Never. Per the last few hundred years of legal precedent, the companies are the victims. It's in the same category as leaving a house unlocked. Legally, the person at fault is the one who decided to abuse the flaw and access information they aren't supposed to.
Even if true (and I don't agree that it is) this is easily remedied through legislation making inadequate care of customer data illegal by statute (negligence per-se). Furthermore there there are a variety of duty of care torts under which a company could be legally charged including potentially fiduciary duty in some cases.
The fact that many companies are incompetent is not a sufficient excuse and should never be regarded as such.
At this moment, nobody knows who or what is going to replace Windows and Office.
And my point is that I think it is deeply unlikely that anything will replace them in the next 5-10 years. After that who the heck knows? The biggest single risk to Microsoft is if the PC platform shrinks strongly and Microsoft is unable to take a big chunk of the mobile market, especially tablets. If tablets start getting used for content creation and Office is not on those tablets then Microsoft is screwed. I don't see that happening overnight however.
Remember how the Roman Empire fell: not at once, but only after some time of having been hollowed out, from the inside, by "barbarians". Isn't that what is going on here, silently ?
The Roman Empire continued on for nearly a thousand years after 476AD where it is commonly assumed it "fell". Microsoft will likely be the same way. They have WAY too big a cash hoard to disappear quickly or quietly. Worst case for them is they buy a number of smaller companies with more promising businesses using said cash hoard.
Mark my words: some time after the release of Windows 9, Microsoft may be making losses for the first time in its history.
Exactly what is going to replace Windows and Office on the desktop? Or are you predicting the desktop/laptop PC will go away? Frankly while I think Microsoft is likely to remain somewhat ineffectual for the next 5-10 years, I really cannot see anyone displacing them off the desktop anytime soon. They have some threats (Android probably most notably) but they are not existential threats just yet. The installed base of Windows and Office is simply too large and too expensive to replace for them to pull a Blackberry.
Do you have any idea what the word phenomena means? It's pretty clear from your argument that you need to look it up so I'll save you some time. It means "any observable occurence".
Second, how we should deal with it depends on whether you can prove that humans are the cause or not.
Wrong. How we should deal with it depends on the probability that humans are the cause. I won't disagree with you that the exact extent of our impact is still significantly unclear. However that is a separate issue from establishing whether or not we are having some amount of effect. There appears to be significant and credible evidence that human activities are having some amount of detrimental effect on the global climate. We also know for a fact what the sources of many of these activities is (cars, industry, fossil fuels, chemicals, etc). There are many actions we can take based on our current understanding of the global climate that are rational and appropriate. As we learn more we can refine our actions based on those findings. But saying we should do nothing until we know everything is just a stupid and dangerous argument.
Frankly the way we are behaving is somewhat like drinking a poison until it kills us before deciding whether or not it is toxic. It's not like we have another Earth we can go to once we've destroyed this one. I'd rather err on the side of too cautious than too reckless.
A religion is an organized collection of beliefs related to sacred things which may or may not include a belief in a god. Faith is a typical (almost ubiquitous in fact) but not required component of a religion. Something can be sacred without requiring faith though in practice this is unusual.
Atheism is a belief that no god exists, something that cannot be proven empirically, and thus Atheism is a religion.
The fact one believes in something that cannot be proven empirically does not make that something a religion. A religion isn't defined merely by the belief (or lack thereof) in a deity. A religion can (and some do) incorporate atheism but holding views of atheism does not make a those views a religion. You can be religious without belief in a god and belief in a god does not make one automatically religious. While it is common for theists to be religious and atheists to be irreligious the reverse is also true in some cases. The concepts of (ir)religion and (a)theism are orthogonal to each other. Much like debates between science and faith, people keep getting the concepts confused and arguing about the wrong things.
It's not an "absence of belief", that would be agnosticism.
It is not an absence of belief but rather a withholding of judgement. You can believe in the non-existence of a god while not denying the possibility one exists which makes you both atheistic and agnostic at the same time. Conversely you can believe in the existence of a god while being unsure of the actual existence of one which makes you both theistic and agnostic at the same time. There are other forms of agnosticism as well. Your definition is overly simplistic.
Atheism clearly meets the "Seven Dimensions of Religion", defined by Ninian Smart (a framework accepted by anthropologists and historians):
Looking them over I see no fit whatsoever with that framework and atheism because religion and theism as I've said before are orthogonal concepts.
And yet we are to believe things like Katrina and Sandy are evidence FOR Global Warming?
Potentially. They are data points. By themselves they are evidence of nothing. However if they, along with other storms, indicate that there is a change in the frequency, severity, locality, or duration of storms then they very well might be evidence of global warming. Remember that hurricanes are formed over bodies of relatively warm water. If the oceans are heating up (and our measurements indicate they seem to be) then we might reasonably expect to see more or larger or more severe hurricanes.
Likewise the recent cold snap results from an unusual disruption of the polar vortex. Changes in circulation patterns can cause unusual weather patterns. This cold snap is evidence of nothing by itself but if we measure an increased frequency of similar weather over time it may very well indicate the climate has changed. It is a data point that in time may add to the pile of evidence for (or against) global warming. Only time will tell.
It seems that every "weather" event is trotted out as evidence FOR Global Warming by someone.
Usually by idiots who are unable to put the event in context.
If it was accurate then there would have been a consensus predicting these events.
I find in continually frustrating that proponents (and opponents) of addressing the risks of climate change bring up scientific consensus as an argument. I think Einstein said it best when reportedly responding to the book "Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein (A Hundred Authors Against Einstein)", by saying (roughly) "if I were wrong, one would be enough". If a model is correct and has predictive value then it is useful regardless of what the consensus might say. If it has no predictive value then it is wrong regardless of any consensus.
