Parrot's a lot harder to use to interact with other languages.
Uhh... wha? That's one of the entire reasons Parrot exists. Any language that's compiled to Parrot can interact with any other language compiled to Parrot.
LLVM at least makes it possible for Python code to play nicely with C compiled via LLVM, for example.
Huh? I *really* don't see how LLVM provides a mechanism for languages to interact with one another. It's IR is really just machine code, it's just that the machine doesn't actually exist. In that sense, compiling to LLVM IR is absolutely no different than compiling directly to, say, x86, and it's pretty clear that Perl, compiled to x86, can't interact with Python, compiled to x86, so why would that be any different for Perl compiled to LLVM IR and Python compiled to LLVM IR?
Remember, language interaction requires a whole host of things, including a common underlying framework for how objects are represented, how methods are called, etc. As far as I know, LLVM provides none of that (unlike the JVM, CLR and Parrot). Heck, it only offers a few types of primitives, including basic numbers, pointers, and lists. It has no concept of objects at all... so how is a Python object supports to interact with a Perl object, for example?
That said, you could certainly build something like that *on top* of LLVM (eg, a CLR, JVM, or Parrot backend that compiled down to LLVM IR, which then provides the necessary infrastructure for languages to interact), but LLVM itself does not, as far as I can tell, directly facilitate such a thing.
Wouldn't a more direct compile yield a better result?
No, it wouldn't.
The entire point of LLVM is that it provides an easy-to-target machine (it's basically a RISC instruction set) that you can use as your intermediate representation (the p-code you described). You then use the LLVM backends to compile the IR down to machine code. And because of the way the IR is structured (for example, it has write-only registers, which makes certain classes of optimizations much easier), you can do a really good job of optimizing.
Basically, you "direct compile" to the LLVM IR, and then let LLVM take care of the details of generating the machine code. This gives you better abstraction (no more machine-specific code generation in Python itself), portability (to whatever LLVM targets), and you get all the sophisticated optimization that LLVM provides for free. That's a huge potential win.
Not really. Parrot is a much higher-level VM, providing things like closures, multiple dispatch, garbage collection, infrastructure to support multiple object models, and so forth, whereas LLVM really models a basic RISC instruction set with an infinite number of write-only registers.
In fact, it would make a fair bit of sense to actually use LLVM as the JIT-compiling backend for Parrot...
He's right about that, of course, but what he and many others don't realize is that doing the little things can actually affect the grand scheme of things.
Why do you think so many people on the right ridiculed Obama when he stated that part of his energy plan was to get people using more efficient lighting?
Simply put: people are stupid. No, really stupid. And so they don't understand the large aggregate effect you get from a lot of small changes.
Hibernate takes as long as cold booting because it has to restore the entire contents of RAM.
Uhuh. Tell that to your average laptop user. My laptop takes roughly half as long to wakeup from hibernation versus a cold boot, *and* all my application state is restored (which was the original complaint against shutting off PCs at night).
Besides, *who cares*? The original complaint was that a cold boot means lost session state. Hibernation solves that problem. So go get a coffee and then get to work.
If I use suspend, audio won't play until I restart the PC due to a driver defect.
Because it would be easier for a 3D app vendor to wrap a browser around their 3D engine than the other way around.
Umm... and that solves the same problem, how, exactly? The whole point, here, is that there are a class of web applications that could really use 3D rendering, but don't have access to the necessary APIs. So you're going to have to expose some kind of API to the Javascript universe, and if you're doing that, you're most of the way to putting a 3D engine (and I use the term "engine" loosely... it's really just providing an OpenGL-like API in the Javascript world) in the browser itself.
If I'm understanding you correctly, what you're describing is the precise inverse: making it possible for a 3D application to render web content within it. That's not even remotely the same thing.
I think that the reason why firefox takes more resources to run than early 90's operating systems might be evidence of the fact that having the browser do all might not be the best.
Funny. I'd rather have Firefox implement a Flash-like subsystem, which could reuse its existing scripting and rendering framework, than have something like Flash which has to essentially build that entire framework from the ground up... poorly.
