It doesn't matter if you repeat it more than once or type it in all-caps, this assertion is still false. Sorry. The universe doesn't respond to the power of 'tantrum.' I'm not trying to insult you. I'm just looking at what you have provided.
Here's the truth:
I in fact offered two things. 1) A logical explanation which even a low-level science student can grasp. 2) A book which I have told you contains the full narrative behind that explanation along with all the materials necessary to verify its assertion.
You know that this is what I have offered. It's not possible for you to NOT know that. Which leaves us with a few possible explanations for your contradictory response, the simplest and most likely being. . .
You are biased and lazy. What you want is a nice series of links to easy websites you don't have to leave your chair in order to investigate. You also think you know what kind of person I am, and you are basing your response upon that assumption. And finally, you are offended that your beloved electronic toys might be having a detrimental biological/neurological effect upon you, and rather than deal with this unhappy possibility with courage, you are running away using faulty reasoning and all-caps to cover your tail.
Sorry. Real study requires that you sometimes enter a library or buy books or white papers, and horrors, actually perform some experiments yourself. It also requires the courage to face uncomfortable possibilities.
As it happens, I certainly do have easy links to exactly the kind of information you are demanding. I have scanned images of graphs and texts I could easily throw up for your benefit. How can I not? Think about this! How can I not? -I am fascinated by this material and I've spent years researching it, and there is plenty of it out there to find. You know this as well! So perhaps I am working this debate in the manner I am for a reason.
You see, I not going to give any easy links to you. Why should I? I worked hard to build a map of reality, and you are acting like a thoughtless nitwit. Please note, I am not saying that this is what you are, I am saying it is what you are choosing to act like. But in the end, I don't care what you go away knowing at the close of the day, and deep down, that is what is most infuriating for you. It denies your false but dearly-held belief that you are special and deserving. You are not. That's the real lesson here. Knowledge requires work and you are lazy.
I gave you a very low-level challenge; Obtain a book and read it. It is very simple. Anybody can do it. Yet, for many, this represents an insurmountable obstacle.
Now. . , will you get to work or blow more of your childish fury at the world for not respecting your specialness?
Please take a deep breath and count to ten before trying to absorb what I'm about to say. . .
You're making a lot of unfounded accusations and demands and you are generally being very uncivil. If you have questions, I'd be happy to answer them. However, demands made from a place of strong emotion and combativeness. . , not so much.
You have demanded layered proof with very specific protocols. I have in fact offered exactly enough of this to fill a book and indeed provided a link to that book. But will you read it? The answer to that question will determine what kind of person you are.
A scientific mind would take the time required to research instead of flying off the handle. An unscientific mind, however, would come up with a host of excuses to avoid having to work for knowledge. "I don't have time to read." "I already know what that book contains, so I don't have to read it." "It's too expensive." Etc.
If you make demands like those you have made, you must be prepared to absorb the information which comes back, otherwise you are just a blow-hard fool of little consequence.
What you do next is up to you, but pay attention to this last bit because it directly applies. . .
I don't care what you do. I don't care if you are wise or idiotic. Nobody does. Your level of awareness is your problem. If you want to fortify your own ignorance, then you are free to do so. However, you don't win any prizes for closing up your mind and I certainly don't lose anything. My responding to you now is a courtesy and nothing more. You have, however, been led to believe that your ignorance is precious and that it must be protected, and more strangely, you have been led to believe that people offering to share knowledge are somehow obligated to do so; that they must present it to you and that you needn't offer any effort to obtain it. This is evidenced by your verbally abusive behavior to which you believe you are entitled. Until you recognize that this is a corrupted state of mind, you will not be able to learn anything of much value.
What will you do next? Are you stronger than your sense of self-importance? Don't answer me that. It's not my problem. It's yours.
I can't count the number of times I've run across this particular piece of rationalization. Probably because, on the surface, it makes an emotional kind of sense.
Yes, non-ionizing radiation doesn't burn anything. But that's not the problem. Nobody is claiming it IS the problem. The only people who are convinced that anybody is claiming this as the problem simply aren't paying attention. Sorry. I don't mean to come down hard on you, but the EM spectrum is useful in electronics because it vibrates, not because it burns things. Cells, when vibrated on the EM spectrum, react. It's that simple. There is a ton of information available to anybody who wants to know what is really going on here.
Basically, it comes down to this:
Cells respond, evidently by their very nature, to coherent electromagnetic signals in the 1 to 500Hz range. They do all kinds of weird things depending on the pulse rate and power and how the Earth's magnetic field interacts with the signal. Cells have been observed to reproduce many times faster or slower than normal when exposed to different radio frequencies. -Or to open up their membrane walls allowing foreign particles to enter which would not normally be able to pass. Very low power signals can do this and a great deal more.
There are a number of observed mechanics, one of which is called, "Cyclotronic Resonance". Here's an example. . .
As I am sure you know, everything has a natural sympathetic frequency. This is understood. Cyclotronic Resonance is a type of resonance which occurs when both a radio frequency and a steady magnetic field are present. For instance, when you produce a 60Hz frequency, (as in wall-socket current), and combine it with a steady magnetic field of 0.2 Gauss, (as supplied by the Earth's magnetic field), the Lithium Ion resonates and becomes excited. It also moves on a spiral vector. The result is that any trace quantities of Lithium which happen to be in the blood stream of an organism will cease to sit still and will instead energize and move, enabling them to penetrate the blood brain barrier with greater frequency than normal. It was noted that rats exposed to these conditions exhibited behavior consistent with a medicinal dose of lithium drug as compared to the control rats. It should be noted that Lithium is the active ingredient in many anti-depressants.
That's just one small example. There are many others. But you're NOT going to read about them in the main stream press. You just won't. I'd explain why but that's a whole other post. (Typically, people who believe in the whole idea that "non-ionizing" means "Safe" also tend to have trouble believing that the media can be anything less than honest. Or that corruption exists. Or that any group might have a vested interest in mass-medicating a population. Just as one example.)
It's so close either way, we're simply going to have to wait and see.
