I don't think that the article says that belief would vanish from those that routinely participate in deep analytic thought. It merely states that doing so decreases religious belief. While only anecdotal, my experience is consistent with what the article states. I completed my degree at a religious institution. I took theology classes from a couple of very well respected religious thinkers. It was very apparent that they wrestled daily with their faith. They were far different from their students; most of whom couldn't be shaken from their beliefs regardless of the evidence with which they were presented. I think the same could be said for the great religious philosophers you note above. In short, I don't think that your examples are entirely inconsistent with the findings of the article.
Maybe, but they have the Mistborn series which is well worth the read. In fact, I just bought the series as an ebook from BN. I should wrap up reading it today or tomorrow. My 12 year old son would like to read it. Unfortunately, it is not a series flagged for lending. On top of that, if it were, I doubt my 12 year old would blow through the 2000 pages in the 2 week lending period. It was looking like I might have to purchase the series twice or hope that the local library has copies of the books available.
Thanks to this decision by the publisher things are looking up. I wonder if they'll automatically strip the DRM from my existing purchase or if it will only apply to future purchases.
I've had similar problems in my home. I chalked it up to the bulbs until I picked up a vintage amplifier. While I wasn't having any issues with my other electronics, parts in my amp were constantly blowing. I finally replaced the power strip with a decent one and haven't had any further issues. For kicks, I started measuring voltages and amps at different outlets and found that things were spiking. Most of the modern stuff in my house seems to deal with this, but I have noticed problems with some of the more sensitive items (like the power brick on my kids' 360). I'm theorizing that these power issues are drastically shortening the life of my CFL bulbs. My thought is that the power spikes and dips are damaging the ballasts.
I live in a pretty nice house that was built in 2006 so the power issues are a surprise to me. If you have the equipment, it might make sense to test some of your outlets and sockets.
I have found the best place to buy HDMI cables when you need one right away - Ross Dress For Less or TJ Maxx. Those stores all have an electronics section and they usually have a few random 6ft HDMI cables priced at around $10 (decent quality too). Sure, that's not as good as many of the online deals, but it's the best I've found for local and cheap. Fry's has some deals as well...
I expected the one thing that movies and television shows always shy away from, but that Star Trek routinely delivered - a moral dilemma. I wanted to consider the pros and cons of interfering in another culture. I wanted to think about whether the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. I wanted to ponder beings greater than ourselves and consider the impact that might have on our outlook. I wanted to appreciate the perspective of species that developed with a completely different system of values. None of those things requires a complex story line or even a rudimentary understanding of the Star Trek canon. At least one of them should have been worked into the movie. Not a single one was.
The magic of Star Trek was in the fact that I was a little less sure of myself at the end of every episode. That magic was completely missing from the latest movie.
I'm sorry, I had to disregard everything you said after you referred to Transformers 2 as T2. T2 is Terminator 2. I find it sad that the last two Terminator movies were bad enough that the brand was diluted to the point of people using T2 to describe a crappy Michael Bay flick.
Right, because the best way to break into the mainstream is to fire up a show on a YouTube Channel entitled 'Geek and Sundry'.
I don't think enough people realize how awesome sport bikes can be. I'm going to start a column in a sports bike magazine in the hope that it will help a new audience catch the fever.
Please, no replies about how Geek and Sundry was created by the producers of The Guild. The Guild is not mainstream.
I highly doubt this has anything to do with distraction. If it did, they'd make people put away their non-electronic distractions such as books, magazines, sudoku, crosswords, SkyMall catalogs, knitting, etc.
You forget that a significant portion of the people working overtime aren't earning overtime pay. In most places software workers are exempt (salaried employees). They can work 20 hours or 70 hours a week. Their pay and benefits are the same.
We purchased ours for $4 at a local thrift store. There were a bunch available at that price. I'm not adding this comment to argue one way or the other about how difficult/not difficult it is for the poor to enjoy healthy diets. This is simply info that some of you might find useful. Our $4 bread machine has been a great investment. Not only does it give us fresh bread, it provides an activity that the kids enjoy.
Of course, we all know that there is no free market for drugs in this country. If you think there is, just rent some floor space and machinery, hire some chemists, and get to work manufacturing the drug. Oh wait, there's now months (if not years) of forms, inspections, permits, etc. you need before you can get started. I won't pretend that I disagree with these. I'm simply stating that the market isn't free to move as it otherwise would.