Or: Firefox + 2D/3D rendering can't *possibly* be any worse than the shitpile that is Firefox + Flash.
Erm shouldn't fancy stuff like 3d acceleration be handled by plug-ins not browsers?
Uh, why? Just because?
I mean, the browser already does accelerated 2D rendering in the form of CSS-decorated HTML. And SVG+Javascript covers quite a bit of the Flash playbook. So why not go all the way and give it the capability to do generalized, accelerated 2D and 3D rendering? We've already got the shitpile that is Flash... at least by embedding this capability in the browser itself, you get a standard implementation across browsers and platforms. And as a bonus, various elements can interact, unlike, say, Flash which is sandboxed away (I can't even copy a frickin' link out of a Flash "application" easily).
Seriously, Canada's stupid protectionist media laws have given us the fantastic sounds of Nickelback, Avril Levigne, and Alanis Morrisette.
Yeah, welcome to the music industry. Or have you not noticed that the US has its fair share of complete, utter garbage, too?
No, I'm sorry, the cancon rules may have their problems and you may disagree with them, but they're hardly responsible for the glut of crap that clogs the airwaves. For that you can blame good ol' fashion pop culture.
Yeah, but as you yourself point out, this isn't specifically because the tables are denormalized. It's because they're denormalized *badly*.
Denormalization, itself, does not equate to poor performance. In fact, quite the opposite is true, when it's done properly and thoughtfully. Which brings us back to the original quote: "Now that disk space is so cheap and many of the data models don't benefit as much from normalization" is *absolutely* true. Does it have to be done carefully? Yes. Is denormalizing a schema a universally good idea? No, of course not. But these days, given the cheapness of storage, if your game is large-scale read-only or minimal write databases where you're performing a lot of data mining, denormalization can be a very useful tool. It just needs to be done properly.
If that's true, then his comments have nothing to do with the quoted section about how, "Now that disk space is so cheap and many of the data models don't benefit as much from normalization,...". Because that comment is *specifically* about schema normalization in the formal sense.
And, uh, I have the pleasure of working now with a huge data warehouse that hasn't normalized status codes, so instead of quickly searching for an integer, the queries run slow as hell scanning char fields. It's not good.
What the hell does that have to do with schema normalization? Normalization has to do with how you architect your tables and relations. The types you use for the columns, and how you standardize their values, is an entirely different, though somewhat related, discussion.
And as it happens, in a data warehouse application, it's not at all unusual to denormalize tables, in order to speed up query performance during data mining operations.
In all honesty shooting down his arguments because he does not have a thesis paper available is a poor argument. This argument is one/.'rs use to prove how correct they are and how others are incorrect.
Actually, no, that's not what I was doing at all. At what point did I lay claim to any form of correctness? Heck, I didn't even provide a counter argument.
My point was very simple: making assumptions based on anecdote and "common sense" is sloppy reasoning, doubly so if one is trying to justify something as broad and invasive as censorship.
Poor reasoning is a *huge* problem in society today, particularly in the area of politics. My hope is that people will begin to recognize when they're invoking simple anecdotes as proof, and will attempt to do better next time. They won't, of course. But one can dream.
As a person who is an expert in communication studies (yes with actual training and a degree from an accredited college) with relation to how verbal, & non-verbal communications affects people as well as how things like games, tv/movies, news, books modifies a persons behavior I give *my* expert opinion to say these things DO influence people.
Ah, no. Unless you're an accredited psychologist, you're not an "expert", any more than I, a computing science graduate, am an accredited mathematician. At best, you're an educated layman. If you were an expert, it'd be *you* who would be citing evidence to actually support your claims. Your haven't done that, so at best, I'm going to assume that you, too, are appealing to anecdote and "common sense" in your particular field. Either that, or you're appealing to your own authority, which would be, I gotta say, rather tacky.
But I don't think I've ever once heard anyone complaining about a red light camera.
Yeah, but is your municipality shortening the yellow in order to generate more red light runners, thus increasing revenue? Because, believe it or not, some US cities have been accused of doing just that...