It could be Apple's "Vista" -or perhaps more accurately, Apple's "X-Box" (recalling that MS's gaming division has been a money pit for years).
Or it could be the next VHS medium. -Technically inferior to the competition, but just happened to win over the Jonses.
Personally, I think it will flop.
-The tech consumers have nearly all written it off. So in terms of herd mentality, the opinion crystallizing seems to be that you'll be a giant loser if you show up with an iPad at the watering hole. I'm not sure Apple has enough marketing muscle to overcome that kind of popular trend. Consider: Many of the people who love the iPhone hate the iPad. Many people here have an iPhone and were very excited about it because of its clever design. But those same people are at best rationalizing the benefits of the iPad, but most often are simply disappointed. Not good.
-The uninformed regular consumer isn't going to be charmed by the iPad. A phone is easy to carry in your pocket. You can carry that around as well as a laptop and not feel like you're being redundant in your computing choices. But an iPad occupies the same kind of mind-space as a laptop, and having to choose between the two will not go favorably for Apple. You need a keyboard and some computing muscle to get anything real done in this world.
But I could be totally wrong. Never under-estimate the buying power of the unwashed masses and idiotic popular trends. Remember, "Crocs"?
This whole thing is rather "Quantum Flux", isn't it? Until the probability wave collapses into one or the other, I really don't know what to think.
I mean, on the one hand, this could be Apple's "Vista". A lack-luster also-ran with so-so sales buoyed up on waves of Apple-fan denial.
Or you could be right. I mean, Apple really is banking on the bulk of people being so threatened by computer options that they just want the popular device despite its technological failings. Beta-max was technically superior to VHS, but that didn't stop the popularity contest from going where it did. When the herd latches on to a trend, you might as well hunker down and go with the flow, because the Lemmings Always Win. (And I find the fact that Disney producers actually drove lemmings over cliff tops in order to satisfy the needs of their scripting department ironic in the most insidious and telling manner!)
If it WAS an argument and not just a friendly tickle under the brain, then I'd have a whole sheet of stickers for my best students. But I'm no teacher. I'm the guy struggling to stay awake in the third row.
The keyword is formula. People have always done things following well defined patterns, recipes, formulas. Sometimes you can hear a joke a deconstruct the formula that must have been used to create it. Same thing with a movie plot.
The funny thing is that when people write outside the lines, as it were, they are soundly smacked down by those who have studied the "rules" of screen play production and similar.
It's probably why I find most films predictable and lame at the best of times and insufferably stupid at the worst.
Example: In a film where somebody is going to die in a car accident, you KNOW it's going to happen before it actually happens. This is due to pattern recognition.
Writing for robots by robots. Welcome to Hollywood, capital of cybernetic humanity.
Oh, and yes, I believe that about half the humans walking around on this planet don't have souls and are actually just complex biological machines. I bet some of them can play the piano, too.
When was the last time you changed your mind about a significant, foundational piece of data in your life?
I'm not talking about an uncertainty being made resolute on one side of the fence or the other.
I'm talking about a belief you once held to be true and around which you based your daily decision-making processes and then after review, realized that you were wrong and then took steps to alter your behavior accordingly.
Now, if you have experienced that, ask yourself the following. . .
Did you change your mind because of your own curiosity, reasoning and data collection OR because your tribe and its associated authority figures changed their minds and you felt compelled to follow suit?
Are you the sort of person who switches back and forth between beliefs easily?
Are you the sort of person who refuses to change belief systems out of fear of appearing or feeling weak-minded?
Do you lie to yourself in order to take the edge off uncomfortable truths?
Are you lying to yourself right now about any of the answers to these questions?
The problem is that both sides of the argument are not being played exclusively by humans.
You see, sociopaths and psychopaths don't care about logical flaws in their arguments. They don't even blink. They just keep on bullshitting their way forward with charm and eloquence, and the real people who would be mortified to be caught in an obvious fallacy and who would either stumble or concede a point are at a serious disadvantage because the sharks just keep on swimming and eating.
The words in these arguments are being used by each side for entirely different reasons. Humans use words to communicate and understand one another and attempt to reach fair and equitable solutions to the given problems. Psychopaths, by contrast, have one prerogative; Destruction and Consumption, and words for them are merely tools used to confuse and manipulate as they advance their agenda. Witness the entire economic crisis and the various wars and the whole 'terrorism' thing.
Interestingly, there a reason psychopathic individuals appear less frequently in societies which grew historically from small communities and tribes. There is a natural genetic weeding out of those who carry the "Creep Gene". They got pushed off the ice when nobody was looking and afterwards everybody in the tribe sighed with relief. (Psychopaths require large systems to hide within so that when they use people, they can avoid collective awareness of their activities. But when people start to compare notes and talk openly about their experiences, shitty people are quickly recognized.)
Psychopaths carry a number of genetic anomalies, and in America those genes have been allowed to express and multiply, largely because the society started with a mass-incursion through colonization (based on massive destruction, slavery and rampant consumption, activities which drew psychopaths like honey from all around the globe, much like the Haitian child abuse and slave trade which spiked after the chaos of the Earthquake, remained the defacto norm until today), rather than on self-weeding societies based on tribal and small community ethics. The psychopath concentration in the US and other countries founded on colonization is many times greater than those which were not. Globally, the estimate of the sociopath-to-human ratio is somewhere around 6%. But that spread isn't balanced across countries. In the US, for instance, it is up around 30%. --That is, around one in three people are entirely selfish game players who are incapable of genuine compassion, who thrill at the pain of others, and who seek only to consume and to feed their darkness. One in three. This is the source of the whole, "Greed is Good," model of society.
But we won't have to put up with it for much longer. Psychopathic societies are automatically set up to self-destruct. Psychopaths are incapable of long-term planning; they are the cancer which kills the host. This much is very clear. Each year we grow that much closer to total melt-down.
Since the fall of the republic last year we have converted to a fascist state.
Only happened last year, did it?
Sorry; government will not save you no matter who happens to be in office. Obama is just Bush with an IQ over 70.
