the sort of thing that you're proposing (negative reviews of something you've never tried) that would have me cheering in the court.
I did not comment about the food or service. In my "review" I asked people to boycott the place because of the fact that they had sued a critic. So whether I had ever tried eating there is irrelevant. Seems clear to me.
I must say though that some of the other negative comments, which were clearly also triggered by this sueball issue, were along the lines of "the food is shit" etc. I would not do that : that is dishonest.
... nuclear is dirty. Until there's a failsafe solution to radiation leaks and nuclear waste storage, it will always be perceived as dirty.
Even if there is a "failsafe solution to radiation leaks", whatever you understand by that, people will remain against nuclear as long as the scaremongers bang on about it, which is their plan of course. As a nuclear power station engineer, with particular responsibility for safety, I can tell you that the plants already have failsafe features against radiation leakage to the extent that they are safer than most other human activities.
As for waste storage, it is a political problem, not a technical one.
[I drive] with the cruise control on at every possible time (most cars have a feature that allows you to nudge your speed slightly faster/slower, which is more fuel efficient than disengaging it in order to adjust your speed.)
Eh? Why more efficient? Cruise control does nothing you can't do with your foot. Not on my car anyway, where the cruise actuator pulls the same throttle lever as the throttle pedal does.
And by the way, modern cars are so low emission that some of them actually clean up the air around them.
Miraculous, the Second Law of Thermodynamics broken at last. So they suck in CO2, breathe out Oxygen, and shit carbon bricks do they? I must be getting out of touch with progress.
I'm pretty sure that the Americas were named differently once. Well, the native population will simply have to get used to a new name
Actually, untravelled natives do not usually have a name for where they live - they don't need one, it is just "here". "Britain" was so named by the Romans, not the Britons. "England" means the "Land of the Angles", not the sort of name you give to your own place but is what a non-Angle would say.
In the UK, the most common names for rivers are "Ouse" and "Avon". They simply mean "River" in old languages. When I was a kid I lived by the River Wandle. Unless you were explaining it to an outsider, no-body ever referred to it in speech as "The Wandle" it was always just "the river".
So you can audit and authorize where it goes. I can't audit a guy stealing cash from my wallet.
Audit all you like, you still might not get it back. Hell, they can't even stop most large-scale internet scams when you would think it easy to audit the trail.
A mugger could take at most about $50 from me (its equivalent - I am in the UK in fact, and in a rural area where muggings are almost unheard of). However a plastic card scam might lift about three orders of magnitude more than that.
There is a non-trivial fee associated with cash too. Cards are probably still more expensive, but not by as much as you may think.
I don't think you have much idea of the total cost of cards. It is not just the transaction fee that Visa rake in. My wife was a bookkeeper for a small company (trade supplier - guttering etc) and they thought long and hard about installing a credit card capability. It is not just the transaction fee that Visa rake in, the other fees were shocking too - set-up fee, deposit on the equipment, hire of the equipment, phone charges, admin charges. Having the facility was going to make a massive dent in the company's annual bottom line. The cost was much worse than taking cheques (which the banks are massivley discouraging too). That had to be balanced against the loss of customers who will only pay by plastic these days.
In the end, everyone would be worse off except the credit card company, who for some transactions would be making more profit than the merchant - just for having a computer running.
...... the fact remains that money is a representation of wealth, and it's the only direct representation which you can own and have custody of irrespective of the banking system.
But modern money does rely on the banking system because it has no intrinsic value. Notes are just that - notes from the bank that they owe you X amount of dollars. Coin used to be worth their actual weight in copper, silver or gold (and was thus international) but those days have long gone. In the UK at least, the "copper" coins are copper-plated steel. Notes and coins only work because people want them to and trust them to, but that could break any time.
You are getting a lot of flak here, perhaps more than you deserve. But the flak is not so much because you want a smart watch, but because you are insulting people, eg with "All you people saying NO have no imagination. and "your magical 100% perfect memory".
I have no problem with your wanting a smart watch, go ahead : the problem is your assuming your reasons must apply to everyone else except ones you sarcastically call "ascetics". If you knew me you would see I am anything but an ascetic and have a perhaps too vivid an imagination. In fact I am so busy with non-ascetic things that I don't have time for some interests, including music.
