Mod parent up. I helped create a tag-based document retrieval system for my former employer using SharePoint. It actually worked quite well.
Use the right tool for the job. It's got a nice interface (that's also very familiar-looking to most users), scales well, and integrates well with MS Office, which (like it or not) is used by 99.99% of the corporate world. It also handles non-office files just fine.
That's not to say that Unix-based solutions don't have their place. During the migration, I actually employed a series of shell/python scripts to assist with several of the more mundane aspects of the process. These probably saved us a couple thousand man-hours that would have otherwise been spent categorizing the files.
I was really looking forward to a file system that never needed to be upgraded...
ZFS might be the holy grail of filesystems in terms of capacity, flexibility, and data integrity, which have traditionally been the limiting factors for filesystems. However, it's not particularly fast, and I'm sure that we'll come up with better ways to store data in the future.
If Apple have their own "ZFS killer" in the works, and choose to release it under a permissive license that's compatible with the GPL, they might very well be able to displace ZFS, given that the Linux community's refusal to support it has been an enormous thorn in its side.
I know a handful of commercial pilots, and all of them are ex-military.
Although this is anecdotal evidence, flight training is indeed %*#&ing expensive. If you're coming out of the military, why not put a marketable skill to use? All of the pilots that I know absolutely love their jobs.
That all said, humans are impulsive beings. It's entirely possible that human intervention could turn a bad situation into a much worse one. I believe that this is an argument that needs to be settled by a set of scientific data, rather than by emotional arguments about the "battle-hardened pilot." An analysis of incidents that have already occurred is also helpful, if we want to compare the relative number of crashes due to software as opposed to pilot errors.
Certain aspects of the software definitely should not allowed to be overriden (ie. the part that prevents pilots from putting enough stress on the plane to snap it in half).
6) Vista was badly received and Microsoft built Windows 7 on top of it. That was their point. I can't say whether or not Vista sucks, since I haven't used it that much.
Although I suppose that's true, the Win7 beta has been uniformly excellent in my experience. I think that the world will eventually forgive Microsoft for Vista, just like they did for Windows ME!
When did Apple ever release "me too!" products to jump into temporarily hot markets?
Many people viewed the iPod as one such device upon its release (perhaps most famously, Slashdot)
The AppleTV also seems like a somewhat half-assed product, while I honestly can't find a niche in which the MacBook Air would be an appealing purchase. Although I don't own one, I can definitely see the appeal of netbooks.
The next time I upgrade my system, I'll purchase a nice desktop, and a half-decent netbook to carry around if I absolutely need to. It'll cost the same as a 'normal' laptop, although I'll have a workhorse desktop with a giant screen, and an extremely portable laptop with great battery life. (Actually, I'm quite interested to know how Apple managed to pull off their claimed battery innovations in the new Macbook, and whether or not that technology will make its way into low-end netbooks)
Verizon Wireless is the closest thing I've seen to a company that actually loathes its customers.
It's gotten to the point where a visit to the Verizon Store to sort out a plan change, or to correct one of their many billing errors is considerably less pleasant and straightforward than a visit to the DMV. I'd go as far as to say that the quality of the customer service at my local DMV is considerably better than anything I've ever experienced from Verizon. Calling them on the phone is similarly an exercise in pain and frustration.
But alas. Verizon is the only carrier with good reception in my area. The major wireless carriers all need to be heavily regulated or sued into oblivion by their customers. Mandatory contracts remove any and all competition from the industry.
I've generally been an apple fan for the past few years. OS X is very simply a much better operating system than anything Microsoft's produced since Win2000 (XP eventually became acceptable with 2 1/2 service packs and Firefox), and Apple's laptops are frankly top-notch.
However, I've kept a Windows/Ubuntu dual boot machine around for situations when those operating systems are more appropriate to the task at hand. Windows for gaming, Ubuntu for intense coding sessions or anything scientific.
I recently installed Windows 7. Although Microsoft have done their (predictable) fair share of copying from Apple, they actually got it right for a change. The new taskbar plays off of the strengths of Apple's dock, and the 'classic' Win95-style taskbar.
It runs well on old hardware, which for me is a huge indicator of the quality of an operating system. The fancy graphical effects don't seem to drain on the CPU too much, and degrade gracefully if your graphics card isn't up to the task. I tried it a few nights ago on an old 1.6GHz Celron machine I had lying around, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was perfectly usable on that machine.
