Compare, say, the idea for practical fusion power (literally, that's it: 'There should be practical fusion power') with a copy of the plans for a practical, working fusion reactor, and lots of supporting documentation to show that it is viable. Which do you think the PTO will issue a patent for?
Knowing the patent office they'd probably grant both at the same time without even knowing it. Of course, that's how I see it as a pessimist and cynic. NB, I don't disagree with you, I just don't hold the USPTO in very high regard, given what they have issued patents on in the past.
I don't know about the rest of you out there in Slash-land, but my co-workers and I have been looking forward to coming home after work and having an extra hour of daylight. It's priceless.
If it's so fucking priceless, why don't you leave work an hour early? Or is it not that priceless after all? I'm with other people here: wasting money, time and fucking up people's sleep schedules is stupid. If you work a job where they can't handle you "coming in an hour early to leave an hour early" then you have a shitty job and should find a better one.
Not only that, the USPO is paid at bulk mail rates for carrying them. If it weren't for junk mail, first class mail would cost considerably more than it does.
Proof please? From everything I've seen, this makes bulk mail rates cheaper, not first class. Eliminating junk mail would at the very least make delivery faster (by eliminating the junk that has to be sorted and delivered), and possibly cheaper as the infrastructure wouldn't have to support the junk mail.
It's not that it's junk that makes it so bad, it's the expense to the recipient.
Junk mail does cost the recipient: in time. The time it takes to sort it from real mail and the time it takes to deal with it (either shredding it, throwing it away or recycling it). It also costs our society and our environment to level whole forests and produce toxic inks for something that very few people want. "The right to be let alone is indeed the the beginning of all freedom." as one man put it.
and attract all those furtive glances that my looks alone sadly never procured for me.
Just a quick aside from a guy to girls: guys usually don't pick up on subtlety, or if they do they are either too nice to think it's anything other than their overactive male ego (this used to be me), or they are a jerk who will think you are desperate. Also, being good looking can sometimes be a turnoff; again, the nice guys will think you are out of their league while the jerks will think you are an airhead and only try to bed you. Try being direct, talking to the nice shy ones, or it sounds like you've found a good conversation starter combined with an effective filter - double bonus!
The influx of cheaper cars (from Japan, I may add!) didn't kill off the top models...
Not yet but American auto manufacturers are on life support. GM used to be huge.
I'm sorry, but if you consider American autos to be (or to have ever been) "the top models", then might I suggest you try thinking a bit differently. Think Porsche, or Bentley if you're not a fan of sports cars. I can think of very few American cars that were top models in their class.
In many countries across the globe, there are large legitimate orphanages with many orphans seeking new parents. I find it closed-minded the posters here choose not to recognize many of these orphanages are backed by religious organizations including the Catholic Church. It's not like the Church denounces abortion and artificial insemination... they actually "walk the talk" when funding the alternative.
In contrast to adoption, artificial insemination costs a lot of money and time. The procedure is not perfect, fails many times, and each time can cost in the tens of thousands of US dollars.
Some places, it is not cheap or fast to adopt a child; I know one couple in particular that could not conceive and tried for years to adopt, but the state wouldn't let them. They finally gave up, and the husband is now a teacher who thinks of his students as "his children" in a philosophical way. On the other end of the spectrum, my brother and his partner have been foster parents for a while now. Thankfully the state where they live thinks they are suitable parents; how many churches would allow an unmarried couple to be parents? Especially a gay couple? (btw, the only reason they are not married is because it is not legal).
Quite honestly, I'm of the same opinion as many others here: why should I take moral guidance from an organization with a history of corruption, that has as it's guiding principle a belief in things that have not been shown to exist and may never be shown to exist? It's nice and all that the church is coming around and finally fitting their views with reality (instead of vice versa - hitting their heads against a brick wall and claiming it doesn't exist for two millenia must have finally convinced them to change their minds), but I've never needed a religion, and I suspect those who cling the tightest to religion would be doing themselves (and others) a favor by looking for reasons to believe rather than indoctrination.
AAC was developed by Dolby labs if I remember right, and many other portable music players support it now, including Sony's newer digital music players and some cell phones.
