Which is funny, because from a relational database standpoint MS SQL Server is mediocre. I won't say it's *bad* because that depends on what you need. It has two big advantages: its integration into Microsoft's tools, and the fact that its not sold by Oracle, the company with the most evil salesforce in the universe (at least since the demise of Cabletron). I once went to a meeting with some Oracle sales managers where we discussed possibly changing our product's support policies to Oracle only. The Oracle "people" at the meeting seemed friendly enough, until I realized they were all freshly dead zombies.
In any case, regarding the mediocrity of SQL Server, a mediocre known quantity is often a good choice for projects. While databases play a key role in modern systems, most projects are not database-centric, but rather UI and external system interface -centric.
Sucrose == fructose and glucose. There's no difference chemically, or in how it's absorbed by the body.
That's simply not true. Sucrose is a disaccharide. The fructose and glucose components are covalently bonded. It's the same kind of bond that forms starches, chitin or cellulose out of simple sugars.
Granted, the body readily converts sucrose into glucose and fructose -- but that this process must take place means that sucrose and HFCS are not exactly the same.
Both are equally bad for you.
That *may* be true. It is even *probably* true. But it is not *necessarily* true. The arguments that the body (for most people) breaks down sucrose into fructose and glucose is *plausible*, but it too crude to be convincing.
As yet, I have heard no news that there is any observed empirical difference on things like postprandial blood chemistry between sucrose and HFCS. This is not surprising. But these studies are relatively recent, and focus on research populations that are well chosen for this phase of research, but which may not tell the whole story (e.g. young, healthy, non-obese women).
We know there is at least one subset of people for whom the two sweeteners are definitely not the same -- sucrose intolerant people. Whether they are the only exception it is too early to tell.
Well, the name *is* a problem in that it implies that high fructose corn syrup is high in fructose for a *sweetener*, which the industry claims it is not when compared to table sugar (sucrose). It is high in fructose *for corn syrup*, which normally consists almost entirely of glucose. HFCS is engineered to match the sweetness of sucrose by converting some of the glucose in corn syrup to fructose. The result is a mix of glucose and fructose.
Sucrose consists of a fructose molecule and glucose molecule, joined by a weak bond. The industry argues that HFCS is nutritionally equivalent to surose because the body converts sucrose into the equivalent of HFCS in the small intestine. Now without endorsing all or any of the claims of the anti-HFCS crowd, I have to say the industry argument is a crock of bull. It assumes that the rate of fructose absorption into the bloodstream can have no possible significance.
Here I think is the kernel of truth in the industry argument. Given that a 20 oz. soda has the equivalent of almost exactly half a cup of granulated sugar, they may well be right *in that particular case*. That's asking the liver to metabolize so much fructose that it might be overwhelmed even if the small intestine takes some time extracting it all. On the other hand, in smaller quantities there might be a difference.
I was looking at a 1930s Coke ad featuring some young people at the soda fountain. I was drawn to the glasses they were drinking out of. I'd estimate the serving size in those glasses to be around 5 fluid ounces. Coke used to be sold in 6.5 fluid ounce bottles, which was upped in the 1950s to 10 ounces and now is 20 ounces. It's more plausible that sucrose vs. HFCS would make a difference if you're talking 16-22 g of sugar rather than 65.
When my kids ask for a bottle of soft drink, and that bottle contains 20 ounces, I remember that my mom used to buy a 32 ounce bottle for the entire family, *and I had seven siblings*. This supersizing of portions is due to the corn subsidies making sugar (in the form for HFCS) so cheap.
Good question. I think at the very last Powers interfered with the dissenter's First Amendment right to freely associate and petition the government for redress of grievances. If there were actual acts planned or discussed, that would be a different story.
The web based surveillance was undertaken with a federal grant. Disclosing information collected under those funds to third parties might be illegal under federal information privacy statutes, unless a clear case can be made that there was a law enforcement purpose. Obviously, Mr. Powers *believed* there was such a purpose, but such a belief is not the same as there *being* one.
I agree. The DHS should share information about individuals and groups *who are planning or at least appear to be planning violence*.
