According to the medical profession, the sine qua non of addiction is that there is an immediate physical reaction when the addictive substance is withheld. No one has ever had an immediate physical reaction from changing their diet from fatty fast food to, say, a healthy, low-fat diet. At least, no so far as I know.
With respect, saying that "people get addicted to fastfood just as they get addicted to drugs" is really quite incorrect. Drugs - the ones people get addicted to - change the way the body acts. Food is only fuel. If you eat too much, you may get fat, but nothing has changed in the way the brain works.
I wish I had mod points for you. This is a very clear and informative summation.
I didn't know about the "4 quarters profit = bonus for Darl" but it doesn't surprise me. It is all too frequently a practice of company boards of directors to hire a stock salesman rather than a manager. As a result, there is far too much of this septic behaviour, i.e. quick inflation of stock prices at the expense of long term profitability, stability and/or continued existence. Why worry about the long term effects if you're gone in two or three years with your big fat bonuses and stock inflation prices?
Didn't we have story a year or so ago about some Aussie boffins researching the physics of the "fall" of bubbles in Guinness? (Do the bubbles go up or do they go down?)
I'm beginning there might be some connection between Australian scientists and foamy malt beverages. But, YMMV.
This is an old song. [Something] I ingested is making me sick. Why didn't anyone warn me!
I remember a song that was out in the '50s by Phil Harris called "Some Little Bug Is Gonna Get You:.
Some little bug is gonna find you someday. Some little bug will creep behind you someday. Then he'll get right down in your gizzard, And if you lose him, you're a wizard. Some little bug is gonna find you someday.
Now you'll die from drinkin' whiskey, And drinkin' water's just as risky! And, Oh! My friends, the things that ice cream does!!
This is nothing to do with protocols and standards, it's to do with who uses a service that Microsoft pays for. Would you allow anyone to walk in off the street and make calls on your phone?
And if you were running a communications system (like the Alabama Phone Company), would you let people call into your service from some other phone company (like Bell Canada, or UK Tel)? Heck, would you let them buy their own phone, or would you allow them to only use phones that you build?
Actually, the current scientific thinking on this question is pretty settled. Introversion/extroversion is hardwired. You can actually determine this at the cellular level. Extrovert cells will be come active with mild electrical stimulus, but introvert cells will become quiet. (My source for this was a lecturer in social psychology at Carleton U. in Ottawa, Canada.)
This does not mean that a person can only behave in one mode or another. As the professor said, "An introvert can learn extroverted behaviour, and vice versa. Which is an important thing about personalities. They are multi-layered like an onion." (Par example, somewhere else on this story, someone contributed that he was an extrovert, but solved problems in an introverted fashion.)
The Carleton U. prof said that the true way to determine whether or not you were basically (Let me repeat that: "Basically", Not "Completely".), basically an introvert or an extrovert was to see what you do to recharge your batteries. Do you seek or avoid stimulus when you want to re-energize yourself?
Now of course, your message makes the very valid point that both behaviours are necessary. But I think that it is fair to say that introversion/extroversion at least at the base / default / normal condition for an individual is hardwired and cannot be changed. But that doesn't prohibit the individual from learning and using the other mode.
A famous example is the case of a method to recover sunken ships by filling them with buoyant bodies fed through a tube. This method was used in 1964 to recover the freighter Al-Kuwait from the bottom of the Persian Gulf. The Danish inventor Karl Kroeyer tried to get a patent for this method, but his patent application (amongst others, in the UK GB 1070600 and in the Netherlands NL 6514306) was rejected for lack of novelty. The prior art? In 1949 the Donald Duck story The Sunken Yacht (by Carl Barks) shows Donald and the nephews raising a ship by filling it with ping pong balls shoved through a tube. Since ping pong balls are buoyant bodies, and they were fed to the yacht through a tube, the Donald Duck episode was considered novelty-destroying prior art.
I also remember reading years ago of a patent that was refused. (Sorry, I don't remember the jurisdiction.) The 'invention' was to deliver chemicals that form plastic foam when mixed together to the interior of sunken ships. When the chemicals mixed in the hold of the ship, the plastic foam would then lighten the ship (by pushing out the denser water) and allow the ship to float to the surface.
The patent was refused due to prior description. This was a Donald Duck comic book where Donald and his nephews pushed ping pong balls down long tubes into the hold of a sunken ship to float it to the top.
