Basically, the overall resistance to replacing QWERTY is down to whether there is a tangible benefit to be had to compensate for the pain of transition. And transition to anything different *will* be painful because it necessarily requires everyone to retrain on the new layout.
Unless what you transition to is something you already know, like handwriting. But that's a lot slower than touch typing.
I still liked Graffiti 1, the original input method on Palm PDAs. Most of all because you could do it without watching - taking notes under the table was not difficult at all. It wasn't all that speedy, but it was reliable and easy to learn for anyone who could write block letters. Graffiti 2, after the lawsuit by Xerox, not so much. You no longer had all the letters as single-stroke, and couldn't move the stylus out of the designated area without it causing problem, which made writing without looking much harder.
In other words, you have no idea what a joyride is.
The whole point being that there is no destination. You go where the road and whim takes you. Discover new places you didn't know about. Enjoy the freedom of not having to go to any particular place, at any particular schedule. Make impromptu decisions when hitting crossroads. Stop at a kid's lemonade stand or ice cream store you didn't know existed. Or where there turns out to be a good view. Or not stop at all, just drive.
There are two types of people in this world. When someone says "Want to go for a ride?", I would say "Sure!", and you would say "Where to?". And never be asked again.
40,000 people died last year in the US alone from human driven vehicles and I'm pretty sure some of them and their loved ones might prefer a different outcome if we had the technology. If we replace the human drivers with computers and drop that number to a smaller number (maybe even zero) then you are going to have a VERY hard time arguing that huge body count is a worthwhile price to pay.
40,000 is a small number compared to number of drivers, passengers and miles driven. Heck, it's less than the number of suicides in a year (and even includes a number of suicides that weren't classified as such).
And if the end justifying the means is your argument, why not apply a technological solution to bigger problems too?
Deaths in the US in 2016: Heart disease: 635,260 Cancer: 598,038 Stroke: 142,142 Diabetes: 80,058
Most of these were likely preventable. Self-administering food appears to be incredibly dangerous. Replacing the human choice of what and how much to eat with expert systems would save a hell of a lot of lives!
Why? Human drivers are demonstrably dangerous and the body count to date heavily favors the computers as the likely safer option.
So? Driving is a calculated risk, where people see the benefits as outweighing the risks. When reducing risks causes the benefits to go down, this changes the equation. If people really were interested in safety above everything else, no one would ever buy sporty cars or drive above 35 mph.
A small risk of accidents and fatalities is an acceptable price for the freedom of driving, as it was for the freedom of riding for those before us. Reducing the risk by taking away the freedom is just not acceptable for many of us.
You can live in a padded room if you like, but don't impose it on others.
Maybe this information should be shared with the Google people. There's a chance they've never considered any of these ideas.
That they have considered it does not imply that they give a fuck. If the goal is to sell to the majority who will buy a product, how it will affect minorities is not going to be a showstopper. It is, unfortunately, up to the government to ensure that the interests of those who will be negatively affected are protected and that manufacturers address issues.
In other words, until a senator gets severely delayed or his dog gets run over by by a driverless car, nothing will happen. Until then, the promises of a reduction in accidents will be enough to let it forge forwards unchecked.
'd like to see them driving in NYC, Boston, Chicago, New Jersey (even humans can't figure this one out), etc.
Please add things like - Twisty mountain passes during winter, with loaded trailers barrelling down doing the standard 9 mph above speed limit. - Deserts with tumbleweed. - Forests with deer crossings. - Areas with bikers who like to ride abreast.
I have multiple 1500VA UPSes, as well as a gasoline generator for longer outages. That didn't do much good for the cable internet being down, but because I also have bridged DSL over copper, I still had internet.
And the phone service doesn't even require that. If you have an old laptop with a built-in modem (or a modem that doesn't require external power) you can still do dial-up in worst case, to let people know you're still alive.
Theoretically, there could also be circular polarization like in some 3D movie systems, but my guess is that this is cost prohibitive compared to parallel linear polarization. If using circular/chiral polarization, the blocking glasses would work regardless of how you tilt your head, but would not work at all on reflections of a screen. It would make a house of mirrors interesting...