It is also possible that the phenomena is real and we simply have not developed a descriptive model yet. Relativity was real even before Einstein developed his model. So you have to ask yourself, how should we behave if there is a reasonable chance that this phenomena is real? Our ability or lack thereof to model the climate change is a separate issue from our ability to measure it. We KNOW that temperatures are rising globally because we are able to measure that even if we don't know for absolute certain why they are rising. So if they are rising what are the potential consequences and what should we do based on those potential consequences?
However, the fact that there is no consensus means that there isn't accuracy in the field of Climate Change
As meaningless as consensus might be, there does appear to be one regarding the existence of climate change. The only real debate at this point is regarding severity.
I am willing to accept carbon based climate change and accept the changes required for preventing future damage, but only if it is scientifically proven.
Well the data we have certainly seems to indicate that climate change is real so I'm not entirely sure what level of proof you are looking for. It's not the sort of phenomena you want to wait until after it occurs to say "yep, we proved it - look at all this damage". However, let's presume for the sake of argument that the data is inconclusive at present. Then the question becomes one of risk. Let's say there is 50% chance that climate change is real and that if it is real the consequences of it are that the planet no longer becomes compatible with human life. Is that a risk you are willing to take or do you think we should act on the risk knowing we might be wrong but playing it safe? Basically you are doing an expected value analysis.
Just being pedantic but a state religion cannot be atheism because atheism is by definition the absence of belief that deities exist. You can accurately say that there is no state religion or that theist religions are officially discouraged/suppressed. But atheism is not and cannot be a religion in any sort of conventional meaning of the term.
Therefore was spending $6-$7 every workday on lunch at Wendy's.
A loaf of bread and some peanut butter is no worse nutritionally and is a LOT cheaper and does not require refrigeration.
Which meant the $117 had to buy the other 1,000-1,500 calories a day or I'd fucking die of starvation. That meant pop and candy. With all this I still ended up losing like 40-50 pounds.
You can get 1000 calories in a just one triple whopper from Burger King. Claiming you needed pop and candy to survive is complete nonsense. That just means you didn't want to think very hard about it. Getting lots of calories is not difficult or expensive these days, even for someone without much income.
With all this I still ended up losing like 40-50 pounds.
Which means you were severely malnourished and/or were overweight to begin with. Given the diet you shared I'm think both are probably true.
Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Rules 1 and 3 are useless to me because I can't afford 'food,' and I can't store vegetables.
There are plenty of vegetables that have minimal or no refrigeration requirements and are extremely affordable. First off there are tons of very inexpensive canned options which do not require any refrigeration of any kind and are good for you. Tomatoes, dried beans, rice, grains, onions, potatoes, squash, sweet potatoes, bananas, apples, and many many more. The only way you can legitimately claim you can't store vegetables of any kind is if you are homeless.
I buy 3-pound bags of frozen chicken for $5, and 3-pound bags of frozen hamburgers for $10.
Your purchasing of frozen products is in all likelihood a false economy. If you want real economy, you buy whole animals or primals and butcher yourself. Any times you pay to have someone butcher or package the food for you, the price goes up. Buy a whole ham or chicken and use the entire product and you'll save a lot more money than anything you normally get from a freezer.
You can buy a 4lb whole fresh chicken for $6-7 if you don't mind doing the butchering yourself. You can pretty much use the whole chicken including the bones. I rarely buy pre-cut chickens anymore and I use the entire bird, including the bones (for stock). Taste is FAR better than anything you will ever get from the freezer section.
Around here ground beef costs around $2.25-2.75 per pound, fresh from the butcher. If you are getting frozen patties for that amount of money you very likely can get better product for less money.
I'd have to know more about this to unpack it, but my own experience is that buying frozen food is much cheaper than anything else except for rice, beans, and flower. Nutritionally, there is no reason to pick fresh food over frozen food.
Nutritionally you are generally correct but if you are purchasing seasonally then you'll find that frozen foods are frequently not any cheaper. It might be more convenient and sometimes is actually a better option for stuff like peas. Sure if you insist on buying strawberries in November in the midwest USA, you'll pay more. However if you purchase in season, utilize farmer's markets, and actually carefully watch prices you usually can beat frozen food prices and with some exceptions you'll get tastier food as well.
It will also be the backbone of their diet in the process. It won't just be empty calories but will be a good chunk of most of what they need to live on since we are mammals.
Lots of people cannot consume milk past infancy. Most of the population of the world actually. About 30-50 million people in the US are lactose intolerant including 75% of Native Americans and 90% of those of Asian descent. Worldwide about 65% of people have some form of lactose intolerance. The percentage of people in north america and europe that can consume milk products without ill effects is actually unusually high.
Also bear in mind that most milk is heavily subsidized in price. The real price of a gallon of milk is somewhere closer to $4-$8 per gallon. Even higher for organic stuff.
You also can't easily replace that calcium.
You do not need milk or milk products to get the needed amount of calcium. There are plenty of fortified foods with extra calcium. Dark leafy greens are an excellent source as are sardines, soybeans, tofu, oranges, sesame seeds, almonds, salmon, white beans, figs, broccoli, and quite a few other foods. The notion that you need milk to get adequate calcium is easily and demonstrably not true.
During unusually hot weather, people tend to accept global warming, and they swing against it during cold events."
Of course they do because many people (most maybe) do not understand the difference between climate and weather. They have either a poor understanding or perhaps no concept at all that short term temperature fluctuations are merely data points in a longer term trend. It is just like how people overreact to a few worse than usual days in the stock market even though the long term trend for the overall market for the last 100 years has been upwards.
Weather = what is happening today Climate = average weather over time
Except that frequently, the project development team will have been terminated after 3.
So you justify the purchase based on a 3 year or 1 year payback. Do I really need to spell that out for you?
I've had some very good monitors, but 5 years is about the maximum life I've been able to get out of them.