Like the parent of this, I wonder about the current patent system. I reely do!
And from an evolutionary perspective, isn't it nice that users don't have to repurchase half of their software every three years when a new version of the OS comes out?
Dang right! Most western police ofrces have an exercise during training where some other police officer comes in and does something loud e.g. points a banana at the instructor and yells "Bang!" After he leaves the rookie cops are to write down what happened. The resulting reports are never consistent across the class or even between individuals.
The RCMP classes even warn them that this is going to happen so that they will watch carefully. Same results. No one remembers all the details correctly.
The objective of the exercise is, of course, to let the rookies know just how un-reliable eye wintess testimony is.
(I recently saw a story on Discovery about memory research that confirms this, but I'm just about to leave work, and I don't want this post to cut into my beer-drinking time;-)
Regarding your second reference, I have to say, I don't think much of it's veracity. For example, from the page, the author Michael P. McCready, Attorney at Law, writes "One note from a sound recording is a copyright violation."
I assume he is talking about snipping out a note from a recording, and not "The flagrant use of the note B# when my client used that note in his grand opus." Nonetheless, I rather doubt that such a claim would fly in any court.
You wrote: We say we're voting for the president, but what we're really doing is voting for which panel of people our state will send to the Electoral College. Those people were selected by the campaign of the person whose name appears on the ballot, so it's rather certain (and contractually required) that they're going to vote for the people they're expected to, but they still have to gather and count the votes just to make sure we're doing it right.
It may be contractually required in some states (but not in all), but if the College elector doesn't vote the way he's "contractually required" to, nothing happens to him.
I read some apologist say that nothing happens to these people "because they didn't make any difference to the results." From which I conclude that incompetent criminals (such as people who try to rob a bank but don't get any money) should not be charged either.
There was a documentary series about 20 years ago on PBS called "The Ascent of Man" written and narated by Jacob Bronowski. (This is also available as a book)
In it, Prof. Bronowski posited that civilisation begins with the invention of agriculture approximately 15,000 years ago. It is at that time that the modern grain came into existence. (How, why or when no one knows.) This allowed people to accumulate food surpluses which could be stored. The importance of this is that it allows humans to settle in a single location rather than leading a nomadic existence.
Now nomads can only keep what they can carry. But a settled farmer can accumulate goods because he is not limited by his carrying capacity. "Well, so what?" you might say. Bronowski made the claim that this leads to the invention of writing. If you have a surplus, at some point you start keeping records - particularly if you have a tribe and a need for distribution of goods. This record keeping starts off with such things as knotted strings or tally sticks, but at some point it starts to evolve into a written language.
And what is the importance of that? It is this. Animals have only two ways of accumulating knowledge: instinct (passed on by DNA), and what it learns in it's lifetime. These have finite limits. But writing allows you to write down information that later generations can access - and build on. Thus the amount of information available to the species begins to increase - and so civilisation.
Which shouldn't surprise us geeks. We know that the design of the system influences the behaviour of the system.:-)
(BTW, if you ever get a chance to view the series or read the book, do so. It is a beautiful and inspiring story. -- Or so I found it. YMMMV)
This is probably the best answer to anyone who is overworked. Right on. If I had points, I'd mod you up further.
A manager's job is to manage! Unfortunately, most people in managerial positions behave like bosses (order passers, overseers) rather than managers (planners, analysts, designers). Sometimes you have to force them to do their proper function. In this case taking responsibility for prioritizing the work tasks.
Of course, if this doesn't work, then you'd better leave before they crash and burn.
Out of curiosity, where is your reference to the claim that "the great mass of inmates who have filled our jails to overflowing aren't Americans, they are people who came to live here because their homelands were more oppressive than ours." I was under the impression that a whacking great number of the US prisoners were incarcerated for drug crimes. If I'm wrong, I'd like to see the numbers, please.
So you doubt the story eh? Because US troops are so 'leet and well trained? Frankly old son, American troops are notorious for firing on allied troops. Hell, even on themselves. For example, most of the casualties taken in Granada were "friendly fire" accidents. And I remember watching on CNN, American AT team looking at a possible target with a night scope, discussing it with command for a while and then firing on it. Yup, it was one of their own.
I was going to read the comments on this story, but since I've already read the link above about when Blockbuster tried to only stock full screen versions of movies, it really seems rather redundant. (it only takes a very little amount of scrolling to realize that *ALL* of the arguments are simply repeated here.)
