I can affirm that. I'm on a keto diet- ~18 carbohydrates total daily. That means no excess protein (which can be converted to carbs) and lots of fat. EVERY vital sign is optimized and my teeth are excellent. The dental industry push to brush & floss daily is superstition at best, subterfuge at worst. God did not give us defective teeth that need such treatment. We made them defective with our massive intake of carbohydrates.
And yes, those carbs contribute to inflammation, obesity and brain damage among many other destructive consequences. There are no healthy carbohydrates, but a few berries a day won't kill you and can compensate with rich nutrients.
Left or Right? Democrat or Republican? C++ or Fortran? Pro or Anti Apple? We are polarized in so many ways. Let's not let our bias work against our vested interests however. Where privacy matters there is only one company that provides hardware that stands out.
Yes, it's certainly a marketing gimmick. Apple was slow to capitalize on the advertising / sale of customer info bandwagon. Now, to cover that error before shareholders, they present that as a 'feature'. "See," they will tell investors, "we've locked in customer loyalty by not selling them out!"
It's a fragile benefit to Apple buyers. For now they can trust that Apple will protect their privacy rather diligently. But corporate winds change like the tide and the future may not be so kind to Apple consumers.
Every serif expunged, every trace of humanity. Clean cold and impersonal, Helvetica is the font of the robotic future where practical reigns supreme and there is no room for art. It is the font of Big Corporations and Big Government, the font of authority and control. There is no place for friendliness or personality in Helvetica. No warmth, no character, no love.
A basic tenet of economics is that when there is a shortage, the price goes up; and when there is a surplus, the price goes down. We tend to think of this in terms of products available to buy or sell, but it applies to any commodity.
Programmers, and employees in general, are a commodity. Employers have to 'buy' them, so to speak, and for many employers, the employees are by far the greatest expense. Companies want to lower those costs and raise their profits.
The goal with all this 'everyone a coder' nonsense is to create a surplus of programmers worldwide. Programmers used to be expensive but not in the future. They'll compete hard to get a bare subsistence job. There will be programmers standing on street corners begging for alms.
This means your children. If you think they'll follow your footsteps and make good money in programming, think again.
Similar to the episode with the Newton Message Pad - Apple's first foray into handheld computing power. It was one slick puppy with the look of the black icon from the movie 2001 and a double hinged door that opened to the screen and wrapped around the back of the device with a reassuring click. The hi-tech green screen was able to handle graphics, text, and to translate human handwriting to text. Even the writing device was a work of art. Outrageously expensive but obviously worth it from the design ethics and fine craftsmanship.
But wait, was it really that great? Inside was another story with hand-soldered subsections, a wonky battery setup (this is one reason that we can't have removable batteries any more- these sucked), a terrible I/O port design and other problems. They never quite finished the engineering or the production process.
I have two of these historic devices available at a reasonable collector's price . . .
Yeah, it's crappy. It's been ignored for years. But it mostly works and I never have to put up with those oddball webmail interfaces. All my inboxes work in the same reliable way they have for years and Tbird doesn't try to think for me.
from an email I got yesterday: "Henrietta Lacks, a poor--and consequently poorly educated--black woman who had pieces of her cervical cancer tumor taken without her consent. Those cells lived on, and on, and on, spawning a multi-billion dollar industry. .."
Ms Lacks got nothing from this research; wasn't even informed of it. Others built reputations and fortunes.
Now we have "Jo Cameron, 71, has a mutation in a previously unknown gene. .." Her DNA happens to be interesting to scientists. Research will be funded by drug companies and taxpayers. Someone will secure patents as a result and an industry will be born that is potentially hugely profitable. Fortunes will be made. But by whom?
Will Jo Cameron get any of that money? How about the universities or drug companies or taxpayers who participated in the research? How about the interns who do 90% of the research that is credited to their professors? Who decides these things and what ethics are involved?
Does your job actually offer any benefit to the world at large? Does your company offer goods or services that are unique and essential?
