We're a sorry bunch, but for a site to get/.ed at roughly midnight on a Friday night is pretty sad!
I mean, I'm stuck at home running an animation rendering, so, um, I have an excuse. But what about the rest of you!
It's simple, enact this and we'll all be forging as much as possible. It wouldn't be complete, but it would be a start.
Re:Living through it - an architectural response
on
The Owner-Builder Book
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
As an architect (technically, I've completed the IDP and I'll be taking the ARE very soon) I have to say that I have a different perspective.
The role of an architect is not to add doodads. There are several perspectives, but fundamentally an architect adds value to your project, not to mention being legally required in many areas for a varitey of reasons - health, safety and public welfare being high on the list.
Let me say at the outset that there are goofball architects, just as there are quack doctors and MBAs who have zero business sense. If your goal is to get a conventional house for the lowest possible dollars per square foot, there are architects who can help you. There are also archtiects who would hinder you. Take the book's point, shop around - talk to people - look at your options.
For your first experience with building a house, a knowledgeable architect can guide you through the legal and financial minefield and hopefully get a more beautiful end result. The world is full of horror stories of financing scams, vanishing subcontractors, code problems that shut projects down, structural 'omissions' and on and on.
Designing a good house takes a fair amount of skill. Most smart people can get a few of the 'balls in the air.' You can develop a decent floor plan, think through the basic cost implications of what goes where and have a sense of how it's going to work in three dimensions. This is usually enough to get someting built, but is the result 'good' or 'great'? Someone with experience designing buildings thoughfully (a.k.a. a good architect) will add value, both qualitatively and functionally. A cynic would say that the market for housing in America has pretty low standards for quality of materials and design. But this is YOUR house we're talking about - do you want the Windows 3.1 of houses?
A structural engineer can also be an important part of the team. While many architects can do the structural engineering part of the design process, particularly for conventional houses, structural engineers can't do a lot of very important parts of the design process. SEs have stacks of code books and manuals that deal with their parts of building design, which are very important, but don't have a lot to do with the simple construction of houses. Their field of expertise doesn't cover things like the codes that relate to your family not burning to death in a fire.
Another issue is 'plan stamping'. In areas where an archictect is required by law you may be tempted to try to find a scumbag to apply her seal to some pre-drawn plans. This is a bad idea. If you need the 'what's in it for me' reason try massive dollar costs. 'Stamped plans' are likely to have problems with local codes which can cost you tens of thousands of dollars in fines and rip-and-replace costs.
I can fudge together shell scripts or bits of C++, but am I a programmer? No. Could I tackle a moderately complicated programming task myself? Maybe, but it would a nasty mess, inefficient, buggy and take a long time. I don't have that expertise even if I know a fair amount about how computers work and know what I like in user interfaces. Don't see architects as an enemy or hinderance. Look for one who wants to work with you in your way for your project and take advantage of her ideas and experience.
The TV ads on the site are aimed at the edges of the WinTel user base, not at it's core. While I'm not happy about that at a 'gut' level, I think it does make sense.
At first I wanted to see a suburban/small town shmoe dressed in Wallmart fashion with a stock car racing cap because that's the core of mass market home purchasing. Instead it's a bunch of people (like me) who wear black (other than to funerals) and roughly half of them are writers. But it dawned on me that they are at the edge between the Mac/Windows world, and just ended up on the wrong side for whatever reason. The are the next 5% who can most easily be brought over.
It does require a bit of technical sophistication to switch over (e.g. you might need to know what an ethernet crossover cable is to move your old files over if you don't have access to a network). Thus, there's a big hump to get over for a big part of the market. Once wireless networking is stock, this might become easier. Imagine that part of the out-of-the-box wizard asks you if you want to move files over from the PC that it found (wirelessly) in the same room.
