Why would they? When they can get the government to do it.
Why would they launch their own satellites if the government did NOT do it for them? Look, they've done well repackaging the text data you've always been able to get from NOAA. They take the raw imagery, doll it up and spin it around in various eye-watering, stomach-churning ways. They're in the data presentation business, not the data production business.
Sure, being the only organization that can fill in the data gap would be a competitive advantage, but that requires investment, and in general the investment in substance by information-media has dropped through the floor. News outfits cutting back on things like foreign bureaues and local reporters and shifting their content to opinion; and you expect them to pick up the 655 million dollars it takes to field the JPSS-1 and the 12.6 *billion* of the entire program?
What the American government really seems to do is funnel tax payers money into companies.
Well, sure. If you're going to have a space program, it's either funnel taxpayers' money into companies or into programs staffed by government workers. The question shouldn't be where the money ends up, it should be value for money. A decade of accurate storm tracking is easily worth 12 billion bucks to America as a whole; it's just not worth 12 billion to any single private entity.
Well as a result of the '53 coup, the shah reigned as an absolute dictator for the following 26 years. Anybody over the age of 40 or so has memories of the Shah, and that includes the entire current Iranian leadership -- they're the revolutionaries who overthrew the Shah in fact. Just like there are plenty of people alive in the US who remember Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter there are plenty Iranians alive who remember the Shah, his secret police, and his torture chambers. They also remember that he was the closest US ally in the Middle East, after Israel.
So if you're waiting for the Iranian leadership to write off the years '53 to '79 as ancient history, you're going to have to wait at least another generation. That might even be two generations, as you might have to wait for the people who grew up personally knowing people in the revolution pass away. Just because it's ancient history for *you* doesn't mean other people have or should have forgotten the Shah.
And they certainly haven't forgotten George W. Bush. After watching in alarm as US forces toppled in weeks a country they'd fought to a stalemate for eight years at the cost of over half a million lives, the Iranian leadership floated an offer that gave the US everything it said it wanted. They offered complete transparency in their nuclear program and a withdrawal of support from Hezbollah and Hamas, in return for what amounted to a promise not to invade. The Bush administration didn't even bother responding.
Now if you were in the shoes of the Iranian leadership, what do you think would appear to be the rational course to pursue? Diplomacy and disarmament? Or arming yourself to the teeth?
Now imagine the people in that world imagining what it would take to create a petroleum-based economy like ours from scratch. The amazing drilling technology; the massive investment in super-ships and pipelines; the scale and sophistication of refineries; the ubiquitous distribution networks; the engine technology to burn petroleum cleanly and efficiently.
Imagining all those things happening in the space of, say, ten or even twenty years would be impossible. And in fact it didn't happen that way. It took us more like a century.
People seem to be daunted by any new energy technology because they can't imagine it replacing petroleum overnight. But it doesn't have to happen that way, and in fact it won't. The dominance of petroleum we've known all our lives will be gone someday, probably within the lifetime of some people alive today but that might be fifty years or more into the future. And as with any technology, success with the replacement technologies will depend on timing. You wan to be ahead of the curve, but not investing so far ahead of the curve you're dealing with impracticability. Back in '94 I worked for a new boss who was betting the company on the emergence of something like Netflix streaming in the next year or two. I explained all the difficulties and why it would not happen any time in the next decade, but she was so certain it was going to happen she could not be dissuaded (so I quit). I envisioned the same future as her, but I thought her timing was premature -- as it turned out to be by some 14 years.
Apple's success is, apart from design, largely a matter of timing. They weren't the first to develop a tablet, but the iPad came when it was possible to make something thin enough, light enough, long-lasting enough and powerful enough to be useful. People who tried when you needed to make the things ten pounds and an inch thick to accommodate the battery failed, no matter how impressive their design was for the time, because he time was wrong.
As I said, petroleum will fade away in the lifetime of many of us, and what replaces it would seem astonishing to us today, but it won't happen overnight. And we'll never run out of oil. We'll use less and less of it as the prices rises against the falling price of the alternatives. At the outset, those alternatives won't look competitive at all. And most of them will never be competitive. The few that will work out will be very difficult to pick out from the rest of the pack of doomed technologies.
Well, I wasn't going to go into presentations, but you're right, preparation is the key. And the most important preparation you can make is to understand your audience and pitch your presentation to be most effective. In particular pay attention to what they want to hear, what they need to hear, and how much detail they can handle. Keep the audience oriented in the presentation, noting that their polestar will always be *their* issues.
Don't mistake "self-confidence" for "arrogance", which many people do. There's a difference between believing in yourself and believing other people have nothing to teach you.
There are lots of things you can do to appear less arrogant to other people, but the first and most important is to become a *disciplined* listener. I stress "discipline" because that's what it takes when you're used to beating other people to the punch. Here are the steps, in order.
(1) Let the other person finish what he has to say -- beyond any reasonable doubt. (2) Demonstrate that you heard everything he had to say. (3) Demonstrate you understand everything he had to say. (4) Show you recognize whatever truth is in what he had to say. All of the truth you can find. If you can't find any truth, recognize good intentions. If you can't find any good intentions, pretend that they're there anyway. (5) Then, only then, give your opinions. Be sure to salt any points of disagreement with admissions of your own fallibility.
That's how you get people to see you as being as smart as you see yourself. As you can see, it's all about resisting the impulse to smack the buzzer and say "Bzzt! WRONG!"
Everyone knows how Europeans feel about US politics.
Oh? How does "everyone" know exactly? Because "everyone" says that?
In fact, if I had to pick a single word that characterizes European political views, the word would be "anti-American".
Again, how do you know this? The Europeans I've talked to seem very friendly toward America, and have positive (albeit mixed) views about the US and its people. They don't necessarily like every US government that comes along, but Americans don't either. They don't agree with every American policy, but neither do Americans.
It's pathetic to get upset because other people don't agree with you all the time. I prefer people who have their own opinions and voice them assertively to yes-men who toady to the biggest bigshot in the room. I think people with the spine to have independent opinions are more worthy of respect than those who just parrot back something they've heard.