There are also a few other cool bits of technology snuck in, including wireless virtualization.
Apple do have a worthy competitor with Win7. Hopefully Snow Leopard will be a big step up from Leopard, which I've been increasingly frustrated with.
A CF reader would have been better for the Pro shooters. I'd rather have this than the inclusive price drop.
Only pro-grade DSLRs now use CF for storage. Any high-end consumer models (under $1200) now use SDHC. Although I'm bummed because my camera uses CF, I can totally see Apple's logic here.
SDHC is the new standard. It's cheaper, smaller, and comes in higher capacities. I imagine that Canon and Nikon will soon take the plunge, and start supporting it on their highest-end models, especially in light of this announcement.
No, it isn't. Although they are indeed a "hybrid" between a diesel and electric design, they don't use battery power or regenerative breaking, and the word "hybrid" is generally not used, as it's understood that virtually all diesel locomotives are actually diesel-electric hybrids.
However, to add to the confusion, there are a few experimental locomotives that are indeed battery-carrying hybrids. GE has a very impressive prototype which will likely enter mainstream service in the near future. The financial and environmental advantages to the technology apparently make it a win-win situation for the railroads. GE's promotional materials promise a $2.5 million savings over the course of the life of the locomotive.
Even more confusing, there are electric-electric hybrids that can operate on battery power over short sections of unpowered track. These have been around for a long time in various capacities.
Many electric locomotives and multiple-units (ie. self-propelled subway cars) now use regenerative breaking to feed power directly back to the grid, providing all of the advantages of a hybrid. There are numerous other practical advantages to this method, including reduced brake wear.
Ah, but I phrased the question specifically with reference to New York and London, which do generally have quite good public transportation in the "congestion" areas (Brooklyn and Queens don't have quite as good subway coverage)
However, critics often point out that there is a small subset of individuals (couriers and the like) who do have a legitimate need for a car in the congestion area. Does congestion pricing help or hurt these individuals?
I don't have a good answer to this question, although I do feel that some sort of compromise could be reached.
Well, people do tend to choose to use public transportation if it's good enough. Heidelberg, Germany is a fantastic example of a well-planned small city with great public transportation options even on the outskirts. It's cheap, fast, and everybody uses it. (Streetcars FTW)
I'm afraid the situation in Virginia is a bit more nefarious. I'm virtually convinced that the bus system there is used by politicians as a form of class warfare (ie. to keep the poor poorer). Most of the cleaning/maintenance staff at my place of work were forced to use this bus system, because their wages were too low to pay for anything else. The poorer neighborhoods were serviced by the most circuitous bus routes imaginable, despite being the most frequently-serviced areas of the bus system.
The manner in which the bus routes were planned made absolutely no intuitive sense, given that the 2-hour bus route literally ran parallel to the "ideal" 25 minute route along the freeway, and made no major stops along the way. Connections were also planned extremely poorly, and the buses made virtually no attempt to operate on a schedule. (On two separate occasions, my bus driver diverged from his route, pulled into a Burger King, ordered breakfast, ate it inside, and returned to the bus about 6 or 7 minutes later)
When gas was $5/gal, I would have been barely able to afford to own a car, drive it, and still eat while earning $8/hour.
There's a definite social stigma attached to using public transportation (particularly buses) that needs to be lifted.
How do you feel about congestion pricing in cities such as New York or London? In one regard, it is an arbitrary restriction, although it also helps to regulate traffic in a very confined environment, while providing funding for public transportation projects.
It is likely to get even better too, what with hybrid locomotives.
Erm. Not quite. Diesel-electric hybrids have been in use for just about as long as diesel locomotives have been around. There are only a handful of diesels (all historic) that weren't hybrids.
The sad truth is that most American cities are ill-suited to public transportation at the fundamental design level.
Maybe we need to rethink the way we plan cities. Suburban-oriented development needs to stop NOW. We don't have the space or the resources to support it. There's no reason why we can't change our zoning laws to encourage new development to be constructed in a more practical fashion.
Many recently constructed suburbs (ie. anything around DC) don't even offer the typical advantages that the suburban lifestyle promised. Houses are crammed onto tiny lots in a traffic-congested area that provides no businesses or services within walking distance. It is literally the worst-case scenario.