They're going after SOHO users because there's a lot less 'inertia' to deal with - "You need a new computer every 2 to 5 years, make it a Mac this time. It's easy. Give it a try." They don't mention it in the ads, but MSOffice is a big part of why this will work for a lot people. "You word process, you prepare presentations, you e-mail and web surf. A Mac works better for these things."
For Wall Street a few percent shift would be a big thing and would strengthen the perception of Apple, so it seems like the place to start is with the fence sitters.
My PB was stolen a while ago, so this has been on my mind recently.
How sophisticated are the people who fence stolen mac laptops. I'm sure that there's a sophisticated network for turning around stolen PCs, but Macs are a bit more obscure. In my case, the stupid theives took the laptop, but not the $80 power cable. I'm sure that the battery ran down in a few days in sleep mode, so to show that it's working to sell it or wipe the drive with a bootable CD would require a specific power cord. Are there 'resale channels' with those kinds of resources? Back to the topic, an OF password would help to some degree by preventing simply booting off a CD. Are there Mac specific fences who would know how to get around that?
It's been a couple of months since the theft, and I still suspect that I may get a call one day: "Uh, I, uh, found a laptop that has your name on the screen and asks for a password...." I can always hope, can't I?
Today, May 14, 2014
A support column of the massive bridge connecting the island of Sicily to the Italian mainland collapsed early this morning. While counts of the missing or dead are not yet in, speculation is already swirling as to the cause of the failure. Since the sun rose this morning, video from helecopters in the area clearly show that the concrete in the broken column is a veritable Swiss cheese of holes from the bodies of Mafiosi that were dumped into the concrete while the bridge was under construction...
Frankly, why care? You chose Win98 knowing that it is insecure and buggy. MacOS users get little sympathy when they ask for kindness because of limited availability of apps caused (supposedly) by their small market share. If you can afford to pay M$FT, you can afford to deal with this problem.
Actually, maybe you should get yourself a Mac! Now with ROOT!
The Doctor's letter is more than impressive. His point by point rebuttal of Microsoft's falacies was both thorough and consise. He clearly called out the internal contradictions that are so common in Microsoft's arguments. I was stunned by how well he made his points.
For anyone who hasn't read it, regardless of your position on the issue, you should.
While this AC uses florid, if correct, English, (s)he speaks as though (s)he is Peruvian. Is this correct?
Perhaps AC hasn't read the Congressman's letter?
If AC is referring to the same Dr. Villanueva, would AC like to cite specifics, and perhaps links to news stories that explain his/her seemingly bizzare comments? Who, specifically, are the persons of "impeccable character" who were "smear[ed]" by his comments?
I missed the "invectives," and the "gnosticism." Is it a "conflation of reckless psychics" to say that a nation state should not trust a 'black box' system for national security? Particularly if the 'black box' is produced by a massive, foreign corporation with a track record of criminal behavior and negligence with regards to security? Perhaps AC would like to explain the reference to "the most vulnerable in our society"? I think that it is far more likely that AC is an employee or stockholder of MS than Michael Moore.
spaceflight vis a vis mountaineering
on
Window or Aisle?
·
· Score: 1
It will be a long time before tickets to space should be listed on travleocity. To some degree, a guiding service could offer a 'ticket' to the summit of Everest on e-bay. but there are a lot of popsicles on it's slopes attesting to the fact that coughing up currency is a lot different than actually being qualified to attempt certain things.
An endavor like serious mountianeering requires that everyone there be a useful part of the team. In more benign environments, a guide can really take responsibility for her clients (including things like literally picking someone up and carrying them to saftey). In an environment like high up on Everest, a guide is parely able to function himself, let alone 'rescue' a client in trouble. Only people who are themselves competent climbers should be up on high mountians. Essentially, a 'guide' service should be simply provididing the convenience of arranging the trip for people who are themselves strong climbers in these kinds of environments. Generally, high altitue guide services do screen prospective clients, but there's a lot of economic pressure on them to keep standards as low as possible. As the events chronicled in "into Thin Air" show, incompetent clients can get not only themselves killed, they can get the guides killed too.
