One more con - As the level of CO2 rises, your respiration rate goes up. Breathing faster than needful is hyperventilation which, even when minor, over time gives rise to more and wider spread stress-related illnesses. Some are systemic; some organs will complain more than the rest. I've forgotten all the particulars (haven't looked into it in a while) but all the info is readily found - except that there's been damn-all research on it. Takes a while for folks to wake up, I guess. I'm mindful of it because the relative atmospheric CO2 content has increased by about a third since I was a kid.
May be balanced by being the century of 'gene, nano, neuro, cyber' so we might be able to fix lots of body stuff.
I don't know how this stuff works so can only stupidly speculate that it will be interesting to try to follow the mutations this wee beastie underwent to let it survive in its current home, and that it somehow could be interesting if not useful when comparing that to some of its closer cousins on our side of the lake.
Might there be clues that let us make more robust some of our helpful bacteria? Or even clues to help combat some of the 'super-bugs' that are really scary in their resistance to anti-biotics, given the extent of nosocomial infection?
I once lived in a metro area where there were five of us with the same first and last names, out of the 1900 or so that Wolfram Alpha says live in the U.S. I even met one face to face, by happenstance.
There being sufficient room for confusion, and the challenge of differentiating who's who, especially on the off-chance that someone who once knew me by my given name might wish to find me, strikes me as a lousy way to go about things.
In Real Life I've gone by an awarded nickname since '71 or '72. Online, I've been "kermidge" since, oh, probably '01 or so. Pre-WWW, I had separate handles on GEnie, CompuServe, and Delphi, and a few smaller bulletin boards.
On searching, there's one other kermidge, a fellow possibly in France, without recent webbish acitivity that I can casually find via a search using Google. (What's trivially funny is that even a cursory search will readily show my 'real' name and city.)
Upshot is, for a while, about as long as the brain-fart lasted, I thought it could be useful to me to be on Google+. But since they won't take my name, the one I'm known by on line....
I'm told, in the various pages on names and appeals, that there's a procedure I can use to try to 'justify' my preferred name. Right. I've used maybe five names in my life, not for nefarious, but for easy social group reference or as needed (GEnie, e.g.). That some robotic entity requires that I 'justify' my choice of self-reference in an arena which already knows me by one is ludicrous - especially in that it's in the same arena.
Installs ok, haven't tried it out yet. Wonder why it needs to remove "python3-aptdaemon.pkcompat" if it says it does its stuff without messing about with a system's libraries, tho.
Even with that simple interaction, if one starts out by trying to appear moderately awake and at least possibly pleasant, with a neutral or better tone of voice, and adds a genuine smile with the thanks, one often gets a genuine smile in return - and that can change a rote mechanical 'interaction' into a mutual acknowledgement of humanity, which adds a bit of cheer to one's day.
When things are going well.... sure, a brief, simple transaction with a machine is OK. (wait - can one really 'transact' with a machine?) But then, in my life, when things are going well I don't need to deal with a machine, unless you wish to count online banking and a healthcare site for appointments, refills, etc.
When things are not going well, I most assuredly need to speak with a human; sometimes, a succession of humans.
On a side note, most of the phone robots I've dealt with the past few years are definitely designed for the convenience of everyone except the customer, and they're getting worse.
Starting with "Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line until our next customer service representative can take your call." No - if my call was important to you, you'd answer the fucking phone. For the company, it's a way to chew up my minutes and keep labor costs lower.
Then the menus - interminable, often irrelevant, sometimes garbled. Many today don't even offer the option to speak with a human, and the traditional default "0" is no-op.
The use of the hold time for dispensing information and ads by recorded voice really annoys me - if I'm waiting for a human voice to answer the call, having to listen to another human voice is plain wrong. Give me some moderately inoffensive music as was done in 'the old days'.
Unless they're surreptitiously recording/sending my searches done via Firefox and Opera on google, duckduckgo, wikipedia, half-dozen others, or doing the same with local machine from the dash or from withing the file manager, after I set the privacy doodad, _what search history_, exactly?
And it fits right in. The great no such agency signals vacuum machine, the not-yet-armed drones (yes, there's a few states making noises; it won't get far, and eventually fade), the continual erasure of public domain, the illegality or at least, impermissability of public protest (e.g., when both Fox and msm unite in denigrating members of occupy, celebrating the spray, beating, fractures, etc., you know the fix is in) - and that fix is the continued spread of a frame of mind, from school on, from children's television to pulpit sermons, that we must bow our heads and kowtow to all that's inimical to freedom, choice, privacy in the name of safety, democracy, and for the children; and most eat it up with a spoon while they're otherwise so busy with their lives. "Fixing the world, one lock down at a time."