To say that viewing pornography everyday, where women are treated like beautiful objects at best, and dogshit at worst, wouldn't have an effect on one's outlook is rubbish. You can't even watch a romantic comedy everyday without it affecting your views - that is basic psychology, empirically proven.
And, of course, you naturally have the studies which prove this "basic psychology" of yours, right?
I mean, you wouldn't be advocating censorship based solely on your baseless assumptions and anecdotal evidence, would you? Because *that* would be a really *really* bad idea.
Richard Stallman has done more damage to the open source movement than anyone else.
Sorry bub, but that's ridiculous. The Linux operating system, with its entire GNU userspace, simply would not exist if it weren't for Richard M. Stallman. Not to mention the myriad projects that have opened up thanks to pressure from the FSF and their followers (Trolltech, I'm looking at you).
Is the man an extremist? Yes. Is the FSF also fairly extremist as a consequence? My experience says yes (we've actually had an FSF lawyer give incorrect legal advice to our corporate lawyers vis a vis the LGPL, and I suspect the reasoning is simple: to further their agenda). These days, is it possible he causes more harm than good? Perhaps. Although, TBH, I think he's probably just ignored, generally. But he has, without question, done more to further open source than virtually anyone else, save for perhaps Linus Torvalds, and to suggest otherwise is to deny the modern history of computing.
There is a grocery store within walking distance, not sure how to carry the 12 bags they use to bag my $60 of groceries but it is there.
A bike and a trailer are the best solution for this. Heck, I built my trailer from EMT, plywood, some tires scavenged from an old bike, and various random parts, for something like 40-50 bucks, and can easily transport a dozen bags of groceries home without difficulty.
'course, the alternative is much simpler: if you're within walking distance, just buy less at a time and go on more grocery trips. You're not wasting gas doing it, your fresh food will stay fresher, and you'll get more exercise, too.
However if one wants clothes or electronics or anything else it would be hours by bus each way or a $50 cab ride each way and probably hour plus waits (cab service here sucks hard).
And how often do you need to make such a trip, really? And note, I'm not saying you must be able to live completely and utterly without a car. But going from driving every single day because you have no other choice to driving once every couple weeks is an *enormous* difference. The problem is, US sub/ex-urban culture makes that kind of living impossible.
Similarly, I'd hate to see India (or any developing nation) move to a culture that precludes a lifestyle that deemphasizes cars. Are such vehicles useful from time to time? Of course they are. But cities shouldn't be designed such that an individual simply can't live without a car. And, unfortunately, inexpensive vehicles make it all too easy for city planners to cop out and assume high levels of car ownership when designing urban areas (hell, how many US suburbs have no frickin' sidewalks?? Way to discourage the most basic of human transportation: our own feet).
Firstly because it seems to have done just fine doing exactly that
Sure, you might believe that. If you're completely blind to the security threats, both economic and geopolitical, created by a deep *deep* dependence on foreign oil.
secondly because it hasn't put any real effort into practicing what you want to preach.
Well, naturally, yes. If the US were, today, to engage the Indians and say "don't allow your populace to become dependent upon cheap oil" while continuing to promote exactly that amongst its own population, of course, it would be deeply hypocritical and rightly ignored by the various developing nations.
If, however, the US were perceived to be attempting to change it's ways, then I think it would have every right to speak out against the spreading of the US suburban culture to the rest of the world.
Of course, we both know that'd never happen. US politicians aren't going to attack their own people for living a lavish, unsustainable lifestyle. But that doesn't mean people, such as the OP in this little thread, can't speak out against it, and bemoan other nations for following down the same path.
I don't own a car. For all of you that are talking about how you can't give up your cars, I'm proof that it can happen.
No, you're an outlier. Congratulations, and welcome to the club.
Then I expect you and GP to give up your moderately sized house, your car, and move to a metropolitan area or some other planned community where you have everything you need within walking distance.
Umm... I already live in such an area. I own a small house (~1400 sq feet). I don't drive a car. I take public transportation to work. And the necessary amenities (groceries, etc), are indeed within walking distance (although, when the whether is good, I prefer cycling as my primary mode of transportation). And I consider my standard of living very high indeed.