Humans need food, water, shelter and energy. Everything else is extra; non-essential. If you are producing essentials and doing it in a way that machines can't easily duplicate- no worries! If you are producing pretty fashion items, mindless amusements, sexy sports cars, or kitchen appliances that produce an exotic coffee product using proprietary supplies... well you might be expendable.
The first world economy requires ever increasing consumer consumption to survive and provide jobs for us and profits for the wealthy. It's a delicate balance. If consumers stop buying things they don't actually need, then the house of cards will collapse.
Fishing & farming are the essential activities. Building skills for homes and watercraft. Repair skills for tractors & irrigation systems. Ham radio operators. These are the jobs that will survive the automation apocalypse.
"Ethical problems arise when a company's interest in profit comes before the interests of the users"
Unfortunately that's the law in the US. Any company that neglects opportunities for profit is subject to lawsuits from shareholders. A corporation's sole responsibility is to look out for the interests of shareholders.
Neglecting customers/users might ultimately reduce profits, thus must be considered. But ethics? Where in the hierarchy of concerns is ethics? For each management organization that will differ.
There is a new type of corporation called a "Public-benefit corporation" in the US and going by similar names in other jurisdictions. It allows for public benefit to be a charter purpose in addition to the traditional corporate goal of maximizing profit for shareholders. Rules vary by location but it's an idea that may spread. Ethics can be an important part of such organizations.
And yet--gamers? Let me take a wild guess that game programmers are people who like games.
Games are the antithesis of efficiency. They consist entirely of a deliberate choice to waste as much time as possible, often to the detriment of useful activity. Even reading books or watching movies can sometimes be considered educational to some extent. Games; not so much.
Of course many games require extreme speed and efficiency to generate maximum endorphins and adrenaline. That code must be impressive. Congrats if you can do it.
Lots of emotion over e-cigarets, not many facts. Look around the web and you find groups who say they are necessary and others that say they are deadly--but where are their facts? Are hospitals filled with vapers? Are they dropping dead in the streets? Are they robbing banks to pay for their habit? Are children vaping in hopes of becoming smokers some day?
It seems that it is mostly the morality police that are determined to crush this product without bothering to find evidence to support their campaign.
Nowhere in this chaos do I see any mention of the benefits of nicotine. Benefits? It's a well-kept secret. Many smart people take a choline supplement (very much like nicotine) that makes them, well, smarter. Nicotine can do that and more but the morality police don't want you to know about that.
Added to what? More eggs? Susan Scutti, CNN writer needs a grammar review, but the report is much worse than that:
Dietary cholesterol is largely unrelated to cholesterol circulating in the body. Many of us can eat cholesterol till it's coming out our ears and have no problem. But some people's bodies insist upon having high cholesterol, even if they eat very little. This should have been known by every health worker in the last decade or two.
When choosing a school, I had the fascinating experience of exploring both Stanford and Berkeley. What a revelation!
Berkeley: home to hippies; progressive Democrats; radical professors; vigorous protests... Stanford: home to Hoover Inst; conservative Republicans; worship of money and power...
Somehow Berkeley seems more likely to support a human approach to AI. Stanford moving in to that realm must be a subterfuge.
My friend the airline mechanic told me that accident reports are designed to protect profits. The pilot will always be blamed. Any suggestion of bad design, poor construction or mismanaged maintenance has dire consequences for manufacturers, airlines and others including politicians who depend upon political donations.
My friend has often told me of his discoveries as he goes about his work. Inside a jumbo jet wing he may find beer cans, panties, drug related garbage, as well as tools and loose parts. He found this shocking so he took it upon himself to investigate every airline accident.
Each accident results in a huge report after a multi year investigation. Those reports are available to anyone willing to study hundreds or thousands of pages. The summary will say the pilot was at fault, but if you read carefully you will discover many disturbing facts about the condition of the aircraft.
It shouldn't be necessary to explain to jaded Slashdot readers that money is the motivator in most corporate and government behavior. Blaming the pilot is the way to reduce costs and bad publicity. If there is a flaw in the airplane, it will be fixed quietly.