I even think DHS has a right to do surveillance (consistent with constitutional rights) of groups who dissent from policies that favor shale oil exploration and exploitation, because those groups are where such acts are likely to originate.
However, I part ways with Mr. Powers here: it is improper to share surveillance information with outside parties where there is no evidence that a crime is being contemplated. This interferes with the target's First Amendment rights of free association and to petition the government. The collection of information on individuals who are (as yet) presumed innocent is necessary to the function of government. The sharing of that information with those persons' enemies is not, and does them harm.
with the Lenovo S10-3t tablet/netbook convertible. The Lenovo hardware is for the most part excellent; the Atom processor is a bit slow for some tasks, but the battery life makes that a reasonable trade-off for me. Around the time of the iPad launch, some people were saying the S10-3t might prove to be an iPad killer. It might not have been a killer, but it could have been a contender, but for its Achilles heel: the Windows tablet functionality is so bad that the device is almost non-functional as a tablet. This was true even after I upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium, which certainly alleviated some of the problems with touch control.
The biggest problem with the device the Windows interface, which wasn't designed for finger input. You can't see window decorations like the close button, because they're under your finger. Controls near the screen edge are hard to work. The Windows solution to this is a kind bizarre ghost mouse that you can configure to appear when you touch the screen. As with a real mouse, it is offset from the cursor, which moves as you drag it along. This kind of works, although the behavior is awkward when you approach the right side of the screen, but it is not configured on by default, probably because it would be too confusing.
The virtual keyboard is unreliable, not always popping when you need it. The solution to that is to have a kind of hotspot at the edge of the screen where it looks like the edge of the keyboard peeps into the frame. You click on the hotspot and the keyboard pops. This hotspot is only a couple of pixels wide, and very hard to activate on a capacitive touchscreen using your finger.
The touchscreen interface to Windows 7 is beyond clunky. It is practically unusable for general purposes... at least with fingertip input. Overall I'd say that anyone who wants Windows 7 on a tablet should opt for a resistive touchscreen with a stylus, which is much closer to the traditional mouse control Windows was designed for. While you lose multi-touch, this set-up has advantage for tasks like drawing or jotting notes longhand.
I like the Lenovo S10-3T overall as a netbook. I frequently use it when I need netbook-like properties (long battery life and compact size), but I almost never use it in tablet configuration, even though that takes only a quck twist of the screen hinge. It would also be possible to design applications for this device that exploit the touchscreen interface although manipulating windows and Windows menus though the Windows interface is not practical.
Yes, while you're driving. That has a rational purpose: to ensure that you conduct your vehicle with reasonable respect for the safety of others. If the car is sitting in my garage, it's nobody's business whether I sit in the driver's seat to drink a beer.
If A has the right to make the rules for B, surely that right is contingent on such rules serving a rational purpose. Of course, such rules are often an injustice to others. For example, not being able to carry my pocket knife in my pocket is an injustice of a sort to me, since I'm not going to hijack the plane. However, it is rational for me to accept this rule, since I don't want planes (even ones that I'm not on) being hijacked. You could think of it this way: rule minimizes the *net* injustice to me, so it's in my interest to accept this rule.
This particular argument doesn't apply to a private jet. Does that mean that the rule is irrational? Not necessarily.
I suspect this may involve scenarios that people aren't taking into account. One such scenario might go like this. We're talking about security at the perimeter, right? So Steven Jobs points out to the security screener that this is a private plane. Why would he want to hijack it? The screener agrees and Steve takes his Ninja stars inside the security perimeter. Once there, he transfers them to a confederate who takes them aboard a commercial flight.
But wait! Steve isn't a terrorist, and he would do no such thing. But neither am I, and *I* can't bring throwing stars inside the security perimeter.
Now I should point out I have no idea whether this scenario is possible. I'm just saying that there is often more to a situation than what is "obvious".
It's that Japanese mania for grading and evaluating. None of that stuff existed in the old days in Okinawa. Nor did it exist in China, where some of the roots of Karate originated. Which is not to say the ranking system is bad.
I see it as part of the cultural genius of Japan to study and systematize. I've read a fair amount of Japanese literature (in translation), and you can see it in their poetry which becomes crystalized with convention over the centuries, then shoots off new creative buds.