Do Americans visit European web forums and loudly criticize your choice in elected officials American complaints about whether your leaders are doing their job in a way that suits us?
First of all, I'm American and, yes, I've seen other Americans do that. I certainly hear Americans complain about European governments.
At least I have my answer for where you get your information on European public opinion -- from (self-reported) European Internet trolls.
Why would we poke our noses into someone else's business, especially when the business in question is something as boring as politics?
Money? Geopolitical power? Lots of reasons. The US does not exactly have a hands off policy towards who governs foreign countries. In any case, I think it's a bit paranoid to worry about Europeans pulling the strings in US elections. They're entitled to their opinions about our leaders, just like we're entitled to our opinions of theres. It's ridiculous to get all worked up about their not liking *everyone* we elect when *we* don't either.
Europeans naturally have a great interest in our elections because the US is the greatest power in the world and who is in the US government affects their lives in a way that who is, say, Prime Minister of Italy does NOT effect us. Back in the Apartheid years I had a young South African Indian woman working for me -- technically she was "colored" according to their law. During the presidential election one year she opined that she wished she could vote in the election because because who won would have a huge effect on her own country, and the entire world. Then she sighed and said, "Actually, it's just that for once in my life I'd like to get the chance to vote."
Let's make a deal: you guys elect whoever you want in your countries, and we'll elect whoever we want in ours.
That's the question, isn't it? Whether we are getting the officials we actually elect. I think outside observers are a good thing. You don't have to agree with their opinions of how they run things, but a little criticism never hurt anybody.
Well, one possible reason is federal pre-emption. We send election observers to other countries under the aegis of the OSCE, and it is possible that the international agreements which allow us to do that require us to accept observers in return. On the other hand, those agreements might not require us to accept observers, in which case Texas law would prevail. It's not a situation you can judge from first principles, what actually has happened matters.
I'm curious why you'd think that voters would feel intimidated by international observers. The purpose of observers is to document the procedures used by election officials so that that people can judge the fairness and legality of elections rather than taking the officials' word for it. It seems to me that voter in intimidation is a non-issue. There is of course a technical issue regarding the letter of the Texas law, but the intent of observation is to ensure that the *officials* don't engage in voter intimidation. It's a case of "who watches the watchmen".
Right now there's nothing inherently suspicious about the Texas AG announcing he'll enforce Texas law, but if he continued to do so in the face of federal preemption that would be fishy.
it's just another way for the pharmaceutical industry to remove money from your wallet. Perhaps ADHD is just a reasonable and rational response to a completely insane world of hyper-focus. Perhaps we should all be chasing buffalo and living in tipis because, it's better. Maybe depression is a correct response to a world gone mad - a civilisation hell bent of murdering the biosphere. Maybe mental health, isn't.
No, ADHD is *not* a reaction to hyper-focus. In fact, hyper-focus is one of the problems ADHD *creates*, although it can at times be useful.
ADHD is badly named; it is not a deficit of *attention*, it is an inability to voluntarily *control* attention. Both shifting focus and hyper-focus are examples of the sufferer's lack of voluntary control. When the thing being focused upon is what the sufferer wants to focus on, great. When it's *not* what you want to be working on, then hyper-focus is not so great. The modern atmosphere of mindless rush and continual distraction *exacerbates* the inability to control focus, so it may *look* like a reaction. It's a bit like being poisoned by pollution; because of natural variation the unnatural mental environment becomes toxic to some people sooner. But being the canary in the coal mine is not an adaptation.
Depression is not a reasonable reaction to a world gone mad; a reasonable reaction to a world gone mad is to try to fix the world, to find a place in the world that is less mad, or at least to insulate yourself from the madness. Depression is a disease which cripples the victim's ability to take care of himself even in mundane, day-to-day tasks -- much less in the challenging ones like getting by in a world gone mad.
It is true that a reasonable humane society would make accommodations for people with ADHD or depression, the way it would make accommodations for somebody who suffers from impaired vision or a broken leg. With those accommodations the ADHD sufferer can become fully productive and contributing, and the depressed person can return to full productivity sooner.
that's right, i just said the lord of the rings is a parable about drug addiction
You can interpret it that way, but it wasn't intended that way. It's a story about the virtue of courage, even in hopeless situations.
in the short term, it gives you superpowers. in the long term, it turns you into a soulless ghoul
Neither of these are true. Stimulant medications don't give you super powers; those college students on illegal methylphenidate (ritalin) are pretty much getting to be where they'd be if they regularly got a good night's sleep. As for turning you into a ghoul, it may be true that methamphetamine abuse causes a serious, personality twisting dependency, but ritalin doesn't. It doesn't hit those dopamine reward circuits as hard as amphetamines do. A stimulant that was like ritalin and which didn't stimulate the brain's reward mechanisms at *all* might well be safer then caffeine.
Caffeine, by the way, is the old school way of improving your school performance. But it too is no substitute for taking care of yourself: getting enough sleep, exercising, eating well, managing your time.
Well, it all boils down to insecurity, doesn't it? And it may be justified.
I've spent decades now in the working world, and there's always been a certain group of desperate people eager to show they're up-to-date by buying into the flavor-of-the-month. You don't have to actually buy the flavor-of-the-month to know what that flavor is, nor to create the next flavor-of-the-month. People who think you have to buy the flavor-of-the-month as soon as it comes out are hobbyists. They may also be pros, but it is their hobbyist impulse that makes them drink the kool-aid.
Anybody who's serious about mobile development is bound to have a drawer full of fairly current devices somewhere. What he carries is what serves his needs. I'd been working with various smartphones for some time before I began carrying one. That's because I made telephony an absolute priority. I began carrying a Palm Treo 650 back in 2005 -- not because it was a quantum leap in smartphone technology, but because the carriers upgraded their networks near my house and I no longer had to worry about choosing the phone with the best reception.