I also realised some years ago that it is a big mistake to think you know the reasons why other people do what they do, or don't do, like your assuming it is lack of imagination here.
FTFA:- "The process, called reverse osmosis, is used by the U.S. military, in ships and in the manufacture of silicon chips.
I was an engineer on a [war]ship and we made fresh water from sea water, seeing that there was plenty of it around. Darned sight easier than making it from shit and piss I should imagine, but admit we never tried it. Of course, recycling being in fashion, maybe someone is doing some posturing here.
:I don't like the word Bing.... I've never really cared for it
Too right. It makes me think of Bing Crosby, the 1950's Brycreemed guy with jug-handle ears who sings that dreary "White Xmas" song on continuous loop in every shopping mall from about mid-October every year.
Otherwise it reminds me of a silly children's board game (can't remember what it's called) where you have to shout "Bing!" or "Ping!" or something like that when you think you have won.
Why is it compulsory that I have to be sat down like a child when I want to take out a £1000 loan but nobody questions businesses.....
Well, to some extent I think people who run businesses are probably expected to have a bit more of a clue to managing finances than the average man-on-the-street.
I think the question is, not why "ordinary" people are required to sit down like a child, but why "business" people are not.
And I think the answer is that bank managers and people generally have an unfounded admiration of anyone calling themselves "business" people. There is the enduring urban myth of the "hard- headed", all-seeing business man. We see it here even on/. with many posters saying things along the lines of "business knows best etc". Having known some businessmen myself, they mostly have been idiots, doing crazy things on impulse because they think that is what "geniuses" do - they all fancy themselves as geniuses. My wife has worked as a book keeper for several small firms and it is really people like her, the unseen aides, who behind the scenes keep these outfits afloat - that and the fact that their competitors were even more incompetent. But my wife would never get a bank to invest in a company because she is not good at bullshitting like her bosses were.
The apocryphal story of a boss receiving job applications and throwing half of them at random into the waste bin - because he wanted "lucky" people and he had just "proved" that they were not - is one I can actually believe, knowing those bosses.
"This might be a fun thing to do. Get a lot of old flash drives, sd cards, and the like,... and stick them everywhere.... After 30 or 40 of them, somebody is going to get sick of playing that game, and it might be the dog"
Very hilarious, I must say - I've nearly split my sides here. So how does that work? You phone the cops, tell them you've got KP and invite them round to search? Good luck with that. No, they won't get sick after drawing 30 blanks in curtain hems - they are going to be tearing your walls down next.
I think the in days of the USSR, the citizens didn't believe the propaganda.
I think that most USSR citizens did believe it. Many people outside the USSR like H.G.Wells and old-style socialists like my (British) grandfather even believed it. The impression that they did not is due to the coverage that the Western media gave (and still gives) to the minority dissidents.
Unless you can really show a sharp division between female and male participants over the history of the sport I feel they should have the opportunities to compete together.
Nothing to do with history, just that in the more physical sports most women would have a poor chance against the men (yes I know that distributions have tails). In my own sport, cycling, there is about 3-4mph difference between the best men and the best women. It is generally the women themselves who want separate championships, even if they are also allowed to enter men's races.
When I rode in local-level road races, there was often a particular girl in the field (among the 39 guys). She was never likely to win, being probably about average among us, but it was her way of keeping in form for her "serious" women's races. She was the World No 6 in women's road racing at the time.
there are a lot of Olympic sports that [are not objective] (high-dive, gymnastics,etc)... By your definition, any sport that is subjectively rated by technique, instead of objectively rated by pre-defined goals, isn't a sport.
Whether they are called a sport or not (and there will always be people who do those things, why not) yes, they should not be in the Olympics. I have briefly watched some of them and it is obvious that some of the judges give scores politically. The Olympics have become over-sized and over-blown anyway : I could hardly believe it when synchronised swimming (dancing in water) was allowed in. Flower arranging next?
Umm... UNIX was around long before Winblows and OSX. As a mater of fact OSX was based on Linux.