Then you haven't had good monitors or you've had very bad quality power. I've had one monitor (out of dozens) fail on me in the last 15 years. Generally speaking they're quite reliable. In my manufacturing plant we have a few dozen monitors and I can recall precisely one failing in the last 8 years and I'm the guy who has to replace them so I'd know.
Perhaps not right now in practice, but all of the factors you mentioned can be theoretically overcome, either with spending a little more, and/or better software to emulate the temporary advantages
Exactly how is software going to allow me to place my single monitor in anything other than a single plane? How is software going to allow my the PC on my desk to drive a large 4K monitor when the hardware demonstrably cannot do it now and cannot realistically be upgraded? How is software going to clone a monitor AND let me flip it around so someone on the other side of the desk can see what I see at the same time?
With a single screen, we have the big advantage of height of course
You can stack multiple monitors vertically. In fact unless I have an application where the gaps between monitors is unacceptable (rare in practice), I can stack multiple monitors higher vertically than any single monitor. I've actually worked with a 2X2 array of monitors at times effectively creating a 4K monitor out of 4 1080P monitors.
Plus someone else pointed out that if your single monitor fails you lose your entire desktop. If one monitor in a multi-monitor setup fails, you still can use your computer. While monitors generally are quite reliable, they do fail on occasion.
Look, there are plenty of use cases where a larger monitor is totally the way to go. However there also are plenty of cases where a multi-monitor setup is preferable. Neither is universally superior to the other.
There are in principle NO advantages to a multiple monitor setup.
Not true at all in practice. There are several advantages to multi-monitor setups. 1) No requirement to arrange the monitors in a single plane. I can position the smaller monitors in a more optimal physical arrangement if desired. 2) The cost of several smaller monitors is often (though not always) less than the cost of one bigger monitor 3) Many machines (especially older ones) cannot drive the larger displays but can easily drive several smaller ones 4) With a multi-monitor setup I can extend or clone my primary display depending on my needs at the time.
Whether a single or multi display setup is ergonomically superior is circumstance and individual dependent. I've also found the gaps between monitors to seldom be an issue in practice. I thought it would be annoying but once you start doing it you never notice it.
I'm not arguing that a large monitor isn't a better option sometimes, merely that there are plenty of circumstances where a multi-monitor setup is at least modestly superior.
For a programmer earning $80,000/year if you can shave off 1.5 seconds 50 times per day you'll recoup the investment in 5 years. Shave off 6 seconds 50 times per day and you recoup the investment in 1.25 years. I use a multi-monitor setup and have recouped the cost many times over and I'm not even a programmer.
If your criteria is that crucial things must break in between versions requiring new drivers, then it is not new like XP -> Vista.
Things that I would make me consider it a new operating system 1) Breaks lots of drivers and/or applications 2) Major user interface changes 3) Major additional OS (not application) features not previously available 4) Complete (or nearly so) backend rewrite
Rewriting back end stuff really doesn't constitute a new operating system unless it is a complete backend rewrite. If I as a user cannot tell the difference then it probably isn't a new system. There're probably some corner case exceptions I'm not thinking of but I think I've hit the important ones. I'm not sure there has been a truly new OS from Apple for quite some time. Easily a decade. Off the top of my head I can't think of anything I'd call a "new" Mac OS in the last 7-10 years.
Bear in mind that under my criteria some versions of Windows don't really constitute a new OS either.
Apple is discontinuing security updates for an 18 month old OS.
Calling Mavericks a "new OS" is really something of a stretch. It is at best a modest revision of the previous version. When Apple does something as dramatic as the difference between XP and Vista or Windows 7 and Windows 8, then maybe it might be realistic to call it a new OS.
They've driven hundreds of thousands of miles in all kinds of regular car traffic and have accident rates that are infinitesimal - and the accidents are almost entirely the fault of the other drivers, not the Google car
Hundreds of thousands of miles is an impressive accomplishment but statistically it isn't enough data to start drawing strong comparisons. The number of fatal accidents in the last few years averages around 1.5 fatal accidents per 100 Million miles driven. Google is at a fraction of a single percent of that number. While their results are very impressive, we need a LOT more data before we should start declaring the autonomous cars to be safer. They might be but we haven't proven it yet.
Google's team announced that they had passed the 300,000 autonomous mile mark on public roads. Accident-free.
While super impressive that may not be enough miles to be statistically significant for comparison's sake. I can't find all accidents but for fatal accidents the accident rate in the US is around 1.5 fatal accidents per 100 million miles driven. So far they are at 0.3% of 100 million miles so they really need to drive a lot more before we jump to serious conclusions about comparing safety rates.
I'm curious what the total accident rate per mile driven in the US is. Would be interesting to compare as more autonomous miles are driven.
They have shipped well over 20'000 developer kits so far.
If they have then good for them. That said, I'm willing to lay you odds that very few of those "developer kits" actually went to real developers. I simply do not believe that there are that many developers with an interest in immersive VR. I've worked in that community and it is a pretty small community. Most of those are probably sold to end consumers and it probably is a pretty good sampling of the actual market for this thing. Maybe there are enough gamers out there interested in this thing, I certainly don't know for sure and I genuinely wish them the best. It's pretty nifty tech regardless of its commercial merits.
I have little doubt that they will sell a lot more units once the consumer versions hits the retail shelves.
I'm happy to be proven wrong but I do not share your confidence.
They also have something like $90 million venture capital, so they certainly can do some volume ordering
All the money in the world won't do you any good if you order more than you can sell. Frankly if they've raised that much capital then I think there are some rather dumb VCs backing them. If the thing sells for $300 the would have to sell 300,000 of them to make that investment back and that is before they even make a profit. Maybe I'm wrong but I REALLY do not see that happening.
Total immersion is a problem and people have wanted to solve for a long long time.
I'm well aware. And what I'm saying is that the fundamental problem is probably not with the hardware. The problem is the lack of use cases for it.