I like neckties. I don't see what the big deal some people have with them is, other than they're a bit old school. Men who think ties are uncomfortable just need to get a properly sized shirt. I suspect a lot of men these days only have one suit that's been sitting int he closet for years and doesn't fit them -- if it ever did. Of course you hate getting dressed in something like that, it'd be like putting on a straight jacket.
In general formal business attire is comfortable, it should feel as close to being in your pajamas as possible. A properly fitted suit looks good on anyone, unlike business casual which works for some but makes others look like slobs. Remember MacWorld '97 where Gil Amelio and Steve Jobs both wore collarless shirts (Source: The Register,Oct 6, 2011)? Jobs looked OK, albeit a bit parson-ish. Amelio looked like an understudy for Clarence, from *It's a Wonderful Life*.
Formal business attire seems foreign to a lot of guys these days, almost a piece of lost lore like shaving with a straight razor. But it's more user-friendly than it looks. The secret is to find a menswear store you like and let them take care of you. Then go back every year or two for a new suit so you always have something that fits. If you never wear suits and you know you're going to need one for an upcoming event, three weeks before you need it try on that old suit. If it's not perfectly comfortable, go straight to the menswear store.
Actually bullshit, A line worker in Foxconn is just paid $2 per hour,they have to work at least 11 hours each day,no saturday.
It is true that cheap labor makes Foxconn a more profitable supplier to use, but you can't call BS until you know how much labor cost is as a fraction of total costs of putting the device on the market. In past devices the cost differential wasn't that high. Perhaps the labor input required to assemble an iPhone 5 is much hither though.
Your missing one of the greatest benefits of bike commuting. When you get to work you feel relaxed and energized.
In any case, bike clothing is practical for cycling. Nobody in his right mind would wear it because of the way it looked. It's kind of like wearing leather for motorcycling; there are good, practical reasons for wearing leather while motorcycling despite the fact that most people look silly in it.
Yeah. Real EEs use discrete components to prototype, which they fabricate themselves. After all their time has little value -- certainly less than the princely $20 a fully assembled and tested Arduino board set them back.
Well, if you worked for me and you left an hour or two early from time to time I'd have no problem with that. But in general I expect people who work for me to spend down time "sharpening their saw" by doing research and experimentation. So if you routinely had nothing to do for several hours a day, I'd expect you to find something to do that'll make you awesome on the next big project. If you didn't find something like that, I would. In that kind of work environment a few hours of "mental health leave" couple of weeks is no big deal, as long as you're doing a good job and getting better at it.
When I managed a development team I recognized that the occasional all-nighter or weekend session was necessary,but I had a policy that my guys had to take comp time *right away*, within a day or two. That wasn't popular; they liked the idea of comp time, but they'd have preferred to bank it. But the point wasn't to compensate them for their extra effort -- they were salaried employees -- it was to make sure when they were at work their minds were sharp.
I believe an engineering team needs three things: skill, energy and focus. "Dedication" is neither here nor there as far as I'm concerned, at least if by that you mean some kind of sentimental attachment to the organization. If you have the big three, you'll get whatever else you need. Too many managers don't manage, they work out a personal psychodrama in which there are good employees and bad employees. To me that's baloney, unless an employee is "good" if and only if he contributes to productivity and "bad" if and only if he does not. An employee who suffers unproductively for the company is neurotic, no matter what else you choose to call him, and shouldn't be encouraged to do that.
While your reasoning is impeccable, according to TFA (dirty pool, I know), problems at two major refineries and a pipeline supplying the CA market are responsible for the price spike in CA.
I think the growing world economy and peak oil explain why petroleum prices are rising generally, refinery capacity has a significant effect on local gasoline prices in the US.
It's a bit like blaming an unusually large hurricane on global warming. Yes, under global warming some regions experience much more energetic storms, it's simplistic to blame something like Katrina on global warming. I'ts the kind of thing that happens more often with global warming, but it can happen in any case. Price spikes are more common in a scenario where global demand is outstripping petroleum supply, but it can happen for other reasons too.
Either that or the damage done to the helmets indicates a level of force best not applied to a naked head.
WARNING, IMPORTANT!!! YOU CANNOT TELL WHETHER A HELMET HAS SUSTAINED DAMAGE BY LOOKING AT IT. ALWAYS DISCARD A HELMET AFTER AN IMPACT OR SEND IT BACK TO THE MANUFACTURER.
Bike helmets absorb damage by deforming permanently, but the deformation is usually beneath the surface of the polycarbonate shell, in the interior of the foam. The only way to assess the damage is to cut the helmet apart with special tools.
Imagine you're a two hundred and twenty pound man crouched with your hands tied behind your back on the hood of a car traveling at 15 mph. The driver slams on the brakes and you fly forward, striking the pavement on the crown of your head. I've had two bike accidents that approximate that, and in both cases I rode away with no injury whatsoever aside from a few scrapes. I'd *almost certainly* have been seriously injured without a helmet. If I gave you $20, would you dive head first off the top of your front steps onto the sidewalk with your hands behind your back? Would you need an alternate universe to know that you'd be seriously hurt?
In both those accident the helmets *looked* perfectly fine. The damage was beneath the shell. The shell, by the way, is a critical element in that head-against-pavement accident. It spreads the force of the impact, and also allows the head to slide over the pavement instead of being snapped back by the friction of your scalp being abraded away. I prefer a helmet that is rounded for that reason, and in the winter I use a snowboarding helmet without holes that meets EU standards that are nearly identical to the bicycle standards.
First of all, you're assuming the kind of accidents you get in traffic are the same ones you get mountain biking. Yes, indeed wrist and collarbone breaks are common in mountain biking, because the most common accidents are low speed face plants and slipping on loose materials. At road speeds you don't fall off your bike, you get thrown off. I speak from experience having got my share of scrapes both mountain and road biking. In any case you should still wear your bike helmet off-road, because head injuries are the ones that will kill you or leave you incapacitated for life. A broken wrist is nothing.