What was your point, again?
Despite all of the associated problems, personal mobility represents a huge increase in the standard of living.
Bullshit. First, a) Manhattanites (which, for the record, I am not) have an excellent standard of living and also represent a community that's highly centralized and *extremely* energy efficient. And b) personal mobility doesn't necessary equate to commuter culture.
US culture has taught people that standard of living == quarter acre in the middle of nowhere. And that's crap. Standard of living means having some space to live, easy access to food and other amenities, relatively low crime and poverty, etc. All of these things can be achieved in the city. But white flight has convinced your average American suburbanite that cities are wretched ghettos that are intolerable to live in. It's a counterproductive cultural phenomenon and it's resulted in a country where it's considered normal to commute multiple hours *each way* to/from work.
Why any other nation would want to adopt such a culture, I have no idea.
then correct your mistake. you can't make others learn without them making the same mistake themselves.
Well that's simply ridiculous. You're saying an addict can't tell their child that drugs are bad? Or a heart patient can't tell their relatives to eat healthy?
Should the US try and fix it's problems? Yes, of course. But that doesn't mean it can't speak from authority when it says that a culture dependent on cheap gas and personal transportation is a really *bad* idea.
Your argument is basically "we already have it, so you can't" is a non sequitur.
But that's not his argument. His argument is, here in north america, we made the huge mistake of designing communities such that a vehicle was a requirement for living. In particular, the suburban and ex-urban phenomenon has left your average American completely incapable of living without personal long-distance transportation. And this phenomenon is coupled with a truly massive underfunding of public transportation, meaning that even those within a reasonable distance of their place of work have no option but to drive.
And so, the solution isn't to give Indians more cars, thus encouraging the very lifestyle north america has mistakenly committed themselves to. The solution is to build communities where cars *aren't necessary in the first place*. Not because "we already have it, so you can't", but because "we already have it, and trust me, you really don't want it".
Then, of course, Roddenberry died and hacks like Berman et. al. brought religion back for DS9, even going so far as to make captain Cisco into the messiah... *sigh* and *ugh*
You *do* realize that that is *no different* than the Apollo episode of TOS, right? ie, the wormhole aliens interacted with a culture (the Bajorans) in such a way as to play god. It's literally the exact same damn thing. The only difference is, the wormhole aliens, living outside non-linear time, could actually see the future, and passed that information down to the Bajorans in the form of prophecy.
It's actually an excellent handling of religion, IMHO, and I see no reason why Roddenberry (your apparently messiah) would've had any problem with it whatsoever.
The listener is NOT allowed to know the source, the tester keeps track of what the source is.
Right. That's called a single blind test, and makes it *very* easy for the tester to convey the answer, even through subconscious cues. If you want to do testing right, you do it double-blind. Otherwise I have absolutely no reason to believe any results you claim to have come to.
As for the rest, given your experience, I don't doubt you have a better ear than I. That said, even the best can trick themselves, and telling the difference between FLAC and CD sounds pretty sketchy to me, given that the path is straight digital right from the CD being ripped to the PC and into the completely lossless FLAC encoder, and so the only kind of artifacts you should pick up are honest to god data corruption, which *doesn't* sound like poor "imaging". It sounds like screeches, pops, and stutters.
I mean, *maybe* I could buy that it's a crappy DAC that you're feeding the audio through during playback on the PC (after all, one of the things that separates a good CD player from a shitty one is a quality DAC), but you claimed it was USB "jitter", which is another all-digital bus... so on the input side, it'd make no damn bit of difference, and on the output side, buffering at the destination would hide even fairly large amounts of jitter (and if it didn't, you'd, once again, hear pops and stutters).
In short, could you tell the difference between 320kbps MP3 and FLAC? Sure. Someone with truly golden ears could probably pull that off, especially if they know the source material very well. But FLAC and CD? Sorry bub, I call shenanigans.
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Parrot's a lot harder to use to interact with other languages.