I had a cell phone number back in the 90s, but I have cut the wireless. Now I am corded only. This was a great liberation. I can no longer be reached at any time, anywhere. No texts, send me an e-mail, to be read at my convenience, not yours. I have a phone that still works through power outages (because power to the landline system is supplied through the phone wires), including DSL still working through power outages. This saved me when we had a ten day power outage here, and all cell phone towers were down. Neighbours came over to make phone calls, and asked whether they could send some e-mails through my WiFi, because their cable and fibre connections were down, down, deeper than down.
Don't be ridiculous. A nation of high IQ white people will absolutely wipe the floor with a nation of black dummies.
See, the problem with that theory is that it's untestable, as it requires a nation of high IQ white people. Not a nation of people who ride obesity scooters at Wal-Mart and complain that chip bags and soda bottles are hard to open.
Let me guess, you're black.
Blond, blue-eyed, and aware that I'm no better than other groups. Any genetic advantages I have are coupled with similar genetic disadvantages, and only work in my favour for a specific environment[*] that no longer is relevant in the modern world.
[*]: Cold climate low light environment where sugars are hard to come by, and where RNA viruses are more of a threat than bacteria.
You are right. It is because they cannot breed that they are different species, not the other way around.
No, that does not follow. There are plenty of examples of individuals that cannot breed with each other but are considered the same species. Animals that reproduce through parthenogenesis are an obvious example, as they don't have sexual reproduction, but an Irish Wolfhound and a Chihuahua are considered the same species, yet cannot breed (while coyotes and wolves are considered different species, but can).
Again, "species" is a concept we apply to "similar" forms of life, without having a firm definition or boundaries. It's for our convenience, because most humans are exceptionally bad at analogue thinking, much preferring everything to fall neatly into a small number of boxes. So we make up boxes, like "blue" or "fox" or "nut", and then later try to retrofit rules that explain the choices we made. But in the case of "species", no such rule stand up to even simple tests, and we continue to name species through fiat.
"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." -- Humpty Dumpty, Lewis Carroll
That's not my definition. My definition of species is that it's an always misleading term we humans use to make it easier for ourselves to describe what we see. We can say "horse" and "dog" and expect others to understand. We can even say "fox" about both a grey fox and a red fox, and get people to understand, even though a grey fox is more closely related to a terrier than it is to red foxes.
Your kind of definition would have blacks as a separate species.
No, your assumption about what my definition is is incorrect. Again, my definition is that "species" is a misleading term that we use to make it easier for ourselves, and doesn't reflect how evolution works.
So, what is your definition of species? I have yet to hear any definition that is based on logic and doesn't break down when faced with gradual differences and common ancestries, but if you have one that is better than just fiat, I'd love to hear it.
Then try to breed a walrus and a lioness and see what happens.
That they cannot breed is not because they are different species, but because the genetic drift from a common ancestor has made them genetically incompatible.
There existed an animal X that was the common ancestor to both the walrus and the lioness. This is indisputable. You would not say that this ancestor is the same species as either a walrus or a lioness. On the walrus line, there is an unbroken line of descendants from X until we reach what we call a walrus. On this line, at what point was "walrus" species classification obtained? And similarly on the lioness line.
If you have three animal populations on an island, A, B and C, and A can breed with B and B can breed with C, but A cannot breed with C, how do you delineate the species?
The "ability to breed" criterion for species can only work if you can exactly define one individual archetype for that species, and define the species as all who can breed with that one particular individual. Whether they can breed with each other is then irrelevant. In the above ABC example, if one of the Bs were defined as an archetype for species B, then all of the island would be one species. If one of the As were defined as an archetype, then all As and Bs would be the same species, but C would not. And, in fact, C could not be its own species either, because that would make the Bs part of two species.
In reality, there are only sliding degrees of differences, and species is a construct that makes it easier for us humans to classify, which we are wont to. But you can trace your lineage up to one of your ancestors without breaking a species line, and then down again to a Pan Troglodytes cousin, again without breaking a species line.
Speciation results from reproductive isolation. If modern humans could interbreed with Neanderthals, we are by definition the same species.