Over the years some here have railed against the developing de facto if not de jure police state; I say it's worse: we are led to shuttering our own minds, to forge our own chains on heart and intellect. And, just in case you're an edge case, a malcontent, there are ever more laws, and ever more prisons, and plenty of prosecutors itching to make an example of you. (Or simply a quiet arrest, a quiet little court appearance, and.... gone. "Hey, whatever happened to $dude? Dunno, man, just stopped showing up.")
For years I've tried to maintain some hope - there are still plenty of good people, even in government. Perhaps it's encroaching age and the promise of death and the continuing pain, but over the past ten years.... no, I really don't think there's much hope left. Best of luck if you do.
Not with a bang, not with a whimper, just an old geek crying "Hey, what happened to my Internet?"
I don't recall seeing "the need to meddle" in Maslow's hierarchy, but I've met too many people over the years who seem to have it; this DB and the tools who'll make the tools to manipulate (whoops, meant 'facilitate', right?) "the educational experience" will be for them a luxurious playground in which to mess people about.
I understand the reasoning that one can't judge the effectiveness of a system, and cannot improve that effectiveness, without measurement. So, what is measured, how, by whom?
Whatever the good intentions and noble pronunciamentos, this will be a way to find profit at the expense of privacy and freedom to choose.
It's OK; I used the term for it's old-timey flavour, because I like it, and I've seen it used in several places in law. I haven't looked it up - too lazy on this sunny (where I live) Sunday morning to look it up in OED and such; I seem to recall it being a normal term of use 'long about colonial times and on into the 19th century. For all I know it may still be in current use in some areas.
As for reputation (gmhowell, following post), I don't think I have one, unless it tend towards 'flake' or 'dimwit'; not that I try to screw up and all, it's simply an un-asked for talent, methinks.
Look, I come here because, amongst the fanbois, trolls, 12-year olds and all, there are many smart, skilled, talented, and experienced people from whom I try to learn stuff. Also there's history, insight, good discussion, helpful suggestions, and wit. Whether any of it works on me is another matter.
For whatever the reasons Cisco makes this offer, it's the right thing to do. Just as sucking the Federal teat (hey, it's just bidness, everybody does it) was the wrong thing to do. To really make things right, they'd also offer to find the state suitable routers, at cost, and set'em up as well.
If I was the state, I'd be taking a close look at conscientious civil servant who approved the original deal. "Misappropriation of public monies" has a nice ring to it on a résumé.
Much thought-provoking stuff, Paul; just reading through a handful of the links given above, and then some from the various articles has nicely taken up several hours. Too bad that, "human nature" as it is will preclude the reading of even some of the material by the very people who, one may submit, need most to read it. For me, much of what's on hand resonates with things I've thought over the past forty years or so, thus, a semi-captive audience of one.
For those who might have the curiousity or interest to read further, the general response may well be "don't have time." Or, again, "tl;dr" - especially should they pick up on a phrase that sets off an automatic response of "it'll never work" or "bullshit."
I've had first-hand exposure in several of the areas and have also had prior or developed interest in some of them, variously agriculture, manufacture, education, and healthcare. The latter in particular operates under a huge disconnect - the economics are judged on through-put rather than outcome.
Anyway, I'm not smart enough to discuss much less argue any of this, so I'll just thank you for the information and wish you well in your efforts.
In rural areas initial cost to plant poles and string copper is low, but upkeep and repair kill you in the long run. Since at least the Sixties, wherever reasonable (politics, geography, finance) there's been a big shift to lay cable. (I worked buried cable for a telco in '67; and yes, the runs were plowed-in fibre, trenches were for house drops and road cuts.)
"It certainly wasn't the boomers that were building anything in the 50s or 60s."
And you think that they should have been building stuff then?
You might consider that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, baby boomers are those who were born between 1945 - 1964.
For instance, I was born in 1947. What do you think I should have been building in, say, 1960, when I was all of 13 years old? Or 1967 maybe, when I was 20? (Now, by then I did work in the construction trades, but hadn't the capital to even leverage buying land and setting up construction projects; I wasn't precocious enough for your liking, I guess.)
And for someone born in '64, I suppose you're really bent out of shape that the greatest building projects for a 6-year old likely involved Lego or somesuch.
As for the 'sense of entitlement'....
You'd have to search far and wide to find someone in my parent's generation who hadn't been affected by The Great Depression (as it was known, although it seems there's one of those every other generation or so) and World War II - both thoroughly global things.
So, no, we didn't have to deal with either of them directly, although the aftermath of each had some lasting effects on attitudes, behaviours, values, politics and law.