The "insufficient" population density argument is bullshit. New Jersey has a higher population density than all of the European states and Japan, and yet most of the state has zero access to a public transportation system that will deliver them somewhere other than New York or Philadelphia. I lived in a rural Scottish town for a short while that had public transportation options that were lightyears better than anything I can get living in NJ, just across the river from NYC.
France has one of the best high-speed rail networks in the world (and has had it since the 70s). Most of France is extremely rural, and yet the TGV system provides access to a huge portion of the country. The eastern seaboard of the US has 4 major cities arranged in a straight line, and we somehow can't figure out how to provide reasonable rail transportation between them. The Acela is barely faster than driving, and costs 10x as much.
I lived in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia for a while, and attempted to do my commute via public transportation at first. Geographically, the area is composed of a narrow peninsula (~10-15 miles wide) connecting Richmond to Virginia Beach. The 60mi stretch from Williamsburg to VB is very densely populated. The situation practically cries for a commuter rail line down the peninsula, with a few well-placed bus routes around the urban centers. Instead, we have numerous 4-lane traffic-clogged highways, and the world's most disjointed bus network. My fairly straightforward commute to work (25 minutes by car, basically on one road) took over 2 hours by bus.
It's often said that only poor people ride the bus. In the case of Hampton Roads, I was tempted to believe that the people on the bus were poor because they never got to work on time.
The naysayers are wrong. The US isn't terribly special. We CAN fix this. Yes, we've made a few bad urban planning decisions over the past 40 years, although much of the rest of the world made those same mistakes.
The costs are justified. The economy can't survive another prolonged $5/gal gas spike. Fixing the means by which transportation works in America is far more important than any war we're fighting (and coincidentally, would have prevented the one we're currently embroiled in)
Ironically, the smog/clouds formed by these airliners masks the sun's output sufficiently to slightly offset global warming (a phenomenon known as global dimming).
Granted, aircraft produce plenty of greenhouse gases that do contribute to long-term climate change. The solution to global warming isn't to fly more planes.
We've actually got a reasonably good set of data to support this hypothesis from the flight ban during the days following 9/11. No planes were in the sky, and it was unusually warm and sunny across the country.
No. They're in the exact opposite situation, in fact. They can't make their product fast enough to keep up with orders, which is why it's not really possible for consumers to purchase them. There are much, much worse positions for a company to be in.
You know, cause the Republicans and George W Bush are evil.
Or it might be because 30 years of supply-side greedfest has destroyed our economy...
Well, supply-side economics was pretty much the baby of the Republican party for those 30 years (and still is, owing much to their current unpopularity).
However, as opposed as I am to the idea in general, it did seem to have helped end the stagflation crisis that Reagan faced when he took office, which was no small feat in and of itself.
However, it spun out of control from there out, and produced a very small number of very wealthy people, held the line for the majority of the population, and screwed the poor. Somehow, the majority of Americans were convinced that the policies directly helped them, despite the fact that this was clearly not the case.
We're talking about the residential networks here. In that case, you are indeed paying for network access as part of your rent. I don't understand why the typical tenant/landlord regulations wouldn't apply. I'd be livid if my landlord demanded that I install spyware on my computer, and forbid me from seeking internet access elsewhere.
Every honor code I've ever heard of has been used as a tool for a college to rid itself of students that it deems undesirable. In my experience, enforcement of these codes varies enormously. Recently, the University of Virginia came under fire for using its honor code to expel students for seemingly trivial offenses.
Honor codes are great in theory, although the ones I've seen put far too much power in the hands of far too few.
A lot in this post. I'm going to go through it point-by-point
I simplify, but basically he is saying that anything worth arguing about gets too complex for the layman to argue about.
No. Wrong.
You're correct. It's vital for all people to take part in philisophical debates, and to form and express their own opinions. A society has no way of improving itself without this sort of discourse.
However, we seem to have a growing tendency (largely thanks to the internet) to extend our arguements into areas in which we might not be so knowledgable. Slashdot can at times be an excellent example of this problem. Lately, this sort of thought has begun to penetrate politics, science, and medicine -- the fact that the vaccine/autism hypothesis is a contentious issue, much less discussed at all is an outright embarrasment to all forms rational thought. Quite simply put, there is absolutely no supporting evidence supporting the hypothesis, and mountains of data against it.
The things we argue about tend to be very very simple. It is the application to the real world that gets very very complex.
Take abortion for example. The real question is "When do we get a soul?"