This definition is faulty, which is easily proven. In Western USA, there's a U shaped valley where lizards live. The ones at one tip of the U can interbreed with those close to it, and those again can interbreed with those close to it, all along the U shape until you get to the other end. But those at the two tips of the U cannot interbreed. Where, exactly, do you put the species boundaries? There are also birds where the same property can be seen - one bird can breed with those east of it, who in turn can breed with those east of it, and so on, across the globe, until at the starting point you have two very different birds that are called different species. Where do you place the boundary markers?
No, not necessarily. There is always a trade-off, and some of them are that the computing power on top of your shoulders take up space, weight, has a very high energy need, and increase the risk of death during birth. Only when the advantages outweigh the disadvantages to the point of providing more viable offspring will evolution select for a trait, including intelligence.
It seems inevitable that there have been many cases of a higher intellect being selected against, including stillbirths, and little clever Al not running as fast from the wolf as his stupid brother Ed, and thus Ed's genes were the ones we inherited.
Another example is the sitting president who by definition has obtained superiority despite not exactly being seen as a higher intellect. He also has 5 known children and 9 grandchildren so far, which is far more than average. In his case, a reasonable assumption is that power is superior to intellect for the propagation of this particular gene mix in this particular environment.
Slashdot Mirror
Basically, the overall resistance to replacing QWERTY is down to whether there is a tangible benefit to be had to compensate for the pain of transition. And transition to anything different *will* be painful because it necessarily requires everyone to retrain on the new layout.
Unless what you transition to is something you already know, like handwriting. But that's a lot slower than touch typing.
I still liked Graffiti 1, the original input method on Palm PDAs. Most of all because you could do it without watching - taking notes under the table was not difficult at all. It wasn't all that speedy, but it was reliable and easy to learn for anyone who could write block letters. Graffiti 2, after the lawsuit by Xerox, not so much. You no longer had all the letters as single-stroke, and couldn't move the stylus out of the designated area without it causing problem, which made writing without looking much harder.
They might even make cars that take directions from you, turn-by-turn.
Oh, they do that. The technology is called a steering wheel.
the US auto fatality rate is 1.5 per 100 million miles. Come back and let us know how things are when you get to a billion miles.
It's even worse than that. You need to compare with the US auto fatality rate for cars not going faster than 35 mph.
And subtract the fatalities that wasn't due to driving, like someone having a heart attack or stroke while being in a car, or a bridge collapsing.
19th century: Wagons and trains. No automobiles. No highways. No car joyrides.
But certainly a horse culture that included riding for the joy of it.
In other words, you have no idea what a joyride is.
The whole point being that there is no destination.
You go where the road and whim takes you. Discover new places you didn't know about. Enjoy the freedom of not having to go to any particular place, at any particular schedule. Make impromptu decisions when hitting crossroads. Stop at a kid's lemonade stand or ice cream store you didn't know existed. Or where there turns out to be a good view. Or not stop at all, just drive.
There are two types of people in this world. When someone says "Want to go for a ride?", I would say "Sure!", and you would say "Where to?". And never be asked again.
40,000 people died last year in the US alone from human driven vehicles and I'm pretty sure some of them and their loved ones might prefer a different outcome if we had the technology. If we replace the human drivers with computers and drop that number to a smaller number (maybe even zero) then you are going to have a VERY hard time arguing that huge body count is a worthwhile price to pay.
40,000 is a small number compared to number of drivers, passengers and miles driven. Heck, it's less than the number of suicides in a year (and even includes a number of suicides that weren't classified as such).
And if the end justifying the means is your argument, why not apply a technological solution to bigger problems too?
Deaths in the US in 2016:
Heart disease: 635,260
Cancer: 598,038
Stroke: 142,142
Diabetes: 80,058
Most of these were likely preventable. Self-administering food appears to be incredibly dangerous. Replacing the human choice of what and how much to eat with expert systems would save a hell of a lot of lives!
First off your argument that autonomous cars somehow reduce your freedom is nonsense.
How do you go on a joyride in an autonomous car?
The freedom to take your car (or motorbike or horse) "out there" is a part of American life. If you never enjoy that, I feel truly sorry for you.
A self driving car wouldn't get fooled by the sign either. It has a map with all the speed limits.