People seem to swing between wanting smart and stupid representatives. --I mean, Palin is an utter retard, so she'll probably get into office (if there is an office in a few years time) because most people now are retards as well and they function comfortably on her level of stupid. (It's all that toxic food, TV, video game and cell phone usage, I think. You can manufacture retards very easily; just poison/attack the central nervous system and feed it idiocy during its formative years, and bingo! Retards! --That is, people who respond to the emotional manipulations and logical fallacies presented to the world by FOX and their clones.)
But even if a certified genius got into office, s/he'd still be evil. Nobody gets in unless the Rockefeller gang gives you the stamp of approval. We knew early on during the primaries, (though I lived in denial for a while because I'm a big chump), that Obama was just another evil clone because all the wrong people were giving him the green light.
Great, an ageist who doesn't even care that he's ageist.
Uh huh. How romantic.
Without parents and guardians, how long would the average child be able to function in the world before being eaten alive? There's a reason the rent is free and life is filled with get-out-of-jail cards until you grow up. Granted, 17 is getting close to the end of that line, and some 17 year-olds are certainly wiser and more capable than some 30 year-olds. But most are vulnerable, ignorant, weak, easily manipulated, they cry easily and their hands quiver when they have to face down authority figures. And that's okay. It's normal! Kids are a blank slate when they enter the world, and during the time it takes to write their own code, they simply can't have the right answers because they haven't finished installing the wiring yet. They don't have the requisite knowledge to function effectively in the world, and so their parents take care of all that crap for them in order to give them the space necessary to grow strong. But to do this, parents need to have executive veto on all decisions they deem necessary. And yes, that can be frustrating, but without it, nobody would survive the first year of their lives, let alone the first 18. Where do you draw the line? The law is specific. Reality is fuzzy.
I tend to take kids seriously until they falter or get overwhelmed. Then I make space for that. Sometimes I meet a kid who I can talk with nearly full-on, but that's very uncommon. Most of the time, I need to hold back my full strength and be thoughtful about what I say and do in ways I don't when I'm around other adults. --And actually, I find I need to tread carefully around many adults because the simple fact of the matter is that most people have blind spots and sore spots and unfinished business in their minds which it would be dis-compassionate to tromp through. Kids have fewer knots, but larger tracts of unknowing. Being aware of this and acting accordingly is what responsibility is all about.
This is how the human race functions, and ideally it works hand in hand with love, compassion and wisdom. It doesn't always; I've seen parents falter and attempt control out of fear and ego. But then kids grow into adults and the world keeps spinning.
Ageism is realism. You don't feed a baby steak until s/he grows some teeth.
Ah, right, so we should ignore the plight of the last legally oppressed group in our society, the young, because in your mind there are brown people to worry about.
"the last legally oppressed group in our society, the young". . ? Are you saying that with a straight face?
The education system certainly IS fundamentally (and imho very deliberately) broken, but none of these battles over the puppet theater of free speech on Facebook are going to fix or even address the underlying problems. And all of that aside, adults provide boundaries to the children under their care for a host of extremely valid reasons. While many of those adults are ignorant and thus dangerously inept, I really don't think that access to 'free-speech' for 17 year-olds is a particularly vital concern. I'd put brain-washing, economic warfare and simple malnutrition much higher on the list of problems. If children can survive that gauntlet into adulthood, then perhaps they'll have minds capable of seeing and comprehending the world, and thus be able to "use their words" to say something the state might deem worthy of repression.
And, yes actually, for fuck's sake. . ,
I certainly AM concerned with the U.S. thirst for slaves, both foreign and domestic. Any non-narcissist bloody-well ought to be, and no, I don't care what color their skin happens to be. Do you? Seriously?
Which makes it legitimate; that's always been my argument when it comes to social commentary.
But at the same time. . . Honestly, this focus on school-is-unfair stories is just a thinking man's "Octo-Mom".
School is full of bullshit and kids have no rights. Yes. We know this. We all lived through it. The only thing new going on here is that indignant internet denizens are watching and lawyers are involved. Marvelous.
Seriously. . . What South American country is the U.S. about to bomb back into the Slave Trade which the Powers That Be are desperate we should fail to notice?
You may see it as bondage, but for some it's a sought after escape from reality.
That's my point, though. What in reality is so horrible that it needs to be escaped from?
If, however, one's gizmo is tricked out with tools rather than drugs, then it implies that s/he is happily engaged in the real world.
It's not a blanket statement or a hard and fast rule. Just one of those squishy observations engineers sometimes find disagreeable but which are useful nonetheless.
I know Star Trek has fallen from popular attention, but these cell phone things are becoming more and more like the kind of gear we collectively envision "Future People" walking around with.
It's interesting, though, that our imaginary selves are interested in exploration, and their portable technology was tuned to that, (probing and measuring the environment), whereas our devices seem to be more about insulating people from reality. (Headphones and music and videos and games, etc.)
In Star Trek they were too busy having adventures to spend much time in Fantasy Lad.
The question of one's state of bondage can be determined by a quick assessment of one's collection of iPhone apps.
Considering your "4 GHz" claim combined with "many thousands of dollar" for your PC, I'm going to go ahead and call BS on you.
Yeah, or he's a regular consumer who spent a lot of money on his computer and simply believed the twenty-two year old in the tie who added the clock speed of each core of the multi-core computer together while promoting the sale. After all, when you look at MS's "System Properties" it does that math right there on the screen for you and you feel all special.
-And apparently, if you use Windows 7, rather annoyed as well.
If you could hook an interface into each optic nerve to overlay images over a person field of vision it could be a whole lot more convincing.
And it wouldn't cause people's eye to bug out. Mark my works, real 3-D display will only be acheived by tapping into the brain and bypassing the eye.
Actually, I'm thinking that elements within our vast tracts of dormant DNA will switch on, allowing people to see and process information from multiple moments across "time" rather than just one frame at a time, as it were. Imagine; being able to see and comprehend the rear side of an object at the same time as the front.
I came back from a meditation once being able to do this for a fraction of a second. Freaked me right out.
The future is coming, and it's not about plugs in the head. (We can hope, anyway!)