At the moment it's still a little niche due to lack of hardware, but there is no shortage on people with tipple monitor setups, TrackIR and other gadgets to get as close to the real thing as possible. Rift can provide a better experience for much cheaper.
A triple monitor setup is NOT the same experience. Even a CAVE is not the same environment. There is a gigantic gap between putting on a headset and going full immersive VR versus being in a semi-immersive display environment.
Look at some reaction videos on Youtube, everybody from 6 year old kids to 90 year old grandmas seems to enjoy the experience, a lot.
I used to conduct demos of immersive VR for my day job. Headsets, 3D googles, etc. Everyone thinks it is cool because it frankly is cool. HOWEVER historcally very very few are actually willing to spend the bucks to buy the stuff and most that do don't use it very much. Maybe these guys have cracked the code but based on my direct experience with this sort of tech I'm quite dubious.
The Rift is already extremely cheap, devkits sell for just $300 which is about as much as a good monitor will cost you and given that the thing is little more then a mobile phone screen and motion tracking that price can easily go down to $200, $100 or even less in the coming years when they ramp up the volume.
I genuinely hope I'm wrong and that they sell a ton of these, I'm just not optimistic. I'm not against the Rift in any way but I'm pretty dubious they are going to get enough sales to get big volume discounts. I run a company that makes wire harnesses and does contract assembly so I'm more than passingly familiar with the economics involved here. Companies like this contract with companies like mine to build their products for them. A few thousand units is not nearly enough to move the needle on price. Setup costs diminish greatly at around 10,000 units (usually) but that's isn't where the big money is here - that's in purchasing. To get big discounts on materials you have to be talking volumes of over 100,000 or more and you have to be able to deal directly with the manufacturers. Most big manufacturers don't want to deal directly with you unless you buy over a million dollars per year of a specific product. Otherwise they tell you to talk to a distributor and the markup there is pretty steep. To give an example one connector we buy for $0.37 each would cost you $2.11 if you were to buy it from a distributor - the difference is that we buy them in lots of 50,000 at a time and use 1000 each day. A lot of the stuff in this headset is custom parts (read $$$) and I doubt they do the manufacturing themselves beyond prototype quantities. I'm sure they've contracted with a company like mine to build the thing but the likely volumes simply aren't high enough to really drop the price by a lot.
The reason why VR failed in the past is that it was to expensive and just not good enough. Tracking was slow, resolution was low, the things were heavy,
That's part of the equation but it really is not the primary reason it has continued to fail. The primary reason is that this technology always has been a solution looking for a problem. It's neat but it doesn't really scratch an itch. No matter how good the headset is, there simply isn't any evidence that there is mass market levels of demand for full immersion VR in any of the likely markets. It's kind of like a Segway - neat but really just an expensive toy with limited real world application. Plus, for whatever reason, people just don't seem to like wearing equipment like this for more than a little while even when the experience is fairly good. Games are probably the biggest market by customer volume but I can't really see casual gamers being interested. The really big money in this stuff is probably in military applications but that's a vastly different market.
The Rift however fixes basically all of that thanks to use of cheap components from mobile phones and in terms of performance it beats every previous consumer headset by a mile.
Kind of a low bar to beat previous consumer VR headsets.:-)
It boils down to whether you think Virtual Reality is a viable concept - whether it will displace the ways we currently accomplish things that we deem to be worthwhile.
I've actually spent about 5 years of my professional life working on simulation and VR technologies including a bit of immersive VR. It does have some uses but as a mass market technology I just don't see the so-called killer app. The hardware is expensive and that is unlikely to change, especially given the lack of economies of scale. Yeah a few people will use it for gaming (not many) and there are some industrial and military uses. The military probably has the most use for this sort of thing of anyone for training and simulation. It's kind of nifty as a marketing tool. The best uses I can think of for the technology are actually not in immersive VR but in augmented reality which shares many of the same hardware and software requirements but has far more mass market potential.
For what it's worth I agree with your opinions on it being a bad idea for kids who already are spending too much time staring at screens as it is.
I can't help seeing a huge similarity between what you are saying and what people said about smartphones, when I was such a geek for carrying around a HP28s / Psion IIIa / Palm Pilot / PocketPC.
I don't remember anyone thinking the potential market for smartphones was a niche market. The problem was that the state of technology didn't allow for a form factor and features with mass appeal. Smartphones were a convergence of several technologies for which there was already a proven demand (phones, PDAs, cameras, personal computers). VR headsets do not enjoy the same situation. Virtually nobody uses them or needs them for any practical purpose today. There are a few incredibly small niche applications in the military and industry. There may be some interest as an entertainment device though the potential market seems limited. I can't see anyone other than hardcore gamers and technophiles buying one of these and even then they won't be able to use it for much more than a few games.
After decades of slow improvement, something can reach a threshold a suddenly take off.
Possible but I don't really see the application that would drive demand. (and before someone brings it up, porn is not the killer app here) The problem with the smartphone was getting the technology to a usable form factor. The potential value and uses were obvious even when it wasn't clear exactly what form it would/should take. The same isn't true for a VR headset. All of the potential uses are very niche and I honestly cannot conceive of any reasonably achievable form factor that would overcome people's objections to wearing them. Something like Google Glass isn't much more than a curiosity to most people and it has FAR more utility and is far less objectionable to wear among the public than a full immersion VR system. I honestly cannot think of a single reason I would buy one of these and I'm someone who as worked directly with this sort of stuff in my professional life.
While I can't deny that maybe someone smarter than me will come up with a form factor that has relatively wide appeal, I'm pretty dubious of it. I've seen a lot of this sort of thing and without some practical application with significant appeal it simply won't be more than a technical curiosity.
Slashdot Mirror
Never. Per the last few hundred years of legal precedent, the companies are the victims. It's in the same category as leaving a house unlocked. Legally, the person at fault is the one who decided to abuse the flaw and access information they aren't supposed to.