I'll pose another question: Does that matter? Is it better to live in squalor than it is to have never lived at all? (There is a conveniently simple answer to this one, though: Use protection, and make sure to follow the directions, lest we end up breeding a society of individuals who are genetically predisposed to incorrectly use contraceptives)
Another great example is say the rule of the law vs a case by case situation. Do we care about the minutia of legal proceedings more than the right/wrongness of the actual actions. Yes, you can get very very specific about whether or not the fact that a man was convicted on an illegal wire tap, should he go free, or variably, a man convicted but later another man proven to have done the crime. But we really are arguing about a basic concept, not the evidence that people cook up to support their viewpoints.
Another interesting argument, although I wouldn't argue that it's an either/or situation. Without rule of law, I would argue that society is left with no reliable means of determining the right/wrongness of actions. For every "benevolent dictatorship," there are twenty others that are rotten to the core.
Most of the upper-level philosophical arguments I've seen against "bias" were usually written by scholars who just didn't realize their OWN bias. There is no such thing as an "unbiased" argument or perspective--even in hard science (much less something as "soft" as politics)
Tsk, tsk. Using a straw man argument in a conversation about philosophy?
The Plato example is nice, although you're missing the point. The Republic, Symposium, and the other socratic dialogues are philosophical parables, and were never intended to be used as an expression of the author's own views/opinions. In fact, they seem to have accomplished their task quite well, as you were able to spot the logical fallacy used by Plato in the Republic.
To pose the obvious question: Why not do both? I don't think that anybody would seriously propose giving up the black box. However, since an increasing number of planes now have internet connectivity (via satellite I presume), why not continuously upload a stream of navigational coordinates and diagnostic data?
Earth's surface area is 510,072,000 km^2, or roughly 5.1 * 10^14 m^2.
That's a 5 with 14 zeroes attached to it. 3000 of anything is going to be little more than a drop in the bucket over an area that large. That's not to say that it's impossible...just extremely unlikely. I'm also sure that there are a lot of ways that a meteor could hit a plane without permanently disabling it. Planes have survived being shot at, flying through a cloud of volcanic ash, losing all engine power, etc...
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent up. I helped create a tag-based document retrieval system for my former employer using SharePoint. It actually worked quite well.
Use the right tool for the job. It's got a nice interface (that's also very familiar-looking to most users), scales well, and integrates well with MS Office, which (like it or not) is used by 99.99% of the corporate world. It also handles non-office files just fine.
That's not to say that Unix-based solutions don't have their place. During the migration, I actually employed a series of shell/python scripts to assist with several of the more mundane aspects of the process. These probably saved us a couple thousand man-hours that would have otherwise been spent categorizing the files.
I was really looking forward to a file system that never needed to be upgraded...
ZFS might be the holy grail of filesystems in terms of capacity, flexibility, and data integrity, which have traditionally been the limiting factors for filesystems. However, it's not particularly fast, and I'm sure that we'll come up with better ways to store data in the future.
If Apple have their own "ZFS killer" in the works, and choose to release it under a permissive license that's compatible with the GPL, they might very well be able to displace ZFS, given that the Linux community's refusal to support it has been an enormous thorn in its side.
I know a handful of commercial pilots, and all of them are ex-military.
Although this is anecdotal evidence, flight training is indeed %*#&ing expensive. If you're coming out of the military, why not put a marketable skill to use? All of the pilots that I know absolutely love their jobs.
"Hey, we took off 45 minutes ago with 5000 gallons of fuel and barring an open fuel cap, there's no way we're actually out"
Something like that actually has happened.
That all said, humans are impulsive beings. It's entirely possible that human intervention could turn a bad situation into a much worse one. I believe that this is an argument that needs to be settled by a set of scientific data, rather than by emotional arguments about the "battle-hardened pilot." An analysis of incidents that have already occurred is also helpful, if we want to compare the relative number of crashes due to software as opposed to pilot errors.
Certain aspects of the software definitely should not allowed to be overriden (ie. the part that prevents pilots from putting enough stress on the plane to snap it in half).
Apparently landing in water is far more dangerous than landing on land
We can file this sentence under "things that probably shouldn't need to be written down"
6) Vista was badly received and Microsoft built Windows 7 on top of it. That was their point. I can't say whether or not Vista sucks, since I haven't used it that much.
Although I suppose that's true, the Win7 beta has been uniformly excellent in my experience. I think that the world will eventually forgive Microsoft for Vista, just like they did for Windows ME!