OSX is not based on Linux, but is a version of BSD which is a Unix. They are more like siblings, with a lot in common.
But your case stands corrected. Neither owe anything to DOS or Windows, thank goodness. I was using Unix before Windows was invented, and was apalled at how bad Windows was by comparison when I first came across it. Windows only became usable (IMHO) with Windows NT, after Microsoft had received a company blood transfusion in the form of Dave Cutler and his team from DEC.
linux distros are still just poor clones of Windows and OSX
That is just silly. Linux pre-dates OSX by about 10 years, and is a clone of Unix, which predates Windows by about 10 years. Linux therefore cannot be described as a clone of either Windows or OSX by any stretch of the imagination.
Sure, there are similarities in style between them all, but that is how fashions go. Windows, OSX and Linux do undoubtedly learn from eachother (I can think of ideas that Windows seems to have taken from Linux, and also Linux ideas that seem to be taken from Windows), but that is how progress goes too. The car analogy here is that there are similarities in style and technology between present-day cars, while quite differnt from cars of 20 years ago - but we don't say that Fords are clones of Chryslers (or vice-versa).
I think the point is to limit the range over which it can be operated. It also makes it easier to identify the operator if they start to fly it dangerously or intrusively. Of course, someone could fly the drone blindly out of the line-of sight range anyway, but there would be little point to doing so, and the thing would probably be lost too.
Slashdot Mirror
the sort of thing that you're proposing (negative reviews of something you've never tried) that would have me cheering in the court.
I did not comment about the food or service. In my "review" I asked people to boycott the place because of the fact that they had sued a critic. So whether I had ever tried eating there is irrelevant. Seems clear to me.
I must say though that some of the other negative comments, which were clearly also triggered by this sueball issue, were along the lines of "the food is shit" etc. I would not do that : that is dishonest.
I've just left a negative review on Tripadvisor, and see that many others are doing the same. Join in!
Even if there is a "failsafe solution to radiation leaks", whatever you understand by that, people will remain against nuclear as long as the scaremongers bang on about it, which is their plan of course. As a nuclear power station engineer, with particular responsibility for safety, I can tell you that the plants already have failsafe features against radiation leakage to the extent that they are safer than most other human activities.
As for waste storage, it is a political problem, not a technical one.
[I drive] with the cruise control on at every possible time (most cars have a feature that allows you to nudge your speed slightly faster/slower, which is more fuel efficient than disengaging it in order to adjust your speed.)
Eh? Why more efficient? Cruise control does nothing you can't do with your foot. Not on my car anyway, where the cruise actuator pulls the same throttle lever as the throttle pedal does.
And by the way, modern cars are so low emission that some of them actually clean up the air around them.
Miraculous, the Second Law of Thermodynamics broken at last. So they suck in CO2, breathe out Oxygen, and shit carbon bricks do they? I must be getting out of touch with progress.
I'm pretty sure that the Americas were named differently once. Well, the native population will simply have to get used to a new name
Actually, untravelled natives do not usually have a name for where they live - they don't need one, it is just "here". "Britain" was so named by the Romans, not the Britons. "England" means the "Land of the Angles", not the sort of name you give to your own place but is what a non-Angle would say.
In the UK, the most common names for rivers are "Ouse" and "Avon". They simply mean "River" in old languages. When I was a kid I lived by the River Wandle. Unless you were explaining it to an outsider, no-body ever referred to it in speech as "The Wandle" it was always just "the river".
The thug prowling around in the woods can take and spend my $20s
How many $20's do you take with you into the woods?
Why would you ever want a cashless society?
So you can audit and authorize where it goes. I can't audit a guy stealing cash from my wallet.
Audit all you like, you still might not get it back. Hell, they can't even stop most large-scale internet scams when you would think it easy to audit the trail.
A mugger could take at most about $50 from me (its equivalent - I am in the UK in fact, and in a rural area where muggings are almost unheard of). However a plastic card scam might lift about three orders of magnitude more than that.
There is a non-trivial fee associated with cash too. Cards are probably still more expensive, but not by as much as you may think.