Second of all, I happen to have my bike helmet right here, *and* a pair of calipers, so I can test your assertion that a helmet is just a cm of styrofoam. Measured at the thinnest part, the styrofoam part of the helmet measures 22mm, and is somewhat thicker at the crown. Furthermore the helmet is more than just styrofoam, there's a polycarbonate shell (the same stuff they make bullet-proof glass out of) which spreads the impact over a large area and also reduces head and neck injuries by sliding rather than catching on the pavement.
Sure, a bike helmet *looks* flimsy, but that's because it's design to destruct on impact -- like an automobile's crumple zones. Like the crumple zones helmets work amazingly well. I happen to have read both the European EN 1078 and Snell B-95 helmet standards and they're both quite robust. You mention crashing on sidewalks; both standards mandate right-angle anvil tests which ensure a helmet's effectiveness when the rider's head strikes the angle of a curb.
Frankly, if you take your bike helmet off when you get to the road, I think you must be nuts. If I were going to wear my helmet part time (which I'm not going to), I'd wear it on the road and not wear it off-road. I've crashed hundreds of times offroad and never hit my helmet (hang onto those bars!). I've crashed maybe a half dozen times on the road in twenty-five years of cycling and have always walked away with no injuries at all. In at least two cases I would have been killed or suffered serious head injury were it not for my helmet.
As for motorcycling, I can't speak from experience but my motorcycling friends tell me that they spend most of their time at speeds at which helmets make no difference at all. Personally, I don't buy that argument, but clearly it doesn't apply to bicycles.
It's because it's fucking unsafe to bike in areas without bike lanes. Which is pretty much most of the US except for major urban areas or the occasional statistical fluke. Rich people in the suburbs who are terrified of their own shadow are the exception. The norm are people who actually are at high risk of being run off the road if they tried to bike to work at 7am.
This is simply untrue. I bike commuted for many years before I got a job with a hundred-plus mile round trip commute. Before that I had a 22 mile round trip commute through a mix of suburban and urban streets that I did without incident for ten years. A reasonably skilled and fit cyclist can commute in rush hour traffic with acceptable safety. By "reasonably skilled" I don't mean an elite bike racer either; I averaged about ten miles per hour on my commute and cruised at fifteen or so.
Car-bicycle accidents are not as common as car-car accidents, although admittedly consequences to the cyclists tend to be much greater. But a reasonably cautious cyclist can avoid most accidents. Cyclists have much higher situational awareness than motorists. We're doing physical activity, so we're more alert; we don't have in-car distractions; we sit higher and can see over most vehicles; and we can detect and track overtaking vehicles by hearing as well as sight.
Frankly, I think only a fool would bike commute without a helmet. Helmets turn accidents that could kill or permanently incapacitate you into inconveniences you ride away from -- the cycling equivalent of a fender-bender. The ability of a modern cycling helmet to protect against injury is nothing short of amazing.
As for bike lanes, they're a great idea that reduces car/bike use conflict. They also reduce cyclist's exposure the greatest danger of bike commuting: inattentive drivers. But speaking from personal experience it's reasonably safe to bike commute without them. Statistics back me up too. It's about as dangerous to bike in the city as it is to be a pedestrian, and remember those statistics include cyclists who don't wear helmets, don't have proper lighting and reflectors, don't ride according to traffic rules, and don't use common sense in picking their routes. For a cyclist with common sense who doesn't mind looking like a dork, the odds are no doubt much better.
This is a mistake. Where does it say the road belongs to cars?
There's a certain group of car drivers are discourteous to each other, traveling in the passing lane and tailgating. As far as they're concerned they don't have to share the road with other motorists. Why would you expect someone like that to have a different attitude toward cyclists?
Do you think Google would exist if they had to pay an expensive Unix license for every machine they own?
Do you think Google would exist without the revenue from delivering highly targeted eyeballs to advertisers?
It's important to avoid false dichotomy here. It's not Free Software or Ad Revenue. It's both. Both are necessary to produce the kind of Internet we have now. Granted if there were no ad revenue, but free software, there'd be an Internet, but not like the one we have now. It might be a *better* Internet, but it's safe to say most of us enjoy sites and services which wouldn't exist without ads.
Now as to ad revenue vs do not track, that's another false dichotomy, but not quite a black-and-white one. Clearly there would be ad revenue if all sites were mandated to honor Do Not Track, but it wouldn't be as much. That means less of some ad supported services many of us use. On the other hand, there are very good reasons for some (although not necessarily all) people not to want to be tracked.
It seems to me that websites should honor Do Not Track. But Will Not Serve *does* honor Do Not Track. Although the site in question doesn't actually see it this way, I actually believe Will Not Serve is the right way to handle Do Not Track. It forces both the user and the site administrator to think about the costs and benefits of their policy. The user loses access to some services, but he gains privacy. If the loss is too much, he can change his mind. Likewise the site owners lose users and revenue when they kick people out. I doubt site owners will find it more profitable to turn away customers, but it's their right to do so if the decision is made on the basis of some customers being unprofitable to serve.
I like handling it this way because it makes people *think* about their knee-jerk reactions. In the end though I think ITIF is tilting at windmills. The Internet works on the financial equivalent of the Law of Large Numbers; call it the Law of Many Users. If you have a large enough user base, you can always find a way to monetize that. It's like copy protection in the late 80s. Yes, it stopped *some* piracy, possibly even *most* of the piracy that *might* have occurred. But it alienated paying, legitimate customers and most firms found they could grow *that* group faster by serving them better.
...t I'll just go with Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat, who eloquently asserted that interstellar war was a complete waste of effort, then goes on to write one book where (wait for it) a bunch of folks decide to wage interstellar war.
I don't see the plot inconsistency here. Stupid people do stupid things. Intelligent people do stupid things. Geniuses do monumentally stupid things.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would they? When they can get the government to do it.
Why would they launch their own satellites if the government did NOT do it for them? Look, they've done well repackaging the text data you've always been able to get from NOAA. They take the raw imagery, doll it up and spin it around in various eye-watering, stomach-churning ways. They're in the data presentation business, not the data production business.