In a sentence, if you've read one, you don't need to read t'other.
I quite take your point. Word of mouth is probably the best vicarious judgement you can get. But on the other hand, some very nice movies (that are not being pushed by Hollywood Marketing) are around for such a short time, if you wait for word of mouth, you are likely to miss the movie.
It's happened to me. In at least one case, it was years before I had another chance to see the movie in some repetory theatre.
Of course. Pornography is a moral issue. And I think that's the main point.
The question that is being debated here is whether or not general morality should be imposed upon an individual. I will state right up front that IMHO, the answer should be "no".
(Peel yourself off the ceiling. I am not advocating immorality. No, really I'm not. Come on back down here and give me your ear for amoment. . . Thanks.)
I think everyone should behave in a moral manner. Morality is that voice inside you that tells you what is "wrong" and what is "right". And I think we all agree that someone who says he's a moral character and then sets it aside at his convenience is no truly a moral man. So I admire the truly moral man - even when I disagree with his conclusions.
Which, to get back to the question of whether or not we should impose morality on an individual, let me ask you a very pertinent question:
Why should my morality trump yours?
Had enough time to think? Was your answer along the lines of, "It shouldn't!", "NO!!", or "Who the blurry whatnot do you think you are!!"
That is, of course, the correct answer. But the corollary is "Why should your morality trump mine?" The answer should be the same, or you are simply saying that everyone should agree with you because you are the more moral person. As you have seen from the above messages, this tends to engender vigorous debate.
No, I don't mind a person having a moral code. I applaud it. But what I want from him in his dealings with me is ethical behaviour. Because we can debate that, arrive at a mutually satisfactory compromise . . . and live in harmony.
It is so rare for someone on Slashdot to accept criticism, and acknowledge it, and admit that he was not absolutely correct. In other words, to behave like an adult seeking truth.
I think they should hire the firm that does the translations for the Asterix comics. (Warning, the site seems rather buggy) Anyone who can translate a comic strip, that depends on French puns, into English and remains "punny" enough to make tears run down my face . . . Well!
I'm not saying you don't have a point. Myself, I'd just rephrase it as, "Humour is a lot harder to translate than action."
Re:Beware the viscious circle.
on
Half Mast
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· Score: 1
The problem with that strategy is that they really have no incentive to stop bullying you. In fact, you are rewarding them.
The better strategy is "Tit for Tat" (see Douglas Hofstadter and "Prisoner's Dilemma"). Actually, if you watch the old Warner Brother's cartoons (post WWII), this is Bugs Bunny's winning strategy.
Of course, you may wish to follow Jesus' precept, "If a man strike the on the right cheek turn unto him the left cheek." That's a moral standpoint, and if that's your morality, more power to you.
Mind you, Jesus never said you had to be a punching bag.
(1) Looking at the routes online would take more time. Go to the computer. Boot computer if it's not already running. Call up the browser. Select the bookmark for Winnipeg transit. Wait for page to load. [versus] go to the display and push a button. (2) Printed rountes are the planned schedule. When there is a heavy snowfall or traffic jams or an accident, printed schedules become a fantasy. The online schedule (also obtainable by phoning, but during rush hour, it can become problematic getting through.) reflects any unplanned delays and is therefore more accurate. (3) When it is -35 degrees Centigrade, knowing the exact time the bus is coming by is a Very Important Piece of Info. (When I was in the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada, and used to go on the New Year's Day Levees in number one dress - Dress coattee and kilt - I would have given my eye teeth for a device like this.) (4) Sure he can't use it when he's away from home. He can't use his land line phone or his computer either. And your point is???
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According to the medical profession, the sine qua non of addiction is that there is an immediate physical reaction when the addictive substance is withheld. No one has ever had an immediate physical reaction from changing their diet from fatty fast food to, say, a healthy, low-fat diet. At least, no so far as I know.
With respect, saying that "people get addicted to fastfood just as they get addicted to drugs" is really quite incorrect. Drugs - the ones people get addicted to - change the way the body acts. Food is only fuel. If you eat too much, you may get fat, but nothing has changed in the way the brain works.
I didn't know about the "4 quarters profit = bonus for Darl" but it doesn't surprise me. It is all too frequently a practice of company boards of directors to hire a stock salesman rather than a manager. As a result, there is far too much of this septic behaviour, i.e. quick inflation of stock prices at the expense of long term profitability, stability and/or continued existence. Why worry about the long term effects if you're gone in two or three years with your big fat bonuses and stock inflation prices?