Oh, that's comforting to know: AAC isn't Apple's proprietary format, it's Dolby's. Same shit, different day. I don't think anyone really cared that much that it (supposedly) was Apple's format as much as it's a proprietary format with no legal means of implementing an open source encoder and decoder.
The only thing that fools people into thinking non-violence is good is that part of becoming the world's baddest-ass species was learning team violence (us vs. the prey, us vs. them).
As someone who doesn't like having violence done to him, I'm going to have to disagree with your opinion on motivations for non-violence. Also, engaging in violence is a high-calorie burning activity, and puts extra stress on an organism. Perhaps those that avoid violence do so for numerous reasons?
He notes that the application of the first law of thermodynamics (the slogan is "A Calorie is A Calorie") to a homeostatic dissipative system like the human body is beyond simplistic. It is simply wrong.
The laws of thermodynamics don't cease to exist simply because someone does some hand-waving and uses fancy big words. If he believes that extra calories are coming from somewhere, he needs to cite some actual science to back it up. That or he needs to show that human metabolism is not burning as many calories as we think. Calories (in essence, mass) don't just pop out of nowhere.
This results in cellular-level semi-starvation in other body tissues, expressed at the organismic level by eating more and exercising less.
So basically, what he does right there is refute his original claim: "oh, the human body somehow gains more calories than it takes in because these are "bad calories", "but these bad calories cause you to eat more and exercise less." I seriously hope you are misrepresenting what he said, because if that's what he said, it's no wonder people are fat when they believe contradictory things like that.
Look, everyone knows that there is a psychological component to dieting. It's very hard for people to cut back in a time of plenty; we are at least a little hard wired to fatten up in times of plenty so we have stores to live off of in times of need. The problem is when those times of need never happen and so we end up killing ourselves sooner through too much. There are very few places that thermodynamics don't apply, though, and human metabolism is not one of them. Burn more calories, good or bad, than you take in, good or bad, and you *will* lose weight. It is that simple. The hard part is convincing your brain not to eat that second slice of pie.
And if you want to venture into the unscientific realm, consistent exercise helps to stabilize your mood and makes you less prone to food cravings (the cravings for sugary foods and for fatty foods are based in imbalances in Serotonin and Dopamine levels).
I know that anecdote != data, but I have to put in a testimonial: exercise *definitely* changes what I'm hungry for. It also helps stave off depression.
That being said, exercise alone wasn't enough for me to lose weight. Part of my problem was that while I had vowed not to change my diet, but up my exercise (thereby burning more calories), I did change my diet, because the exercise changed my appetite. In essence, even if you exercise, you still must at least _control_ your diet, if not change it, to lose weight.
Everyone I know who's given up corn syrup, to the extent that it's possible in the US, has lost a minimum of 10 lbs.
Well yeah, considering the obscene amounts of soda that most people drink, when they switch to diet (= no HFCS), they should lose weight.
But to suggest that exercise isn't a vital part of a healthy lifestyle is wrong, and potentially very dangerous.
True, but to lose weight you still must at least *control* what you are eating. Otherwise it's just an exercise (pun intended) in futility.
I think that's the number one problem with diet plans these days. People assume that since it worked for them it will work for everyone else. I don't think that's the case.
Look, the Hacker's diet is very simple: eat less calories than you burn and you *will* lose weight. There are very few places that Newton's laws don't apply and human metabolism isn't one of them. This is one place where science definitely *can* apply to medicine (in the form of diet), and far too many people ignore this, to their detriment.
I eat whatever I feel like and I'm in great shape. This is not the case with the majority of Americans.
That's good! By stopping when you feel you've eaten enough (I'm assuming that's an essential part of "eat whatever I feel like"), you are listening to your body's signals of how much you need to eat. Not all people work like that. The human mind is a complicated thing, and even supposedly harmless attitudes can ruin eating habits. Did your parents ever tell you to "clean your plate"? Especially if they filled it for you? Do you eat everything you are given at a restaurant? Many people do, because they feel it is wasteful, even if they feel full after a few bites.
In fact, I'd say worrying so much about the details of what is said and how is exactly the problem. What's the big deal?