And everyone with a car navigation system all know that the maps are always going to be completely accurate and should be trusted...
Why? Human drivers are demonstrably dangerous and the body count to date heavily favors the computers as the likely safer option.
So? Driving is a calculated risk, where people see the benefits as outweighing the risks. When reducing risks causes the benefits to go down, this changes the equation.
If people really were interested in safety above everything else, no one would ever buy sporty cars or drive above 35 mph.
A small risk of accidents and fatalities is an acceptable price for the freedom of driving, as it was for the freedom of riding for those before us. Reducing the risk by taking away the freedom is just not acceptable for many of us.
You can live in a padded room if you like, but don't impose it on others.
Maybe this information should be shared with the Google people. There's a chance they've never considered any of these ideas.
That they have considered it does not imply that they give a fuck.
If the goal is to sell to the majority who will buy a product, how it will affect minorities is not going to be a showstopper. It is, unfortunately, up to the government to ensure that the interests of those who will be negatively affected are protected and that manufacturers address issues.
In other words, until a senator gets severely delayed or his dog gets run over by by a driverless car, nothing will happen. Until then, the promises of a reduction in accidents will be enough to let it forge forwards unchecked.
'd like to see them driving in NYC, Boston, Chicago, New Jersey (even humans can't figure this one out), etc.
Please add things like
- Twisty mountain passes during winter, with loaded trailers barrelling down doing the standard 9 mph above speed limit.
- Deserts with tumbleweed.
- Forests with deer crossings.
- Areas with bikers who like to ride abreast.
What power source were you using for your router?
I have multiple 1500VA UPSes, as well as a gasoline generator for longer outages. That didn't do much good for the cable internet being down, but because I also have bridged DSL over copper, I still had internet.
And the phone service doesn't even require that. If you have an old laptop with a built-in modem (or a modem that doesn't require external power) you can still do dial-up in worst case, to let people know you're still alive.
Theoretically, there could also be circular polarization like in some 3D movie systems, but my guess is that this is cost prohibitive compared to parallel linear polarization. If using circular/chiral polarization, the blocking glasses would work regardless of how you tilt your head, but would not work at all on reflections of a screen. It would make a house of mirrors interesting...
In his 30 years of being "a cybersecurity professional" he never learned that caller ID is trivially faked?
Anyone using "cyber" as part of their description are fake themselves.
So is fraud; making things illegal won't stop criminals.
Actually, it will, in that you can arrest, jail, prosecute and imprison them once it's illegal, but if it's legal, they can continue at will.
That's racist. You're telling us you wouldn't take a call from Sitting Bull?
He died in 1890, still waiting for a dialtone. He actually had a candlestick phone, but it had not yet been connected.
I had a cell phone number back in the 90s, but I have cut the wireless. Now I am corded only.
This was a great liberation. I can no longer be reached at any time, anywhere. No texts, send me an e-mail, to be read at my convenience, not yours. I have a phone that still works through power outages (because power to the landline system is supplied through the phone wires), including DSL still working through power outages. This saved me when we had a ten day power outage here, and all cell phone towers were down. Neighbours came over to make phone calls, and asked whether they could send some e-mails through my WiFi, because their cable and fibre connections were down, down, deeper than down.
19 out of 20 telephone calls who are not friends and family are scams
Really? Are you sure it's not 18 out of 19?
Don't be ridiculous. A nation of high IQ white people will absolutely wipe the floor with a nation of black dummies.
See, the problem with that theory is that it's untestable, as it requires a nation of high IQ white people. Not a nation of people who ride obesity scooters at Wal-Mart and complain that chip bags and soda bottles are hard to open.
Let me guess, you're black.
Blond, blue-eyed, and aware that I'm no better than other groups. Any genetic advantages I have are coupled with similar genetic disadvantages, and only work in my favour for a specific environment[*] that no longer is relevant in the modern world.
[*]: Cold climate low light environment where sugars are hard to come by, and where RNA viruses are more of a threat than bacteria.
If this is right then this watch wouldn't detect someone falling off a roof and getting impaled on fence.
Clearly, studies are needed.
You are right. It is because they cannot breed that they are different species, not the other way around.