Even if true (and I don't agree that it is) this is easily remedied through legislation making inadequate care of customer data illegal by statute (negligence per-se). Furthermore there there are a variety of duty of care torts under which a company could be legally charged including potentially fiduciary duty in some cases.
The fact that many companies are incompetent is not a sufficient excuse and should never be regarded as such.
At this moment, nobody knows who or what is going to replace Windows and Office.
And my point is that I think it is deeply unlikely that anything will replace them in the next 5-10 years. After that who the heck knows? The biggest single risk to Microsoft is if the PC platform shrinks strongly and Microsoft is unable to take a big chunk of the mobile market, especially tablets. If tablets start getting used for content creation and Office is not on those tablets then Microsoft is screwed. I don't see that happening overnight however.
Remember how the Roman Empire fell: not at once, but only after some time of having been hollowed out, from the inside, by "barbarians". Isn't that what is going on here, silently ?
The Roman Empire continued on for nearly a thousand years after 476AD where it is commonly assumed it "fell". Microsoft will likely be the same way. They have WAY too big a cash hoard to disappear quickly or quietly. Worst case for them is they buy a number of smaller companies with more promising businesses using said cash hoard.
Mark my words: some time after the release of Windows 9, Microsoft may be making losses for the first time in its history.
Exactly what is going to replace Windows and Office on the desktop? Or are you predicting the desktop/laptop PC will go away? Frankly while I think Microsoft is likely to remain somewhat ineffectual for the next 5-10 years, I really cannot see anyone displacing them off the desktop anytime soon. They have some threats (Android probably most notably) but they are not existential threats just yet. The installed base of Windows and Office is simply too large and too expensive to replace for them to pull a Blackberry.
First, it's not phenomena, it's natural.
Do you have any idea what the word phenomena means? It's pretty clear from your argument that you need to look it up so I'll save you some time. It means "any observable occurence".
Second, how we should deal with it depends on whether you can prove that humans are the cause or not.
Wrong. How we should deal with it depends on the probability that humans are the cause. I won't disagree with you that the exact extent of our impact is still significantly unclear. However that is a separate issue from establishing whether or not we are having some amount of effect. There appears to be significant and credible evidence that human activities are having some amount of detrimental effect on the global climate. We also know for a fact what the sources of many of these activities is (cars, industry, fossil fuels, chemicals, etc). There are many actions we can take based on our current understanding of the global climate that are rational and appropriate. As we learn more we can refine our actions based on those findings. But saying we should do nothing until we know everything is just a stupid and dangerous argument.
Frankly the way we are behaving is somewhat like drinking a poison until it kills us before deciding whether or not it is toxic. It's not like we have another Earth we can go to once we've destroyed this one. I'd rather err on the side of too cautious than too reckless.
A religion is any belief based on faith.
A religion is an organized collection of beliefs related to sacred things which may or may not include a belief in a god. Faith is a typical (almost ubiquitous in fact) but not required component of a religion. Something can be sacred without requiring faith though in practice this is unusual.
Atheism is a belief that no god exists, something that cannot be proven empirically, and thus Atheism is a religion.
The fact one believes in something that cannot be proven empirically does not make that something a religion. A religion isn't defined merely by the belief (or lack thereof) in a deity. A religion can (and some do) incorporate atheism but holding views of atheism does not make a those views a religion. You can be religious without belief in a god and belief in a god does not make one automatically religious. While it is common for theists to be religious and atheists to be irreligious the reverse is also true in some cases. The concepts of (ir)religion and (a)theism are orthogonal to each other. Much like debates between science and faith, people keep getting the concepts confused and arguing about the wrong things.
It's not an "absence of belief", that would be agnosticism.
It is not an absence of belief but rather a withholding of judgement. You can believe in the non-existence of a god while not denying the possibility one exists which makes you both atheistic and agnostic at the same time. Conversely you can believe in the existence of a god while being unsure of the actual existence of one which makes you both theistic and agnostic at the same time. There are other forms of agnosticism as well. Your definition is overly simplistic.
Atheism clearly meets the "Seven Dimensions of Religion", defined by Ninian Smart (a framework accepted by anthropologists and historians):
Looking them over I see no fit whatsoever with that framework and atheism because religion and theism as I've said before are orthogonal concepts.
And yet we are to believe things like Katrina and Sandy are evidence FOR Global Warming?
Potentially. They are data points. By themselves they are evidence of nothing. However if they, along with other storms, indicate that there is a change in the frequency, severity, locality, or duration of storms then they very well might be evidence of global warming. Remember that hurricanes are formed over bodies of relatively warm water. If the oceans are heating up (and our measurements indicate they seem to be) then we might reasonably expect to see more or larger or more severe hurricanes.
Likewise the recent cold snap results from an unusual disruption of the polar vortex. Changes in circulation patterns can cause unusual weather patterns. This cold snap is evidence of nothing by itself but if we measure an increased frequency of similar weather over time it may very well indicate the climate has changed. It is a data point that in time may add to the pile of evidence for (or against) global warming. Only time will tell.
It seems that every "weather" event is trotted out as evidence FOR Global Warming by someone.
Usually by idiots who are unable to put the event in context.
If it was accurate then there would have been a consensus predicting these events.
I find in continually frustrating that proponents (and opponents) of addressing the risks of climate change bring up scientific consensus as an argument. I think Einstein said it best when reportedly responding to the book "Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein (A Hundred Authors Against Einstein)", by saying (roughly) "if I were wrong, one would be enough". If a model is correct and has predictive value then it is useful regardless of what the consensus might say. If it has no predictive value then it is wrong regardless of any consensus.
It is also possible that the phenomena is real and we simply have not developed a descriptive model yet. Relativity was real even before Einstein developed his model. So you have to ask yourself, how should we behave if there is a reasonable chance that this phenomena is real? Our ability or lack thereof to model the climate change is a separate issue from our ability to measure it. We KNOW that temperatures are rising globally because we are able to measure that even if we don't know for absolute certain why they are rising. So if they are rising what are the potential consequences and what should we do based on those potential consequences?