At some point in the future, space flight may be so regular and under-control that anyone can be strapped in and shot "like spam in a can" into space. For the time being there are some strict criteria for who should be put inot 'the can' and sent up, and lots of cash isn't one of them.
Let me state the obvious - Apple needs to release G5 based systems soon, or it will be in deep do do.
It needs to be cutting edge - DDR266 ram! Dual processors well over 1GHz! Oh wait, I meant "cutting edge as of a year ago".
It should be said, though, that the dual G4/1GHz system they tested did OK considering the system and processor speeds. It has me drooling for one of those Dual 1.6GHz G5 system! MacWorld NY will tell...
Mathematica was, in large part, developed at UofIL (Urbana-Champaign) and I was one of the guinea pigs for using it to teach Calculus. (It's worth pointing out that some guy named Mark Anderson, or something, who lived down the hall from me in Hopkins residence hall was writing some linking-pictures-over-the-internet program called Mosaic, or someting, at the same time);^)
Anyway, anyone who took the intro to Chemistry class at Urbana-Champaign (including my dad) spent a lot of time staring at the 8ft x 20ft (2.4m x 6.0m) periodic table in the big Chem building lecture hall. Well, some idiot decided to pull it off the wall and throw it out! Luckily, my housemates rescued it and we screwed it to the wall of our house over the stairs that led up to the second floor. It is/was at the northeast corner of California and Busey in Urbana.
How about the return of AutoCAD? My consistant gripe has also been for 3DStudio, but with Maya's price cut I would be happy if AutoCAD MAC had 3d stair and window-in-wall tools like 3DSViz and good Maya support - oh, wait, Maya competes with 3DS - rats. OK, how about Architecure tools for Maya - two way AutoCAD import/export, 3D stair layout, various windows and doors in walls - oh, yeah, walls.
Not infrequently we hear about the Chinese military/security complex claiming that the US is up to all sorts of absurd stuff (ocasionally it proves to be true, though). When we hear that these guys are making these goofy claims I think to myself, "those jerks are spouting crap to justify their political power when there isn't really that much conflict." Why shouldn't we think that about this report? I'm sure that the Chinese military/security complex is doing work on cracking/viruses just like everyone else. Would they be stupid enough to try some sort of massive attack? No.
Given how National Public Radio reported this story (failed to question the hype), I can't imagine how wacky General Electric (defense contractor) news (NBC) will report on it. My boss is usually a good hype barometer, I'll see if he's sucked in by it.
It's not that sci-fi fans would be supporting NASA, I'm sure his point is that only this tax would go to funding NASA. The next step is that given that all this taxable sci-fi stuff is produced by small to large businesses, to which Republicans are beholden^H^H^H^H^H attentive, they would all be loopholed out of the tax, leaving no money for NASA. Besides and Professor of Theobiology can tell you that sci-fi fans are all atheists and communists, anyway!
It's Real, so the 'video quality' sucks, but it's a really nicely done piece - well worth tracking down a Win or Mac box to see. As you see the builder creeping to the top of the hill on his little 'car' I was totally psyched to see the drop! While they tease you for a while, you do get to see the loop in action - it's real!
Umberto Eco (best know for his novel "The Name of the Rose") is a professor of semiotics. (Semiotics could be defined as the study of symbol systems and their interpretation, or a better definition). "Symbol systems and interpretation" - sound familiar? Our dear Professor of Theobiology is all about finding 'hidden meanings' and 'concealed connections'! Pokemon=evolution! chmod+base 8=satan! Steve Jobs' reality distortion field "mind control"(hmm, maybe he has a point on that last one...;^) )
In his novel "Foucault's Pendulum" he tells the story of a publishing house editor who gets way in over his head working on a project on books on the occult. He and his friends keep finiding more and more wild connections between elements that at first seem unrelated, but when put together form a wild web. (If you read it, don't get bogged down in the hundreds of names, most aren't that important) Because the characters are willing to form connections between things that aren't really proveable, their world turns into a madhouse of hidden meanings and sinister powers. Sound familiar? Our dear Professor of Theobiology lives in just such a world.
