Or maybe, just maybe, he respects BOTH, and realizes that the choice of whether to be an academic, or do something else is a personal decision that is completely unrelated to how intelligent the person is.
Maybe the point he's trying to make is that you shouldn't ignore EITHER side because of the letters behind their name, or the lack thereof, and instead focus on what the actual message is, along with the facts the person is backing it up with.
If you want me to believe you, show me proof, don't show me diplomas and degrees and tell me that I'm not smart enough to understand what you're saying, explain to me why you are right and show me the data.
Likewise don't show me your paycheck and tell me that because you make lots of money you must know what you're saying, explain to me why you are right and show me the data.
The larger point is, the data and the methods are the important part, who is presenting it is completely irrelevant. If your conclusions can stand on their own, you shouldn't be afraid to show how you got to them. (ever try to pass your high school physics of math tests without showing your work? why should the "real world" be any different?)
When did a scientist first try to publish something about the dangers of smoking? When did the first "peer reviewed" anti-smoking article actually get published?
Sure, there has been lots published, but smoking was seen as beneficial in the past, and had been for a long time, it's only relatively recently that people realized it was bad, how much lag time was there before someone managed to get something published?
Does that bode well for the process in general on any currently accepted "truths" and anyone trying to dispel them?
they also generally have to adhere to a local fire code which specifies the maximum occupancy of the location, allowing anyone in once the venue has reached that maximum is usually illegal.
perhaps I should clarify. If you shoot at the police/soldiers coming to get you, they simply shoot back.
If you communicate with the world and convince enough people your cause is just, those same police/soldiers refuse to shoot at you. THAT is where change and revolution come from, not from the masses taking up arms against the government, because the day and age where that was once possible has long passed, but instead by convincing those soldiers that they are on the wrong side of the conflict, it is only when the might of the government ceases to be at the government's control that a real revolution happens.
It might not help you, but it might help the populace if it happens enough times. A disarmed populace loses their vote.
And just how will it help the populace? There is only one thing a gun does in this situation, and that is kill people (most notably, the person who thinks he can stand up to the government with his gun). nobody is helped in any way.
what helps is when enough people get outraged at something, and guns will never cause that, the only thing that can cause it is communication.
you still fail to show how any weapon will help you once "the men with guns show up" The computer may get a last ditch message out to let people know what's happened... the gun will more likely kill you then save you.
So, when the government comes to execute you for crimes you did not commit, you're going to throw your mouse at them and try to hit them with your keyboard? I think most of us can agree that once you have reached the point of violence, there has been a kind of failure. Does that mean you should be unprepared for violence? If computers have a place in self defense, it is as a fifth box between soap and ballot, long before the one for ammo.
If you had a credible example of anyone in the United States stopping themselves from being killed by the government because they were armed... you'd have an argument. As it is, all anyone might do is kill several government agents before being executed. their own chance of death actually INCREASES if they are armed, as if they are not they will likely have their day in court, whereas if they get in a gun battle with the police they will very likely end up dead.
However, with information, you can take down entire governments...
>> Unless you need a bulb with a wide dimmable range or some other fairly exotic use
When did dimming a light bulb become an "exotic use"??? Most houses have at least 1, if not several dimmable bulbs in use, and most of us don't want to give them up! I love CFL bulbs, and all my non-dimming fixtures now have them, but I still have 8 bulbs that I can't replace with CFLs because, regardless of what the manufacturers claim, nobody has yet produced a CFL that dims!
The big problem I've seen evolve in the printer market is the difference between a "home" and "office" printer (they used to all be just printers)
Office printers are expensive to buy, but they last forever, they get TONS of printing out of their ink/toner cartridges, which are dirt cheap to replace (on a per-page comparison) and because of their simple designs can usually be re-filled easily, and will be available to purchase for decades to come. Office printers also use standard formats like postscript and don't require a special program running on your PC...
Home printers by comparison are the opposite, they're cheap to buy, and don't last long, their ink/toner cartridges cost a fortune (again, on a per-page comparison) and print very few pages, and often contain all sorts of proprietary chips to try to prevent you from buying generic cartridges (this same added complication ensures that you often can't re-fill the cartridges, and the original manufacturer is likely to phase them out after a fairly short period of time). Home printers also usually require bloated software running on your PC which tries to make you buy all sorts of "accessories" every time you open them, and hog half your system resources even when you aren't printing...
So basically my recommendation is that it hardly matters what brand you buy, just as long as you look at their office line-up, and not their home printers. (even some of the worst offenders in the home market still make amazing office printers)
If anything buskers are likely to be the targets of such things. Since they may well not "own" the music they perform.