Having studied in a no-rankings Chinese kwoon for many years, I can see advantages and disadvantages to the Japanese belt system. The greatest advantage is that it ensures consistent training, that everyone gets the full curriculum and the senior students continue to work on the basic curriculum. The biggest drawback is that people read too much into the ranking system, particularly the black belt rank, which becomes a goal in itself. That's good and bad. Black belt level should really the beginning of serious study, but it is often the point where people stop learning and drop out.
The phrase "Methinks the lady doth protest too much" springs to mind.
Indeed it does. From Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2:
Player Queen: Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife, If once I be a widow, ever I be a wife! [i.e., "If I ever remarry after I am widowed, may I live a troubled life."]... Hamlet (the the real queen): Madam, how like you this play? Queen Gertrude: The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Hamlet: Oh, but she'll keep her word.
"Protest" in Elizabethan English means "to declare solemnly," or "to vow". It's not entirely clear whether Gertrude means "The lady vows more than is wise to do," or "The lady vows so much she is not credible." Possibly both. Hamlet's rejoinder is ironic and threatening; he is saying Gertrude will lead a troubled life because of her crime.
In any case, most people use this quote to insinuate that some person's credibility has been impeached by his protestations of innocence, but that really doesn't make much sense. What Shakespeare is saying here is that people who claim to be unrealistically virtuous are unreliable. So you (unlike most) got it exactly right. Kudos.
For what it's worth: Most polls show Americans want smaller government.
Sure, who wouldn't, "ceteris paribus" (all other things being equal). We'd like smaller government, please, but don't cut my Medicare. We'd like smaller government, but you should also do something about salmonella in eggs. We'd like smaller government, and while you're at it do something about the horrible commute I have every day.
It's like my old bolshie Uncle Ivan used to tell me. "Kid," he'd say, "nobody believes in capitalism. Nobody believes in socialism either. It's 'Socialism for me, capitalism for you.'"
Well, I do think that this was at least flippant, if not smug:
My default privacy settings are the best available because I don't use Facebook.
While it is indisputable that this is the best privacy scenario for *you*, you can't reasonably say that has any applicability to somebody who wants to use Facebook. It's certainly reasonable to discuss whether Facebook provides services that people really need, or question the value of the services, but still many people will come to a different conclusion than you.
My advice on Facebook privacy controls is not to rely on them *at all*. Rather, treat everything you post there as if you were saying it on television.
It's almost a disservice to Facebook users to give them the "friend of a friend" choice, because not everyone is sophisticated enough to understand that people have interlocking circles of friends. You might think you are releasing information to the circle you share with someone, when in fact you might be releasing it to a different circle, or to practically anyone in the case of people who friend everybody in sight. My college age nephew asked to friend me, and I said OK, and the very first thing I saw was a "hubba-hubba" comment he made on a picture a female friend of his posted of herself posing provocatively in a bikini. It was tame stuff, but she probably didn't want it popping up on her friend's middle aged uncle's news page.
My sister-in-law's husband designed two of the largest shellfish aquaculture facilities in the world. The shellfish are raised to a certain size in the hatchery, then hung in small nets on long lines in the ocean to eat wild food. My sister-in-law designed the algae farm that provided food for the shellfish before they were transferred to the long lines. A large fraction of the final product was essentially recycled algae in the form of scallops and clams. That's an easy way to make an algae species that is unpalatable taste good. You feed it to livestock.
Anybody who's eaten "seaweed" as a salad or soup in a Japanese restaurant has eaten macroalgae in a dish that is intended to be tasty, although it's something of an acquired taste for an American. In general what you become accustomed to eating is what you find tasty.
In any case, at 15g/day consumption you're talking dietary supplementation. Still, I could easily eat over a 100g of wakame or kombu (kelp) because I happen to like it. It wouldn't be enough to keep me on my feet, but it would be a major dietary source of essential fatty acids (e.g. omega 3), minerals (potassium, iodine) and phytochemicals.
What this guy is doing pretty much amounts to diet hacking. You wouldn't do most kinds of hacking for their straight utility value. You do them because they're interesting.
Is shooting yourself in the head to avoid a pointless and severely unpleasant (but "sustainable") existence in a dystopian ecologically green world "the future"?