For a more in depth (but not too dry) look at how and why connections between ideas should (and shouldn't) be made, look at Eco's essay "Interpretation and Overinterpretation" (A little more at this link). Basically, Eco is reacting to the excesses that can take place in the academic world.
I believe that he is reacting to the extremes of some of the academic movements that arose or became more prominent starting in the late Sixties, such as Deconstructionism, Feminism and Post-Colonialism (as examples). At their best, these movements have revealed important limitations in our ability to present purely rational arguments (Deconstructionism)or the societal and interpersonal structures that harm women (Feminism). But when stupid and lazy people jump on these bandwagons, the basic (often very difficult) ideas get thrown around slopily and wild connections are made, where no such connections exist.
This brings us back to our Professor of Theobiology. In "The Name of the Rose", Eco used the conflict between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance to illustrate the distinction between two different modes of thought. The medieval monks were trapped in their way of thinking - full of hidden meanings and sinister connections. In contrast, the protagonist used reason and science to deal with the problems at hand (a series of murders).
All in all, it's rather frightening that here in the 21st century we're still trying to deal with the Taliban and our Professor of Theobiology.
Let's be frank here - The author of the site actually believes this stuff. In case anyone is wondering what was being taught in the Madrasas that led to the Taliban - well, here it is.
Real world noise cancelation, particularly in large areas is really tricky. Part of my architecture practice is designing veterinary clinics, which have all sorts of noise problems. The biggest problem is that you don't want to hear the sounds Spot makes during some necessary proceedures when you are out in the waiting room. I've spent a lot of time explaining why white noise generators won't work for this to my boss. He reads 'noise maksing' and 'noise cancelation' in an ad and takes it at face value.
White noise systems basically use a psychoacoustic trick to make conversations less distracting: By lowering the signal to noise ratio, you brain is less likely to pick up on the conversation in the next cube, and you feel less distracted. Noise cancelation is typically only available in very small spaces: like inside headphones. The point to the article is that for a lot of money, you can make the very small space somewhat larger.
When you read the article, it's clear that they are only talking about noise suppression in quite small areas. Great for my girlfriend sitting on the couch studying (currently distracted by her neighbors in the next apartment who can't interact with their children other than by screaming). But this won't help me when trying to quiet a whole waiting room. Basically we need to build exam rooms like music practice rooms - (physically) heavy walls with few penetrations.
even if it could help unlock what exactly drove the guy to end his life.
I Am Not A Psychiatrist, but....
Overwhelmingly suicide is the result of mental illness and/or substance use. (More than half of all suicides in the US are alchohol related). Think about it, if a guy has a heart attack while shovling snow off the driveway, learning more about the snow crystals doesn't tell you about his heart attack. He had heart disease, and the exertion of shoveling caused one of several bad things to happen inside is heart. Mental illness is a disease state - suicidiality is a symptom of the disease.
One might want engage in a bunch of Freudian analysis of this guy's game play, but, odds are, the levels of seritonin activity in his brain were out of whack. Did Everquest create stress in this guy's life that incresed the intensity of his suicidiality? (this would be the 'shoveling' int the heart attack metaphor) - maybe. But real life is generally a hell of a lot more stressful.
If the target market is the people who listen to top 40 radio, then they only need about 50 active songs at a time - after all normal commercial radio programs those 50 songs and rotates the crap out of them. The corporation that owns the radio station says you only need to hear 50 songs, that's all you need to hear. The corporation that owns the music says you only need to hear 200 songs, then that's all you need to hear.