Actually it's worse than that, ask any small time musician about the copyright levy and they'll tell you that they have to pay the levy on the blank CDs they buy to record their own music on to sell to you, and because they are way too small to get any money back from CIRA you end up paying for music you don't want whenever you buy the music of these small time performers. No longer can you say that instead of supporting the big names you will support the true independent artists, because by supporting them the big names also get their cut!
Have you thought of the possibility of a field line starting at one particle and ending at a completely different particle? (a matched set of 2 monopoles?) from what I'm reading this would seem to be what this is talking about, and it also solves the problem you describe.
At -35c how much electricity would it take to keep the surface above 0c? and do you really think that the solar cells will be generating that much at night to ensure it stays warm enough? I should also note that the absolute most dangerous roads are the ones hovering near zero because that means you're driving on actual ice and not snow, or worse yet, wet ice.
I think you have a good point here, the most important part of multitasking isn't how many tasks you do at once, but how well you prioritize, as different tasks start to use up more of your internal resources you have to know which tasks to drop and which to keep. This is a common problem, people who keep the cell phone conversation instead of the focus on driving for example.
I used to work tech support, the majority of calls were dead simple and required very little thought on my part, it was quite common for me to be on 2 different IRC channels, ICQ, monitoring a ham radio, chatting with co-workers (the mute button is wonderful) all while talking to the customer on the phone. The trick was, when one of those rare calls came in that actually required real thought and problem solving I had to immediately stop monitoring any of the other communications and focus solely on the call.
Another example is while driving on a good day I'll have the radio going, I'll be monitoring a couple of ham radios, and possibly talking with a passenger, but if driving through a blizzard on slick roads in a whiteout all the radios are off, and any passenger better shut up.
allowing outgoing connections would be a snap, all you need is a few phone lines. Incoming connections are the problem, and I bet that unless you get the government and a large team of lawyers involved, that connection is simply not available.
By the same token, not all speech is protected, the courts (up to an including the supreme court) have ruled several times that for any society to function there must be rules governing what speech is protected. This is why slander and libel are illegal, it is also why you can prosecute people for hate crimes, or for plotting to kill people.
What the courts will decide in this particular case has yet to be seen, however it's not quite as simple as yelling "free speech!" because we all know that there are limits to that (and by necessity).
Having been the victim of a similar website 5 years ago, I can certainly imagine how the police must feel in this particular case.
How about food, water, shelter, clothing, and job training?
This would take care of the necessities of life (what welfare is supposed to do) while denying them any "luxury" items unless they are willing to work for them, while giving them the ability to go out there and work. I should also be perfectly clear that I do classify alcohol, cigarettes, and TV service in with the "luxury" items.
I think the idea of a welfare "cheque" is the wrong idea, this gives too much discretion to the person receiving the money, many of whom have shown an inability to properly use such discretion. As a telecommunications technician I have installed full digital HD TV service in a house while the occupants discussed which charity to get their next meal from, the money they are spending on the TV service each month would cover food for most of a month if they knew how to shop effectively. I have also seen people in the media claiming welfare doesn't provide enough money to buy groceries while they stand there surrounded by empty cases of beer and chain smoking... it isn't a matter of not enough money, it's a matter of incorrect priorities.
- Wired so it will always work. I don't want to have to think about recharging it.
I've used both wired and wireless. Wired is fine, but sometimes the core does get in the way (moreso than keyboard because of the movement and length). Wireless isn't much trouble, just put the mouse in the charger at the end of the day, take it out in the morning. Easy.
never had a problem with my wired mouse, the cord falls off the back of the desk and always has as much (or as little) cord available as I need.
- Mechanical so it always responds in a reliable way. I have yet to find a led/laser mouse that works reliable all the time, every time.
You must have some kind of magical mouse ball that doesn't drag fibers and crap onto the rollers. Mechanical ball mice are anything but reliable. Even a mediocre optical mouse is better than a ball mouse, and a laser mouse works on almost anything (even some glass).
This one I have to disagree on, I have never found any optical mouse that works reliably and precisely, and if you happen to use a smooth surface it's even worse, my ball mouse does get "crap" on the rollers, however it takes 30 seconds or less to clean it off when it happens, and I probably do that once or twice a year (If I had a mouse with batteries I would spend more time per year on maintenance to change batteries I'm sure)
I currently have a Microsoft Intellimouse, It's corded, it's mechanical, it's ergonomic (which I personally like even if the other poster didn't) it has "the right number" of buttons for me (3 including the wheel button) and in the 8+ years I've had it I've never had an issue. I hate Microsoft software, but their hardware isn't bad (my keyboard is also one of theirs from the same time as the mouse, and apart from completely screwing up the home/end/delete/pgup/pgdn/insert part, the rest I find really nice)
Every ad should explain itself? How are you going to do that on something that takes up 1/6th of a normal computer screen.