Similarly, the pharma patents (and patents in general) are another restriction on a truly free market. Do you think it likely that existing giants like Eli Lilly or Phizer are likely to re-tool to create a cheap generic drug while a free, government-enforced monopoly (and its associated high profit margins) is available on other drugs they produce? Of course not. Again, it seems that temporary monopolies are necessary in this space simply to encourage massive R&D spend by these companies. Still, artificial monopolies don't exist in a free market.
But what about the companies that already thrive providing cheap, generic pharma products. Why aren't they filling the gap? The answer seems simple (I'm just reasoning below - no citations available as I don't sit on the boards of these companies). 1. Companies already producing the drug haven't ramped up production because they know that a) there is a high barrier to entry to new drug production and b)contraction in supply is likely to increase price, thus increasing their margin - at least in the short term.
2. Existing companies won't re-tool to produce the drug right now because the cost of re-tooling and crossing the approval hurdles for production is too high to justify the effort. They can make more money selling the same generic drugs they do today. Of course, these companies will respond when the price of the drug in question rises to the level where it makes sense for these companies to go through the effort to re-tool and seek approval. Bottom line here is that there is a significant barrier to entry that keeps free market forces at bay.
So, the reason free market forces aren't at work here is because the free market doesn't exist in this space. That's good for a lot of reasons (I, for one, appreciate that I can assume my pharma products are safe), but bad for the reason you see above.
I work in the 'innovation' space and wish this would come up at the classes, conventions, etc. So many in innovation rush out to patent every idea they have in hope of making a fortune on IP - without any 'real' work. If these people understood just how this activity stifles their own endeavors it would go at least some way toward turning things around.
With that said, another problem in the patent space is that it appears to offer a 'silver bullet' to companies looking to get a leg up on their competition. I've worked with a number of small software oriented start-ups and some think (probably rightly so) that superior IP rights are much more effective at overcoming the competition than a superior product. I'm not sure what to do in this space or in the space where mega-corps use patents very effectively to erect a barrier to entry.
I frequently hear ideas about using patents in ways that I feel do nothing but stifle innovation. I launch off on my little patent diatribe and many people note that they've never really thought of it that way. Given that so many people look at patents simply as a war-chest item, it would seem that education is a good start in getting them to see the harms in that attitude.
Wow - I wish I had your luck. I had a 42" Samsung plasma that had a terrible time with HDMI (the picture would randomly drop out and leave only sound). This was a common problem that got better with a firmware update, but was never completely fixed. I currently own the Samsung Captivate - the GPS has never worked correctly. This is a very common issue. I also owned some old Samsung flip phone that was pretty poorly engineered - breakage of the flip cover was quite common. A couple of my friends had it happen to them (mine made it through a year or so okay).
All that said, I still like Samsung products, but they definitely aren't perfection.
in "LOL". If any additional "O"s are added it ceases to be "LOL" and turns into something else.
On a side note, I always thought that true expression of 'super funny' is to leave the last "L" off "LOL". "Laughing out" is like "bleeding out" but with laughing. If that doesn't convey just how out of control your laughter is nothing will.
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that people are starting to figure out (at attempt to remedy) the fact that the U.S. is falling far behind in Math and the Sciences. Still, I'm concerned about a crop of young people reaching voting age without at least a basic understanding of History, Government, and Literature. After all, these people will reach voting age around the time they wrap up their studies in secondary school. Shouldn't they at least have a basic understanding of the duties of citizenship before they venture into the world and take on those new responsibilities?
I also understand that not all students can pursue post-secondary education and that they should leave secondary school with at least a start on what it takes to get a decent paying job in today's competitive environment. Still, I wonder if hard knowledge (being able to write a simple program in C# for example) is better than a thirst for learning and the tools to pursue that thirst. I can tell you that I would rather hire someone who really wants to learn and knows how than someone who can do some simple programming. After all, both are going to need to learn a ton before they're really ready to contribute in an enterprise environment. My money is on the person that shows a knack for the learning part. I wish more companies would value that desire when it comes to people entering the workforce.
It would be interesting to see how much change is really taken. Perhaps one could determine, on average, the ratio of large denomination coins to small denomination coins carried in travelers' pockets. We could call this ratio A. We could then compare this ratio to that of the money collected and turned in by TSA agents - Ratio B. I think it's safe to assume that TSA agents are more likely to be selective of the coins they keep if, indeed, they keep some. I would suspect that ratio B would differ substantially from ratio A if TSA agents were keeping money for themselves.