It reminds me of a commercial from the mid 80s. It was supposed to be a Soviet fashon show - a stocky older woman walked up and down a catwalk wearing the same overalls while a Russian-accented announcer said "Is Eveningwear", "Is Swim Wear" and so on. The point was that in the "Free World" we have many choices, while in the "Communist World" you get what the oligarchy offers you. So we beat the awful Communists, now the corporate oligarchy offers us a choice of 40 movies and 200 songs. Hurray! Victory!
No, they won't actually make Holy Chips(TM). Rather they will get their followers to believe that Holy Chips(TM) exist and are superior and sue people who point out that Holy Chips(TM) don't actually exist.
Also, RAMBUS employees will have to sign billion year contracts and instead of being paid, will have to pay RAMBUtology for the opportunity to work.
Slashdot Mirror
We're a sorry bunch, but for a site to get /.ed at roughly midnight on a Friday night is pretty sad!
I mean, I'm stuck at home running an animation rendering, so, um, I have an excuse. But what about the rest of you!
It's simple, enact this and we'll all be forging as much as possible. It wouldn't be complete, but it would be a start.
As an architect (technically, I've completed the IDP and I'll be taking the ARE very soon) I have to say that I have a different perspective. The role of an architect is not to add doodads. There are several perspectives, but fundamentally an architect adds value to your project, not to mention being legally required in many areas for a varitey of reasons - health, safety and public welfare being high on the list. Let me say at the outset that there are goofball architects, just as there are quack doctors and MBAs who have zero business sense. If your goal is to get a conventional house for the lowest possible dollars per square foot, there are architects who can help you. There are also archtiects who would hinder you. Take the book's point, shop around - talk to people - look at your options. For your first experience with building a house, a knowledgeable architect can guide you through the legal and financial minefield and hopefully get a more beautiful end result. The world is full of horror stories of financing scams, vanishing subcontractors, code problems that shut projects down, structural 'omissions' and on and on. Designing a good house takes a fair amount of skill. Most smart people can get a few of the 'balls in the air.' You can develop a decent floor plan, think through the basic cost implications of what goes where and have a sense of how it's going to work in three dimensions. This is usually enough to get someting built, but is the result 'good' or 'great'? Someone with experience designing buildings thoughfully (a.k.a. a good architect) will add value, both qualitatively and functionally. A cynic would say that the market for housing in America has pretty low standards for quality of materials and design. But this is YOUR house we're talking about - do you want the Windows 3.1 of houses? A structural engineer can also be an important part of the team. While many architects can do the structural engineering part of the design process, particularly for conventional houses, structural engineers can't do a lot of very important parts of the design process. SEs have stacks of code books and manuals that deal with their parts of building design, which are very important, but don't have a lot to do with the simple construction of houses. Their field of expertise doesn't cover things like the codes that relate to your family not burning to death in a fire. Another issue is 'plan stamping'. In areas where an archictect is required by law you may be tempted to try to find a scumbag to apply her seal to some pre-drawn plans. This is a bad idea. If you need the 'what's in it for me' reason try massive dollar costs. 'Stamped plans' are likely to have problems with local codes which can cost you tens of thousands of dollars in fines and rip-and-replace costs. I can fudge together shell scripts or bits of C++, but am I a programmer? No. Could I tackle a moderately complicated programming task myself? Maybe, but it would a nasty mess, inefficient, buggy and take a long time. I don't have that expertise even if I know a fair amount about how computers work and know what I like in user interfaces. Don't see architects as an enemy or hinderance. Look for one who wants to work with you in your way for your project and take advantage of her ideas and experience.