When did Apple ever release "me too!" products to jump into temporarily hot markets?
Many people viewed the iPod as one such device upon its release (perhaps most famously, Slashdot)
The AppleTV also seems like a somewhat half-assed product, while I honestly can't find a niche in which the MacBook Air would be an appealing purchase. Although I don't own one, I can definitely see the appeal of netbooks.
The next time I upgrade my system, I'll purchase a nice desktop, and a half-decent netbook to carry around if I absolutely need to. It'll cost the same as a 'normal' laptop, although I'll have a workhorse desktop with a giant screen, and an extremely portable laptop with great battery life. (Actually, I'm quite interested to know how Apple managed to pull off their claimed battery innovations in the new Macbook, and whether or not that technology will make its way into low-end netbooks)
Verizon Wireless is the closest thing I've seen to a company that actually loathes its customers.
It's gotten to the point where a visit to the Verizon Store to sort out a plan change, or to correct one of their many billing errors is considerably less pleasant and straightforward than a visit to the DMV. I'd go as far as to say that the quality of the customer service at my local DMV is considerably better than anything I've ever experienced from Verizon. Calling them on the phone is similarly an exercise in pain and frustration.
But alas. Verizon is the only carrier with good reception in my area. The major wireless carriers all need to be heavily regulated or sued into oblivion by their customers. Mandatory contracts remove any and all competition from the industry.
I've generally been an apple fan for the past few years. OS X is very simply a much better operating system than anything Microsoft's produced since Win2000 (XP eventually became acceptable with 2 1/2 service packs and Firefox), and Apple's laptops are frankly top-notch.
However, I've kept a Windows/Ubuntu dual boot machine around for situations when those operating systems are more appropriate to the task at hand. Windows for gaming, Ubuntu for intense coding sessions or anything scientific.
I recently installed Windows 7. Although Microsoft have done their (predictable) fair share of copying from Apple, they actually got it right for a change. The new taskbar plays off of the strengths of Apple's dock, and the 'classic' Win95-style taskbar.
It runs well on old hardware, which for me is a huge indicator of the quality of an operating system. The fancy graphical effects don't seem to drain on the CPU too much, and degrade gracefully if your graphics card isn't up to the task. I tried it a few nights ago on an old 1.6GHz Celron machine I had lying around, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was perfectly usable on that machine.
There are also a few other cool bits of technology snuck in, including wireless virtualization.
Apple do have a worthy competitor with Win7. Hopefully Snow Leopard will be a big step up from Leopard, which I've been increasingly frustrated with.
A CF reader would have been better for the Pro shooters. I'd rather have this than the inclusive price drop.
Only pro-grade DSLRs now use CF for storage. Any high-end consumer models (under $1200) now use SDHC. Although I'm bummed because my camera uses CF, I can totally see Apple's logic here.
SDHC is the new standard. It's cheaper, smaller, and comes in higher capacities. I imagine that Canon and Nikon will soon take the plunge, and start supporting it on their highest-end models, especially in light of this announcement.
No, it isn't. Although they are indeed a "hybrid" between a diesel and electric design, they don't use battery power or regenerative breaking, and the word "hybrid" is generally not used, as it's understood that virtually all diesel locomotives are actually diesel-electric hybrids.
However, to add to the confusion, there are a few experimental locomotives that are indeed battery-carrying hybrids. GE has a very impressive prototype which will likely enter mainstream service in the near future. The financial and environmental advantages to the technology apparently make it a win-win situation for the railroads. GE's promotional materials promise a $2.5 million savings over the course of the life of the locomotive.
Even more confusing, there are electric-electric hybrids that can operate on battery power over short sections of unpowered track. These have been around for a long time in various capacities.
Many electric locomotives and multiple-units (ie. self-propelled subway cars) now use regenerative breaking to feed power directly back to the grid, providing all of the advantages of a hybrid. There are numerous other practical advantages to this method, including reduced brake wear.
Ah, but I phrased the question specifically with reference to New York and London, which do generally have quite good public transportation in the "congestion" areas (Brooklyn and Queens don't have quite as good subway coverage)
However, critics often point out that there is a small subset of individuals (couriers and the like) who do have a legitimate need for a car in the congestion area. Does congestion pricing help or hurt these individuals?
I don't have a good answer to this question, although I do feel that some sort of compromise could be reached.