This depends on how you define "explain itself". My hope is that this would make illegal the ads that say "punch the monkey and win a prize" or "your internet connection is not secure" or any of a number of ridiculous things, and force ads to advertise the product they are selling. that way you know what you're clicking on before you do? I know these ads aren't a problem for experienced users, but there are still a LOT of people who fall for this garbage.
the best part is thought that once you do it once you don't HAVE to go near it again! an open source textbook wouldn't have the same problem of having to change the version number and the order of the questions at the end of the chapter every year just to prevent a used textbook market. so it could stay the same until something major changes in the field!
Of course, all of this aside, I'm ok paying for textbooks, I just want the option to buy last years edition of the book that hasn't changed in 20 years, instead of needing this year's edition so that my page numbers and end of chapter questions line up (no other differences the majority of the time)
I thought the geostationary model for satellite phones had finally come to an end... the latency is just too high to comfortably carry on a conversation. The LEO satellite constellations are a much better way to work for a phone, the delays aren't really much more than a cell phone (apparently to the user). I've actually been looking forward to someone doing a LEO constellation for satellite broadband, it could finally make it useful. I've been quite impressed when using the Iridium network. Globalstar though has some work to do yet, too many holes in their constellation.
As others have pointed out though, Satellite alone has some major coverage problems (anywhere sheltered or indoors) but combined with the cell network this could be a powerful tool (though a pretty pricey one I bet!)
It's cheaper, smaller, and it's pretty much a full Linux based computer... oh and it has a colour screen too!
I'm sorry, but at $500 you can buy any of a number of laptops, netbooks or PDAs that all do much more than the Kindle does. Their price point is definitely in the wrong place for such a limited device.
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Or maybe, just maybe, he respects BOTH, and realizes that the choice of whether to be an academic, or do something else is a personal decision that is completely unrelated to how intelligent the person is.
Maybe the point he's trying to make is that you shouldn't ignore EITHER side because of the letters behind their name, or the lack thereof, and instead focus on what the actual message is, along with the facts the person is backing it up with.
If you want me to believe you, show me proof, don't show me diplomas and degrees and tell me that I'm not smart enough to understand what you're saying, explain to me why you are right and show me the data.
Likewise don't show me your paycheck and tell me that because you make lots of money you must know what you're saying, explain to me why you are right and show me the data.
The larger point is, the data and the methods are the important part, who is presenting it is completely irrelevant. If your conclusions can stand on their own, you shouldn't be afraid to show how you got to them. (ever try to pass your high school physics of math tests without showing your work? why should the "real world" be any different?)
When did a scientist first try to publish something about the dangers of smoking?
When did the first "peer reviewed" anti-smoking article actually get published?
Sure, there has been lots published, but smoking was seen as beneficial in the past, and had been for a long time, it's only relatively recently that people realized it was bad, how much lag time was there before someone managed to get something published?
Does that bode well for the process in general on any currently accepted "truths" and anyone trying to dispel them?
they also generally have to adhere to a local fire code which specifies the maximum occupancy of the location, allowing anyone in once the venue has reached that maximum is usually illegal.
perhaps I should clarify.
If you shoot at the police/soldiers coming to get you, they simply shoot back.
If you communicate with the world and convince enough people your cause is just, those same police/soldiers refuse to shoot at you. THAT is where change and revolution come from, not from the masses taking up arms against the government, because the day and age where that was once possible has long passed, but instead by convincing those soldiers that they are on the wrong side of the conflict, it is only when the might of the government ceases to be at the government's control that a real revolution happens.
It might not help you, but it might help the populace if it happens enough times. A disarmed populace loses their vote.
And just how will it help the populace?
There is only one thing a gun does in this situation, and that is kill people (most notably, the person who thinks he can stand up to the government with his gun). nobody is helped in any way.
what helps is when enough people get outraged at something, and guns will never cause that, the only thing that can cause it is communication.
you still fail to show how any weapon will help you once "the men with guns show up"
The computer may get a last ditch message out to let people know what's happened... the gun will more likely kill you then save you.
So, when the government comes to execute you for crimes you did not commit, you're going to throw your mouse at them and try to hit them with your keyboard? I think most of us can agree that once you have reached the point of violence, there has been a kind of failure. Does that mean you should be unprepared for violence? If computers have a place in self defense, it is as a fifth box between soap and ballot, long before the one for ammo.