One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is that a phrase or saying used too often (or "forced" to be said in the name of consideration or political correctness) can lose meaning. Say something often enough and it loses its meaning and value; at that point, continuing to use the phrase can make it insulting. It's the same problem with saying "thank you" or "I love you" when you don't really mean it, but politeness or custom requires it. In my opinion, people should not speak unless they can contribute positively (and that doesn't mean hiding all criticism; just rephrase it to be constructive) and they mean what they say. Saying something when you don't mean it is almost as bad as lying, and can be more destructive.
That being said, people should be more considerate. I'm not saying people should say "thank you" or "good game" less; only that they should say it when they sincerely mean it, and they should mean it more often. Make your words mean something; make them gifts to be valued and appreciated. Don't just mouth the words like a drone. Be thoughtful, considerate and sincere.
If you disagree with this conclusion than consider how you will respond when your employer or customers decide they will start paying you whatever they want to and if that's not enough for rent, too bad for you. It's no way to make a living.
No, no, no! You're looking at this the wrong way! I hate haggling just as much as the next guy, but this is *exactly* how the market used to work before regulation and those with power fucked it up. You don't just say "oh well, I can't pay the rent". You find someone else who will pay you enough. No one willing to pay you enough to make the rent? Change what you are selling. Get a different skillset, go to university, choose a new profession, and voila! You compete in another market where the demand is high.
People like stability, though, so compromises were made. "Pay me and give me benefits, and I promise to stick around for a while instead of moving to the highest bidder." People traded freedom and mobility for safety and security. Only two problems: people become less flexible and able to adapt when in the same job for a long time, and those with power (employers, etc) have taken more than the employed agreed to. How do we fix this? Save more money, become financially independent, become more flexible and adaptable and be willing to tell your current employer to take a hike when they try to screw you over. Be honest: time is a very limited resource; get the highest price possible.
Actually, I'm not aware of a single example off the top of my head where a work would definitely have only been created if the author receives the legal assurance of copyright.
I can think of at least one example, and to be perfectly honest I think the world would have been better off without it. I'm not for abolishing copyright altogether, but to paraphrase one of my favorite quotes, those who create only for pay should go harm some other field.
Some would say Harry Potter is not the best example of culture.
Slightly OT, but I would argue that Harry Potter *is* culture, and I'm not even really a fan of it. Like it or not, it's a part of our culture. It's not highbrow, but it's not lowbrow either. While some might say that makes it worse because it's merely mediocre, I would argue that at least it has some good messages, and not ones that are only used to bludgeon you with the author's beliefs. It's gotten tons of kids (and adults!) to engage the parts of their brains responsible for reading that would otherwise go unused. I actually suspect that one of the reasons we *haven't* seen l33t speak and txt speak take over written culture is Harry Potter.
Beyond that, no one wants wind farms in their back yard
I want a wind farm in my back yard, but it wouldn't fit. I'd still be satisfied with just one windmill, but my wife doesn't like the idea and the neighbors would probably sue. I could move to a couple of acres where I could put up a windmill or two, but that would mean I probably couldn't bicycle in to work in any reasonable amount of time anymore and so I'd end up burning more gasoline.
and are vast arrays of solar panels really the best land utilization method out there?
Depends on where the land is and what it's currently being used for (I live about 50miles from that solar plant). I'd love to get solar on my roof, but it's still very expensive, and from what I've heard, production of solar cells isn't exactly environmentally friendly.
To my way of thinking, if you disagree with your countries policy, the proper course of action is to voice your opposition with your elected leaders, to your fellow citizens and at the ballotbox. You don't help other world leaders make a case against your country or undermine it. You don't stand on foreign soil and bad mouth your country and/or Government.
So, you would have a problem with a Chinese citizen coming to America and badmouthing China?. You may say it's a matter of degree, but if someone feels something their government is doing is wrong, and it's obvious that the government isn't listening, what else should they do?
So what about all the villainy done by atheists in the name of human progress? Mao and Stalin (both of whom killed more people in cold blood than Hitler) come to mind. What's your excuse for them?