Sure, being the only organization that can fill in the data gap would be a competitive advantage, but that requires investment, and in general the investment in substance by information-media has dropped through the floor. News outfits cutting back on things like foreign bureaues and local reporters and shifting their content to opinion; and you expect them to pick up the 655 million dollars it takes to field the JPSS-1 and the 12.6 *billion* of the entire program?
What the American government really seems to do is funnel tax payers money into companies.
Well, sure. If you're going to have a space program, it's either funnel taxpayers' money into companies or into programs staffed by government workers. The question shouldn't be where the money ends up, it should be value for money. A decade of accurate storm tracking is easily worth 12 billion bucks to America as a whole; it's just not worth 12 billion to any single private entity.
Here you go.
Well as a result of the '53 coup, the shah reigned as an absolute dictator for the following 26 years. Anybody over the age of 40 or so has memories of the Shah, and that includes the entire current Iranian leadership -- they're the revolutionaries who overthrew the Shah in fact. Just like there are plenty of people alive in the US who remember Richard Nixon or Jimmy Carter there are plenty Iranians alive who remember the Shah, his secret police, and his torture chambers. They also remember that he was the closest US ally in the Middle East, after Israel.
So if you're waiting for the Iranian leadership to write off the years '53 to '79 as ancient history, you're going to have to wait at least another generation. That might even be two generations, as you might have to wait for the people who grew up personally knowing people in the revolution pass away. Just because it's ancient history for *you* doesn't mean other people have or should have forgotten the Shah.
And they certainly haven't forgotten George W. Bush. After watching in alarm as US forces toppled in weeks a country they'd fought to a stalemate for eight years at the cost of over half a million lives, the Iranian leadership floated an offer that gave the US everything it said it wanted. They offered complete transparency in their nuclear program and a withdrawal of support from Hezbollah and Hamas, in return for what amounted to a promise not to invade. The Bush administration didn't even bother responding.
Now if you were in the shoes of the Iranian leadership, what do you think would appear to be the rational course to pursue? Diplomacy and disarmament? Or arming yourself to the teeth?
Now imagine the people in that world imagining what it would take to create a petroleum-based economy like ours from scratch. The amazing drilling technology; the massive investment in super-ships and pipelines; the scale and sophistication of refineries; the ubiquitous distribution networks; the engine technology to burn petroleum cleanly and efficiently.
Imagining all those things happening in the space of, say, ten or even twenty years would be impossible. And in fact it didn't happen that way. It took us more like a century.
People seem to be daunted by any new energy technology because they can't imagine it replacing petroleum overnight. But it doesn't have to happen that way, and in fact it won't. The dominance of petroleum we've known all our lives will be gone someday, probably within the lifetime of some people alive today but that might be fifty years or more into the future. And as with any technology, success with the replacement technologies will depend on timing. You wan to be ahead of the curve, but not investing so far ahead of the curve you're dealing with impracticability. Back in '94 I worked for a new boss who was betting the company on the emergence of something like Netflix streaming in the next year or two. I explained all the difficulties and why it would not happen any time in the next decade, but she was so certain it was going to happen she could not be dissuaded (so I quit). I envisioned the same future as her, but I thought her timing was premature -- as it turned out to be by some 14 years.
Apple's success is, apart from design, largely a matter of timing. They weren't the first to develop a tablet, but the iPad came when it was possible to make something thin enough, light enough, long-lasting enough and powerful enough to be useful. People who tried when you needed to make the things ten pounds and an inch thick to accommodate the battery failed, no matter how impressive their design was for the time, because he time was wrong.
As I said, petroleum will fade away in the lifetime of many of us, and what replaces it would seem astonishing to us today, but it won't happen overnight. And we'll never run out of oil. We'll use less and less of it as the prices rises against the falling price of the alternatives. At the outset, those alternatives won't look competitive at all. And most of them will never be competitive. The few that will work out will be very difficult to pick out from the rest of the pack of doomed technologies.
Well, I wasn't going to go into presentations, but you're right, preparation is the key. And the most important preparation you can make is to understand your audience and pitch your presentation to be most effective. In particular pay attention to what they want to hear, what they need to hear, and how much detail they can handle. Keep the audience oriented in the presentation, noting that their polestar will always be *their* issues.
Hot sauce or garlic butter?
If the flavor is kind of just "meh", you break out the pepper sauce. If the taste is *nasty* you go for the garlic butter.
Don't mistake "self-confidence" for "arrogance", which many people do. There's a difference between believing in yourself and believing other people have nothing to teach you.
There are lots of things you can do to appear less arrogant to other people, but the first and most important is to become a *disciplined* listener. I stress "discipline" because that's what it takes when you're used to beating other people to the punch. Here are the steps, in order.
(1) Let the other person finish what he has to say -- beyond any reasonable doubt.
(2) Demonstrate that you heard everything he had to say.
(3) Demonstrate you understand everything he had to say.
(4) Show you recognize whatever truth is in what he had to say. All of the truth you can find. If you can't find any truth, recognize good intentions. If you can't find any good intentions, pretend that they're there anyway.
(5) Then, only then, give your opinions. Be sure to salt any points of disagreement with admissions of your own fallibility.
That's how you get people to see you as being as smart as you see yourself. As you can see, it's all about resisting the impulse to smack the buzzer and say "Bzzt! WRONG!"
Everyone knows how Europeans feel about US politics.
Oh? How does "everyone" know exactly? Because "everyone" says that?
In fact, if I had to pick a single word that characterizes European political views, the word would be "anti-American".
Again, how do you know this? The Europeans I've talked to seem very friendly toward America, and have positive (albeit mixed) views about the US and its people. They don't necessarily like every US government that comes along, but Americans don't either. They don't agree with every American policy, but neither do Americans.