If you had a credible example of anyone in the United States stopping themselves from being killed by the government because they were armed... you'd have an argument.
As it is, all anyone might do is kill several government agents before being executed. their own chance of death actually INCREASES if they are armed, as if they are not they will likely have their day in court, whereas if they get in a gun battle with the police they will very likely end up dead.
However, with information, you can take down entire governments...
>> Unless you need a bulb with a wide dimmable range or some other fairly exotic use
When did dimming a light bulb become an "exotic use"??? Most houses have at least 1, if not several dimmable bulbs in use, and most of us don't want to give them up!
I love CFL bulbs, and all my non-dimming fixtures now have them, but I still have 8 bulbs that I can't replace with CFLs because, regardless of what the manufacturers claim, nobody has yet produced a CFL that dims!
The big problem I've seen evolve in the printer market is the difference between a "home" and "office" printer (they used to all be just printers)
Office printers are expensive to buy, but they last forever, they get TONS of printing out of their ink/toner cartridges, which are dirt cheap to replace (on a per-page comparison) and because of their simple designs can usually be re-filled easily, and will be available to purchase for decades to come. Office printers also use standard formats like postscript and don't require a special program running on your PC...
Home printers by comparison are the opposite, they're cheap to buy, and don't last long, their ink/toner cartridges cost a fortune (again, on a per-page comparison) and print very few pages, and often contain all sorts of proprietary chips to try to prevent you from buying generic cartridges (this same added complication ensures that you often can't re-fill the cartridges, and the original manufacturer is likely to phase them out after a fairly short period of time). Home printers also usually require bloated software running on your PC which tries to make you buy all sorts of "accessories" every time you open them, and hog half your system resources even when you aren't printing...
So basically my recommendation is that it hardly matters what brand you buy, just as long as you look at their office line-up, and not their home printers. (even some of the worst offenders in the home market still make amazing office printers)
the fractions I've been seeing recently are more like 10/9ths... which really makes me wonder what they think they're doing...
If anything buskers are likely to be the targets of such things. Since they may well not "own" the music they perform.
Actually it's worse than that, ask any small time musician about the copyright levy and they'll tell you that they have to pay the levy on the blank CDs they buy to record their own music on to sell to you, and because they are way too small to get any money back from CIRA you end up paying for music you don't want whenever you buy the music of these small time performers. No longer can you say that instead of supporting the big names you will support the true independent artists, because by supporting them the big names also get their cut!
Have you thought of the possibility of a field line starting at one particle and ending at a completely different particle? (a matched set of 2 monopoles?)
from what I'm reading this would seem to be what this is talking about, and it also solves the problem you describe.
At -35c how much electricity would it take to keep the surface above 0c? and do you really think that the solar cells will be generating that much at night to ensure it stays warm enough?
I should also note that the absolute most dangerous roads are the ones hovering near zero because that means you're driving on actual ice and not snow, or worse yet, wet ice.
I think you have a good point here, the most important part of multitasking isn't how many tasks you do at once, but how well you prioritize, as different tasks start to use up more of your internal resources you have to know which tasks to drop and which to keep. This is a common problem, people who keep the cell phone conversation instead of the focus on driving for example.
I used to work tech support, the majority of calls were dead simple and required very little thought on my part, it was quite common for me to be on 2 different IRC channels, ICQ, monitoring a ham radio, chatting with co-workers (the mute button is wonderful) all while talking to the customer on the phone. The trick was, when one of those rare calls came in that actually required real thought and problem solving I had to immediately stop monitoring any of the other communications and focus solely on the call.
Another example is while driving on a good day I'll have the radio going, I'll be monitoring a couple of ham radios, and possibly talking with a passenger, but if driving through a blizzard on slick roads in a whiteout all the radios are off, and any passenger better shut up.
Under which category -- human factors, weather, or mechanical problems -- would "double bird stike" fall?
depends if they hit the pilots, a cloud, or the engines ;)
allowing outgoing connections would be a snap, all you need is a few phone lines.
Incoming connections are the problem, and I bet that unless you get the government and a large team of lawyers involved, that connection is simply not available.
By the same token, not all speech is protected, the courts (up to an including the supreme court) have ruled several times that for any society to function there must be rules governing what speech is protected. This is why slander and libel are illegal, it is also why you can prosecute people for hate crimes, or for plotting to kill people.