You know, I'm really sick and tired of this being brought up all the time. The point is not that "some psycho who killed lots of people believed XXX, therefore XXX is bad". The point is that the majority of hatred is based on belief without evidence, and religion just happens to have the corner on that market. Mao and Stalin may have been atheists in the sense that they didn't have any beliefs about god, but they definitely had religious overtones to their dictatorships. Furthermore, religion would not have stopped them from doing what they did; more likely it would have made them all the more zealous. You want to argue that "atheists" killed more people than theists? Fine. But until you can show me more people have been killed because their killers used reason to justify it rather than religion, I'm going to have to call belief without evidence (aka religion) a blight on mankind. The fact that reason, in the form of science, has brought so much good to the world, while religions of all stripes strive to keep progress from happening just reinforces my impression of religion as malevolent.
One of my favourite shows of this season is Journeyman (time travel ftw), and the main character wields an iPhone. It's quite entrenched in our culture given how little time it's been on the market.
It's really a testament to Apple's marketing prowess; don't get me wrong, the iPhone is neat, but not really revolutionary. The exact same phone coming out of any other company wouldn't be where the iPhone is today because nobody markets like Apple. Which lead me to another thought . ..
Are the appearance of the iPhones on the shows placements? Marketing can be quite subtle these days, so it's really hard to tell. I'd put 50/50 odds on it being Apple marketing vs people picking them up and using them without being paid to. I have noticed Treos in "Criminal Minds", but again, I don't know if that was placement or just coincidence. In either case, it's still a bygone conclusion that smartphones aren't the niche market Dvorak makes them out to be.
. . . and by "finest" I mean "stupidity as usual".
First of all, it wants to put Google search on a phone.
Duh. What did he think Google would put on it? Microsoft's search engine?
It wants to do this because it is obvious to the folks at Google that people need to do Web searches from their phone, so they can, uh, get directions to the restaurant? Of course, they can simply use the phone itself to call the restaurant and ask!
Ok smartass, what's the phone number of the restaurant? Oh, you mean you have to search for it? Or better yet, just get directions yourself.
I've actually used various phones with Web capability. They never work right.
Says you. My browser (Blazer on Treo) seems to work adequately. So does the browser on my friend's Symbian phone. If you believe some iPhone user's, Safari is the second coming.
They take forever to navigate. It's hard to read the screens
What smartphones have you actually used, mister I write about technology so I should probably try out a wide variety before writing about it.
... I also hope that people note the fact that the public has not been flocking to smartphones of any sort.
Which is why of course we rarely see people with Blackberries, Treo's or any of a dozen other smartphones. The iPhone alone has made such a quick entrance into popular culture that I've already seen it on two TV shows (Mythbusters and The Colbert Report).
My personal believe is that every person should work and live as openly as practically possible. This is how Open Source has developed, and if we are to have a free society, this is how we should live. It's when you can't see people as people, that you are okay with treating them as trash.
I've often thought this way myself, but I always come back to a root problem: people hate unreasoningly (is that redundant?). Until you can wipe homophobia from the human race, there will be good reasons that some people don't come out of the closet. Same goes for any number of other things that we keep private because to not do so would ruin our lives. I'm not a big fan of Ayn Rand, but here's a cogent quote by her:
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
-- Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (1943)
Until you can either mandate tolerance, eliminate intolerance, or somehow guarantee absolute freedom/liberty, privacy will be necessary.
Here's a computer problem comparison since that is probably your specialty. There are a MILLION programs out there that can act as calculators, they're very easy programs to write - but there are only a handful of good BLAS libraries out there, those are difficult problems. You'd be called a fool if you suggested that we could make BLAS progress faster by taking the people off developing calculators and put them on BLAS - it's the same as your uneducated assumptions about the medical community.
Why do we need a million different calculator programs? Isn't one, or even a dozen good enough to cover all cases? Reversing the analogy, how many penis pills do we need? If it's so easy to make them, why can't people work on the hard stuff, then if an emergency need arises for penis pills they can whip out (pun intended) a new penis pill?
On the other hand, you could be referring to the vocal minority problem
Just a note: I find it very interesting in that the link you provide for "vocal minority" is Greenpeace, as opposed to some other vocal minority which is far more vocal, and arguably a smaller minority. Pray tell, why did you choose this way? Not that I'm any fan of Greenpeace, but I would argue that the Religious Right has done much more damage that Greenpeace.
but thanks to which we now live in the wonderful world of [link to political correctness]
Ah, I see now; it becomes all too clear. Shame I'm limited to 400 friends/foes.