However, the fact that there is no consensus means that there isn't accuracy in the field of Climate Change
As meaningless as consensus might be, there does appear to be one regarding the existence of climate change. The only real debate at this point is regarding severity.
I am willing to accept carbon based climate change and accept the changes required for preventing future damage, but only if it is scientifically proven.
Well the data we have certainly seems to indicate that climate change is real so I'm not entirely sure what level of proof you are looking for. It's not the sort of phenomena you want to wait until after it occurs to say "yep, we proved it - look at all this damage". However, let's presume for the sake of argument that the data is inconclusive at present. Then the question becomes one of risk. Let's say there is 50% chance that climate change is real and that if it is real the consequences of it are that the planet no longer becomes compatible with human life. Is that a risk you are willing to take or do you think we should act on the risk knowing we might be wrong but playing it safe? Basically you are doing an expected value analysis.
and the official state religion is atheism.
Just being pedantic but a state religion cannot be atheism because atheism is by definition the absence of belief that deities exist. You can accurately say that there is no state religion or that theist religions are officially discouraged/suppressed. But atheism is not and cannot be a religion in any sort of conventional meaning of the term.
May I remind you that said idiots, by virtue of genetically being H. sapiens and breathing, have the same voting power as you and I?
In some elections the breathing requirement is reportedly optional.
Therefore was spending $6-$7 every workday on lunch at Wendy's.
A loaf of bread and some peanut butter is no worse nutritionally and is a LOT cheaper and does not require refrigeration.
Which meant the $117 had to buy the other 1,000-1,500 calories a day or I'd fucking die of starvation. That meant pop and candy. With all this I still ended up losing like 40-50 pounds.
You can get 1000 calories in a just one triple whopper from Burger King. Claiming you needed pop and candy to survive is complete nonsense. That just means you didn't want to think very hard about it. Getting lots of calories is not difficult or expensive these days, even for someone without much income.
With all this I still ended up losing like 40-50 pounds.
Which means you were severely malnourished and/or were overweight to begin with. Given the diet you shared I'm think both are probably true.
Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." Rules 1 and 3 are useless to me because I can't afford 'food,' and I can't store vegetables.
There are plenty of vegetables that have minimal or no refrigeration requirements and are extremely affordable. First off there are tons of very inexpensive canned options which do not require any refrigeration of any kind and are good for you. Tomatoes, dried beans, rice, grains, onions, potatoes, squash, sweet potatoes, bananas, apples, and many many more. The only way you can legitimately claim you can't store vegetables of any kind is if you are homeless.
I buy 3-pound bags of frozen chicken for $5, and 3-pound bags of frozen hamburgers for $10.
Your purchasing of frozen products is in all likelihood a false economy. If you want real economy, you buy whole animals or primals and butcher yourself. Any times you pay to have someone butcher or package the food for you, the price goes up. Buy a whole ham or chicken and use the entire product and you'll save a lot more money than anything you normally get from a freezer.
You can buy a 4lb whole fresh chicken for $6-7 if you don't mind doing the butchering yourself. You can pretty much use the whole chicken including the bones. I rarely buy pre-cut chickens anymore and I use the entire bird, including the bones (for stock). Taste is FAR better than anything you will ever get from the freezer section.
Around here ground beef costs around $2.25-2.75 per pound, fresh from the butcher. If you are getting frozen patties for that amount of money you very likely can get better product for less money.
I'd have to know more about this to unpack it, but my own experience is that buying frozen food is much cheaper than anything else except for rice, beans, and flower. Nutritionally, there is no reason to pick fresh food over frozen food.
Nutritionally you are generally correct but if you are purchasing seasonally then you'll find that frozen foods are frequently not any cheaper. It might be more convenient and sometimes is actually a better option for stuff like peas. Sure if you insist on buying strawberries in November in the midwest USA, you'll pay more. However if you purchase in season, utilize farmer's markets, and actually carefully watch prices you usually can beat frozen food prices and with some exceptions you'll get tastier food as well.
It will also be the backbone of their diet in the process. It won't just be empty calories but will be a good chunk of most of what they need to live on since we are mammals.
Lots of people cannot consume milk past infancy. Most of the population of the world actually. About 30-50 million people in the US are lactose intolerant including 75% of Native Americans and 90% of those of Asian descent. Worldwide about 65% of people have some form of lactose intolerance. The percentage of people in north america and europe that can consume milk products without ill effects is actually unusually high.
Also bear in mind that most milk is heavily subsidized in price. The real price of a gallon of milk is somewhere closer to $4-$8 per gallon. Even higher for organic stuff.
You also can't easily replace that calcium.
You do not need milk or milk products to get the needed amount of calcium. There are plenty of fortified foods with extra calcium. Dark leafy greens are an excellent source as are sardines, soybeans, tofu, oranges, sesame seeds, almonds, salmon, white beans, figs, broccoli, and quite a few other foods. The notion that you need milk to get adequate calcium is easily and demonstrably not true.
During unusually hot weather, people tend to accept global warming, and they swing against it during cold events."
Of course they do because many people (most maybe) do not understand the difference between climate and weather. They have either a poor understanding or perhaps no concept at all that short term temperature fluctuations are merely data points in a longer term trend. It is just like how people overreact to a few worse than usual days in the stock market even though the long term trend for the overall market for the last 100 years has been upwards.
Weather = what is happening today
Climate = average weather over time
Except that frequently, the project development team will have been terminated after 3.
So you justify the purchase based on a 3 year or 1 year payback. Do I really need to spell that out for you?
I've had some very good monitors, but 5 years is about the maximum life I've been able to get out of them.