Who knew that science could be so sophisticated? Here, just look at the title of the study: "Implicit violent imagery processing among fans and non-fans of music with violent themes", isn't that impressive? And here's a snippet of the data analysis: "...ratings of arousal to the song Eaten (XÂ=4.03, s.e. = 0.33) than to the song Happy (XÂ=3.34, s.e. = 0.27; F1,31 = 4.15, p = 0.050, ÎG2=0.046; figure 3b)." [Of course Slashdot cannot reproduce this text correctly, but please trust me, it looks very technical.]
Wow, we're talking about Science here with a capital S! We need a science team like this to help us to understand why Facebook inspires depression, not joy.
In my part of the world most people wear clothing. It doesn't matter what your skin color is when only 4% of your surface area is skin.
Unfortunately, most of those people wear dark clothing at night. Children and adults, male and female, pedestrians and bicyclists. Even fire engine red is almost indistinguishable from black at night. So, these people are at risk from motorists already. Self-driving cars are obviously not a concern of these people.
Almost every government talks about threats from outside their borders, while in reality they most fear the threat inside their border. China, with more than a billion citizens is most afraid of what they might do if not carefully 'managed'. All the petty dictators of the world fear their citizens but it goes way beyond that. Even the US (fill in your own observations of US repression) . . .
One of the most important elements in creative thinking is un-focusing. To the extent that you are focused on, for instance, a complex math problem, you are likely to become frustrated and fail to come to an ideal solution. The best thing you can do is to relax a while, think about something else, come back to the problem later. Relaxing with music might be ideal, depending upon your proclivities.
Salvador Dali, in his autobiography, stated that his best inspirations come to him when he first awakes and is enjoying his morning pee. It is those moments of reverie that inspire creativity, not straining to focus on some trivial chore while listening to music.
This study seems to have used a bizarre definition of 'creativity'.
The given example was poor: there was a huge cost in lives sacrificed willingly.
In the real world there is also a huge cost. Money and lives. Of course, when we have the autonomous weapons, it's foreign lives so they aren't really a loss to us. But what about the money?
When our military costs, combined with the cost of subverting other governments and also the surveillance of our own citizens total more than the military cost of all other countries combined, then we can count that as a significant cost.
If instead, a similar amount of money were invested in helping countries instead of threatening them, we would be loved and wouldn't need a military. If some of that money was invested in helping our own citizens instead of threatening them with Big Brother, we could empty our jails and many hospital emergency rooms. If we put some money into parental guidance and education and a proactive health care system, we could have a model society.
But then Boeing's profits would drop considerably, and their donations to congresspeople would follow.
Yes, I've been trying to do this since 1985 and my DeLorean is running out of dilithium crystals. My obnoxious son chides me with these words:
'You are old, father William,' the young man said, 'And your hair has become very white; And yet you incessantly stand on your head - Do you think, at your age, it is right?' . . .
What's that all about? Every incident brings police from miles around. I watched a homeless person being interrogated by a cop at around 5 am. Within 15 minutes there were six patrol cars blocking other traffic while the cops stood around in a huddle. Some citizens gathered too, as usual.
These cops have nothing else to do? They know that the situation is under control yet they flock together at every opportunity. Are they lonely?
A smart entrepreneur would put together a mobile donut truck and a police scanner so he could be on the scene of every incident.
Crime happens everywhere but it is not always reported. The worst, most critical crime in terms of its overall effect upon the public is never subject to a police dispatch. It happens at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and environs in Washington DC. It happens at Wall Street. And at Caracas, Mexico City, Dubai, Tel Aviv, Moscow, and even Geneva. It happens in marble buildings and fancy restaurants and hotels and involves people wearing Armani suits and fake sun tans. These crimes involve investment schemes, trade in drugs & guns, overthrowing governments, usurious loans to third world countries, manipulation of elections, monetary gifts to dictators and warlords, currency manipulations, deforestation for private profit and more. These criminals enrich each other at the expense of billions who suffer from the ravages of war, hunger, disease and deprivation.
The police are not called because these perpetrators are above the law.