Politically correct is what some people call you if they don't like it when you ask them to have some respect for other people.
-- King Kaufman
Slashdot Mirror
Then don't read it - problem solved!
Knowing the patent office they'd probably grant both at the same time without even knowing it. Of course, that's how I see it as a pessimist and cynic. NB, I don't disagree with you, I just don't hold the USPTO in very high regard, given what they have issued patents on in the past.
If it's so fucking priceless, why don't you leave work an hour early? Or is it not that priceless after all? I'm with other people here: wasting money, time and fucking up people's sleep schedules is stupid. If you work a job where they can't handle you "coming in an hour early to leave an hour early" then you have a shitty job and should find a better one.
Then let the people who want them sign up for the mailing list for them. Why should people get them if they don't want them?
"Also, people are paid money to create, sell, deliver and install windows."
Proof please? From everything I've seen, this makes bulk mail rates cheaper, not first class. Eliminating junk mail would at the very least make delivery faster (by eliminating the junk that has to be sorted and delivered), and possibly cheaper as the infrastructure wouldn't have to support the junk mail.
Junk mail does cost the recipient: in time. The time it takes to sort it from real mail and the time it takes to deal with it (either shredding it, throwing it away or recycling it). It also costs our society and our environment to level whole forests and produce toxic inks for something that very few people want. "The right to be let alone is indeed the the beginning of all freedom." as one man put it.
Just a quick aside from a guy to girls: guys usually don't pick up on subtlety, or if they do they are either too nice to think it's anything other than their overactive male ego (this used to be me), or they are a jerk who will think you are desperate. Also, being good looking can sometimes be a turnoff; again, the nice guys will think you are out of their league while the jerks will think you are an airhead and only try to bed you. Try being direct, talking to the nice shy ones, or it sounds like you've found a good conversation starter combined with an effective filter - double bonus!
I'm sorry, but if you consider American autos to be (or to have ever been) "the top models", then might I suggest you try thinking a bit differently. Think Porsche, or Bentley if you're not a fan of sports cars. I can think of very few American cars that were top models in their class.
Some places, it is not cheap or fast to adopt a child; I know one couple in particular that could not conceive and tried for years to adopt, but the state wouldn't let them. They finally gave up, and the husband is now a teacher who thinks of his students as "his children" in a philosophical way. On the other end of the spectrum, my brother and his partner have been foster parents for a while now. Thankfully the state where they live thinks they are suitable parents; how many churches would allow an unmarried couple to be parents? Especially a gay couple? (btw, the only reason they are not married is because it is not legal).
Quite honestly, I'm of the same opinion as many others here: why should I take moral guidance from an organization with a history of corruption, that has as it's guiding principle a belief in things that have not been shown to exist and may never be shown to exist? It's nice and all that the church is coming around and finally fitting their views with reality (instead of vice versa - hitting their heads against a brick wall and claiming it doesn't exist for two millenia must have finally convinced them to change their minds), but I've never needed a religion, and I suspect those who cling the tightest to religion would be doing themselves (and others) a favor by looking for reasons to believe rather than indoctrination.
Oh, that's comforting to know: AAC isn't Apple's proprietary format, it's Dolby's . Same shit, different day. I don't think anyone really cared that much that it (supposedly) was Apple's format as much as it's a proprietary format with no legal means of implementing an open source encoder and decoder.
As someone who doesn't like having violence done to him, I'm going to have to disagree with your opinion on motivations for non-violence. Also, engaging in violence is a high-calorie burning activity, and puts extra stress on an organism. Perhaps those that avoid violence do so for numerous reasons?
The laws of thermodynamics don't cease to exist simply because someone does some hand-waving and uses fancy big words. If he believes that extra calories are coming from somewhere, he needs to cite some actual science to back it up. That or he needs to show that human metabolism is not burning as many calories as we think. Calories (in essence, mass) don't just pop out of nowhere.
So basically, what he does right there is refute his original claim: "oh, the human body somehow gains more calories than it takes in because these are "bad calories", "but these bad calories cause you to eat more and exercise less." I seriously hope you are misrepresenting what he said, because if that's what he said, it's no wonder people are fat when they believe contradictory things like that.