He did not give details on how Southern planned to divide its 30 percent share between debt and equity but said his company was not looking for financial backing from Japan. Toshiba of Japan is majority owner of Westinghouse, whose AP1000 reactor has been selected for the Vogtle plant's expansion and is under review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Okay. That's just pathetic.
You know the U.S. is a fading empire when they need to turn to Japan to build their own infrastructure. What's next? The automotive industry?
I actually looked up "Neckbeard Device" and found nothing. I have no idea what you are talking about. Please advise, because if you have a cool explanation, I'm totally using it at the next cocktail party I attend.
Also, as has been pointed out. . .
Mouse, Keyboard, USB stick. Done.
Though I sort of agree with you on the video out. Seriously? Has anybody ever truly said, "Damn! I really need to plug my laptop into a television!" -Though, I can envision some sort of emerging market whereby your computer game controller also happens to be your handheld computer. -People being able to bring their own fully personalized game controller to a gaming meet. . , that could be very popular. People extend self-identification to the devices they carry around and use all the time, so being able to plug it in and compete with it in public could be very appealing. But this Notion device certainly isn't thinking that way, so essentially the video-out is just there because of market momentum and because it probably cost them virtually nothing to include.
Still, I have to say that this is the first device of its kind which I have an inkling of interest in. The screen tech is pretty advanced. But you're right; I don't think the Indian manufacturing market has worked out how to sell to the garden variety American. Indians are super-charged with economic energy and optimism, and that's great to see, but they're also operating under the influence of a truly different set of cultural imperatives. The Indian and Western cultures really don't fit together comfortably at all. It'll take a few tries to get it right, and Apple is like GM. It has home turf advantage. Funny thing is that in a few years, (if we're all still here), when the billion people in India transform into potential customers and as our economy tanks, they probably won't bother even trying to sell over here with such verve.
One could argue they're just processed info about the light on different parts of the set at given times. Australian govt. is weird.
Hm. I was thinking the same thing, (including the 'weird' part), but then I realized, "Yes, but the movie set itself represents a creative manipulation of light, as does the post processing from color correction to CGI. Nobody in the public can go out privately and re-collect those same bits of light instance. They are gone. Whereas a phone book is different; anybody can compile their own list of phone numbers. They are not creatively modified. The only argument for creativity the phone companies might have a shot at selling is that they had to invent the phone numbers assigned to customers in the first place, but that's a stretch, particularly since that whole process is automated. Can a photo editing program lay claim to the light patterns emitted by the software?
In any case, the spirit of the law in both cases is quite different, and that's what it's all supposed to be about.
The only real hope for $100 netbooks is ARM + Linux. You can bet your life that Intel and Microsoft will do everything possible to derail the ARM train.
This is true.
And the other side of the argument should also make note of 3D videos and increasingly realistic games which will no doubt require further development of chips and video hardware. I imagine that computers will continue to evolve and draw excited Wows from the audience of tech geeks.
But we are still definitely on the cusp of a vast plateau. Laptops as we currently know them are about to become something very different. Laptop guts from 5 years ago looked very much like those of today. That's about to change dramatically, and that change will have an unpredictable ripple effect.
Heck, that by itself is rather exciting, now that I think about it!
Is this some kind of joke? This guy is NOT asking for help with this article.
It's a mind-game which he hopes will achieve two things. . .
1. He's advertising his site to privacy freaks (well, you and me, actually) who might actually be inclined to use his services, thus ballooning his traffic, thus increasing the price he can ask for when selling to advertisers.
2. He's trying to inject the idea into popular discussion that ads are some sort of Freedom Fry, and hopefully infect the IT people of the world with the idea that ad-blocking is bad for good things.
Sorry, but anybody who is so totally into pumping adverts at people against their will cannot be trusted. And it IS against their will. People who have installed ad-blocking features on their browsers have CHOSEN not to see ads. To attempt to circumvent this, as he clearly explains he does on a daily basis, is a violation of Free Will. People who have no problem violating Free Will, will also have no difficulty in justifying the selling of private click data to the highest bidder. I'd be shocked if he wasn't doing this.
This guy is not a censorship crusader. It's all about profit and personal gain. He may not view himself that way, but that wouldn't be any surprise either; denial is always easier to embrace than a hard truth and the work required to change one's behavior.
Joking aside, the Jedi approach to reality is actually very similar to one particular caste of Eastern warrior/philosopher/monk. It was explained to me by a fellow who was deeply steeped in this stuff, and it was fascinating to hear about their methods.
What would be noteworthy, (I almost said, "cool"), would be if a belt-farm Jedi Academy actually taught viable kung-fu. It'd be embarrassing if you were a martial arts student and got your ass kicked by a Jedi.
It's about taxes. When a huge amount of money is moving through a specific channel, the government will always attempt to tax it.
Number 2:
It's about social control. India must be suppressed. Right now, slave labor in India is one of the great engines driving it's growing economy. The longer that lasts, the better India will be off down the road. (The Hoover Dam is an American example; even though it cost a ton of cash, the workers at the time were barely being paid because it was a time in America's history of slave labor. If you tried to build another Hoover Dam today, you probably couldn't afford it because construction workers are unionized and have a standard of living many levels above, "Shanty Town".)
Number 3 (Bonus!):
India's predominant genetics aren't supposed to survive. That's reserved for China. Chinese people make better fear-driven drones than East Indians, or anyone for that matter. East Indians are marked for harvesting. (Or that's my current theory, anyway.) Money being funneled in through the internet increases attraction to the WWW and the ability to get on it, which in turn gives people access to information. Information is power, and India hasn't been sufficiently doped up, brain washed and debt-ridden to be allowed access to power. Heck, they might actually DO something with it!
Slashdot Mirror
And you offer NOTHING.
It doesn't matter if you repeat it more than once or type it in all-caps, this assertion is still false. Sorry. The universe doesn't respond to the power of 'tantrum.' I'm not trying to insult you. I'm just looking at what you have provided.
Here's the truth:
I in fact offered two things. 1) A logical explanation which even a low-level science student can grasp. 2) A book which I have told you contains the full narrative behind that explanation along with all the materials necessary to verify its assertion.