Sure, our parents, having gone through some real shit, generally wanted to see to it that their children didn't have to - 'cuz it was some serious bad shit, the kind that was bad enough that a grown-up mostly wouldn't wish even an enemy to experience.
As a result of all those good wishes, some of us were spoiled, some still came up hardscrabble, and, as in most things done by humans when nothing special is going on, most of us just came up in the middle of the muddle, as it were.
Overall, the watchword was opportunity - we tended to have better schools, better clothes, better medical care, better diet than did our parents generation, so we may have taken those things for granted.
The cultural, social, and psychological stuff, that was a mixed bag. There were some little things, the undeclared war in Southeast Asia (first advisors, 1955, first combat troops, 1965), the Cold War (duck and cover, mother-fucker), the commie hunt, the wonderful Cuban missile circus, all the various civil rights issues. Nothing special, really.
But maybe you had your own fun in the Sandbox, I dunno.
I remember reading in the book (forgot title; I think it was before "Nautilus Ninety North" though) there'd been a leak in a secondary steam condensing loop of the reactor in Nautilus (SSN-571) while she was in transit from the Canal to Hawaii and on to Greenland by way of the North Pole.
The Navy and Westinghouse had had teams of engineers aboard trying to isolate and stop the leak, none were successful. While is wasn't a critical leak, it's not something you'd want to go sideways whilst under ice. Anyway, somewhere between the first attempt and the final run, she stopped in Seattle.
Members of the crew were put ashore to buy up all the cans of Bar's Leak they could get (the skipper and other officers chipped in all their cash along with the ship's fund). The leak was stopped. (sorry my memory's not better; I no longer have the book. Maybe someone here will have more precise info.)
Yeah, but.... government is not monolithic. NRC is not hand in glove with EPA, for instance. Each branch and agency has its own fiercely-defended rice bowl. I'm not saying collusion isn't possible, only that it's not automatic.
Slashdot Mirror
One more con -
As the level of CO2 rises, your respiration rate goes up. Breathing faster than needful is hyperventilation which, even when minor, over time gives rise to more and wider spread stress-related illnesses. Some are systemic; some organs will complain more than the rest. I've forgotten all the particulars (haven't looked into it in a while) but all the info is readily found - except that there's been damn-all research on it. Takes a while for folks to wake up, I guess. I'm mindful of it because the relative atmospheric CO2 content has increased by about a third since I was a kid.
May be balanced by being the century of 'gene, nano, neuro, cyber' so we might be able to fix lots of body stuff.
If you've got to go to Antarctica then it is far war, aina?
Good luck with the homework, and all the rest.
I don't know how this stuff works so can only stupidly speculate that it will be interesting to try to follow the mutations this wee beastie underwent to let it survive in its current home, and that it somehow could be interesting if not useful when comparing that to some of its closer cousins on our side of the lake.
Might there be clues that let us make more robust some of our helpful bacteria? Or even clues to help combat some of the 'super-bugs' that are really scary in their resistance to anti-biotics, given the extent of nosocomial infection?
with a little room left to be pleasantly surprised, even edified, from time to time.
I once lived in a metro area where there were five of us with the same first and last names, out of the 1900 or so that Wolfram Alpha says live in the U.S. I even met one face to face, by happenstance.
There being sufficient room for confusion, and the challenge of differentiating who's who, especially on the off-chance that someone who once knew me by my given name might wish to find me, strikes me as a lousy way to go about things.
In Real Life I've gone by an awarded nickname since '71 or '72. Online, I've been "kermidge" since, oh, probably '01 or so. Pre-WWW, I had separate handles on GEnie, CompuServe, and Delphi, and a few smaller bulletin boards.
On searching, there's one other kermidge, a fellow possibly in France, without recent webbish acitivity that I can casually find via a search using Google. (What's trivially funny is that even a cursory search will readily show my 'real' name and city.)
Upshot is, for a while, about as long as the brain-fart lasted, I thought it could be useful to me to be on Google+. But since they won't take my name, the one I'm known by on line....
I'm told, in the various pages on names and appeals, that there's a procedure I can use to try to 'justify' my preferred name. Right. I've used maybe five names in my life, not for nefarious, but for easy social group reference or as needed (GEnie, e.g.). That some robotic entity requires that I 'justify' my choice of self-reference in an arena which already knows me by one is ludicrous - especially in that it's in the same arena.
Thanks for the info. I am decidedly unsophisticated at this stuff.
Installs ok, haven't tried it out yet.
Wonder why it needs to remove "python3-aptdaemon.pkcompat" if it says it does its stuff without messing about with a system's libraries, tho.