It's pathetic to get upset because other people don't agree with you all the time. I prefer people who have their own opinions and voice them assertively to yes-men who toady to the biggest bigshot in the room. I think people with the spine to have independent opinions are more worthy of respect than those who just parrot back something they've heard.
Do Americans visit European web forums and loudly criticize your choice in elected officials American complaints about whether your leaders are doing their job in a way that suits us?
First of all, I'm American and, yes, I've seen other Americans do that. I certainly hear Americans complain about European governments.
At least I have my answer for where you get your information on European public opinion -- from (self-reported) European Internet trolls.
Why would we poke our noses into someone else's business, especially when the business in question is something as boring as politics?
Money? Geopolitical power? Lots of reasons. The US does not exactly have a hands off policy towards who governs foreign countries. In any case, I think it's a bit paranoid to worry about Europeans pulling the strings in US elections. They're entitled to their opinions about our leaders, just like we're entitled to our opinions of theres. It's ridiculous to get all worked up about their not liking *everyone* we elect when *we* don't either.
Europeans naturally have a great interest in our elections because the US is the greatest power in the world and who is in the US government affects their lives in a way that who is, say, Prime Minister of Italy does NOT effect us. Back in the Apartheid years I had a young South African Indian woman working for me -- technically she was "colored" according to their law. During the presidential election one year she opined that she wished she could vote in the election because because who won would have a huge effect on her own country, and the entire world. Then she sighed and said, "Actually, it's just that for once in my life I'd like to get the chance to vote."
Let's make a deal: you guys elect whoever you want in your countries, and we'll elect whoever we want in ours.
That's the question, isn't it? Whether we are getting the officials we actually elect. I think outside observers are a good thing. You don't have to agree with their opinions of how they run things, but a little criticism never hurt anybody.
Well, one possible reason is federal pre-emption. We send election observers to other countries under the aegis of the OSCE, and it is possible that the international agreements which allow us to do that require us to accept observers in return. On the other hand, those agreements might not require us to accept observers, in which case Texas law would prevail. It's not a situation you can judge from first principles, what actually has happened matters.
I'm curious why you'd think that voters would feel intimidated by international observers. The purpose of observers is to document the procedures used by election officials so that that people can judge the fairness and legality of elections rather than taking the officials' word for it. It seems to me that voter in intimidation is a non-issue. There is of course a technical issue regarding the letter of the Texas law, but the intent of observation is to ensure that the *officials* don't engage in voter intimidation. It's a case of "who watches the watchmen".
Right now there's nothing inherently suspicious about the Texas AG announcing he'll enforce Texas law, but if he continued to do so in the face of federal preemption that would be fishy.
Well, can you name any other female leader roles that didn't seem arrogant to you? Excluding eye-candy actresses?
it's just another way for the pharmaceutical industry to remove money from your wallet. Perhaps ADHD is just a reasonable and rational response to a completely insane world of hyper-focus. Perhaps we should all be chasing buffalo and living in tipis because, it's better. Maybe depression is a correct response to a world gone mad - a civilisation hell bent of murdering the biosphere. Maybe mental health, isn't.
No, ADHD is *not* a reaction to hyper-focus. In fact, hyper-focus is one of the problems ADHD *creates*, although it can at times be useful.
ADHD is badly named; it is not a deficit of *attention*, it is an inability to voluntarily *control* attention. Both shifting focus and hyper-focus are examples of the sufferer's lack of voluntary control. When the thing being focused upon is what the sufferer wants to focus on, great. When it's *not* what you want to be working on, then hyper-focus is not so great. The modern atmosphere of mindless rush and continual distraction *exacerbates* the inability to control focus, so it may *look* like a reaction. It's a bit like being poisoned by pollution; because of natural variation the unnatural mental environment becomes toxic to some people sooner. But being the canary in the coal mine is not an adaptation.
Depression is not a reasonable reaction to a world gone mad; a reasonable reaction to a world gone mad is to try to fix the world, to find a place in the world that is less mad, or at least to insulate yourself from the madness. Depression is a disease which cripples the victim's ability to take care of himself even in mundane, day-to-day tasks -- much less in the challenging ones like getting by in a world gone mad.
It is true that a reasonable humane society would make accommodations for people with ADHD or depression, the way it would make accommodations for somebody who suffers from impaired vision or a broken leg. With those accommodations the ADHD sufferer can become fully productive and contributing, and the depressed person can return to full productivity sooner.
that's right, i just said the lord of the rings is a parable about drug addiction
You can interpret it that way, but it wasn't intended that way. It's a story about the virtue of courage, even in hopeless situations.
in the short term, it gives you superpowers. in the long term, it turns you into a soulless ghoul
Neither of these are true. Stimulant medications don't give you super powers; those college students on illegal methylphenidate (ritalin) are pretty much getting to be where they'd be if they regularly got a good night's sleep. As for turning you into a ghoul, it may be true that methamphetamine abuse causes a serious, personality twisting dependency, but ritalin doesn't. It doesn't hit those dopamine reward circuits as hard as amphetamines do. A stimulant that was like ritalin and which didn't stimulate the brain's reward mechanisms at *all* might well be safer then caffeine.
Caffeine, by the way, is the old school way of improving your school performance. But it too is no substitute for taking care of yourself: getting enough sleep, exercising, eating well, managing your time.
Well, it all boils down to insecurity, doesn't it? And it may be justified.
I've spent decades now in the working world, and there's always been a certain group of desperate people eager to show they're up-to-date by buying into the flavor-of-the-month. You don't have to actually buy the flavor-of-the-month to know what that flavor is, nor to create the next flavor-of-the-month. People who think you have to buy the flavor-of-the-month as soon as it comes out are hobbyists. They may also be pros, but it is their hobbyist impulse that makes them drink the kool-aid.
Anybody who's serious about mobile development is bound to have a drawer full of fairly current devices somewhere. What he carries is what serves his needs. I'd been working with various smartphones for some time before I began carrying one. That's because I made telephony an absolute priority. I began carrying a Palm Treo 650 back in 2005 -- not because it was a quantum leap in smartphone technology, but because the carriers upgraded their networks near my house and I no longer had to worry about choosing the phone with the best reception.