Uhh... wha? That's one of the entire reasons Parrot exists. Any language that's compiled to Parrot can interact with any other language compiled to Parrot.
LLVM at least makes it possible for Python code to play nicely with C compiled via LLVM, for example.
Huh? I *really* don't see how LLVM provides a mechanism for languages to interact with one another. It's IR is really just machine code, it's just that the machine doesn't actually exist. In that sense, compiling to LLVM IR is absolutely no different than compiling directly to, say, x86, and it's pretty clear that Perl, compiled to x86, can't interact with Python, compiled to x86, so why would that be any different for Perl compiled to LLVM IR and Python compiled to LLVM IR?
Remember, language interaction requires a whole host of things, including a common underlying framework for how objects are represented, how methods are called, etc. As far as I know, LLVM provides none of that (unlike the JVM, CLR and Parrot). Heck, it only offers a few types of primitives, including basic numbers, pointers, and lists. It has no concept of objects at all... so how is a Python object supports to interact with a Perl object, for example?
That said, you could certainly build something like that *on top* of LLVM (eg, a CLR, JVM, or Parrot backend that compiled down to LLVM IR, which then provides the necessary infrastructure for languages to interact), but LLVM itself does not, as far as I can tell, directly facilitate such a thing.
Wouldn't a more direct compile yield a better result?
No, it wouldn't.
The entire point of LLVM is that it provides an easy-to-target machine (it's basically a RISC instruction set) that you can use as your intermediate representation (the p-code you described). You then use the LLVM backends to compile the IR down to machine code. And because of the way the IR is structured (for example, it has write-only registers, which makes certain classes of optimizations much easier), you can do a really good job of optimizing.
Basically, you "direct compile" to the LLVM IR, and then let LLVM take care of the details of generating the machine code. This gives you better abstraction (no more machine-specific code generation in Python itself), portability (to whatever LLVM targets), and you get all the sophisticated optimization that LLVM provides for free. That's a huge potential win.
Not really. Parrot is a much higher-level VM, providing things like closures, multiple dispatch, garbage collection, infrastructure to support multiple object models, and so forth, whereas LLVM really models a basic RISC instruction set with an infinite number of write-only registers.
In fact, it would make a fair bit of sense to actually use LLVM as the JIT-compiling backend for Parrot...
He's right about that, of course, but what he and many others don't realize is that doing the little things can actually affect the grand scheme of things.
Why do you think so many people on the right ridiculed Obama when he stated that part of his energy plan was to get people using more efficient lighting?
Simply put: people are stupid. No, really stupid. And so they don't understand the large aggregate effect you get from a lot of small changes.
Hibernate takes as long as cold booting because it has to restore the entire contents of RAM.
Uhuh. Tell that to your average laptop user. My laptop takes roughly half as long to wakeup from hibernation versus a cold boot, *and* all my application state is restored (which was the original complaint against shutting off PCs at night).
Besides, *who cares*? The original complaint was that a cold boot means lost session state. Hibernation solves that problem. So go get a coffee and then get to work.
If I use suspend, audio won't play until I restart the PC due to a driver defect.
Then get a better PC or better drivers.
Because it would be easier for a 3D app vendor to wrap a browser around their 3D engine than the other way around.
Umm... and that solves the same problem, how, exactly? The whole point, here, is that there are a class of web applications that could really use 3D rendering, but don't have access to the necessary APIs. So you're going to have to expose some kind of API to the Javascript universe, and if you're doing that, you're most of the way to putting a 3D engine (and I use the term "engine" loosely... it's really just providing an OpenGL-like API in the Javascript world) in the browser itself.
If I'm understanding you correctly, what you're describing is the precise inverse: making it possible for a 3D application to render web content within it. That's not even remotely the same thing.
I think that the reason why firefox takes more resources to run than early 90's operating systems might be evidence of the fact that having the browser do all might not be the best.
Funny. I'd rather have Firefox implement a Flash-like subsystem, which could reuse its existing scripting and rendering framework, than have something like Flash which has to essentially build that entire framework from the ground up... poorly.
Or: Firefox + 2D/3D rendering can't *possibly* be any worse than the shitpile that is Firefox + Flash.