Slashdot Mirror
I can affirm that. I'm on a keto diet- ~18 carbohydrates total daily. That means no excess protein (which can be converted to carbs) and lots of fat. EVERY vital sign is optimized and my teeth are excellent. The dental industry push to brush & floss daily is superstition at best, subterfuge at worst. God did not give us defective teeth that need such treatment. We made them defective with our massive intake of carbohydrates.
And yes, those carbs contribute to inflammation, obesity and brain damage among many other destructive consequences. There are no healthy carbohydrates, but a few berries a day won't kill you and can compensate with rich nutrients.
Left or Right? Democrat or Republican? C++ or Fortran? Pro or Anti Apple? We are polarized in so many ways. Let's not let our bias work against our vested interests however. Where privacy matters there is only one company that provides hardware that stands out.
Yes, it's certainly a marketing gimmick. Apple was slow to capitalize on the advertising / sale of customer info bandwagon. Now, to cover that error before shareholders, they present that as a 'feature'. "See," they will tell investors, "we've locked in customer loyalty by not selling them out!"
It's a fragile benefit to Apple buyers. For now they can trust that Apple will protect their privacy rather diligently. But corporate winds change like the tide and the future may not be so kind to Apple consumers.
Every serif expunged, every trace of humanity. Clean cold and impersonal, Helvetica is the font of the robotic future where practical reigns supreme and there is no room for art. It is the font of Big Corporations and Big Government, the font of authority and control. There is no place for friendliness or personality in Helvetica. No warmth, no character, no love.
A basic tenet of economics is that when there is a shortage, the price goes up; and when there is a surplus, the price goes down. We tend to think of this in terms of products available to buy or sell, but it applies to any commodity.
Programmers, and employees in general, are a commodity. Employers have to 'buy' them, so to speak, and for many employers, the employees are by far the greatest expense. Companies want to lower those costs and raise their profits.
The goal with all this 'everyone a coder' nonsense is to create a surplus of programmers worldwide. Programmers used to be expensive but not in the future. They'll compete hard to get a bare subsistence job. There will be programmers standing on street corners begging for alms.
This means your children. If you think they'll follow your footsteps and make good money in programming, think again.
Similar to the episode with the Newton Message Pad - Apple's first foray into handheld computing power. It was one slick puppy with the look of the black icon from the movie 2001 and a double hinged door that opened to the screen and wrapped around the back of the device with a reassuring click. The hi-tech green screen was able to handle graphics, text, and to translate human handwriting to text. Even the writing device was a work of art. Outrageously expensive but obviously worth it from the design ethics and fine craftsmanship.
But wait, was it really that great? Inside was another story with hand-soldered subsections, a wonky battery setup (this is one reason that we can't have removable batteries any more- these sucked), a terrible I/O port design and other problems. They never quite finished the engineering or the production process.
I have two of these historic devices available at a reasonable collector's price . . .
- they hate it when you do that!
Yeah, it's crappy. It's been ignored for years. But it mostly works and I never have to put up with those oddball webmail interfaces. All my inboxes work in the same reliable way they have for years and Tbird doesn't try to think for me.
from an email I got yesterday: "Henrietta Lacks, a poor--and consequently poorly educated--black woman who had pieces of her cervical cancer tumor taken without her consent. Those cells lived on, and on, and on, spawning a multi-billion dollar industry. . ."
Ms Lacks got nothing from this research; wasn't even informed of it. Others built reputations and fortunes.
Now we have "Jo Cameron, 71, has a mutation in a previously unknown gene. . ." Her DNA happens to be interesting to scientists. Research will be funded by drug companies and taxpayers. Someone will secure patents as a result and an industry will be born that is potentially hugely profitable. Fortunes will be made. But by whom?
Will Jo Cameron get any of that money? How about the universities or drug companies or taxpayers who participated in the research? How about the interns who do 90% of the research that is credited to their professors? Who decides these things and what ethics are involved?
Does your job actually offer any benefit to the world at large? Does your company offer goods or services that are unique and essential?
Humans need food, water, shelter and energy. Everything else is extra; non-essential. If you are producing essentials and doing it in a way that machines can't easily duplicate- no worries! If you are producing pretty fashion items, mindless amusements, sexy sports cars, or kitchen appliances that produce an exotic coffee product using proprietary supplies ... well you might be expendable.