Didn't we have story a year or so ago about some Aussie boffins researching the physics of the "fall" of bubbles in Guinness? (Do the bubbles go up or do they go down?)
I'm beginning there might be some connection between Australian scientists and foamy malt beverages. But, YMMV.
This is an old song. [Something] I ingested is making me sick. Why didn't anyone warn me!
I remember a song that was out in the '50s by Phil Harris called "Some Little Bug Is Gonna Get You:.
And if you were running a communications system (like the Alabama Phone Company), would you let people call into your service from some other phone company (like Bell Canada, or UK Tel)? Heck, would you let them buy their own phone, or would you allow them to only use phones that you build?
Actually, the current scientific thinking on this question is pretty settled. Introversion/extroversion is hardwired. You can actually determine this at the cellular level. Extrovert cells will be come active with mild electrical stimulus, but introvert cells will become quiet. (My source for this was a lecturer in social psychology at Carleton U. in Ottawa, Canada.)
This does not mean that a person can only behave in one mode or another. As the professor said, "An introvert can learn extroverted behaviour, and vice versa. Which is an important thing about personalities. They are multi-layered like an onion." (Par example, somewhere else on this story, someone contributed that he was an extrovert, but solved problems in an introverted fashion.)
The Carleton U. prof said that the true way to determine whether or not you were basically (Let me repeat that: "Basically", Not "Completely".), basically an introvert or an extrovert was to see what you do to recharge your batteries. Do you seek or avoid stimulus when you want to re-energize yourself?
Now of course, your message makes the very valid point that both behaviours are necessary. But I think that it is fair to say that introversion/extroversion at least at the base / default / normal condition for an individual is hardwired and cannot be changed. But that doesn't prohibit the individual from learning and using the other mode.
In this article on patents, it reads:
A famous example is the case of a method to recover sunken ships by filling them with buoyant bodies fed through a tube. This method was used in 1964 to recover the freighter Al-Kuwait from the bottom of the Persian Gulf. The Danish inventor Karl Kroeyer tried to get a patent for this method, but his patent application (amongst others, in the UK GB 1070600 and in the Netherlands NL 6514306) was rejected for lack of novelty. The prior art? In 1949 the Donald Duck story The Sunken Yacht (by Carl Barks) shows Donald and the nephews raising a ship by filling it with ping pong balls shoved through a tube. Since ping pong balls are buoyant bodies, and they were fed to the yacht through a tube, the Donald Duck episode was considered novelty-destroying prior art.
The patent was refused due to prior description. This was a Donald Duck comic book where Donald and his nephews pushed ping pong balls down long tubes into the hold of a sunken ship to float it to the top.
Like the parent of this, I wonder about the current patent system. I reely do!
And from an evolutionary perspective, isn't it nice that users don't have to repurchase half of their software every three years when a new version of the OS comes out?
The RCMP classes even warn them that this is going to happen so that they will watch carefully. Same results. No one remembers all the details correctly.
The objective of the exercise is, of course, to let the rookies know just how un-reliable eye wintess testimony is.
(I recently saw a story on Discovery about memory research that confirms this, but I'm just about to leave work, and I don't want this post to cut into my beer-drinking time ;-)
I assume he is talking about snipping out a note from a recording, and not "The flagrant use of the note B# when my client used that note in his grand opus." Nonetheless, I rather doubt that such a claim would fly in any court.
Oh, right! You did write in an American court.
It may be contractually required in some states (but not in all), but if the College elector doesn't vote the way he's "contractually required" to, nothing happens to him.
I read some apologist say that nothing happens to these people "because they didn't make any difference to the results." From which I conclude that incompetent criminals (such as people who try to rob a bank but don't get any money) should not be charged either.
In it, Prof. Bronowski posited that civilisation begins with the invention of agriculture approximately 15,000 years ago. It is at that time that the modern grain came into existence. (How, why or when no one knows.) This allowed people to accumulate food surpluses which could be stored. The importance of this is that it allows humans to settle in a single location rather than leading a nomadic existence.
Now nomads can only keep what they can carry. But a settled farmer can accumulate goods because he is not limited by his carrying capacity. "Well, so what?" you might say. Bronowski made the claim that this leads to the invention of writing. If you have a surplus, at some point you start keeping records - particularly if you have a tribe and a need for distribution of goods. This record keeping starts off with such things as knotted strings or tally sticks, but at some point it starts to evolve into a written language.