Erm shouldn't fancy stuff like 3d acceleration be handled by plug-ins not browsers?
Uh, why? Just because?
I mean, the browser already does accelerated 2D rendering in the form of CSS-decorated HTML. And SVG+Javascript covers quite a bit of the Flash playbook. So why not go all the way and give it the capability to do generalized, accelerated 2D and 3D rendering? We've already got the shitpile that is Flash... at least by embedding this capability in the browser itself, you get a standard implementation across browsers and platforms. And as a bonus, various elements can interact, unlike, say, Flash which is sandboxed away (I can't even copy a frickin' link out of a Flash "application" easily).
Seriously, Canada's stupid protectionist media laws have given us the fantastic sounds of Nickelback, Avril Levigne, and Alanis Morrisette.
Yeah, welcome to the music industry. Or have you not noticed that the US has its fair share of complete, utter garbage, too?
No, I'm sorry, the cancon rules may have their problems and you may disagree with them, but they're hardly responsible for the glut of crap that clogs the airwaves. For that you can blame good ol' fashion pop culture.
Yeah, but as you yourself point out, this isn't specifically because the tables are denormalized. It's because they're denormalized *badly*.
Denormalization, itself, does not equate to poor performance. In fact, quite the opposite is true, when it's done properly and thoughtfully. Which brings us back to the original quote: "Now that disk space is so cheap and many of the data models don't benefit as much from normalization" is *absolutely* true. Does it have to be done carefully? Yes. Is denormalizing a schema a universally good idea? No, of course not. But these days, given the cheapness of storage, if your game is large-scale read-only or minimal write databases where you're performing a lot of data mining, denormalization can be a very useful tool. It just needs to be done properly.
If that's true, then his comments have nothing to do with the quoted section about how, "Now that disk space is so cheap and many of the data models don't benefit as much from normalization, ...". Because that comment is *specifically* about schema normalization in the formal sense.
And, uh, I have the pleasure of working now with a huge data warehouse that hasn't normalized status codes, so instead of quickly searching for an integer, the queries run slow as hell scanning char fields. It's not good.
What the hell does that have to do with schema normalization? Normalization has to do with how you architect your tables and relations. The types you use for the columns, and how you standardize their values, is an entirely different, though somewhat related, discussion.
And as it happens, in a data warehouse application, it's not at all unusual to denormalize tables, in order to speed up query performance during data mining operations.
In all honesty shooting down his arguments because he does not have a thesis paper available is a poor argument. This argument is one /.'rs use to prove how correct they are and how others are incorrect.
Actually, no, that's not what I was doing at all. At what point did I lay claim to any form of correctness? Heck, I didn't even provide a counter argument.
My point was very simple: making assumptions based on anecdote and "common sense" is sloppy reasoning, doubly so if one is trying to justify something as broad and invasive as censorship.
Poor reasoning is a *huge* problem in society today, particularly in the area of politics. My hope is that people will begin to recognize when they're invoking simple anecdotes as proof, and will attempt to do better next time. They won't, of course. But one can dream.
As a person who is an expert in communication studies (yes with actual training and a degree from an accredited college) with relation to how verbal, & non-verbal communications affects people as well as how things like games, tv/movies, news, books modifies a persons behavior I give *my* expert opinion to say these things DO influence people.
Ah, no. Unless you're an accredited psychologist, you're not an "expert", any more than I, a computing science graduate, am an accredited mathematician. At best, you're an educated layman. If you were an expert, it'd be *you* who would be citing evidence to actually support your claims. Your haven't done that, so at best, I'm going to assume that you, too, are appealing to anecdote and "common sense" in your particular field. Either that, or you're appealing to your own authority, which would be, I gotta say, rather tacky.
But I don't think I've ever once heard anyone complaining about a red light camera.
Yeah, but is your municipality shortening the yellow in order to generate more red light runners, thus increasing revenue? Because, believe it or not, some US cities have been accused of doing just that...
So if the graviton is massless, how does it interact with matter?