It depends on what you find "unpleasant". Some find aspects of modern life unpleasant, but others don't even notice them. Others find primitive living unpleasant, a few would prefer that life. In any case change happens, and mos people adapt to a new sense of what is "normal". In general I think we live better than our ancestors did, but it doesn't mean everything that's happened is positive. For one thing, most of us have got to trek a long way to find a decent fishing hole. That doesn't mean I want to live in a log cabin with dirt floors.
I was working in the environmental movement when the whole paradigm shift from "Crying Indian" environmentalism to sustainability was taking place. I've always been skeptical of "sustainability". While sustainability is a useful way of looking at things, here's my problem with making it the intellectual cornerstone of environmental thought: non-sustainability is a self-correcting problem.
Let's imagine a dialog between A the environmentalist and B the non-environmentalist.
A: You should stop doing that. B: Why? A: Because it isn't sustainable. B: So? A: So you won't be able to keep doing that indefinitely. B: Sure, but I *can* do it *now*. Later on, I'll do something different.
B has a point that's seriously worth considering. Take coal mining. It's not sustainable in the sense that you can't get your energy from coal forever, but from a financial sense it may be sustainable; you take the wealth out of the ground today and you move your investments elsewhere tomorrow.
The real issue with non-sustainability isn't that you can't keep doing it. It's in the specifics of *why* something is not sustainable, and how to handle the consequences of doing the non-sustainable thing when the cash flow dries up. The corporate owners of a gold mine can extract all the market value of the gold, then let the company go bankrupt leaving other people to deal with the problem of leaking ponds with arsenic laden tailings in them.
The point of a "sustainability" analysis is not to say, "you can't keep doing things exactly this way forever, so you can't do this." A sufficiently detailed analysis would probably show *anything* is non-sustainable. The real work comes when you've identified a reason for something being unsustainable. Then you ask, "How will this stop working? What will be the consequences of doing this, and who will bear those consequences when we stop?" In the case of gold mining, you've got to make sure that the mining company invests its revenue in pollution control, maybe putting some in escrow, rather than saying "you can't mine here." If accounting for the cost of the mine's mess means the owners don't turn a profit, then the mine is simply not economical with all the costs taken into account. If any reasonable person would think that the consequences of mining are provided for, then its reasonable to go ahead and mine the gold, even though it's not sustainable. No process is perfectly sustainable.
So the point of environmentalism isn't to lower the quality of life *now*. It's to take our future quality of life into account when we make decisions.
There's one more dimension that needs to be mentioned, one that is orthogonal to "sustainability". That is justice. The costs and benefits of a practice aren't locked together. If I invest in a coal plant that pollutes a neighborhood, I may benefit financially enough that I can move to an unpolluted area. The people living near the plant also benefit by lower energy costs and increased economic development, but they don't benefit as much as I do. On the other hand, they pay a lot more in terms of reduced environmental quality than I do. I bear none of that cost.
Environmentalism often seems opposed to capitalism, because the mobility of capital is so important
If the credit card was stolen, then the loss should come out of the credit company's pocket, not Paypal or the Ebay seller.
Why?
Being pretty far to the left politically, I'm just about the least likely person I know to have sympathy for a bank, but I just don't see why the bank is responsible here.
The law in the US limits the liability of the cardholder, who may well be the one most at fault. So it is the merchant who bears the cost. When the fraudster uses a stolen credit card, he is stealing from the merchant, not the cardholder. What the GP is asking is for somebody else to compensate him for having been robbed of $600. I can understand that. A lot of "merchants" these days are consumers who occasionally sell as well as buy stuff off of eBay. It's natural for people who think of themselves as consumers rather than merchants to have a consumer's attitude toward fraud: if I'm honest, then fraud should be somebody else's problem.
The closest I can come out to this being the bank's fault is that (a) they encourage consumers and merchants to use their services with the assurance that the system is safe and (b) the credit cart companies have opposed laws that would reduce fraud but make using credit cards less convenient. These are rather thin justifications.