Couldn't the bulbs just have a built in grounded wire mesh? (OK, so standard lamp sockets aren't grounded - hmmm)
The TV ads on the site are aimed at the edges of the WinTel user base, not at it's core. While I'm not happy about that at a 'gut' level, I think it does make sense. At first I wanted to see a suburban/small town shmoe dressed in Wallmart fashion with a stock car racing cap because that's the core of mass market home purchasing. Instead it's a bunch of people (like me) who wear black (other than to funerals) and roughly half of them are writers. But it dawned on me that they are at the edge between the Mac/Windows world, and just ended up on the wrong side for whatever reason. The are the next 5% who can most easily be brought over. It does require a bit of technical sophistication to switch over (e.g. you might need to know what an ethernet crossover cable is to move your old files over if you don't have access to a network). Thus, there's a big hump to get over for a big part of the market. Once wireless networking is stock, this might become easier. Imagine that part of the out-of-the-box wizard asks you if you want to move files over from the PC that it found (wirelessly) in the same room. They're going after SOHO users because there's a lot less 'inertia' to deal with - "You need a new computer every 2 to 5 years, make it a Mac this time. It's easy. Give it a try." They don't mention it in the ads, but MSOffice is a big part of why this will work for a lot people. "You word process, you prepare presentations, you e-mail and web surf. A Mac works better for these things." For Wall Street a few percent shift would be a big thing and would strengthen the perception of Apple, so it seems like the place to start is with the fence sitters.
My PB was stolen a while ago, so this has been on my mind recently. How sophisticated are the people who fence stolen mac laptops. I'm sure that there's a sophisticated network for turning around stolen PCs, but Macs are a bit more obscure. In my case, the stupid theives took the laptop, but not the $80 power cable. I'm sure that the battery ran down in a few days in sleep mode, so to show that it's working to sell it or wipe the drive with a bootable CD would require a specific power cord. Are there 'resale channels' with those kinds of resources? Back to the topic, an OF password would help to some degree by preventing simply booting off a CD. Are there Mac specific fences who would know how to get around that? It's been a couple of months since the theft, and I still suspect that I may get a call one day: "Uh, I, uh, found a laptop that has your name on the screen and asks for a password...." I can always hope, can't I?
Today, May 14, 2014 A support column of the massive bridge connecting the island of Sicily to the Italian mainland collapsed early this morning. While counts of the missing or dead are not yet in, speculation is already swirling as to the cause of the failure. Since the sun rose this morning, video from helecopters in the area clearly show that the concrete in the broken column is a veritable Swiss cheese of holes from the bodies of Mafiosi that were dumped into the concrete while the bridge was under construction...
Frankly, why care? You chose Win98 knowing that it is insecure and buggy. MacOS users get little sympathy when they ask for kindness because of limited availability of apps caused (supposedly) by their small market share. If you can afford to pay M$FT, you can afford to deal with this problem. Actually, maybe you should get yourself a Mac! Now with ROOT!
The Doctor's letter is more than impressive. His point by point rebuttal of Microsoft's falacies was both thorough and consise. He clearly called out the internal contradictions that are so common in Microsoft's arguments. I was stunned by how well he made his points. For anyone who hasn't read it, regardless of your position on the issue, you should.
While this AC uses florid, if correct, English, (s)he speaks as though (s)he is Peruvian. Is this correct? Perhaps AC hasn't read the Congressman's letter? If AC is referring to the same Dr. Villanueva, would AC like to cite specifics, and perhaps links to news stories that explain his/her seemingly bizzare comments? Who, specifically, are the persons of "impeccable character" who were "smear[ed]" by his comments? I missed the "invectives," and the "gnosticism." Is it a "conflation of reckless psychics" to say that a nation state should not trust a 'black box' system for national security? Particularly if the 'black box' is produced by a massive, foreign corporation with a track record of criminal behavior and negligence with regards to security? Perhaps AC would like to explain the reference to "the most vulnerable in our society"? I think that it is far more likely that AC is an employee or stockholder of MS than Michael Moore.
At some point in the future, space flight may be so regular and under-control that anyone can be strapped in and shot "like spam in a can" into space. For the time being there are some strict criteria for who should be put inot 'the can' and sent up, and lots of cash isn't one of them.