Well, given a photon is massless, yet still interacts with matter, I'm really not sure where the problem is...
To say that viewing pornography everyday, where women are treated like beautiful objects at best, and dogshit at worst, wouldn't have an effect on one's outlook is rubbish. You can't even watch a romantic comedy everyday without it affecting your views - that is basic psychology, empirically proven.
And, of course, you naturally have the studies which prove this "basic psychology" of yours, right?
I mean, you wouldn't be advocating censorship based solely on your baseless assumptions and anecdotal evidence, would you? Because *that* would be a really *really* bad idea.
Richard Stallman has done more damage to the open source movement than anyone else.
Sorry bub, but that's ridiculous. The Linux operating system, with its entire GNU userspace, simply would not exist if it weren't for Richard M. Stallman. Not to mention the myriad projects that have opened up thanks to pressure from the FSF and their followers (Trolltech, I'm looking at you).
Is the man an extremist? Yes. Is the FSF also fairly extremist as a consequence? My experience says yes (we've actually had an FSF lawyer give incorrect legal advice to our corporate lawyers vis a vis the LGPL, and I suspect the reasoning is simple: to further their agenda). These days, is it possible he causes more harm than good? Perhaps. Although, TBH, I think he's probably just ignored, generally. But he has, without question, done more to further open source than virtually anyone else, save for perhaps Linus Torvalds, and to suggest otherwise is to deny the modern history of computing.
There is a grocery store within walking distance, not sure how to carry the 12 bags they use to bag my $60 of groceries but it is there.
A bike and a trailer are the best solution for this. Heck, I built my trailer from EMT, plywood, some tires scavenged from an old bike, and various random parts, for something like 40-50 bucks, and can easily transport a dozen bags of groceries home without difficulty.
'course, the alternative is much simpler: if you're within walking distance, just buy less at a time and go on more grocery trips. You're not wasting gas doing it, your fresh food will stay fresher, and you'll get more exercise, too.
However if one wants clothes or electronics or anything else it would be hours by bus each way or a $50 cab ride each way and probably hour plus waits (cab service here sucks hard).
And how often do you need to make such a trip, really? And note, I'm not saying you must be able to live completely and utterly without a car. But going from driving every single day because you have no other choice to driving once every couple weeks is an *enormous* difference. The problem is, US sub/ex-urban culture makes that kind of living impossible.
Similarly, I'd hate to see India (or any developing nation) move to a culture that precludes a lifestyle that deemphasizes cars. Are such vehicles useful from time to time? Of course they are. But cities shouldn't be designed such that an individual simply can't live without a car. And, unfortunately, inexpensive vehicles make it all too easy for city planners to cop out and assume high levels of car ownership when designing urban areas (hell, how many US suburbs have no frickin' sidewalks?? Way to discourage the most basic of human transportation: our own feet).
Firstly because it seems to have done just fine doing exactly that
Sure, you might believe that. If you're completely blind to the security threats, both economic and geopolitical, created by a deep *deep* dependence on foreign oil.
secondly because it hasn't put any real effort into practicing what you want to preach.
Well, naturally, yes. If the US were, today, to engage the Indians and say "don't allow your populace to become dependent upon cheap oil" while continuing to promote exactly that amongst its own population, of course, it would be deeply hypocritical and rightly ignored by the various developing nations.
If, however, the US were perceived to be attempting to change it's ways, then I think it would have every right to speak out against the spreading of the US suburban culture to the rest of the world.
Of course, we both know that'd never happen. US politicians aren't going to attack their own people for living a lavish, unsustainable lifestyle. But that doesn't mean people, such as the OP in this little thread, can't speak out against it, and bemoan other nations for following down the same path.
I don't own a car. For all of you that are talking about how you can't give up your cars, I'm proof that it can happen.
No, you're an outlier. Congratulations, and welcome to the club.
Then I expect you and GP to give up your moderately sized house, your car, and move to a metropolitan area or some other planned community where you have everything you need within walking distance.
Umm... I already live in such an area. I own a small house (~1400 sq feet). I don't drive a car. I take public transportation to work. And the necessary amenities (groceries, etc), are indeed within walking distance (although, when the whether is good, I prefer cycling as my primary mode of transportation). And I consider my standard of living very high indeed.