The one other thing to consider - travelers are probably less likely to leave behind large denomination coins. As such, ratio B might differ from ratio A for reasons other than theft. One would probably have to create a representative sample when finding ratio A so as not to taint the results.
Re:CES also had some unofficial [Apple] spies...
on
Who Goes To CES?
·
· Score: 2
Spies? Choosing not to exhibit does not mean that you can't view the other exhibits. I'd also note that it's a stretch to call viewing anything that is out in the open at CES spying.
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I could be), but AFAIK there is no strong ecosystem for x86 software that is geared toward usage on a touch-screen phone. Granted, Win8 will run X86 and will probably garner some touch-oriented software for the small screen, but it doesn't exist yet. So if I get one of these phones which 'apps' will I run? I suppose there is the Android x86 port, but I would imagine that most of the existing Android apps would fail in that environment.
Environmentalists have it all wrong. They want to save the planet - turn it back into the lush, green place it once was. This is simply letting the plants win. Think about it. Long ago the world was without life. It was hot, barren, and CO2 was plentiful in the atmosphere. Then life took hold. Plants started sucking up CO2 and storing it. Those plants then colonized the world; continuing to suck up and store CO2. They destroyed the Earth that was. They covered it from pole to pole, taking hold in every nook and cranny. They built large carbon stockpiles (oil, coal, etc.) and helped to reduce the temperature of the planet.
Then Earth's saviors came - humans. They saw what the plants had been doing. They quickly set to work eliminating the plants and reducing their carbon stockpiles - reintroducing CO2 to the atmosphere where it belongs. They will continue to do this until the Earth becomes the uninhabitable barren planet it was meant to be. Quite honestly, humanity is really a messiah figure for this planet. Earth First has it completely backward.
Of course, then the process will probably begin again...
While I agree that this certainly won't want to make OEMs leave Android for Windows Phone, I think it's worth noting that, if they did, they wouldn't be changing their world much. After all, Google does own Motorola.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think that the article says that belief would vanish from those that routinely participate in deep analytic thought. It merely states that doing so decreases religious belief. While only anecdotal, my experience is consistent with what the article states. I completed my degree at a religious institution. I took theology classes from a couple of very well respected religious thinkers. It was very apparent that they wrestled daily with their faith. They were far different from their students; most of whom couldn't be shaken from their beliefs regardless of the evidence with which they were presented. I think the same could be said for the great religious philosophers you note above. In short, I don't think that your examples are entirely inconsistent with the findings of the article.
Maybe, but they have the Mistborn series which is well worth the read. In fact, I just bought the series as an ebook from BN. I should wrap up reading it today or tomorrow. My 12 year old son would like to read it. Unfortunately, it is not a series flagged for lending. On top of that, if it were, I doubt my 12 year old would blow through the 2000 pages in the 2 week lending period. It was looking like I might have to purchase the series twice or hope that the local library has copies of the books available.
Thanks to this decision by the publisher things are looking up. I wonder if they'll automatically strip the DRM from my existing purchase or if it will only apply to future purchases.
I've had similar problems in my home. I chalked it up to the bulbs until I picked up a vintage amplifier. While I wasn't having any issues with my other electronics, parts in my amp were constantly blowing. I finally replaced the power strip with a decent one and haven't had any further issues. For kicks, I started measuring voltages and amps at different outlets and found that things were spiking. Most of the modern stuff in my house seems to deal with this, but I have noticed problems with some of the more sensitive items (like the power brick on my kids' 360). I'm theorizing that these power issues are drastically shortening the life of my CFL bulbs. My thought is that the power spikes and dips are damaging the ballasts.
I live in a pretty nice house that was built in 2006 so the power issues are a surprise to me. If you have the equipment, it might make sense to test some of your outlets and sockets.
I have found the best place to buy HDMI cables when you need one right away - Ross Dress For Less or TJ Maxx. Those stores all have an electronics section and they usually have a few random 6ft HDMI cables priced at around $10 (decent quality too). Sure, that's not as good as many of the online deals, but it's the best I've found for local and cheap. Fry's has some deals as well...
This will allow many Slashdotters to effectively replace their in-laws.