+5 funny
Laughed so hard it made my eyes water.
Even with that simple interaction, if one starts out by trying to appear moderately awake and at least possibly pleasant, with a neutral or better tone of voice, and adds a genuine smile with the thanks, one often gets a genuine smile in return - and that can change a rote mechanical 'interaction' into a mutual acknowledgement of humanity, which adds a bit of cheer to one's day.
When things are going well.... sure, a brief, simple transaction with a machine is OK. (wait - can one really 'transact' with a machine?) But then, in my life, when things are going well I don't need to deal with a machine, unless you wish to count online banking and a healthcare site for appointments, refills, etc.
When things are not going well, I most assuredly need to speak with a human; sometimes, a succession of humans.
On a side note, most of the phone robots I've dealt with the past few years are definitely designed for the convenience of everyone except the customer, and they're getting worse.
Starting with "Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line until our next customer service representative can take your call." No - if my call was important to you, you'd answer the fucking phone. For the company, it's a way to chew up my minutes and keep labor costs lower.
Then the menus - interminable, often irrelevant, sometimes garbled. Many today don't even offer the option to speak with a human, and the traditional default "0" is no-op.
The use of the hold time for dispensing information and ads by recorded voice really annoys me - if I'm waiting for a human voice to answer the call, having to listen to another human voice is plain wrong. Give me some moderately inoffensive music as was done in 'the old days'.
first belly-laugh of the day
thanks!
Unless they're surreptitiously recording/sending my searches done via Firefox and Opera on google, duckduckgo, wikipedia, half-dozen others, or doing the same with local machine from the dash or from withing the file manager, after I set the privacy doodad, _what search history_, exactly?
And it fits right in. The great no such agency signals vacuum machine, the not-yet-armed drones (yes, there's a few states making noises; it won't get far, and eventually fade), the continual erasure of public domain, the illegality or at least, impermissability of public protest (e.g., when both Fox and msm unite in denigrating members of occupy, celebrating the spray, beating, fractures, etc., you know the fix is in) - and that fix is the continued spread of a frame of mind, from school on, from children's television to pulpit sermons, that we must bow our heads and kowtow to all that's inimical to freedom, choice, privacy in the name of safety, democracy, and for the children; and most eat it up with a spoon while they're otherwise so busy with their lives. "Fixing the world, one lock down at a time."
Over the years some here have railed against the developing de facto if not de jure police state; I say it's worse: we are led to shuttering our own minds, to forge our own chains on heart and intellect. And, just in case you're an edge case, a malcontent, there are ever more laws, and ever more prisons, and plenty of prosecutors itching to make an example of you. (Or simply a quiet arrest, a quiet little court appearance, and.... gone. "Hey, whatever happened to $dude? Dunno, man, just stopped showing up.")
For years I've tried to maintain some hope - there are still plenty of good people, even in government. Perhaps it's encroaching age and the promise of death and the continuing pain, but over the past ten years.... no, I really don't think there's much hope left. Best of luck if you do.
Not with a bang, not with a whimper, just an old geek crying "Hey, what happened to my Internet?"
+5 informative
and you nailed it, besides. Thanks.
I don't recall seeing "the need to meddle" in Maslow's hierarchy, but I've met too many people over the years who seem to have it; this DB and the tools who'll make the tools to manipulate (whoops, meant 'facilitate', right?) "the educational experience" will be for them a luxurious playground in which to mess people about.
I understand the reasoning that one can't judge the effectiveness of a system, and cannot improve that effectiveness, without measurement. So, what is measured, how, by whom?
Whatever the good intentions and noble pronunciamentos, this will be a way to find profit at the expense of privacy and freedom to choose.
It's OK; I used the term for it's old-timey flavour, because I like it, and I've seen it used in several places in law. I haven't looked it up - too lazy on this sunny (where I live) Sunday morning to look it up in OED and such; I seem to recall it being a normal term of use 'long about colonial times and on into the 19th century. For all I know it may still be in current use in some areas.
As for reputation (gmhowell, following post), I don't think I have one, unless it tend towards 'flake' or 'dimwit'; not that I try to screw up and all, it's simply an un-asked for talent, methinks.
Look, I come here because, amongst the fanbois, trolls, 12-year olds and all, there are many smart, skilled, talented, and experienced people from whom I try to learn stuff. Also there's history, insight, good discussion, helpful suggestions, and wit. Whether any of it works on me is another matter.
Thanks for the explanation. I'm glad to have learned something that helps me to understand stuff I don't know about.
For whatever the reasons Cisco makes this offer, it's the right thing to do. Just as sucking the Federal teat (hey, it's just bidness, everybody does it) was the wrong thing to do. To really make things right, they'd also offer to find the state suitable routers, at cost, and set'em up as well.