Then you haven't had good monitors or you've had very bad quality power. I've had one monitor (out of dozens) fail on me in the last 15 years. Generally speaking they're quite reliable. In my manufacturing plant we have a few dozen monitors and I can recall precisely one failing in the last 8 years and I'm the guy who has to replace them so I'd know.
Perhaps not right now in practice, but all of the factors you mentioned can be theoretically overcome, either with spending a little more, and/or better software to emulate the temporary advantages
Exactly how is software going to allow me to place my single monitor in anything other than a single plane? How is software going to allow my the PC on my desk to drive a large 4K monitor when the hardware demonstrably cannot do it now and cannot realistically be upgraded? How is software going to clone a monitor AND let me flip it around so someone on the other side of the desk can see what I see at the same time?
With a single screen, we have the big advantage of height of course
You can stack multiple monitors vertically. In fact unless I have an application where the gaps between monitors is unacceptable (rare in practice), I can stack multiple monitors higher vertically than any single monitor. I've actually worked with a 2X2 array of monitors at times effectively creating a 4K monitor out of 4 1080P monitors.
Plus someone else pointed out that if your single monitor fails you lose your entire desktop. If one monitor in a multi-monitor setup fails, you still can use your computer. While monitors generally are quite reliable, they do fail on occasion.
Look, there are plenty of use cases where a larger monitor is totally the way to go. However there also are plenty of cases where a multi-monitor setup is preferable. Neither is universally superior to the other.
There are in principle NO advantages to a multiple monitor setup.
Not true at all in practice. There are several advantages to multi-monitor setups.
1) No requirement to arrange the monitors in a single plane. I can position the smaller monitors in a more optimal physical arrangement if desired.
2) The cost of several smaller monitors is often (though not always) less than the cost of one bigger monitor
3) Many machines (especially older ones) cannot drive the larger displays but can easily drive several smaller ones
4) With a multi-monitor setup I can extend or clone my primary display depending on my needs at the time.
Whether a single or multi display setup is ergonomically superior is circumstance and individual dependent. I've also found the gaps between monitors to seldom be an issue in practice. I thought it would be annoying but once you start doing it you never notice it.
I'm not arguing that a large monitor isn't a better option sometimes, merely that there are plenty of circumstances where a multi-monitor setup is at least modestly superior.
Almost any non-negligible productivity improvement is going to recoup $500 over the lifespan of an LED monitor.
Agreed. Obligatory XKCD.
For a programmer earning $80,000/year if you can shave off 1.5 seconds 50 times per day you'll recoup the investment in 5 years. Shave off 6 seconds 50 times per day and you recoup the investment in 1.25 years. I use a multi-monitor setup and have recouped the cost many times over and I'm not even a programmer.
If your criteria is that crucial things must break in between versions requiring new drivers, then it is not new like XP -> Vista.
Things that I would make me consider it a new operating system
1) Breaks lots of drivers and/or applications
2) Major user interface changes
3) Major additional OS (not application) features not previously available
4) Complete (or nearly so) backend rewrite
Rewriting back end stuff really doesn't constitute a new operating system unless it is a complete backend rewrite. If I as a user cannot tell the difference then it probably isn't a new system. There're probably some corner case exceptions I'm not thinking of but I think I've hit the important ones. I'm not sure there has been a truly new OS from Apple for quite some time. Easily a decade. Off the top of my head I can't think of anything I'd call a "new" Mac OS in the last 7-10 years.
Bear in mind that under my criteria some versions of Windows don't really constitute a new OS either.
Apple is discontinuing security updates for an 18 month old OS.
Calling Mavericks a "new OS" is really something of a stretch. It is at best a modest revision of the previous version. When Apple does something as dramatic as the difference between XP and Vista or Windows 7 and Windows 8, then maybe it might be realistic to call it a new OS.
They've driven hundreds of thousands of miles in all kinds of regular car traffic and have accident rates that are infinitesimal - and the accidents are almost entirely the fault of the other drivers, not the Google car
Hundreds of thousands of miles is an impressive accomplishment but statistically it isn't enough data to start drawing strong comparisons. The number of fatal accidents in the last few years averages around 1.5 fatal accidents per 100 Million miles driven. Google is at a fraction of a single percent of that number. While their results are very impressive, we need a LOT more data before we should start declaring the autonomous cars to be safer. They might be but we haven't proven it yet.
Google's team announced that they had passed the 300,000 autonomous mile mark on public roads. Accident-free.
While super impressive that may not be enough miles to be statistically significant for comparison's sake. I can't find all accidents but for fatal accidents the accident rate in the US is around 1.5 fatal accidents per 100 million miles driven. So far they are at 0.3% of 100 million miles so they really need to drive a lot more before we jump to serious conclusions about comparing safety rates.
I'm curious what the total accident rate per mile driven in the US is. Would be interesting to compare as more autonomous miles are driven.
They have shipped well over 20'000 developer kits so far.
If they have then good for them. That said, I'm willing to lay you odds that very few of those "developer kits" actually went to real developers. I simply do not believe that there are that many developers with an interest in immersive VR. I've worked in that community and it is a pretty small community. Most of those are probably sold to end consumers and it probably is a pretty good sampling of the actual market for this thing. Maybe there are enough gamers out there interested in this thing, I certainly don't know for sure and I genuinely wish them the best. It's pretty nifty tech regardless of its commercial merits.
I have little doubt that they will sell a lot more units once the consumer versions hits the retail shelves.
I'm happy to be proven wrong but I do not share your confidence.
They also have something like $90 million venture capital, so they certainly can do some volume ordering
All the money in the world won't do you any good if you order more than you can sell. Frankly if they've raised that much capital then I think there are some rather dumb VCs backing them. If the thing sells for $300 the would have to sell 300,000 of them to make that investment back and that is before they even make a profit. Maybe I'm wrong but I REALLY do not see that happening.