You know that this is what I have offered. It's not possible for you to NOT know that. Which leaves us with a few possible explanations for your contradictory response, the simplest and most likely being. . .
You are biased and lazy. What you want is a nice series of links to easy websites you don't have to leave your chair in order to investigate. You also think you know what kind of person I am, and you are basing your response upon that assumption. And finally, you are offended that your beloved electronic toys might be having a detrimental biological/neurological effect upon you, and rather than deal with this unhappy possibility with courage, you are running away using faulty reasoning and all-caps to cover your tail.
Sorry. Real study requires that you sometimes enter a library or buy books or white papers, and horrors, actually perform some experiments yourself. It also requires the courage to face uncomfortable possibilities.
As it happens, I certainly do have easy links to exactly the kind of information you are demanding. I have scanned images of graphs and texts I could easily throw up for your benefit. How can I not? Think about this! How can I not? -I am fascinated by this material and I've spent years researching it, and there is plenty of it out there to find. You know this as well! So perhaps I am working this debate in the manner I am for a reason.
You see, I not going to give any easy links to you. Why should I? I worked hard to build a map of reality, and you are acting like a thoughtless nitwit. Please note, I am not saying that this is what you are, I am saying it is what you are choosing to act like. But in the end, I don't care what you go away knowing at the close of the day, and deep down, that is what is most infuriating for you. It denies your false but dearly-held belief that you are special and deserving. You are not. That's the real lesson here. Knowledge requires work and you are lazy.
I gave you a very low-level challenge; Obtain a book and read it. It is very simple. Anybody can do it. Yet, for many, this represents an insurmountable obstacle.
Now. . , will you get to work or blow more of your childish fury at the world for not respecting your specialness?
Only you can decide that.
-FL
Please take a deep breath and count to ten before trying to absorb what I'm about to say. . .
You're making a lot of unfounded accusations and demands and you are generally being very uncivil. If you have questions, I'd be happy to answer them. However, demands made from a place of strong emotion and combativeness. . , not so much.
You have demanded layered proof with very specific protocols. I have in fact offered exactly enough of this to fill a book and indeed provided a link to that book. But will you read it? The answer to that question will determine what kind of person you are.
A scientific mind would take the time required to research instead of flying off the handle. An unscientific mind, however, would come up with a host of excuses to avoid having to work for knowledge. "I don't have time to read." "I already know what that book contains, so I don't have to read it." "It's too expensive." Etc.
If you make demands like those you have made, you must be prepared to absorb the information which comes back, otherwise you are just a blow-hard fool of little consequence.
What you do next is up to you, but pay attention to this last bit because it directly applies. . .
I don't care what you do. I don't care if you are wise or idiotic. Nobody does. Your level of awareness is your problem. If you want to fortify your own ignorance, then you are free to do so. However, you don't win any prizes for closing up your mind and I certainly don't lose anything. My responding to you now is a courtesy and nothing more. You have, however, been led to believe that your ignorance is precious and that it must be protected, and more strangely, you have been led to believe that people offering to share knowledge are somehow obligated to do so; that they must present it to you and that you needn't offer any effort to obtain it. This is evidenced by your verbally abusive behavior to which you believe you are entitled. Until you recognize that this is a corrupted state of mind, you will not be able to learn anything of much value.
What will you do next? Are you stronger than your sense of self-importance? Don't answer me that. It's not my problem. It's yours.
Bye now.
-FL
Oh boy.
I can't count the number of times I've run across this particular piece of rationalization. Probably because, on the surface, it makes an emotional kind of sense.
Yes, non-ionizing radiation doesn't burn anything. But that's not the problem. Nobody is claiming it IS the problem. The only people who are convinced that anybody is claiming this as the problem simply aren't paying attention. Sorry. I don't mean to come down hard on you, but the EM spectrum is useful in electronics because it vibrates, not because it burns things. Cells, when vibrated on the EM spectrum, react. It's that simple. There is a ton of information available to anybody who wants to know what is really going on here.
Basically, it comes down to this:
Cells respond, evidently by their very nature, to coherent electromagnetic signals in the 1 to 500Hz range. They do all kinds of weird things depending on the pulse rate and power and how the Earth's magnetic field interacts with the signal. Cells have been observed to reproduce many times faster or slower than normal when exposed to different radio frequencies. -Or to open up their membrane walls allowing foreign particles to enter which would not normally be able to pass. Very low power signals can do this and a great deal more.
There are a number of observed mechanics, one of which is called, "Cyclotronic Resonance". Here's an example. . .
As I am sure you know, everything has a natural sympathetic frequency. This is understood. Cyclotronic Resonance is a type of resonance which occurs when both a radio frequency and a steady magnetic field are present. For instance, when you produce a 60Hz frequency, (as in wall-socket current), and combine it with a steady magnetic field of 0.2 Gauss, (as supplied by the Earth's magnetic field), the Lithium Ion resonates and becomes excited. It also moves on a spiral vector. The result is that any trace quantities of Lithium which happen to be in the blood stream of an organism will cease to sit still and will instead energize and move, enabling them to penetrate the blood brain barrier with greater frequency than normal. It was noted that rats exposed to these conditions exhibited behavior consistent with a medicinal dose of lithium drug as compared to the control rats. It should be noted that Lithium is the active ingredient in many anti-depressants.
That's just one small example. There are many others. But you're NOT going to read about them in the main stream press. You just won't. I'd explain why but that's a whole other post. (Typically, people who believe in the whole idea that "non-ionizing" means "Safe" also tend to have trouble believing that the media can be anything less than honest. Or that corruption exists. Or that any group might have a vested interest in mass-medicating a population. Just as one example.)
But there is some excellent information out there. -A good book on this is, "Cross Currents" by Robert O. Becker.
Scary?
Of course it is.
Good luck.
-FL
Schrodinger's Cat, that is.
It's so close either way, we're simply going to have to wait and see.
It could be Apple's "Vista" -or perhaps more accurately, Apple's "X-Box" (recalling that MS's gaming division has been a money pit for years).
Or it could be the next VHS medium. -Technically inferior to the competition, but just happened to win over the Jonses.