I expected the one thing that movies and television shows always shy away from, but that Star Trek routinely delivered - a moral dilemma. I wanted to consider the pros and cons of interfering in another culture. I wanted to think about whether the good of the many outweighs the good of the few. I wanted to ponder beings greater than ourselves and consider the impact that might have on our outlook. I wanted to appreciate the perspective of species that developed with a completely different system of values. None of those things requires a complex story line or even a rudimentary understanding of the Star Trek canon. At least one of them should have been worked into the movie. Not a single one was.
The magic of Star Trek was in the fact that I was a little less sure of myself at the end of every episode. That magic was completely missing from the latest movie.
I'm sorry, I had to disregard everything you said after you referred to Transformers 2 as T2. T2 is Terminator 2. I find it sad that the last two Terminator movies were bad enough that the brand was diluted to the point of people using T2 to describe a crappy Michael Bay flick.
Right, because the best way to break into the mainstream is to fire up a show on a YouTube Channel entitled 'Geek and Sundry'.
I don't think enough people realize how awesome sport bikes can be. I'm going to start a column in a sports bike magazine in the hope that it will help a new audience catch the fever.
Please, no replies about how Geek and Sundry was created by the producers of The Guild. The Guild is not mainstream.
I highly doubt this has anything to do with distraction. If it did, they'd make people put away their non-electronic distractions such as books, magazines, sudoku, crosswords, SkyMall catalogs, knitting, etc.
You forget that a significant portion of the people working overtime aren't earning overtime pay. In most places software workers are exempt (salaried employees). They can work 20 hours or 70 hours a week. Their pay and benefits are the same.
You should definitely spend your time in Mexico. The police there are much more upstanding.
We purchased ours for $4 at a local thrift store. There were a bunch available at that price. I'm not adding this comment to argue one way or the other about how difficult/not difficult it is for the poor to enjoy healthy diets. This is simply info that some of you might find useful. Our $4 bread machine has been a great investment. Not only does it give us fresh bread, it provides an activity that the kids enjoy.
Of course, we all know that there is no free market for drugs in this country. If you think there is, just rent some floor space and machinery, hire some chemists, and get to work manufacturing the drug. Oh wait, there's now months (if not years) of forms, inspections, permits, etc. you need before you can get started. I won't pretend that I disagree with these. I'm simply stating that the market isn't free to move as it otherwise would.
Similarly, the pharma patents (and patents in general) are another restriction on a truly free market. Do you think it likely that existing giants like Eli Lilly or Phizer are likely to re-tool to create a cheap generic drug while a free, government-enforced monopoly (and its associated high profit margins) is available on other drugs they produce? Of course not. Again, it seems that temporary monopolies are necessary in this space simply to encourage massive R&D spend by these companies. Still, artificial monopolies don't exist in a free market.
But what about the companies that already thrive providing cheap, generic pharma products. Why aren't they filling the gap? The answer seems simple (I'm just reasoning below - no citations available as I don't sit on the boards of these companies).
1. Companies already producing the drug haven't ramped up production because they know that a) there is a high barrier to entry to new drug production and b)contraction in supply is likely to increase price, thus increasing their margin - at least in the short term.
2. Existing companies won't re-tool to produce the drug right now because the cost of re-tooling and crossing the approval hurdles for production is too high to justify the effort. They can make more money selling the same generic drugs they do today. Of course, these companies will respond when the price of the drug in question rises to the level where it makes sense for these companies to go through the effort to re-tool and seek approval.
Bottom line here is that there is a significant barrier to entry that keeps free market forces at bay.
So, the reason free market forces aren't at work here is because the free market doesn't exist in this space. That's good for a lot of reasons (I, for one, appreciate that I can assume my pharma products are safe), but bad for the reason you see above.
I work in the 'innovation' space and wish this would come up at the classes, conventions, etc. So many in innovation rush out to patent every idea they have in hope of making a fortune on IP - without any 'real' work. If these people understood just how this activity stifles their own endeavors it would go at least some way toward turning things around.
With that said, another problem in the patent space is that it appears to offer a 'silver bullet' to companies looking to get a leg up on their competition. I've worked with a number of small software oriented start-ups and some think (probably rightly so) that superior IP rights are much more effective at overcoming the competition than a superior product. I'm not sure what to do in this space or in the space where mega-corps use patents very effectively to erect a barrier to entry.
I frequently hear ideas about using patents in ways that I feel do nothing but stifle innovation. I launch off on my little patent diatribe and many people note that they've never really thought of it that way. Given that so many people look at patents simply as a war-chest item, it would seem that education is a good start in getting them to see the harms in that attitude.