Let me state the obvious - Apple needs to release G5 based systems soon, or it will be in deep do do. It needs to be cutting edge - DDR266 ram! Dual processors well over 1GHz! Oh wait, I meant "cutting edge as of a year ago". It should be said, though, that the dual G4/1GHz system they tested did OK considering the system and processor speeds. It has me drooling for one of those Dual 1.6GHz G5 system! MacWorld NY will tell...
Mathematica was, in large part, developed at UofIL (Urbana-Champaign) and I was one of the guinea pigs for using it to teach Calculus. (It's worth pointing out that some guy named Mark Anderson, or something, who lived down the hall from me in Hopkins residence hall was writing some linking-pictures-over-the-internet program called Mosaic, or someting, at the same time) ;^)
Anyway, anyone who took the intro to Chemistry class at Urbana-Champaign (including my dad) spent a lot of time staring at the 8ft x 20ft (2.4m x 6.0m) periodic table in the big Chem building lecture hall. Well, some idiot decided to pull it off the wall and throw it out! Luckily, my housemates rescued it and we screwed it to the wall of our house over the stairs that led up to the second floor. It is/was at the northeast corner of California and Busey in Urbana.
How about the return of AutoCAD? My consistant gripe has also been for 3DStudio, but with Maya's price cut I would be happy if AutoCAD MAC had 3d stair and window-in-wall tools like 3DSViz and good Maya support - oh, wait, Maya competes with 3DS - rats. OK, how about Architecure tools for Maya - two way AutoCAD import/export, 3D stair layout, various windows and doors in walls - oh, yeah, walls.
Given how National Public Radio reported this story (failed to question the hype), I can't imagine how wacky General Electric (defense contractor) news (NBC) will report on it. My boss is usually a good hype barometer, I'll see if he's sucked in by it.
It's not that sci-fi fans would be supporting NASA, I'm sure his point is that only this tax would go to funding NASA. The next step is that given that all this taxable sci-fi stuff is produced by small to large businesses, to which Republicans are beholden^H^H^H^H^H attentive, they would all be loopholed out of the tax, leaving no money for NASA. Besides and Professor of Theobiology can tell you that sci-fi fans are all atheists and communists, anyway!
It's Real, so the 'video quality' sucks, but it's a really nicely done piece - well worth tracking down a Win or Mac box to see. As you see the builder creeping to the top of the hill on his little 'car' I was totally psyched to see the drop! While they tease you for a while, you do get to see the loop in action - it's real!
Umberto Eco (best know for his novel "The Name of the Rose") is a professor of semiotics. (Semiotics could be defined as the study of symbol systems and their interpretation, or a better definition). "Symbol systems and interpretation" - sound familiar? Our dear Professor of Theobiology is all about finding 'hidden meanings' and 'concealed connections'! Pokemon=evolution! chmod+base 8=satan! Steve Jobs' reality distortion field "mind control"(hmm, maybe he has a point on that last one... ;^) )
In his novel "Foucault's Pendulum" he tells the story of a publishing house editor who gets way in over his head working on a project on books on the occult. He and his friends keep finiding more and more wild connections between elements that at first seem unrelated, but when put together form a wild web. (If you read it, don't get bogged down in the hundreds of names, most aren't that important) Because the characters are willing to form connections between things that aren't really proveable, their world turns into a madhouse of hidden meanings and sinister powers. Sound familiar? Our dear Professor of Theobiology lives in just such a world.
For a more in depth (but not too dry) look at how and why connections between ideas should (and shouldn't) be made, look at Eco's essay "Interpretation and Overinterpretation" (A little more at this link). Basically, Eco is reacting to the excesses that can take place in the academic world.