Well, people do tend to choose to use public transportation if it's good enough. Heidelberg, Germany is a fantastic example of a well-planned small city with great public transportation options even on the outskirts. It's cheap, fast, and everybody uses it. (Streetcars FTW)
I'm afraid the situation in Virginia is a bit more nefarious. I'm virtually convinced that the bus system there is used by politicians as a form of class warfare (ie. to keep the poor poorer). Most of the cleaning/maintenance staff at my place of work were forced to use this bus system, because their wages were too low to pay for anything else. The poorer neighborhoods were serviced by the most circuitous bus routes imaginable, despite being the most frequently-serviced areas of the bus system.
The manner in which the bus routes were planned made absolutely no intuitive sense, given that the 2-hour bus route literally ran parallel to the "ideal" 25 minute route along the freeway, and made no major stops along the way. Connections were also planned extremely poorly, and the buses made virtually no attempt to operate on a schedule. (On two separate occasions, my bus driver diverged from his route, pulled into a Burger King, ordered breakfast, ate it inside, and returned to the bus about 6 or 7 minutes later)
When gas was $5/gal, I would have been barely able to afford to own a car, drive it, and still eat while earning $8/hour.
There's a definite social stigma attached to using public transportation (particularly buses) that needs to be lifted.
How do you feel about congestion pricing in cities such as New York or London? In one regard, it is an arbitrary restriction, although it also helps to regulate traffic in a very confined environment, while providing funding for public transportation projects.
It is likely to get even better too, what with hybrid locomotives.
Erm. Not quite. Diesel-electric hybrids have been in use for just about as long as diesel locomotives have been around. There are only a handful of diesels (all historic) that weren't hybrids.
The sad truth is that most American cities are ill-suited to public transportation at the fundamental design level.
Maybe we need to rethink the way we plan cities. Suburban-oriented development needs to stop NOW. We don't have the space or the resources to support it. There's no reason why we can't change our zoning laws to encourage new development to be constructed in a more practical fashion.
Many recently constructed suburbs (ie. anything around DC) don't even offer the typical advantages that the suburban lifestyle promised. Houses are crammed onto tiny lots in a traffic-congested area that provides no businesses or services within walking distance. It is literally the worst-case scenario.
The "insufficient" population density argument is bullshit. New Jersey has a higher population density than all of the European states and Japan, and yet most of the state has zero access to a public transportation system that will deliver them somewhere other than New York or Philadelphia. I lived in a rural Scottish town for a short while that had public transportation options that were lightyears better than anything I can get living in NJ, just across the river from NYC.
France has one of the best high-speed rail networks in the world (and has had it since the 70s). Most of France is extremely rural, and yet the TGV system provides access to a huge portion of the country. The eastern seaboard of the US has 4 major cities arranged in a straight line, and we somehow can't figure out how to provide reasonable rail transportation between them. The Acela is barely faster than driving, and costs 10x as much.
I lived in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia for a while, and attempted to do my commute via public transportation at first. Geographically, the area is composed of a narrow peninsula (~10-15 miles wide) connecting Richmond to Virginia Beach. The 60mi stretch from Williamsburg to VB is very densely populated. The situation practically cries for a commuter rail line down the peninsula, with a few well-placed bus routes around the urban centers. Instead, we have numerous 4-lane traffic-clogged highways, and the world's most disjointed bus network. My fairly straightforward commute to work (25 minutes by car, basically on one road) took over 2 hours by bus.
It's often said that only poor people ride the bus. In the case of Hampton Roads, I was tempted to believe that the people on the bus were poor because they never got to work on time.
The naysayers are wrong. The US isn't terribly special. We CAN fix this. Yes, we've made a few bad urban planning decisions over the past 40 years, although much of the rest of the world made those same mistakes.
The costs are justified. The economy can't survive another prolonged $5/gal gas spike. Fixing the means by which transportation works in America is far more important than any war we're fighting (and coincidentally, would have prevented the one we're currently embroiled in)
Ironically, the smog/clouds formed by these airliners masks the sun's output sufficiently to slightly offset global warming (a phenomenon known as global dimming).
Granted, aircraft produce plenty of greenhouse gases that do contribute to long-term climate change. The solution to global warming isn't to fly more planes.
We've actually got a reasonably good set of data to support this hypothesis from the flight ban during the days following 9/11. No planes were in the sky, and it was unusually warm and sunny across the country.