One of the more insightful comments I've read of late. Wish I had mod points to spend.
Wow - I wish I had your luck. I had a 42" Samsung plasma that had a terrible time with HDMI (the picture would randomly drop out and leave only sound). This was a common problem that got better with a firmware update, but was never completely fixed. I currently own the Samsung Captivate - the GPS has never worked correctly. This is a very common issue. I also owned some old Samsung flip phone that was pretty poorly engineered - breakage of the flip cover was quite common. A couple of my friends had it happen to them (mine made it through a year or so okay).
All that said, I still like Samsung products, but they definitely aren't perfection.
in "LOL". If any additional "O"s are added it ceases to be "LOL" and turns into something else.
On a side note, I always thought that true expression of 'super funny' is to leave the last "L" off "LOL". "Laughing out" is like "bleeding out" but with laughing. If that doesn't convey just how out of control your laughter is nothing will.
are belong to us!
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that people are starting to figure out (at attempt to remedy) the fact that the U.S. is falling far behind in Math and the Sciences. Still, I'm concerned about a crop of young people reaching voting age without at least a basic understanding of History, Government, and Literature. After all, these people will reach voting age around the time they wrap up their studies in secondary school. Shouldn't they at least have a basic understanding of the duties of citizenship before they venture into the world and take on those new responsibilities?
I also understand that not all students can pursue post-secondary education and that they should leave secondary school with at least a start on what it takes to get a decent paying job in today's competitive environment. Still, I wonder if hard knowledge (being able to write a simple program in C# for example) is better than a thirst for learning and the tools to pursue that thirst. I can tell you that I would rather hire someone who really wants to learn and knows how than someone who can do some simple programming. After all, both are going to need to learn a ton before they're really ready to contribute in an enterprise environment. My money is on the person that shows a knack for the learning part. I wish more companies would value that desire when it comes to people entering the workforce.
It would be interesting to see how much change is really taken. Perhaps one could determine, on average, the ratio of large denomination coins to small denomination coins carried in travelers' pockets. We could call this ratio A. We could then compare this ratio to that of the money collected and turned in by TSA agents - Ratio B. I think it's safe to assume that TSA agents are more likely to be selective of the coins they keep if, indeed, they keep some. I would suspect that ratio B would differ substantially from ratio A if TSA agents were keeping money for themselves.
The one other thing to consider - travelers are probably less likely to leave behind large denomination coins. As such, ratio B might differ from ratio A for reasons other than theft. One would probably have to create a representative sample when finding ratio A so as not to taint the results.
Spies? Choosing not to exhibit does not mean that you can't view the other exhibits. I'd also note that it's a stretch to call viewing anything that is out in the open at CES spying.
Awesome - thanks. For some reason I wasn't even thinking about the Dalvik VM. If I hadn't already posted in the thread I'd mod you informative.
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I could be), but AFAIK there is no strong ecosystem for x86 software that is geared toward usage on a touch-screen phone. Granted, Win8 will run X86 and will probably garner some touch-oriented software for the small screen, but it doesn't exist yet. So if I get one of these phones which 'apps' will I run? I suppose there is the Android x86 port, but I would imagine that most of the existing Android apps would fail in that environment.
Environmentalists have it all wrong. They want to save the planet - turn it back into the lush, green place it once was. This is simply letting the plants win. Think about it. Long ago the world was without life. It was hot, barren, and CO2 was plentiful in the atmosphere. Then life took hold. Plants started sucking up CO2 and storing it. Those plants then colonized the world; continuing to suck up and store CO2. They destroyed the Earth that was. They covered it from pole to pole, taking hold in every nook and cranny. They built large carbon stockpiles (oil, coal, etc.) and helped to reduce the temperature of the planet.
Then Earth's saviors came - humans. They saw what the plants had been doing. They quickly set to work eliminating the plants and reducing their carbon stockpiles - reintroducing CO2 to the atmosphere where it belongs. They will continue to do this until the Earth becomes the uninhabitable barren planet it was meant to be. Quite honestly, humanity is really a messiah figure for this planet. Earth First has it completely backward.
Of course, then the process will probably begin again...
While I agree that this certainly won't want to make OEMs leave Android for Windows Phone, I think it's worth noting that, if they did, they wouldn't be changing their world much. After all, Google does own Motorola.