I don't think you have much idea of the total cost of cards. It is not just the transaction fee that Visa rake in. My wife was a bookkeeper for a small company (trade supplier - guttering etc) and they thought long and hard about installing a credit card capability. It is not just the transaction fee that Visa rake in, the other fees were shocking too - set-up fee, deposit on the equipment, hire of the equipment, phone charges, admin charges. Having the facility was going to make a massive dent in the company's annual bottom line. The cost was much worse than taking cheques (which the banks are massivley discouraging too). That had to be balanced against the loss of customers who will only pay by plastic these days.
In the end, everyone would be worse off except the credit card company, who for some transactions would be making more profit than the merchant - just for having a computer running.
- tap a dollar value on your phone, tap your phone against mine, money moved
And what could possibly go wrong?
But modern money does rely on the banking system because it has no intrinsic value. Notes are just that - notes from the bank that they owe you X amount of dollars. Coin used to be worth their actual weight in copper, silver or gold (and was thus international) but those days have long gone. In the UK at least, the "copper" coins are copper-plated steel. Notes and coins only work because people want them to and trust them to, but that could break any time.
You are getting a lot of flak here, perhaps more than you deserve. But the flak is not so much because you want a smart watch, but because you are insulting people, eg with "All you people saying NO have no imagination. and "your magical 100% perfect memory".
I have no problem with your wanting a smart watch, go ahead : the problem is your assuming your reasons must apply to everyone else except ones you sarcastically call "ascetics". If you knew me you would see I am anything but an ascetic and have a perhaps too vivid an imagination. In fact I am so busy with non-ascetic things that I don't have time for some interests, including music.
I also realised some years ago that it is a big mistake to think you know the reasons why other people do what they do, or don't do, like your assuming it is lack of imagination here.
In answer to Causby
I want one. ..... tell me the time faster than pulling the pod (cell phone) out of my pocket
I have a dumb watch for that.
Oh, I forgot my pod in my car when I went into the shopping mall? I'll know because my watch will vibrate
I don't forget my phone. Keep trying though.
at a playground trying to manage multiple children ...? I'll know if one ... starts to wander away
I don't manage multiple children.
listening to a podcast in earphones
I never listen to music.
use the mic on my watch for better audio quality.
Why would it be better than the phone?
take a 'selfie' ... go pose, look at my watch to see what the camera sees
Rarely do selfies, but never found a problem framing - just note some landmarks in the camera viewfinder first.
You are the same people who would say "Why would I need my cell phone to have a big screen on it?"
Yup, that's me.
Have you guys paused to consider that there might be applications beyond your current imagination?
Have you paused to consider that there might be other lifestyles than your own?
FTFA :- "The process, called reverse osmosis, is used by the U.S. military, in ships and in the manufacture of silicon chips.
I was an engineer on a [war]ship and we made fresh water from sea water, seeing that there was plenty of it around. Darned sight easier than making it from shit and piss I should imagine, but admit we never tried it. Of course, recycling being in fashion, maybe someone is doing some posturing here.
Tragedy of the commons
Wow, that's like 50 Olympic-size swimming pools per micro-Wales!
Clod, that is a dimensionless number. Did you mean micro-Waleses per Nelson's Columns?
:I don't like the word Bing .... I've never really cared for it
Too right. It makes me think of Bing Crosby, the 1950's Brycreemed guy with jug-handle ears who sings that dreary "White Xmas" song on continuous loop in every shopping mall from about mid-October every year. Otherwise it reminds me of a silly children's board game (can't remember what it's called) where you have to shout "Bing!" or "Ping!" or something like that when you think you have won.
No, business are sat down and are interrogated like ordinary people
Some are, no doubt, but it will depend on whether you are already in the Old Boy network or not. In the UK, we call it the "Rotary Club" mentality.
Why is it compulsory that I have to be sat down like a child when I want to take out a £1000 loan but nobody questions businesses .... .
Well, to some extent I think people who run businesses are probably expected to have a bit more of a clue to managing finances than the average man-on-the-street.
I think the question is, not why "ordinary" people are required to sit down like a child, but why "business" people are not.