The first world economy requires ever increasing consumer consumption to survive and provide jobs for us and profits for the wealthy. It's a delicate balance. If consumers stop buying things they don't actually need, then the house of cards will collapse.
Fishing & farming are the essential activities. Building skills for homes and watercraft. Repair skills for tractors & irrigation systems. Ham radio operators. These are the jobs that will survive the automation apocalypse.
"Ethical problems arise when a company's interest in profit comes before the interests of the users"
Unfortunately that's the law in the US. Any company that neglects opportunities for profit is subject to lawsuits from shareholders. A corporation's sole responsibility is to look out for the interests of shareholders.
Neglecting customers/users might ultimately reduce profits, thus must be considered. But ethics? Where in the hierarchy of concerns is ethics? For each management organization that will differ.
There is a new type of corporation called a "Public-benefit corporation" in the US and going by similar names in other jurisdictions. It allows for public benefit to be a charter purpose in addition to the traditional corporate goal of maximizing profit for shareholders. Rules vary by location but it's an idea that may spread. Ethics can be an important part of such organizations.
And yet--gamers? Let me take a wild guess that game programmers are people who like games.
Games are the antithesis of efficiency. They consist entirely of a deliberate choice to waste as much time as possible, often to the detriment of useful activity. Even reading books or watching movies can sometimes be considered educational to some extent. Games; not so much.
Of course many games require extreme speed and efficiency to generate maximum endorphins and adrenaline. That code must be impressive. Congrats if you can do it.
Lots of emotion over e-cigarets, not many facts. Look around the web and you find groups who say they are necessary and others that say they are deadly--but where are their facts? Are hospitals filled with vapers? Are they dropping dead in the streets? Are they robbing banks to pay for their habit? Are children vaping in hopes of becoming smokers some day?
It seems that it is mostly the morality police that are determined to crush this product without bothering to find evidence to support their campaign.
Nowhere in this chaos do I see any mention of the benefits of nicotine. Benefits? It's a well-kept secret. Many smart people take a choline supplement (very much like nicotine) that makes them, well, smarter. Nicotine can do that and more but the morality police don't want you to know about that.
"People who eat an added three or four eggs . . ."
Added to what? More eggs? Susan Scutti, CNN writer needs a grammar review, but the report is much worse than that:
Dietary cholesterol is largely unrelated to cholesterol circulating in the body. Many of us can eat cholesterol till it's coming out our ears and have no problem. But some people's bodies insist upon having high cholesterol, even if they eat very little. This should have been known by every health worker in the last decade or two.
When choosing a school, I had the fascinating experience of exploring both Stanford and Berkeley. What a revelation!
Berkeley: home to hippies; progressive Democrats; radical professors; vigorous protests...
Stanford: home to Hoover Inst; conservative Republicans; worship of money and power...
Somehow Berkeley seems more likely to support a human approach to AI. Stanford moving in to that realm must be a subterfuge.
My friend the airline mechanic told me that accident reports are designed to protect profits. The pilot will always be blamed. Any suggestion of bad design, poor construction or mismanaged maintenance has dire consequences for manufacturers, airlines and others including politicians who depend upon political donations.
My friend has often told me of his discoveries as he goes about his work. Inside a jumbo jet wing he may find beer cans, panties, drug related garbage, as well as tools and loose parts. He found this shocking so he took it upon himself to investigate every airline accident.
Each accident results in a huge report after a multi year investigation. Those reports are available to anyone willing to study hundreds or thousands of pages. The summary will say the pilot was at fault, but if you read carefully you will discover many disturbing facts about the condition of the aircraft.
It shouldn't be necessary to explain to jaded Slashdot readers that money is the motivator in most corporate and government behavior. Blaming the pilot is the way to reduce costs and bad publicity. If there is a flaw in the airplane, it will be fixed quietly.