Personally, I think it will flop.
-The tech consumers have nearly all written it off. So in terms of herd mentality, the opinion crystallizing seems to be that you'll be a giant loser if you show up with an iPad at the watering hole. I'm not sure Apple has enough marketing muscle to overcome that kind of popular trend. Consider: Many of the people who love the iPhone hate the iPad. Many people here have an iPhone and were very excited about it because of its clever design. But those same people are at best rationalizing the benefits of the iPad, but most often are simply disappointed. Not good.
-The uninformed regular consumer isn't going to be charmed by the iPad. A phone is easy to carry in your pocket. You can carry that around as well as a laptop and not feel like you're being redundant in your computing choices. But an iPad occupies the same kind of mind-space as a laptop, and having to choose between the two will not go favorably for Apple. You need a keyboard and some computing muscle to get anything real done in this world.
But I could be totally wrong. Never under-estimate the buying power of the unwashed masses and idiotic popular trends. Remember, "Crocs"?
Brr.
-FL
This whole thing is rather "Quantum Flux", isn't it? Until the probability wave collapses into one or the other, I really don't know what to think.
I mean, on the one hand, this could be Apple's "Vista". A lack-luster also-ran with so-so sales buoyed up on waves of Apple-fan denial.
Or you could be right. I mean, Apple really is banking on the bulk of people being so threatened by computer options that they just want the popular device despite its technological failings. Beta-max was technically superior to VHS, but that didn't stop the popularity contest from going where it did. When the herd latches on to a trend, you might as well hunker down and go with the flow, because the Lemmings Always Win. (And I find the fact that Disney producers actually drove lemmings over cliff tops in order to satisfy the needs of their scripting department ironic in the most insidious and telling manner!)
Apple is dead. Long live Apple.
-FL
You'd get a gold star if I was handing them out.
If it WAS an argument and not just a friendly tickle under the brain, then I'd have a whole sheet of stickers for my best students. But I'm no teacher. I'm the guy struggling to stay awake in the third row.
Cheers!
-FL
The keyword is formula. People have always done things following well defined patterns, recipes, formulas. Sometimes you can hear a joke a deconstruct the formula that must have been used to create it. Same thing with a movie plot.
The funny thing is that when people write outside the lines, as it were, they are soundly smacked down by those who have studied the "rules" of screen play production and similar.
It's probably why I find most films predictable and lame at the best of times and insufferably stupid at the worst.
Example: In a film where somebody is going to die in a car accident, you KNOW it's going to happen before it actually happens. This is due to pattern recognition.
Writing for robots by robots. Welcome to Hollywood, capital of cybernetic humanity.
Oh, and yes, I believe that about half the humans walking around on this planet don't have souls and are actually just complex biological machines. I bet some of them can play the piano, too.
-FL
When was the last time you changed your mind about a significant, foundational piece of data in your life?
I'm not talking about an uncertainty being made resolute on one side of the fence or the other.
I'm talking about a belief you once held to be true and around which you based your daily decision-making processes and then after review, realized that you were wrong and then took steps to alter your behavior accordingly.
Now, if you have experienced that, ask yourself the following. . .
Did you change your mind because of your own curiosity, reasoning and data collection OR because your tribe and its associated authority figures changed their minds and you felt compelled to follow suit?
Are you the sort of person who switches back and forth between beliefs easily?
Are you the sort of person who refuses to change belief systems out of fear of appearing or feeling weak-minded?
Do you lie to yourself in order to take the edge off uncomfortable truths?
Are you lying to yourself right now about any of the answers to these questions?
Just asking.
-FL
The problem is that both sides of the argument are not being played exclusively by humans.
You see, sociopaths and psychopaths don't care about logical flaws in their arguments. They don't even blink. They just keep on bullshitting their way forward with charm and eloquence, and the real people who would be mortified to be caught in an obvious fallacy and who would either stumble or concede a point are at a serious disadvantage because the sharks just keep on swimming and eating.
The words in these arguments are being used by each side for entirely different reasons. Humans use words to communicate and understand one another and attempt to reach fair and equitable solutions to the given problems. Psychopaths, by contrast, have one prerogative; Destruction and Consumption, and words for them are merely tools used to confuse and manipulate as they advance their agenda. Witness the entire economic crisis and the various wars and the whole 'terrorism' thing.
Interestingly, there a reason psychopathic individuals appear less frequently in societies which grew historically from small communities and tribes. There is a natural genetic weeding out of those who carry the "Creep Gene". They got pushed off the ice when nobody was looking and afterwards everybody in the tribe sighed with relief. (Psychopaths require large systems to hide within so that when they use people, they can avoid collective awareness of their activities. But when people start to compare notes and talk openly about their experiences, shitty people are quickly recognized.)
Psychopaths carry a number of genetic anomalies, and in America those genes have been allowed to express and multiply, largely because the society started with a mass-incursion through colonization (based on massive destruction, slavery and rampant consumption, activities which drew psychopaths like honey from all around the globe, much like the Haitian child abuse and slave trade which spiked after the chaos of the Earthquake, remained the defacto norm until today), rather than on self-weeding societies based on tribal and small community ethics. The psychopath concentration in the US and other countries founded on colonization is many times greater than those which were not. Globally, the estimate of the sociopath-to-human ratio is somewhere around 6%. But that spread isn't balanced across countries. In the US, for instance, it is up around 30%. --That is, around one in three people are entirely selfish game players who are incapable of genuine compassion, who thrill at the pain of others, and who seek only to consume and to feed their darkness. One in three. This is the source of the whole, "Greed is Good," model of society.
But we won't have to put up with it for much longer. Psychopathic societies are automatically set up to self-destruct. Psychopaths are incapable of long-term planning; they are the cancer which kills the host. This much is very clear. Each year we grow that much closer to total melt-down.
-FL
Since the fall of the republic last year we have converted to a fascist state.
Only happened last year, did it?
Sorry; government will not save you no matter who happens to be in office. Obama is just Bush with an IQ over 70.