Look, everyone knows that there is a psychological component to dieting. It's very hard for people to cut back in a time of plenty; we are at least a little hard wired to fatten up in times of plenty so we have stores to live off of in times of need. The problem is when those times of need never happen and so we end up killing ourselves sooner through too much. There are very few places that thermodynamics don't apply, though, and human metabolism is not one of them. Burn more calories, good or bad, than you take in, good or bad, and you *will* lose weight. It is that simple. The hard part is convincing your brain not to eat that second slice of pie.
I know that anecdote != data, but I have to put in a testimonial: exercise *definitely* changes what I'm hungry for. It also helps stave off depression.
That being said, exercise alone wasn't enough for me to lose weight. Part of my problem was that while I had vowed not to change my diet, but up my exercise (thereby burning more calories), I did change my diet, because the exercise changed my appetite. In essence, even if you exercise, you still must at least _control_ your diet, if not change it, to lose weight.
Well yeah, considering the obscene amounts of soda that most people drink, when they switch to diet (= no HFCS), they should lose weight.
True, but to lose weight you still must at least *control* what you are eating. Otherwise it's just an exercise (pun intended) in futility.
Look, the Hacker's diet is very simple: eat less calories than you burn and you *will* lose weight. There are very few places that Newton's laws don't apply and human metabolism isn't one of them. This is one place where science definitely *can* apply to medicine (in the form of diet), and far too many people ignore this, to their detriment.
That's good! By stopping when you feel you've eaten enough (I'm assuming that's an essential part of "eat whatever I feel like"), you are listening to your body's signals of how much you need to eat. Not all people work like that. The human mind is a complicated thing, and even supposedly harmless attitudes can ruin eating habits. Did your parents ever tell you to "clean your plate"? Especially if they filled it for you? Do you eat everything you are given at a restaurant? Many people do, because they feel it is wasteful, even if they feel full after a few bites.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is that a phrase or saying used too often (or "forced" to be said in the name of consideration or political correctness) can lose meaning. Say something often enough and it loses its meaning and value; at that point, continuing to use the phrase can make it insulting. It's the same problem with saying "thank you" or "I love you" when you don't really mean it, but politeness or custom requires it. In my opinion, people should not speak unless they can contribute positively (and that doesn't mean hiding all criticism; just rephrase it to be constructive) and they mean what they say . Saying something when you don't mean it is almost as bad as lying, and can be more destructive.
That being said, people should be more considerate. I'm not saying people should say "thank you" or "good game" less; only that they should say it when they sincerely mean it, and they should mean it more often. Make your words mean something; make them gifts to be valued and appreciated. Don't just mouth the words like a drone. Be thoughtful, considerate and sincere.
No, no, no! You're looking at this the wrong way! I hate haggling just as much as the next guy, but this is *exactly* how the market used to work before regulation and those with power fucked it up. You don't just say "oh well, I can't pay the rent". You find someone else who will pay you enough. No one willing to pay you enough to make the rent? Change what you are selling. Get a different skillset, go to university, choose a new profession, and voila! You compete in another market where the demand is high.
People like stability, though, so compromises were made. "Pay me and give me benefits, and I promise to stick around for a while instead of moving to the highest bidder." People traded freedom and mobility for safety and security. Only two problems: people become less flexible and able to adapt when in the same job for a long time, and those with power (employers, etc) have taken more than the employed agreed to. How do we fix this? Save more money, become financially independent, become more flexible and adaptable and be willing to tell your current employer to take a hike when they try to screw you over. Be honest: time is a very limited resource; get the highest price possible.
I can think of at least one example, and to be perfectly honest I think the world would have been better off without it. I'm not for abolishing copyright altogether, but to paraphrase one of my favorite quotes, those who create only for pay should go harm some other field.
Slightly OT, but I would argue that Harry Potter *is* culture, and I'm not even really a fan of it. Like it or not, it's a part of our culture. It's not highbrow, but it's not lowbrow either. While some might say that makes it worse because it's merely mediocre, I would argue that at least it has some good messages, and not ones that are only used to bludgeon you with the author's beliefs. It's gotten tons of kids (and adults!) to engage the parts of their brains responsible for reading that would otherwise go unused. I actually suspect that one of the reasons we *haven't* seen l33t speak and txt speak take over written culture is Harry Potter.