Total immersion is a problem and people have wanted to solve for a long long time.
I'm well aware. And what I'm saying is that the fundamental problem is probably not with the hardware. The problem is the lack of use cases for it.
At the moment it's still a little niche due to lack of hardware, but there is no shortage on people with tipple monitor setups, TrackIR and other gadgets to get as close to the real thing as possible. Rift can provide a better experience for much cheaper.
A triple monitor setup is NOT the same experience. Even a CAVE is not the same environment. There is a gigantic gap between putting on a headset and going full immersive VR versus being in a semi-immersive display environment.
Look at some reaction videos on Youtube, everybody from 6 year old kids to 90 year old grandmas seems to enjoy the experience, a lot.
I used to conduct demos of immersive VR for my day job. Headsets, 3D googles, etc. Everyone thinks it is cool because it frankly is cool. HOWEVER historcally very very few are actually willing to spend the bucks to buy the stuff and most that do don't use it very much. Maybe these guys have cracked the code but based on my direct experience with this sort of tech I'm quite dubious.
The Rift is already extremely cheap, devkits sell for just $300 which is about as much as a good monitor will cost you and given that the thing is little more then a mobile phone screen and motion tracking that price can easily go down to $200, $100 or even less in the coming years when they ramp up the volume.
I genuinely hope I'm wrong and that they sell a ton of these, I'm just not optimistic. I'm not against the Rift in any way but I'm pretty dubious they are going to get enough sales to get big volume discounts. I run a company that makes wire harnesses and does contract assembly so I'm more than passingly familiar with the economics involved here. Companies like this contract with companies like mine to build their products for them. A few thousand units is not nearly enough to move the needle on price. Setup costs diminish greatly at around 10,000 units (usually) but that's isn't where the big money is here - that's in purchasing. To get big discounts on materials you have to be talking volumes of over 100,000 or more and you have to be able to deal directly with the manufacturers. Most big manufacturers don't want to deal directly with you unless you buy over a million dollars per year of a specific product. Otherwise they tell you to talk to a distributor and the markup there is pretty steep. To give an example one connector we buy for $0.37 each would cost you $2.11 if you were to buy it from a distributor - the difference is that we buy them in lots of 50,000 at a time and use 1000 each day. A lot of the stuff in this headset is custom parts (read $$$) and I doubt they do the manufacturing themselves beyond prototype quantities. I'm sure they've contracted with a company like mine to build the thing but the likely volumes simply aren't high enough to really drop the price by a lot.
The reason why VR failed in the past is that it was to expensive and just not good enough. Tracking was slow, resolution was low, the things were heavy,
That's part of the equation but it really is not the primary reason it has continued to fail. The primary reason is that this technology always has been a solution looking for a problem. It's neat but it doesn't really scratch an itch. No matter how good the headset is, there simply isn't any evidence that there is mass market levels of demand for full immersion VR in any of the likely markets. It's kind of like a Segway - neat but really just an expensive toy with limited real world application. Plus, for whatever reason, people just don't seem to like wearing equipment like this for more than a little while even when the experience is fairly good. Games are probably the biggest market by customer volume but I can't really see casual gamers being interested. The really big money in this stuff is probably in military applications but that's a vastly different market.
The Rift however fixes basically all of that thanks to use of cheap components from mobile phones and in terms of performance it beats every previous consumer headset by a mile.
Kind of a low bar to beat previous consumer VR headsets. :-)
It boils down to whether you think Virtual Reality is a viable concept - whether it will displace the ways we currently accomplish things that we deem to be worthwhile.
I've actually spent about 5 years of my professional life working on simulation and VR technologies including a bit of immersive VR. It does have some uses but as a mass market technology I just don't see the so-called killer app. The hardware is expensive and that is unlikely to change, especially given the lack of economies of scale. Yeah a few people will use it for gaming (not many) and there are some industrial and military uses. The military probably has the most use for this sort of thing of anyone for training and simulation. It's kind of nifty as a marketing tool. The best uses I can think of for the technology are actually not in immersive VR but in augmented reality which shares many of the same hardware and software requirements but has far more mass market potential.
For what it's worth I agree with your opinions on it being a bad idea for kids who already are spending too much time staring at screens as it is.
I can't help seeing a huge similarity between what you are saying and what people said about smartphones, when I was such a geek for carrying around a HP28s / Psion IIIa / Palm Pilot / PocketPC.
I don't remember anyone thinking the potential market for smartphones was a niche market. The problem was that the state of technology didn't allow for a form factor and features with mass appeal. Smartphones were a convergence of several technologies for which there was already a proven demand (phones, PDAs, cameras, personal computers). VR headsets do not enjoy the same situation. Virtually nobody uses them or needs them for any practical purpose today. There are a few incredibly small niche applications in the military and industry. There may be some interest as an entertainment device though the potential market seems limited. I can't see anyone other than hardcore gamers and technophiles buying one of these and even then they won't be able to use it for much more than a few games.
After decades of slow improvement, something can reach a threshold a suddenly take off.
Possible but I don't really see the application that would drive demand. (and before someone brings it up, porn is not the killer app here) The problem with the smartphone was getting the technology to a usable form factor. The potential value and uses were obvious even when it wasn't clear exactly what form it would/should take. The same isn't true for a VR headset. All of the potential uses are very niche and I honestly cannot conceive of any reasonably achievable form factor that would overcome people's objections to wearing them. Something like Google Glass isn't much more than a curiosity to most people and it has FAR more utility and is far less objectionable to wear among the public than a full immersion VR system. I honestly cannot think of a single reason I would buy one of these and I'm someone who as worked directly with this sort of stuff in my professional life.
While I can't deny that maybe someone smarter than me will come up with a form factor that has relatively wide appeal, I'm pretty dubious of it. I've seen a lot of this sort of thing and without some practical application with significant appeal it simply won't be more than a technical curiosity.