I like neckties. I don't see what the big deal some people have with them is, other than they're a bit old school. Men who think ties are uncomfortable just need to get a properly sized shirt. I suspect a lot of men these days only have one suit that's been sitting int he closet for years and doesn't fit them -- if it ever did. Of course you hate getting dressed in something like that, it'd be like putting on a straight jacket.
In general formal business attire is comfortable, it should feel as close to being in your pajamas as possible. A properly fitted suit looks good on anyone, unlike business casual which works for some but makes others look like slobs. Remember MacWorld '97 where Gil Amelio and Steve Jobs both wore collarless shirts (Source: The Register,Oct 6, 2011)? Jobs looked OK, albeit a bit parson-ish. Amelio looked like an understudy for Clarence, from *It's a Wonderful Life*.
Formal business attire seems foreign to a lot of guys these days, almost a piece of lost lore like shaving with a straight razor. But it's more user-friendly than it looks. The secret is to find a menswear store you like and let them take care of you. Then go back every year or two for a new suit so you always have something that fits. If you never wear suits and you know you're going to need one for an upcoming event, three weeks before you need it try on that old suit. If it's not perfectly comfortable, go straight to the menswear store.
Actually bullshit, A line worker in Foxconn is just paid $2 per hour,they have to work at least 11 hours each day,no saturday.
It is true that cheap labor makes Foxconn a more profitable supplier to use, but you can't call BS until you know how much labor cost is as a fraction of total costs of putting the device on the market. In past devices the cost differential wasn't that high. Perhaps the labor input required to assemble an iPhone 5 is much hither though.
Your missing one of the greatest benefits of bike commuting. When you get to work you feel relaxed and energized.
In any case, bike clothing is practical for cycling. Nobody in his right mind would wear it because of the way it looked. It's kind of like wearing leather for motorcycling; there are good, practical reasons for wearing leather while motorcycling despite the fact that most people look silly in it.
Yeah. Real EEs use discrete components to prototype, which they fabricate themselves. After all their time has little value -- certainly less than the princely $20 a fully assembled and tested Arduino board set them back.
Well, if you worked for me and you left an hour or two early from time to time I'd have no problem with that. But in general I expect people who work for me to spend down time "sharpening their saw" by doing research and experimentation. So if you routinely had nothing to do for several hours a day, I'd expect you to find something to do that'll make you awesome on the next big project. If you didn't find something like that, I would. In that kind of work environment a few hours of "mental health leave" couple of weeks is no big deal, as long as you're doing a good job and getting better at it.
When I managed a development team I recognized that the occasional all-nighter or weekend session was necessary,but I had a policy that my guys had to take comp time *right away*, within a day or two. That wasn't popular; they liked the idea of comp time, but they'd have preferred to bank it. But the point wasn't to compensate them for their extra effort -- they were salaried employees -- it was to make sure when they were at work their minds were sharp.
I believe an engineering team needs three things: skill, energy and focus. "Dedication" is neither here nor there as far as I'm concerned, at least if by that you mean some kind of sentimental attachment to the organization. If you have the big three, you'll get whatever else you need. Too many managers don't manage, they work out a personal psychodrama in which there are good employees and bad employees. To me that's baloney, unless an employee is "good" if and only if he contributes to productivity and "bad" if and only if he does not. An employee who suffers unproductively for the company is neurotic, no matter what else you choose to call him, and shouldn't be encouraged to do that.
While your reasoning is impeccable, according to TFA (dirty pool, I know), problems at two major refineries and a pipeline supplying the CA market are responsible for the price spike in CA.
I think the growing world economy and peak oil explain why petroleum prices are rising generally, refinery capacity has a significant effect on local gasoline prices in the US.
It's a bit like blaming an unusually large hurricane on global warming. Yes, under global warming some regions experience much more energetic storms, it's simplistic to blame something like Katrina on global warming. I'ts the kind of thing that happens more often with global warming, but it can happen in any case. Price spikes are more common in a scenario where global demand is outstripping petroleum supply, but it can happen for other reasons too.
Either that or the damage done to the helmets indicates a level of force best not applied to a naked head.
WARNING, IMPORTANT!!! YOU CANNOT TELL WHETHER A HELMET HAS SUSTAINED DAMAGE BY LOOKING AT IT. ALWAYS DISCARD A HELMET AFTER AN IMPACT OR SEND IT BACK TO THE MANUFACTURER.
Bike helmets absorb damage by deforming permanently, but the deformation is usually beneath the surface of the polycarbonate shell, in the interior of the foam. The only way to assess the damage is to cut the helmet apart with special tools.
Imagine you're a two hundred and twenty pound man crouched with your hands tied behind your back on the hood of a car traveling at 15 mph. The driver slams on the brakes and you fly forward, striking the pavement on the crown of your head. I've had two bike accidents that approximate that, and in both cases I rode away with no injury whatsoever aside from a few scrapes. I'd *almost certainly* have been seriously injured without a helmet. If I gave you $20, would you dive head first off the top of your front steps onto the sidewalk with your hands behind your back? Would you need an alternate universe to know that you'd be seriously hurt?
In both those accident the helmets *looked* perfectly fine. The damage was beneath the shell. The shell, by the way, is a critical element in that head-against-pavement accident. It spreads the force of the impact, and also allows the head to slide over the pavement instead of being snapped back by the friction of your scalp being abraded away. I prefer a helmet that is rounded for that reason, and in the winter I use a snowboarding helmet without holes that meets EU standards that are nearly identical to the bicycle standards.
You don't know what you're talking about.
First of all, you're assuming the kind of accidents you get in traffic are the same ones you get mountain biking. Yes, indeed wrist and collarbone breaks are common in mountain biking, because the most common accidents are low speed face plants and slipping on loose materials. At road speeds you don't fall off your bike, you get thrown off. I speak from experience having got my share of scrapes both mountain and road biking. In any case you should still wear your bike helmet off-road, because head injuries are the ones that will kill you or leave you incapacitated for life. A broken wrist is nothing.