I want a wind farm in my back yard, but it wouldn't fit. I'd still be satisfied with just one windmill, but my wife doesn't like the idea and the neighbors would probably sue. I could move to a couple of acres where I could put up a windmill or two, but that would mean I probably couldn't bicycle in to work in any reasonable amount of time anymore and so I'd end up burning more gasoline.
Depends on where the land is and what it's currently being used for (I live about 50miles from that solar plant). I'd love to get solar on my roof, but it's still very expensive, and from what I've heard, production of solar cells isn't exactly environmentally friendly.
To post an angry irrational response from an Apple Fanboi?
So, you would have a problem with a Chinese citizen coming to America and badmouthing China?. You may say it's a matter of degree, but if someone feels something their government is doing is wrong, and it's obvious that the government isn't listening, what else should they do?
You know, I'm really sick and tired of this being brought up all the time. The point is not that "some psycho who killed lots of people believed XXX, therefore XXX is bad". The point is that the majority of hatred is based on belief without evidence, and religion just happens to have the corner on that market. Mao and Stalin may have been atheists in the sense that they didn't have any beliefs about god, but they definitely had religious overtones to their dictatorships. Furthermore, religion would not have stopped them from doing what they did; more likely it would have made them all the more zealous. You want to argue that "atheists" killed more people than theists? Fine. But until you can show me more people have been killed because their killers used reason to justify it rather than religion, I'm going to have to call belief without evidence (aka religion) a blight on mankind. The fact that reason, in the form of science, has brought so much good to the world, while religions of all stripes strive to keep progress from happening just reinforces my impression of religion as malevolent.
It's really a testament to Apple's marketing prowess; don't get me wrong, the iPhone is neat, but not really revolutionary. The exact same phone coming out of any other company wouldn't be where the iPhone is today because nobody markets like Apple. Which lead me to another thought . . .
Are the appearance of the iPhones on the shows placements? Marketing can be quite subtle these days, so it's really hard to tell. I'd put 50/50 odds on it being Apple marketing vs people picking them up and using them without being paid to. I have noticed Treos in "Criminal Minds", but again, I don't know if that was placement or just coincidence. In either case, it's still a bygone conclusion that smartphones aren't the niche market Dvorak makes them out to be.
. . . and by "finest" I mean "stupidity as usual".
Duh. What did he think Google would put on it? Microsoft's search engine?
Ok smartass, what's the phone number of the restaurant? Oh, you mean you have to search for it? Or better yet, just get directions yourself.
Says you. My browser (Blazer on Treo) seems to work adequately. So does the browser on my friend's Symbian phone. If you believe some iPhone user's, Safari is the second coming.
What smartphones have you actually used, mister I write about technology so I should probably try out a wide variety before writing about it.
Which is why of course we rarely see people with Blackberries, Treo's or any of a dozen other smartphones. The iPhone alone has made such a quick entrance into popular culture that I've already seen it on two TV shows (Mythbusters and The Colbert Report).
I've often thought this way myself, but I always come back to a root problem: people hate unreasoningly (is that redundant?). Until you can wipe homophobia from the human race, there will be good reasons that some people don't come out of the closet. Same goes for any number of other things that we keep private because to not do so would ruin our lives. I'm not a big fan of Ayn Rand, but here's a cogent quote by her:
Until you can either mandate tolerance, eliminate intolerance, or somehow guarantee absolute freedom/liberty, privacy will be necessary.
Why do we need a million different calculator programs? Isn't one, or even a dozen good enough to cover all cases? Reversing the analogy, how many penis pills do we need? If it's so easy to make them, why can't people work on the hard stuff, then if an emergency need arises for penis pills they can whip out (pun intended) a new penis pill?
Just a note: I find it very interesting in that the link you provide for "vocal minority" is Greenpeace, as opposed to some other vocal minority which is far more vocal, and arguably a smaller minority. Pray tell, why did you choose this way? Not that I'm any fan of Greenpeace, but I would argue that the Religious Right has done much more damage that Greenpeace.
Ah, I see now; it becomes all too clear. Shame I'm limited to 400 friends/foes.