/. with many posters saying things along the lines of "business knows best etc". Having known some businessmen myself, they mostly have been idiots, doing crazy things on impulse because they think that is what "geniuses" do - they all fancy themselves as geniuses. My wife has worked as a book keeper for several small firms and it is really people like her, the unseen aides, who behind the scenes keep these outfits afloat - that and the fact that their competitors were even more incompetent. But my wife would never get a bank to invest in a company because she is not good at bullshitting like her bosses were.
And I think the answer is that bank managers and people generally have an unfounded admiration of anyone calling themselves "business" people. There is the enduring urban myth of the "hard- headed", all-seeing business man. We see it here even on
The apocryphal story of a boss receiving job applications and throwing half of them at random into the waste bin - because he wanted "lucky" people and he had just "proved" that they were not - is one I can actually believe, knowing those bosses.
"This might be a fun thing to do. Get a lot of old flash drives, sd cards, and the like, ... and stick them everywhere. ... After 30 or 40 of them, somebody is going to get sick of playing that game, and it might be the dog"
Very hilarious, I must say - I've nearly split my sides here. So how does that work? You phone the cops, tell them you've got KP and invite them round to search? Good luck with that. No, they won't get sick after drawing 30 blanks in curtain hems - they are going to be tearing your walls down next.
I think the in days of the USSR, the citizens didn't believe the propaganda.
I think that most USSR citizens did believe it. Many people outside the USSR like H.G.Wells and old-style socialists like my (British) grandfather even believed it. The impression that they did not is due to the coverage that the Western media gave (and still gives) to the minority dissidents.
Unless you can really show a sharp division between female and male participants over the history of the sport I feel they should have the opportunities to compete together.
Nothing to do with history, just that in the more physical sports most women would have a poor chance against the men (yes I know that distributions have tails). In my own sport, cycling, there is about 3-4mph difference between the best men and the best women. It is generally the women themselves who want separate championships, even if they are also allowed to enter men's races.
When I rode in local-level road races, there was often a particular girl in the field (among the 39 guys). She was never likely to win, being probably about average among us, but it was her way of keeping in form for her "serious" women's races. She was the World No 6 in women's road racing at the time.
there are a lot of Olympic sports that [are not objective] (high-dive, gymnastics,etc) ... By your definition, any sport that is subjectively rated by technique, instead of objectively rated by pre-defined goals, isn't a sport.
Whether they are called a sport or not (and there will always be people who do those things, why not) yes, they should not be in the Olympics. I have briefly watched some of them and it is obvious that some of the judges give scores politically. The Olympics have become over-sized and over-blown anyway : I could hardly believe it when synchronised swimming (dancing in water) was allowed in. Flower arranging next?
Umm... UNIX was around long before Winblows and OSX. As a mater of fact OSX was based on Linux.
OSX is not based on Linux, but is a version of BSD which is a Unix. They are more like siblings, with a lot in common.
But your case stands corrected. Neither owe anything to DOS or Windows, thank goodness. I was using Unix before Windows was invented, and was apalled at how bad Windows was by comparison when I first came across it. Windows only became usable (IMHO) with Windows NT, after Microsoft had received a company blood transfusion in the form of Dave Cutler and his team from DEC.
linux distros are still just poor clones of Windows and OSX
That is just silly. Linux pre-dates OSX by about 10 years, and is a clone of Unix, which predates Windows by about 10 years. Linux therefore cannot be described as a clone of either Windows or OSX by any stretch of the imagination.
Sure, there are similarities in style between them all, but that is how fashions go. Windows, OSX and Linux do undoubtedly learn from eachother (I can think of ideas that Windows seems to have taken from Linux, and also Linux ideas that seem to be taken from Windows), but that is how progress goes too. The car analogy here is that there are similarities in style and technology between present-day cars, while quite differnt from cars of 20 years ago - but we don't say that Fords are clones of Chryslers (or vice-versa).
I think the point is to limit the range over which it can be operated. It also makes it easier to identify the operator if they start to fly it dangerously or intrusively. Of course, someone could fly the drone blindly out of the line-of sight range anyway, but there would be little point to doing so, and the thing would probably be lost too.