No. They're in the exact opposite situation, in fact. They can't make their product fast enough to keep up with orders, which is why it's not really possible for consumers to purchase them. There are much, much worse positions for a company to be in.
You know, cause the Republicans and George W Bush are evil.
Or it might be because 30 years of supply-side greedfest has destroyed our economy...
Well, supply-side economics was pretty much the baby of the Republican party for those 30 years (and still is, owing much to their current unpopularity).
However, as opposed as I am to the idea in general, it did seem to have helped end the stagflation crisis that Reagan faced when he took office, which was no small feat in and of itself.
However, it spun out of control from there out, and produced a very small number of very wealthy people, held the line for the majority of the population, and screwed the poor. Somehow, the majority of Americans were convinced that the policies directly helped them, despite the fact that this was clearly not the case.
We're talking about the residential networks here. In that case, you are indeed paying for network access as part of your rent. I don't understand why the typical tenant/landlord regulations wouldn't apply. I'd be livid if my landlord demanded that I install spyware on my computer, and forbid me from seeking internet access elsewhere.
Every honor code I've ever heard of has been used as a tool for a college to rid itself of students that it deems undesirable. In my experience, enforcement of these codes varies enormously. Recently, the University of Virginia came under fire for using its honor code to expel students for seemingly trivial offenses.
Honor codes are great in theory, although the ones I've seen put far too much power in the hands of far too few.
A lot in this post. I'm going to go through it point-by-point
I simplify, but basically he is saying that anything worth arguing about gets too complex for the layman to argue about.
No. Wrong.
You're correct. It's vital for all people to take part in philisophical debates, and to form and express their own opinions. A society has no way of improving itself without this sort of discourse.
However, we seem to have a growing tendency (largely thanks to the internet) to extend our arguements into areas in which we might not be so knowledgable. Slashdot can at times be an excellent example of this problem. Lately, this sort of thought has begun to penetrate politics, science, and medicine -- the fact that the vaccine/autism hypothesis is a contentious issue, much less discussed at all is an outright embarrasment to all forms rational thought. Quite simply put, there is absolutely no supporting evidence supporting the hypothesis, and mountains of data against it.
The things we argue about tend to be very very simple. It is the application to the real world that gets very very complex.
Take abortion for example. The real question is "When do we get a soul?"
I'll pose another question: Does that matter? Is it better to live in squalor than it is to have never lived at all?
(There is a conveniently simple answer to this one, though: Use protection, and make sure to follow the directions, lest we end up breeding a society of individuals who are genetically predisposed to incorrectly use contraceptives)
Another great example is say the rule of the law vs a case by case situation. Do we care about the minutia of legal proceedings more than the right/wrongness of the actual actions. Yes, you can get very very specific about whether or not the fact that a man was convicted on an illegal wire tap, should he go free, or variably, a man convicted but later another man proven to have done the crime. But we really are arguing about a basic concept, not the evidence that people cook up to support their viewpoints.
Another interesting argument, although I wouldn't argue that it's an either/or situation. Without rule of law, I would argue that society is left with no reliable means of determining the right/wrongness of actions. For every "benevolent dictatorship," there are twenty others that are rotten to the core.
Most of the upper-level philosophical arguments I've seen against "bias" were usually written by scholars who just didn't realize their OWN bias. There is no such thing as an "unbiased" argument or perspective--even in hard science (much less something as "soft" as politics)
Tsk, tsk. Using a straw man argument in a conversation about philosophy?
The Plato example is nice, although you're missing the point. The Republic, Symposium, and the other socratic dialogues are philosophical parables, and were never intended to be used as an expression of the author's own views/opinions. In fact, they seem to have accomplished their task quite well, as you were able to spot the logical fallacy used by Plato in the Republic.
Did kdawson even read the article before writing the summary?
You must be new here.
To pose the obvious question: Why not do both? I don't think that anybody would seriously propose giving up the black box. However, since an increasing number of planes now have internet connectivity (via satellite I presume), why not continuously upload a stream of navigational coordinates and diagnostic data?
Earth's surface area is 510,072,000 km^2, or roughly 5.1 * 10^14 m^2.
That's a 5 with 14 zeroes attached to it. 3000 of anything is going to be little more than a drop in the bucket over an area that large. That's not to say that it's impossible...just extremely unlikely. I'm also sure that there are a lot of ways that a meteor could hit a plane without permanently disabling it. Planes have survived being shot at, flying through a cloud of volcanic ash, losing all engine power, etc...