And what is the importance of that? It is this. Animals have only two ways of accumulating knowledge: instinct (passed on by DNA), and what it learns in it's lifetime. These have finite limits. But writing allows you to write down information that later generations can access - and build on. Thus the amount of information available to the species begins to increase - and so civilisation.
Which shouldn't surprise us geeks. We know that the design of the system influences the behaviour of the system. :-)
(BTW, if you ever get a chance to view the series or read the book, do so. It is a beautiful and inspiring story. -- Or so I found it. YMMMV)
A manager's job is to manage! Unfortunately, most people in managerial positions behave like bosses (order passers, overseers) rather than managers (planners, analysts, designers). Sometimes you have to force them to do their proper function. In this case taking responsibility for prioritizing the work tasks.
Of course, if this doesn't work, then you'd better leave before they crash and burn.
Excellent comment!
Out of curiosity, where is your reference to the claim that "the great mass of inmates who have filled our jails to overflowing aren't Americans, they are people who came to live here because their homelands were more oppressive than ours." I was under the impression that a whacking great number of the US prisoners were incarcerated for drug crimes. If I'm wrong, I'd like to see the numbers, please.
Do you have a link, by any chance?
You doubt it? I believe it!
In a sentence, if you've read one, you don't need to read t'other.
It's happened to me. In at least one case, it was years before I had another chance to see the movie in some repetory theatre.
The question that is being debated here is whether or not general morality should be imposed upon an individual. I will state right up front that IMHO, the answer should be "no".
(Peel yourself off the ceiling. I am not advocating immorality. No, really I'm not. Come on back down here and give me your ear for amoment. . . Thanks.)
I think everyone should behave in a moral manner. Morality is that voice inside you that tells you what is "wrong" and what is "right". And I think we all agree that someone who says he's a moral character and then sets it aside at his convenience is no truly a moral man. So I admire the truly moral man - even when I disagree with his conclusions.
Which, to get back to the question of whether or not we should impose morality on an individual, let me ask you a very pertinent question:
Had enough time to think? Was your answer along the lines of, "It shouldn't!", "NO!!", or "Who the blurry whatnot do you think you are!!"
That is, of course, the correct answer. But the corollary is "Why should your morality trump mine?" The answer should be the same, or you are simply saying that everyone should agree with you because you are the more moral person. As you have seen from the above messages, this tends to engender vigorous debate.
No, I don't mind a person having a moral code. I applaud it. But what I want from him in his dealings with me is ethical behaviour. Because we can debate that, arrive at a mutually satisfactory compromise . . . and live in harmony.
Thank you for raising the level of discourse.
I'm not saying you don't have a point. Myself, I'd just rephrase it as, "Humour is a lot harder to translate than action."
The better strategy is "Tit for Tat" (see Douglas Hofstadter and "Prisoner's Dilemma"). Actually, if you watch the old Warner Brother's cartoons (post WWII), this is Bugs Bunny's winning strategy.
Of course, you may wish to follow Jesus' precept, "If a man strike the on the right cheek turn unto him the left cheek." That's a moral standpoint, and if that's your morality, more power to you.
Mind you, Jesus never said you had to be a punching bag.
(1) Looking at the routes online would take more time. Go to the computer. Boot computer if it's not already running. Call up the browser. Select the bookmark for Winnipeg transit. Wait for page to load. [versus] go to the display and push a button.
(2) Printed rountes are the planned schedule. When there is a heavy snowfall or traffic jams or an accident, printed schedules become a fantasy. The online schedule (also obtainable by phoning, but during rush hour, it can become problematic getting through.) reflects any unplanned delays and is therefore more accurate.
(3) When it is -35 degrees Centigrade, knowing the exact time the bus is coming by is a Very Important Piece of Info. (When I was in the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada, and used to go on the New Year's Day Levees in number one dress - Dress coattee and kilt - I would have given my eye teeth for a device like this.)
(4) Sure he can't use it when he's away from home. He can't use his land line phone or his computer either. And your point is???
From reference.com
codswallop Audio pronunciation of codswallop ( P ) Pronunciation Key (kdzwlp)
n. Chiefly British Slang
Nonsense; rubbish.
Umm . . . Yeah, that's what I meant.