What was your point, again?
Despite all of the associated problems, personal mobility represents a huge increase in the standard of living.
Bullshit. First, a) Manhattanites (which, for the record, I am not) have an excellent standard of living and also represent a community that's highly centralized and *extremely* energy efficient. And b) personal mobility doesn't necessary equate to commuter culture.
US culture has taught people that standard of living == quarter acre in the middle of nowhere. And that's crap. Standard of living means having some space to live, easy access to food and other amenities, relatively low crime and poverty, etc. All of these things can be achieved in the city. But white flight has convinced your average American suburbanite that cities are wretched ghettos that are intolerable to live in. It's a counterproductive cultural phenomenon and it's resulted in a country where it's considered normal to commute multiple hours *each way* to/from work.
Why any other nation would want to adopt such a culture, I have no idea.
then correct your mistake. you can't make others learn without them making the same mistake themselves.
Well that's simply ridiculous. You're saying an addict can't tell their child that drugs are bad? Or a heart patient can't tell their relatives to eat healthy?
Should the US try and fix it's problems? Yes, of course. But that doesn't mean it can't speak from authority when it says that a culture dependent on cheap gas and personal transportation is a really *bad* idea.
Your argument is basically "we already have it, so you can't" is a non sequitur.
But that's not his argument. His argument is, here in north america, we made the huge mistake of designing communities such that a vehicle was a requirement for living. In particular, the suburban and ex-urban phenomenon has left your average American completely incapable of living without personal long-distance transportation. And this phenomenon is coupled with a truly massive underfunding of public transportation, meaning that even those within a reasonable distance of their place of work have no option but to drive.
And so, the solution isn't to give Indians more cars, thus encouraging the very lifestyle north america has mistakenly committed themselves to. The solution is to build communities where cars *aren't necessary in the first place*. Not because "we already have it, so you can't", but because "we already have it, and trust me, you really don't want it".
Then, of course, Roddenberry died and hacks like Berman et. al. brought religion back for DS9, even going so far as to make captain Cisco into the messiah... *sigh* and *ugh*
You *do* realize that that is *no different* than the Apollo episode of TOS, right? ie, the wormhole aliens interacted with a culture (the Bajorans) in such a way as to play god. It's literally the exact same damn thing. The only difference is, the wormhole aliens, living outside non-linear time, could actually see the future, and passed that information down to the Bajorans in the form of prophecy.
It's actually an excellent handling of religion, IMHO, and I see no reason why Roddenberry (your apparently messiah) would've had any problem with it whatsoever.
ROFL, bravo! Jynnan Tonnyx for everyone!
The listener is NOT allowed to know the source, the tester keeps track of what the source is.
Right. That's called a single blind test, and makes it *very* easy for the tester to convey the answer, even through subconscious cues. If you want to do testing right, you do it double-blind. Otherwise I have absolutely no reason to believe any results you claim to have come to.
As for the rest, given your experience, I don't doubt you have a better ear than I. That said, even the best can trick themselves, and telling the difference between FLAC and CD sounds pretty sketchy to me, given that the path is straight digital right from the CD being ripped to the PC and into the completely lossless FLAC encoder, and so the only kind of artifacts you should pick up are honest to god data corruption, which *doesn't* sound like poor "imaging". It sounds like screeches, pops, and stutters.
I mean, *maybe* I could buy that it's a crappy DAC that you're feeding the audio through during playback on the PC (after all, one of the things that separates a good CD player from a shitty one is a quality DAC), but you claimed it was USB "jitter", which is another all-digital bus... so on the input side, it'd make no damn bit of difference, and on the output side, buffering at the destination would hide even fairly large amounts of jitter (and if it didn't, you'd, once again, hear pops and stutters).
In short, could you tell the difference between 320kbps MP3 and FLAC? Sure. Someone with truly golden ears could probably pull that off, especially if they know the source material very well. But FLAC and CD? Sorry bub, I call shenanigans.