If I was the state, I'd be taking a close look at conscientious civil servant who approved the original deal. "Misappropriation of public monies" has a nice ring to it on a résumé.
Much thought-provoking stuff, Paul; just reading through a handful of the links given above, and then some from the various articles has nicely taken up several hours. Too bad that, "human nature" as it is will preclude the reading of even some of the material by the very people who, one may submit, need most to read it. For me, much of what's on hand resonates with things I've thought over the past forty years or so, thus, a semi-captive audience of one.
For those who might have the curiousity or interest to read further, the general response may well be "don't have time." Or, again, "tl;dr" - especially should they pick up on a phrase that sets off an automatic response of "it'll never work" or "bullshit."
I've had first-hand exposure in several of the areas and have also had prior or developed interest in some of them, variously agriculture, manufacture, education, and healthcare. The latter in particular operates under a huge disconnect - the economics are judged on through-put rather than outcome.
Anyway, I'm not smart enough to discuss much less argue any of this, so I'll just thank you for the information and wish you well in your efforts.
Yeah, but....
In rural areas initial cost to plant poles and string copper is low, but upkeep and repair kill you in the long run. Since at least the Sixties, wherever reasonable (politics, geography, finance) there's been a big shift to lay cable. (I worked buried cable for a telco in '67; and yes, the runs were plowed-in fibre, trenches were for house drops and road cuts.)
"It certainly wasn't the boomers that were building anything in the 50s or 60s."
And you think that they should have been building stuff then?
You might consider that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, baby boomers are those who were born between 1945 - 1964.
For instance, I was born in 1947. What do you think I should have been building in, say, 1960, when I was all of 13 years old? Or 1967 maybe, when I was 20? (Now, by then I did work in the construction trades, but hadn't the capital to even leverage buying land and setting up construction projects; I wasn't precocious enough for your liking, I guess.)
And for someone born in '64, I suppose you're really bent out of shape that the greatest building projects for a 6-year old likely involved Lego or somesuch.
As for the 'sense of entitlement'....
You'd have to search far and wide to find someone in my parent's generation who hadn't been affected by The Great Depression (as it was known, although it seems there's one of those every other generation or so) and World War II - both thoroughly global things.
So, no, we didn't have to deal with either of them directly, although the aftermath of each had some lasting effects on attitudes, behaviours, values, politics and law.
Sure, our parents, having gone through some real shit, generally wanted to see to it that their children didn't have to - 'cuz it was some serious bad shit, the kind that was bad enough that a grown-up mostly wouldn't wish even an enemy to experience.
As a result of all those good wishes, some of us were spoiled, some still came up hardscrabble, and, as in most things done by humans when nothing special is going on, most of us just came up in the middle of the muddle, as it were.
Overall, the watchword was opportunity - we tended to have better schools, better clothes, better medical care, better diet than did our parents generation, so we may have taken those things for granted.
The cultural, social, and psychological stuff, that was a mixed bag. There were some little things, the undeclared war in Southeast Asia (first advisors, 1955, first combat troops, 1965), the Cold War (duck and cover, mother-fucker), the commie hunt, the wonderful Cuban missile circus, all the various civil rights issues. Nothing special, really.
But maybe you had your own fun in the Sandbox, I dunno.
Thank you for the linked article; makes interesting, useful reading. That it was Diebold that got caught makes it somehow more delicious.
I'm also grateful you didn't razz me for not finding this on my own.
A bit of history on Bar's Leaks - http://www.barsproducts.com/company/history
I remember reading in the book (forgot title; I think it was before "Nautilus Ninety North" though) there'd been a leak in a secondary steam condensing loop of the reactor in Nautilus (SSN-571) while she was in transit from the Canal to Hawaii and on to Greenland by way of the North Pole.
The Navy and Westinghouse had had teams of engineers aboard trying to isolate and stop the leak, none were successful. While is wasn't a critical leak, it's not something you'd want to go sideways whilst under ice. Anyway, somewhere between the first attempt and the final run, she stopped in Seattle.
Members of the crew were put ashore to buy up all the cans of Bar's Leak they could get (the skipper and other officers chipped in all their cash along with the ship's fund). The leak was stopped. (sorry my memory's not better; I no longer have the book. Maybe someone here will have more precise info.)
Yeah, but.... government is not monolithic. NRC is not hand in glove with EPA, for instance. Each branch and agency has its own fiercely-defended rice bowl. I'm not saying collusion isn't possible, only that it's not automatic.
Has any one, let alone some large corporate entity, every been sanctioned for false takedown?