011 if they are currently saying "spring."
By this logic, ordinary TV and movies could be even more damaging to children's eyesight and related neural pathways. On TV and on the movie screen, objects are depicted at all sorts of "distances" from the viewer, but the eyes always focus at the screen at the same depth! They are always directed at the same angle relative to each other, and never cross or uncross at all like they would when viewing the actual scene the movie depicts.
With a 3d movie, the eyes do cross and uncross like you'd expect in order to view closer or farther objects. This actually stimulates the muscles more dynamically than a regular movie would. Of course your eyes have their own individual focus which still doesn't change since the movie screen is actually at a constant depth, but that's true of regular movies as well.
I'm not saying that we should ignore any potential problems. It just seems like a lot of uninformed hand wringing at this point, similar to what every generation does about the new technology and culture their kids get. After all, there have been 3d games and movies and kids toys for decades. If there were any actual cases of stunted development, I assume these articles would be pointing to them instead of making unsupported claims like "users of all ages can succumb to the perils of 3D experience." (Although the article paints a pretty reasonable picture overall, quoting an ophthalmologist who says it's overblown.)
Thanks for the interesting post. I went to Washington University in St. Louis (enrolled 2002) for the same reason: It seemed like the most likely to have highly-motivated students. Since Wash U was still rising in the rankings at that time, I figured the student body would be even more motivated than at one of the Ivies since there'd be fewer lazy "legacy" rich kids. (Not that all legacy kids are lazy, but some are.) I was very happy with my choice. When you're looking for a school, see which ones have only recently risen into the top ranks at that time because those ones are probably fostering a challenging academic environment and attracting the ambitious and intelligent applicants.
Timecode is a 97-minute movie where the screen is split in four sections, each one following one character in a single take.
It was shot 15 times total, and the director apparently insisted that the actors wear different clothes each time so there wouldn't be any temptation to edit any two takes together!
This is not intended to be a package manager replacement. In fact, keeping older possibly-buggy versions of libraries around is a good thing in some of the expected use cases, e.g.:
There are many more use cases illustrated on the website, which you obviously did not read or else you wouldn't have compared CDE to a package manager. Almost all the examples he uses are ad-hoc transfers where the CDE package will only be used on a temporary basis, or where the effort required to bundle a package for each OS would be unwarranted, or where the lack of library upgrades is actually an advantage.
Okay, so in the cases where you don't install the CDE-packaged library into the chroot, when you upgrade your system library to an incompatible version you will lose the ability to run the stored program (because the package manager doesn't know its dependencies). That bit-rot is exactly the problem CDE is trying to solve!
"without reversing the blade pitch."
You've nailed it without realizing. The trick is that the blade pitch is already reversed from the direction most people expect when seeing pictures or diagrams of this sort of vehicle. The faster the car goes, the faster the blades spin "into" the tail wind, so they pick up a constant force from the wind.
As others have mentioned throughout the discussion, having an engine that drives the wheel directly complicates the design and reduces modularity. It's not terrible (it sounds almost the same as the Prius but with a larger battery pack), but it's different than the revolutionary design people were expecting, so it's more of a disappointment relative to expectations.
Because of this feature, the Volt has to have a transmission (another source of required maintenance), and the engine has to be designed to run at different RPMs instead of always running at optimal. Also, if the engine were simply a way to charge the batteries, then it could conceivably be swapped out for something else that produces electricity (like more batteries or a fuel cell) if someone wanted to change the balance between maximum total range and max electric range. Like I said, it's not the worst, but it's also nothing new.
I think you have the terms a bit mixed up. "Decriminalize" means it is still illegal for anyone to possess the substance, but that the penalties for smaller amounts are fines rather than jail time. "Legalize" includes a status like alcohol or tobacco, with sales restricted to those above a certain age. Proposition 19 would set that age at 21. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_19_(2010)#Authorization_of_criminal_and_civil_penalties).
I think most supporters of Prop 19 and THC legalization in general would agree that THC should not be available for sale to children. Implying otherwise is a strawman argument that makes opposition to the Proposition seem more reasonable by re-framing the terms involved.
Link? Or if it's behind a paywall, at least a reference of any sort?
Ah, the shortsighted "used vs. new" trope again. Actually it doesn't make much difference overall once you actually consider the effect you have by buying used.
Economics: If you buy used, then there is one less used car in the market for others to buy. Increasing the demand and decreasing the supply of used cars increases the price, which shifts people's demand toward new cars. (Although the total shift in price from buying one car isn't much, it actually does push an average of one more person to buy new instead of used, maybe by giving that much more encouragement to the lifestyle of buying new every 5 years and selling the older one.) Assuming people don't change their decision about whether or not to drive at all*, buying a used or a new car has exactly the same effect on the number that get produced and sold as new.
In other words, as long as you're driving, the marginal impact of buying used vs. new is effectively zero.** Your comments about carpooling, busing or biking are much more appropriate... stick to those ones in the future.
*There is a slight effect on total driver population from buying up cheap used cars to push the prices up and force poor people to bike/bus simply because they can't afford a car anymore, but I think it's a second-order effect unless carried to the extreme, and I assume it's not what you meant.
**The real thing that affects new car production is the total lifespan of the car before it gets scrapped, so if you're the sort of person who takes better care of a car and makes it last longer, or if you somehow buy it from someone who would otherwise have scrapped it, then you're doing some good as far as saving resources on new cars. Of course you'll do just as much good buying new and taking good care of that one to make it last 20+ years, so once again used vs. new is mostly irrelevant from an environmental standpoint.
Disclosure in case anyone cares: I bought a Prius new in 2006 and I plan to make it last as long as possible.
In short, Dell's right: if you're new to computing, install Ubuntu.
Actually, they recommended the opposite! They gave three reasons to choose Windows, one of which was "if you are new to using computers." I agree with you that this point should have been on the Ubuntu side, or at the very least left off the comparison.
On one hand, I don't think we'll ever get to the point where it can be Die Hard 4 info-Armageddon with hackers blowing up power plants at will.
Something like this may have already happened, during the cold war: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_pipeline_sabotage
In short: CIA learns that USSR is planning to steal sophisticated SCADA software that's not available to them due to export restrictions. CIA inserts trojan that will make pipeline fail catastrophically. Boom. Now that's cyber-warfare!
First-hand experience is not appropriate for Wikipedia at all, regardless of how good it is. That's because there's no way for anyone later to verify your friend's level of experience. All information on Wikipedia is supposed to be cited (or common knowledge). Do you really think it would be a good idea to just trust all contributors who claim to have knowledge of some subject?
The official name of this policy is No Original Research. "The term 'original research' refers to material--such as facts, allegations, ideas, and stories--not already published by reliable sources."
Disclaimer: I don't know about the particulars of your friend's edits, nor do I have any particular association with Wikipedia (beyond having an account with a handful of trivial edits).
You've gotten a number of replies already but I'll say two things that I didn't see covered:
it can be to share risk, it can be to shift risk to another party
Exactly. There is very little risk associated with pre-existing conditions, just cost.
I agree with the GP's reply to another post: that doesn't mean it's a bad thing for the government to mandate or provide coverage for such conditions. It's just not "insurance" at that point.
IAAA (Actuary), so my training is largely in insurance and risk.