What the courts will decide in this particular case has yet to be seen, however it's not quite as simple as yelling "free speech!" because we all know that there are limits to that (and by necessity).
Having been the victim of a similar website 5 years ago, I can certainly imagine how the police must feel in this particular case.
Ok, so what would you give them instead of money?
How about food, water, shelter, clothing, and job training?
This would take care of the necessities of life (what welfare is supposed to do) while denying them any "luxury" items unless they are willing to work for them, while giving them the ability to go out there and work. I should also be perfectly clear that I do classify alcohol, cigarettes, and TV service in with the "luxury" items.
I think the idea of a welfare "cheque" is the wrong idea, this gives too much discretion to the person receiving the money, many of whom have shown an inability to properly use such discretion. As a telecommunications technician I have installed full digital HD TV service in a house while the occupants discussed which charity to get their next meal from, the money they are spending on the TV service each month would cover food for most of a month if they knew how to shop effectively. I have also seen people in the media claiming welfare doesn't provide enough money to buy groceries while they stand there surrounded by empty cases of beer and chain smoking... it isn't a matter of not enough money, it's a matter of incorrect priorities.
- Wired so it will always work. I don't want to have to think about recharging it.
I've used both wired and wireless. Wired is fine, but sometimes the core does get in the way (moreso than keyboard because of the movement and length). Wireless isn't much trouble, just put the mouse in the charger at the end of the day, take it out in the morning. Easy.
never had a problem with my wired mouse, the cord falls off the back of the desk and always has as much (or as little) cord available as I need.
- Mechanical so it always responds in a reliable way. I have yet to find a led/laser mouse that works reliable all the time, every time.
You must have some kind of magical mouse ball that doesn't drag fibers and crap onto the rollers. Mechanical ball mice are anything but reliable. Even a mediocre optical mouse is better than a ball mouse, and a laser mouse works on almost anything (even some glass).
This one I have to disagree on, I have never found any optical mouse that works reliably and precisely, and if you happen to use a smooth surface it's even worse, my ball mouse does get "crap" on the rollers, however it takes 30 seconds or less to clean it off when it happens, and I probably do that once or twice a year (If I had a mouse with batteries I would spend more time per year on maintenance to change batteries I'm sure)
I currently have a Microsoft Intellimouse, It's corded, it's mechanical, it's ergonomic (which I personally like even if the other poster didn't) it has "the right number" of buttons for me (3 including the wheel button) and in the 8+ years I've had it I've never had an issue. I hate Microsoft software, but their hardware isn't bad (my keyboard is also one of theirs from the same time as the mouse, and apart from completely screwing up the home/end/delete/pgup/pgdn/insert part, the rest I find really nice)
the problem is, that none of these issues have been addressed since 1999 so they are still there to worry about.
Every ad should explain itself? How are you going to do that on something that takes up 1/6th of a normal computer screen.
This depends on how you define "explain itself". My hope is that this would make illegal the ads that say "punch the monkey and win a prize" or "your internet connection is not secure" or any of a number of ridiculous things, and force ads to advertise the product they are selling. that way you know what you're clicking on before you do? I know these ads aren't a problem for experienced users, but there are still a LOT of people who fall for this garbage.
the best part is thought that once you do it once you don't HAVE to go near it again!
an open source textbook wouldn't have the same problem of having to change the version number and the order of the questions at the end of the chapter every year just to prevent a used textbook market. so it could stay the same until something major changes in the field!
Of course, all of this aside, I'm ok paying for textbooks, I just want the option to buy last years edition of the book that hasn't changed in 20 years, instead of needing this year's edition so that my page numbers and end of chapter questions line up (no other differences the majority of the time)
I thought the geostationary model for satellite phones had finally come to an end... the latency is just too high to comfortably carry on a conversation. The LEO satellite constellations are a much better way to work for a phone, the delays aren't really much more than a cell phone (apparently to the user). I've actually been looking forward to someone doing a LEO constellation for satellite broadband, it could finally make it useful. I've been quite impressed when using the Iridium network. Globalstar though has some work to do yet, too many holes in their constellation.
As others have pointed out though, Satellite alone has some major coverage problems (anywhere sheltered or indoors) but combined with the cell network this could be a powerful tool (though a pretty pricey one I bet!)
It's cheaper, smaller, and it's pretty much a full Linux based computer... oh and it has a colour screen too!
I'm sorry, but at $500 you can buy any of a number of laptops, netbooks or PDAs that all do much more than the Kindle does. Their price point is definitely in the wrong place for such a limited device.
my phone has the option to set specific ring tones for specific callers.
blocked callers get the "silent" ring tone.