People seem to swing between wanting smart and stupid representatives. --I mean, Palin is an utter retard, so she'll probably get into office (if there is an office in a few years time) because most people now are retards as well and they function comfortably on her level of stupid. (It's all that toxic food, TV, video game and cell phone usage, I think. You can manufacture retards very easily; just poison/attack the central nervous system and feed it idiocy during its formative years, and bingo! Retards! --That is, people who respond to the emotional manipulations and logical fallacies presented to the world by FOX and their clones.)
But even if a certified genius got into office, s/he'd still be evil. Nobody gets in unless the Rockefeller gang gives you the stamp of approval. We knew early on during the primaries, (though I lived in denial for a while because I'm a big chump), that Obama was just another evil clone because all the wrong people were giving him the green light.
-FL
Great, an ageist who doesn't even care that he's ageist.
Uh huh. How romantic.
Without parents and guardians, how long would the average child be able to function in the world before being eaten alive? There's a reason the rent is free and life is filled with get-out-of-jail cards until you grow up. Granted, 17 is getting close to the end of that line, and some 17 year-olds are certainly wiser and more capable than some 30 year-olds. But most are vulnerable, ignorant, weak, easily manipulated, they cry easily and their hands quiver when they have to face down authority figures. And that's okay. It's normal! Kids are a blank slate when they enter the world, and during the time it takes to write their own code, they simply can't have the right answers because they haven't finished installing the wiring yet. They don't have the requisite knowledge to function effectively in the world, and so their parents take care of all that crap for them in order to give them the space necessary to grow strong. But to do this, parents need to have executive veto on all decisions they deem necessary. And yes, that can be frustrating, but without it, nobody would survive the first year of their lives, let alone the first 18. Where do you draw the line? The law is specific. Reality is fuzzy.
I tend to take kids seriously until they falter or get overwhelmed. Then I make space for that. Sometimes I meet a kid who I can talk with nearly full-on, but that's very uncommon. Most of the time, I need to hold back my full strength and be thoughtful about what I say and do in ways I don't when I'm around other adults. --And actually, I find I need to tread carefully around many adults because the simple fact of the matter is that most people have blind spots and sore spots and unfinished business in their minds which it would be dis-compassionate to tromp through. Kids have fewer knots, but larger tracts of unknowing. Being aware of this and acting accordingly is what responsibility is all about.
This is how the human race functions, and ideally it works hand in hand with love, compassion and wisdom. It doesn't always; I've seen parents falter and attempt control out of fear and ego. But then kids grow into adults and the world keeps spinning.
Ageism is realism. You don't feed a baby steak until s/he grows some teeth.
-FL
Ah, right, so we should ignore the plight of the last legally oppressed group in our society, the young, because in your mind there are brown people to worry about.
"the last legally oppressed group in our society, the young". . ? Are you saying that with a straight face?
The education system certainly IS fundamentally (and imho very deliberately) broken, but none of these battles over the puppet theater of free speech on Facebook are going to fix or even address the underlying problems. And all of that aside, adults provide boundaries to the children under their care for a host of extremely valid reasons. While many of those adults are ignorant and thus dangerously inept, I really don't think that access to 'free-speech' for 17 year-olds is a particularly vital concern. I'd put brain-washing, economic warfare and simple malnutrition much higher on the list of problems. If children can survive that gauntlet into adulthood, then perhaps they'll have minds capable of seeing and comprehending the world, and thus be able to "use their words" to say something the state might deem worthy of repression.
And, yes actually, for fuck's sake. . ,
I certainly AM concerned with the U.S. thirst for slaves, both foreign and domestic. Any non-narcissist bloody-well ought to be, and no, I don't care what color their skin happens to be. Do you? Seriously?
-FL
Apparently, 300+ posters do.
Which makes it legitimate; that's always been my argument when it comes to social commentary.
But at the same time. . . Honestly, this focus on school-is-unfair stories is just a thinking man's "Octo-Mom".
School is full of bullshit and kids have no rights. Yes. We know this. We all lived through it. The only thing new going on here is that indignant internet denizens are watching and lawyers are involved. Marvelous.
Seriously. . . What South American country is the U.S. about to bomb back into the Slave Trade which the Powers That Be are desperate we should fail to notice?
-FL
You may see it as bondage, but for some it's a sought after escape from reality.
That's my point, though. What in reality is so horrible that it needs to be escaped from?
If, however, one's gizmo is tricked out with tools rather than drugs, then it implies that s/he is happily engaged in the real world.
It's not a blanket statement or a hard and fast rule. Just one of those squishy observations engineers sometimes find disagreeable but which are useful nonetheless.
-FL
I know Star Trek has fallen from popular attention, but these cell phone things are becoming more and more like the kind of gear we collectively envision "Future People" walking around with.
It's interesting, though, that our imaginary selves are interested in exploration, and their portable technology was tuned to that, (probing and measuring the environment), whereas our devices seem to be more about insulating people from reality. (Headphones and music and videos and games, etc.)
In Star Trek they were too busy having adventures to spend much time in Fantasy Lad.
The question of one's state of bondage can be determined by a quick assessment of one's collection of iPhone apps.
-FL
Considering your "4 GHz" claim combined with "many thousands of dollar" for your PC, I'm going to go ahead and call BS on you.
Yeah, or he's a regular consumer who spent a lot of money on his computer and simply believed the twenty-two year old in the tie who added the clock speed of each core of the multi-core computer together while promoting the sale. After all, when you look at MS's "System Properties" it does that math right there on the screen for you and you feel all special.
-And apparently, if you use Windows 7, rather annoyed as well.
-FL
If you could hook an interface into each optic nerve to overlay images over a person field of vision it could be a whole lot more convincing.
And it wouldn't cause people's eye to bug out. Mark my works, real 3-D display will only be acheived by tapping into the brain and bypassing the eye.
Actually, I'm thinking that elements within our vast tracts of dormant DNA will switch on, allowing people to see and process information from multiple moments across "time" rather than just one frame at a time, as it were. Imagine; being able to see and comprehend the rear side of an object at the same time as the front.
I came back from a meditation once being able to do this for a fraction of a second. Freaked me right out.