I believe that he is reacting to the extremes of some of the academic movements that arose or became more prominent starting in the late Sixties, such as Deconstructionism, Feminism and Post-Colonialism (as examples). At their best, these movements have revealed important limitations in our ability to present purely rational arguments (Deconstructionism)or the societal and interpersonal structures that harm women (Feminism). But when stupid and lazy people jump on these bandwagons, the basic (often very difficult) ideas get thrown around slopily and wild connections are made, where no such connections exist.This brings us back to our Professor of Theobiology. In "The Name of the Rose", Eco used the conflict between the Dark Ages and the Renaissance to illustrate the distinction between two different modes of thought. The medieval monks were trapped in their way of thinking - full of hidden meanings and sinister connections. In contrast, the protagonist used reason and science to deal with the problems at hand (a series of murders).
All in all, it's rather frightening that here in the 21st century we're still trying to deal with the Taliban and our Professor of Theobiology.
Let's be frank here - The author of the site actually believes this stuff. In case anyone is wondering what was being taught in the Madrasas that led to the Taliban - well, here it is.
Real world noise cancelation, particularly in large areas is really tricky. Part of my architecture practice is designing veterinary clinics, which have all sorts of noise problems. The biggest problem is that you don't want to hear the sounds Spot makes during some necessary proceedures when you are out in the waiting room. I've spent a lot of time explaining why white noise generators won't work for this to my boss. He reads 'noise maksing' and 'noise cancelation' in an ad and takes it at face value.
White noise systems basically use a psychoacoustic trick to make conversations less distracting: By lowering the signal to noise ratio, you brain is less likely to pick up on the conversation in the next cube, and you feel less distracted. Noise cancelation is typically only available in very small spaces: like inside headphones. The point to the article is that for a lot of money, you can make the very small space somewhat larger.
When you read the article, it's clear that they are only talking about noise suppression in quite small areas. Great for my girlfriend sitting on the couch studying (currently distracted by her neighbors in the next apartment who can't interact with their children other than by screaming). But this won't help me when trying to quiet a whole waiting room. Basically we need to build exam rooms like music practice rooms - (physically) heavy walls with few penetrations.
oh, sorry....
even if it could help unlock what exactly drove the guy to end his life.
I Am Not A Psychiatrist, but....
Overwhelmingly suicide is the result of mental illness and/or substance use. (More than half of all suicides in the US are alchohol related). Think about it, if a guy has a heart attack while shovling snow off the driveway, learning more about the snow crystals doesn't tell you about his heart attack. He had heart disease, and the exertion of shoveling caused one of several bad things to happen inside is heart. Mental illness is a disease state - suicidiality is a symptom of the disease.
One might want engage in a bunch of Freudian analysis of this guy's game play, but, odds are, the levels of seritonin activity in his brain were out of whack. Did Everquest create stress in this guy's life that incresed the intensity of his suicidiality? (this would be the 'shoveling' int the heart attack metaphor) - maybe. But real life is generally a hell of a lot more stressful.
If the target market is the people who listen to top 40 radio, then they only need about 50 active songs at a time - after all normal commercial radio programs those 50 songs and rotates the crap out of them. The corporation that owns the radio station says you only need to hear 50 songs, that's all you need to hear. The corporation that owns the music says you only need to hear 200 songs, then that's all you need to hear.
It reminds me of a commercial from the mid 80s. It was supposed to be a Soviet fashon show - a stocky older woman walked up and down a catwalk wearing the same overalls while a Russian-accented announcer said "Is Eveningwear", "Is Swim Wear" and so on. The point was that in the "Free World" we have many choices, while in the "Communist World" you get what the oligarchy offers you. So we beat the awful Communists, now the corporate oligarchy offers us a choice of 40 movies and 200 songs. Hurray! Victory!
No, they won't actually make Holy Chips(TM). Rather they will get their followers to believe that Holy Chips(TM) exist and are superior and sue people who point out that Holy Chips(TM) don't actually exist.
Also, RAMBUS employees will have to sign billion year contracts and instead of being paid, will have to pay RAMBUtology for the opportunity to work.
Given that I can't sync my Clie via USB because of the lack of 'drivers' for OS X, who cares wether bluetooth is involved - how did Jobs do it?
Any clue what's up?