Who knew that science could be so sophisticated? Here, just look at the title of the study: "Implicit violent imagery processing among fans and non-fans of music with violent themes", isn't that impressive? And here's a snippet of the data analysis: "...ratings of arousal to the song Eaten (XÂ=4.03, s.e. = 0.33) than to the song Happy (XÂ=3.34, s.e. = 0.27; F1,31 = 4.15, p = 0.050, ÎG2=0.046; figure 3b)." [Of course Slashdot cannot reproduce this text correctly, but please trust me, it looks very technical.]
Wow, we're talking about Science here with a capital S! We need a science team like this to help us to understand why Facebook inspires depression, not joy.
In my part of the world most people wear clothing. It doesn't matter what your skin color is when only 4% of your surface area is skin.
Unfortunately, most of those people wear dark clothing at night. Children and adults, male and female, pedestrians and bicyclists. Even fire engine red is almost indistinguishable from black at night. So, these people are at risk from motorists already. Self-driving cars are obviously not a concern of these people.
Almost every government talks about threats from outside their borders, while in reality they most fear the threat inside their border. China, with more than a billion citizens is most afraid of what they might do if not carefully 'managed'. All the petty dictators of the world fear their citizens but it goes way beyond that. Even the US (fill in your own observations of US repression) . . .
Correct.
One of the most important elements in creative thinking is un-focusing. To the extent that you are focused on, for instance, a complex math problem, you are likely to become frustrated and fail to come to an ideal solution. The best thing you can do is to relax a while, think about something else, come back to the problem later. Relaxing with music might be ideal, depending upon your proclivities.
Salvador Dali, in his autobiography, stated that his best inspirations come to him when he first awakes and is enjoying his morning pee. It is those moments of reverie that inspire creativity, not straining to focus on some trivial chore while listening to music.
This study seems to have used a bizarre definition of 'creativity'.
The given example was poor: there was a huge cost in lives sacrificed willingly.
In the real world there is also a huge cost. Money and lives. Of course, when we have the autonomous weapons, it's foreign lives so they aren't really a loss to us. But what about the money?
When our military costs, combined with the cost of subverting other governments and also the surveillance of our own citizens total more than the military cost of all other countries combined, then we can count that as a significant cost.
If instead, a similar amount of money were invested in helping countries instead of threatening them, we would be loved and wouldn't need a military. If some of that money was invested in helping our own citizens instead of threatening them with Big Brother, we could empty our jails and many hospital emergency rooms. If we put some money into parental guidance and education and a proactive health care system, we could have a model society.
But then Boeing's profits would drop considerably, and their donations to congresspeople would follow.
Yes, I've been trying to do this since 1985 and my DeLorean is running out of dilithium crystals. My obnoxious son chides me with these words:
'You are old, father William,' the young man said,
'And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head -
Do you think, at your age, it is right?' . . .
Since it's only one person, wouldn't it be "Adds 'Clippy' To Her Business Card" ?
Just a thought.
Oh, and thank you for capitalizing the first character of every word. It really makes the topic more exciting.
What's that all about? Every incident brings police from miles around. I watched a homeless person being interrogated by a cop at around 5 am. Within 15 minutes there were six patrol cars blocking other traffic while the cops stood around in a huddle. Some citizens gathered too, as usual.
These cops have nothing else to do? They know that the situation is under control yet they flock together at every opportunity. Are they lonely?
A smart entrepreneur would put together a mobile donut truck and a police scanner so he could be on the scene of every incident.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Crime happens everywhere but it is not always reported. The worst, most critical crime in terms of its overall effect upon the public is never subject to a police dispatch. It happens at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and environs in Washington DC. It happens at Wall Street. And at Caracas, Mexico City, Dubai, Tel Aviv, Moscow, and even Geneva. It happens in marble buildings and fancy restaurants and hotels and involves people wearing Armani suits and fake sun tans. These crimes involve investment schemes, trade in drugs & guns, overthrowing governments, usurious loans to third world countries, manipulation of elections, monetary gifts to dictators and warlords, currency manipulations, deforestation for private profit and more. These criminals enrich each other at the expense of billions who suffer from the ravages of war, hunger, disease and deprivation.
The police are not called because these perpetrators are above the law.