Second of all, I happen to have my bike helmet right here, *and* a pair of calipers, so I can test your assertion that a helmet is just a cm of styrofoam. Measured at the thinnest part, the styrofoam part of the helmet measures 22mm, and is somewhat thicker at the crown. Furthermore the helmet is more than just styrofoam, there's a polycarbonate shell (the same stuff they make bullet-proof glass out of) which spreads the impact over a large area and also reduces head and neck injuries by sliding rather than catching on the pavement.
Sure, a bike helmet *looks* flimsy, but that's because it's design to destruct on impact -- like an automobile's crumple zones. Like the crumple zones helmets work amazingly well. I happen to have read both the European EN 1078 and Snell B-95 helmet standards and they're both quite robust. You mention crashing on sidewalks; both standards mandate right-angle anvil tests which ensure a helmet's effectiveness when the rider's head strikes the angle of a curb.
Frankly, if you take your bike helmet off when you get to the road, I think you must be nuts. If I were going to wear my helmet part time (which I'm not going to), I'd wear it on the road and not wear it off-road. I've crashed hundreds of times offroad and never hit my helmet (hang onto those bars!). I've crashed maybe a half dozen times on the road in twenty-five years of cycling and have always walked away with no injuries at all. In at least two cases I would have been killed or suffered serious head injury were it not for my helmet.
As for motorcycling, I can't speak from experience but my motorcycling friends tell me that they spend most of their time at speeds at which helmets make no difference at all. Personally, I don't buy that argument, but clearly it doesn't apply to bicycles.
It's because it's fucking unsafe to bike in areas without bike lanes. Which is pretty much most of the US except for major urban areas or the occasional statistical fluke. Rich people in the suburbs who are terrified of their own shadow are the exception. The norm are people who actually are at high risk of being run off the road if they tried to bike to work at 7am.
This is simply untrue. I bike commuted for many years before I got a job with a hundred-plus mile round trip commute. Before that I had a 22 mile round trip commute through a mix of suburban and urban streets that I did without incident for ten years. A reasonably skilled and fit cyclist can commute in rush hour traffic with acceptable safety. By "reasonably skilled" I don't mean an elite bike racer either; I averaged about ten miles per hour on my commute and cruised at fifteen or so.
Car-bicycle accidents are not as common as car-car accidents, although admittedly consequences to the cyclists tend to be much greater. But a reasonably cautious cyclist can avoid most accidents. Cyclists have much higher situational awareness than motorists. We're doing physical activity, so we're more alert; we don't have in-car distractions; we sit higher and can see over most vehicles; and we can detect and track overtaking vehicles by hearing as well as sight.
Frankly, I think only a fool would bike commute without a helmet. Helmets turn accidents that could kill or permanently incapacitate you into inconveniences you ride away from -- the cycling equivalent of a fender-bender. The ability of a modern cycling helmet to protect against injury is nothing short of amazing.
As for bike lanes, they're a great idea that reduces car/bike use conflict. They also reduce cyclist's exposure the greatest danger of bike commuting: inattentive drivers. But speaking from personal experience it's reasonably safe to bike commute without them. Statistics back me up too. It's about as dangerous to bike in the city as it is to be a pedestrian, and remember those statistics include cyclists who don't wear helmets, don't have proper lighting and reflectors, don't ride according to traffic rules, and don't use common sense in picking their routes. For a cyclist with common sense who doesn't mind looking like a dork, the odds are no doubt much better.
"car's part of the road" ???
This is a mistake. Where does it say the road belongs to cars?
There's a certain group of car drivers are discourteous to each other, traveling in the passing lane and tailgating. As far as they're concerned they don't have to share the road with other motorists. Why would you expect someone like that to have a different attitude toward cyclists?
Do you think Google would exist if they had to pay an expensive Unix license for every machine they own?
Do you think Google would exist without the revenue from delivering highly targeted eyeballs to advertisers?
It's important to avoid false dichotomy here. It's not Free Software or Ad Revenue. It's both. Both are necessary to produce the kind of Internet we have now. Granted if there were no ad revenue, but free software, there'd be an Internet, but not like the one we have now. It might be a *better* Internet, but it's safe to say most of us enjoy sites and services which wouldn't exist without ads.
Now as to ad revenue vs do not track, that's another false dichotomy, but not quite a black-and-white one. Clearly there would be ad revenue if all sites were mandated to honor Do Not Track, but it wouldn't be as much. That means less of some ad supported services many of us use. On the other hand, there are very good reasons for some (although not necessarily all) people not to want to be tracked.
It seems to me that websites should honor Do Not Track. But Will Not Serve *does* honor Do Not Track. Although the site in question doesn't actually see it this way, I actually believe Will Not Serve is the right way to handle Do Not Track. It forces both the user and the site administrator to think about the costs and benefits of their policy. The user loses access to some services, but he gains privacy. If the loss is too much, he can change his mind. Likewise the site owners lose users and revenue when they kick people out. I doubt site owners will find it more profitable to turn away customers, but it's their right to do so if the decision is made on the basis of some customers being unprofitable to serve.
I like handling it this way because it makes people *think* about their knee-jerk reactions. In the end though I think ITIF is tilting at windmills. The Internet works on the financial equivalent of the Law of Large Numbers; call it the Law of Many Users. If you have a large enough user base, you can always find a way to monetize that. It's like copy protection in the late 80s. Yes, it stopped *some* piracy, possibly even *most* of the piracy that *might* have occurred. But it alienated paying, legitimate customers and most firms found they could grow *that* group faster by serving them better.
...t I'll just go with Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat, who eloquently asserted that interstellar war was a complete waste of effort, then goes on to write one book where (wait for it) a bunch of folks decide to wage interstellar war.
I don't see the plot inconsistency here. Stupid people do stupid things. Intelligent people do stupid things. Geniuses do monumentally stupid things.