The future is coming, and it's not about plugs in the head. (We can hope, anyway!)
-FL
He did not give details on how Southern planned to divide its 30 percent share between debt and equity but said his company was not looking for financial backing from Japan. Toshiba of Japan is majority owner of Westinghouse, whose AP1000 reactor has been selected for the Vogtle plant's expansion and is under review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Okay. That's just pathetic.
You know the U.S. is a fading empire when they need to turn to Japan to build their own infrastructure. What's next? The automotive industry?
-FL
I actually looked up "Neckbeard Device" and found nothing. I have no idea what you are talking about. Please advise, because if you have a cool explanation, I'm totally using it at the next cocktail party I attend.
Also, as has been pointed out. . .
Mouse, Keyboard, USB stick. Done.
Though I sort of agree with you on the video out. Seriously? Has anybody ever truly said, "Damn! I really need to plug my laptop into a television!" -Though, I can envision some sort of emerging market whereby your computer game controller also happens to be your handheld computer. -People being able to bring their own fully personalized game controller to a gaming meet. . , that could be very popular. People extend self-identification to the devices they carry around and use all the time, so being able to plug it in and compete with it in public could be very appealing. But this Notion device certainly isn't thinking that way, so essentially the video-out is just there because of market momentum and because it probably cost them virtually nothing to include.
Still, I have to say that this is the first device of its kind which I have an inkling of interest in. The screen tech is pretty advanced. But you're right; I don't think the Indian manufacturing market has worked out how to sell to the garden variety American. Indians are super-charged with economic energy and optimism, and that's great to see, but they're also operating under the influence of a truly different set of cultural imperatives. The Indian and Western cultures really don't fit together comfortably at all. It'll take a few tries to get it right, and Apple is like GM. It has home turf advantage. Funny thing is that in a few years, (if we're all still here), when the billion people in India transform into potential customers and as our economy tanks, they probably won't bother even trying to sell over here with such verve.
-FL
One could argue they're just processed info about the light on different parts of the set at given times.
Australian govt. is weird.
Hm. I was thinking the same thing, (including the 'weird' part), but then I realized, "Yes, but the movie set itself represents a creative manipulation of light, as does the post processing from color correction to CGI. Nobody in the public can go out privately and re-collect those same bits of light instance. They are gone. Whereas a phone book is different; anybody can compile their own list of phone numbers. They are not creatively modified. The only argument for creativity the phone companies might have a shot at selling is that they had to invent the phone numbers assigned to customers in the first place, but that's a stretch, particularly since that whole process is automated. Can a photo editing program lay claim to the light patterns emitted by the software?
In any case, the spirit of the law in both cases is quite different, and that's what it's all supposed to be about.
Interesting.
-FL
The only real hope for $100 netbooks is ARM + Linux. You can bet your life that Intel and Microsoft will do everything possible to derail the ARM train.
This is true.
And the other side of the argument should also make note of 3D videos and increasingly realistic games which will no doubt require further development of chips and video hardware. I imagine that computers will continue to evolve and draw excited Wows from the audience of tech geeks.
But we are still definitely on the cusp of a vast plateau. Laptops as we currently know them are about to become something very different. Laptop guts from 5 years ago looked very much like those of today. That's about to change dramatically, and that change will have an unpredictable ripple effect.
Heck, that by itself is rather exciting, now that I think about it!
-FL
Is this some kind of joke? This guy is NOT asking for help with this article.
It's a mind-game which he hopes will achieve two things. . .
1. He's advertising his site to privacy freaks (well, you and me, actually) who might actually be inclined to use his services, thus ballooning his traffic, thus increasing the price he can ask for when selling to advertisers.
2. He's trying to inject the idea into popular discussion that ads are some sort of Freedom Fry, and hopefully infect the IT people of the world with the idea that ad-blocking is bad for good things.
Sorry, but anybody who is so totally into pumping adverts at people against their will cannot be trusted. And it IS against their will. People who have installed ad-blocking features on their browsers have CHOSEN not to see ads. To attempt to circumvent this, as he clearly explains he does on a daily basis, is a violation of Free Will. People who have no problem violating Free Will, will also have no difficulty in justifying the selling of private click data to the highest bidder. I'd be shocked if he wasn't doing this.
This guy is not a censorship crusader. It's all about profit and personal gain. He may not view himself that way, but that wouldn't be any surprise either; denial is always easier to embrace than a hard truth and the work required to change one's behavior.
-FL
And what the heck are they doing teaching kids with Red lightsabers?
Have they learned nothing?
(There. I met my weekly quota of 'geek' in under five minutes. Thanks George!)
-FL
I wonder if they are instructors or students?
Joking aside, the Jedi approach to reality is actually very similar to one particular caste of Eastern warrior/philosopher/monk. It was explained to me by a fellow who was deeply steeped in this stuff, and it was fascinating to hear about their methods.
What would be noteworthy, (I almost said, "cool"), would be if a belt-farm Jedi Academy actually taught viable kung-fu. It'd be embarrassing if you were a martial arts student and got your ass kicked by a Jedi.
-FL
Number 1:
It's about taxes. When a huge amount of money is moving through a specific channel, the government will always attempt to tax it.
Number 2:
It's about social control. India must be suppressed. Right now, slave labor in India is one of the great engines driving it's growing economy. The longer that lasts, the better India will be off down the road. (The Hoover Dam is an American example; even though it cost a ton of cash, the workers at the time were barely being paid because it was a time in America's history of slave labor. If you tried to build another Hoover Dam today, you probably couldn't afford it because construction workers are unionized and have a standard of living many levels above, "Shanty Town".)
Number 3 (Bonus!):
India's predominant genetics aren't supposed to survive. That's reserved for China. Chinese people make better fear-driven drones than East Indians, or anyone for that matter. East Indians are marked for harvesting. (Or that's my current theory, anyway.) Money being funneled in through the internet increases attraction to the WWW and the ability to get on it, which in turn gives people access to information. Information is power, and India hasn't been sufficiently doped up, brain washed and debt-ridden to be allowed access to power. Heck, they might actually DO something with it!
-FL