No, that does not follow. There are plenty of examples of individuals that cannot breed with each other but are considered the same species. Animals that reproduce through parthenogenesis are an obvious example, as they don't have sexual reproduction, but an Irish Wolfhound and a Chihuahua are considered the same species, yet cannot breed (while coyotes and wolves are considered different species, but can).
Again, "species" is a concept we apply to "similar" forms of life, without having a firm definition or boundaries. It's for our convenience, because most humans are exceptionally bad at analogue thinking, much preferring everything to fall neatly into a small number of boxes. So we make up boxes, like "blue" or "fox" or "nut", and then later try to retrofit rules that explain the choices we made. But in the case of "species", no such rule stand up to even simple tests, and we continue to name species through fiat.
"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
-- Humpty Dumpty, Lewis Carroll
That's not my definition. My definition of species is that it's an always misleading term we humans use to make it easier for ourselves to describe what we see. We can say "horse" and "dog" and expect others to understand. We can even say "fox" about both a grey fox and a red fox, and get people to understand, even though a grey fox is more closely related to a terrier than it is to red foxes.
Your kind of definition would have blacks as a separate species.
No, your assumption about what my definition is is incorrect. Again, my definition is that "species" is a misleading term that we use to make it easier for ourselves, and doesn't reflect how evolution works.
So, what is your definition of species? I have yet to hear any definition that is based on logic and doesn't break down when faced with gradual differences and common ancestries, but if you have one that is better than just fiat, I'd love to hear it.
Then try to breed a walrus and a lioness and see what happens.
That they cannot breed is not because they are different species, but because the genetic drift from a common ancestor has made them genetically incompatible.
There existed an animal X that was the common ancestor to both the walrus and the lioness. This is indisputable. You would not say that this ancestor is the same species as either a walrus or a lioness. On the walrus line, there is an unbroken line of descendants from X until we reach what we call a walrus. On this line, at what point was "walrus" species classification obtained? And similarly on the lioness line.
If you have three animal populations on an island, A, B and C, and A can breed with B and B can breed with C, but A cannot breed with C, how do you delineate the species?
The "ability to breed" criterion for species can only work if you can exactly define one individual archetype for that species, and define the species as all who can breed with that one particular individual. Whether they can breed with each other is then irrelevant.
In the above ABC example, if one of the Bs were defined as an archetype for species B, then all of the island would be one species. If one of the As were defined as an archetype, then all As and Bs would be the same species, but C would not. And, in fact, C could not be its own species either, because that would make the Bs part of two species.
In reality, there are only sliding degrees of differences, and species is a construct that makes it easier for us humans to classify, which we are wont to. But you can trace your lineage up to one of your ancestors without breaking a species line, and then down again to a Pan Troglodytes cousin, again without breaking a species line.
Speciation results from reproductive isolation. If modern humans could interbreed with Neanderthals, we are by definition the same species.
This definition is faulty, which is easily proven.
In Western USA, there's a U shaped valley where lizards live. The ones at one tip of the U can interbreed with those close to it, and those again can interbreed with those close to it, all along the U shape until you get to the other end. But those at the two tips of the U cannot interbreed. Where, exactly, do you put the species boundaries?
There are also birds where the same property can be seen - one bird can breed with those east of it, who in turn can breed with those east of it, and so on, across the globe, until at the starting point you have two very different birds that are called different species. Where do you place the boundary markers?
Higher intellect is a superiority.
No, not necessarily. There is always a trade-off, and some of them are that the computing power on top of your shoulders take up space, weight, has a very high energy need, and increase the risk of death during birth.
Only when the advantages outweigh the disadvantages to the point of providing more viable offspring will evolution select for a trait, including intelligence.
It seems inevitable that there have been many cases of a higher intellect being selected against, including stillbirths, and little clever Al not running as fast from the wolf as his stupid brother Ed, and thus Ed's genes were the ones we inherited.
Another example is the sitting president who by definition has obtained superiority despite not exactly being seen as a higher intellect. He also has 5 known children and 9 grandchildren so far, which is far more than average. In his case, a reasonable assumption is that power is superior to intellect for the propagation of this particular gene mix in this particular environment.