Why the heck should anyone be sad? One of the reasons open source is so important to the industry is to prevent the state of the art in software from becoming moribund. Microsoft practically stopped working on IE once it had what it thought was an unbreakable monopoly on browsers. Imagine where we'd be today without Firefox and the Apache Group. It might be a world of IE6 browsers served from VB ASPs on IIS 5.
Do you have a right to breathe air? To occupy some region of spacetime?
It's silly to talk about the right to do something you can't avoid doing. What you need to talk about is what people *do* with those things. I have a right to breathe, but not to stick my face right in front of yours and breath on it. I have a right to occupy some region of space, but that doesn't entitle me to walk into your house and occupy some of *that* space.
The problem is that people (on both sides of the issue) think that hate speech laws are intended to outlaw hate. Trying to outlaw hate would be nonsensical. It doesn't make sense to outlaw even *hateful* speech. For example I don't think there's any point to trying to outlaw the idiocy of these Bible thumping morons who want to burn the Quran. It's better for them to display their feeble-mindedness in public than encourage them to nurse it in private. All hate speech is odious, stupid and bigoted, but not all odious, stupid and bigoted speech is hate speech.
We ought to restrict the term "hate speech" to threats that a reasonable person would judge to restrict the legitimate freedoms of the target *and* (this is what makes it different from a simple threat) everybody like them. Burning a cross on somebody's front lawn is more than simple trespass. It is a message to an entire group of people to stop living as if they were free. This test ought to be applied strictly. If we do so, then these blockheads burning the Quran are not engaging in hate speech, just *hateful* speech. While they will certainly make some people feel threatened, this is not specific enough in its target to be a threat.
Things might be different if they were burning the Quran in front of a mosque. Unfortunately, this is one of those things were context matters. That happens all the time in free speech issues. If I say that "Blacks should be forced to move out of this town," at a university symposium on race, I'm just expressing an odious opinion. If I say that in front of an angry drunken mob that's formed after a rumor that a black man raped a white girl, that's an entirely different act although superficially the same. It's an incitement to riot and murder.
Hate speech is specifically speech which is intended to restrict the rights of others by instilling fear.
They are missing Marble Bar, WA Australia, which has the worlds record for the longest heat wave (set in 1924, when the temperatures exceeded 100 degrees F for 160 consecutive days).
Of course Monkey Mia, WA is better known because it's a tourist spot.
That's because you have to enter the name in Akkadian (ISO 15924 code "Xsux") rather than pseudo-phonetic English. Here is a crib sheet: http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U12000.pdf.
You're mixing up the chronology here. Deliberately?
Murdoch had to become a citizen under the old FCC rules. Once he was naturalized the FCC had no legal basis to deny his acquisition of Fox. He was just as American as any other US citizen, legally speaking.
Ownership concentration rules were further relaxed by the deregulation provisions in the Telecom act of 1996, passed by the 104th Congress (Republican control of both houses) and signed by Bill Clinton (Democrat, DLC wing).
The elimination of concentration of ownership regulation was completed with minimal public comment allowed in 2003, after Republicans got control of the FCC in 2001 under Michael Powell. This same set of commissioners quashed two internal studies showing the impact of deregulation on concentration of ownership, but those studies were subsequently leaked.
So it's very clear that the current media ownership situation is almost entirely a product of deliberate Republican policies. That doesn't make them bad, but if you support the policies you shouldn't be weasely about it and claim they were Democratic policies.
Not to mention that the supposedly jihadist Saudi prince who is the bogeyman in Fox News' account of the "ground zero mosque" is never named because he is a close business associate of Rupert Murdoch with connections to the Bush family. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is never mentioned by name, because a quick google search would show he owns 7% of... Fox News.
So, by the Fox News argument that we should oppose the Cordoba House project because it is funded by jihadists, we should boycott Fox News because its revenues *go into the pockets of the very same alleged jihadists*.
Of course that argument is dependent on the assumption that Prince Alwaleed supports Al Qaeda, for which there is no evidence, whether you are trying to draw a connection between Cordoba House and Al Qaeda or Murdoch and Al Qaeda. It's all bullshit which none of the people who matter take seriously.
You didn't criticize. You (ironically) pontificated about something you don't really know anything about (cognitive therapy). You then pulled an "example" (smoking cessation) out of thin air which didn't have any bearing at all on your "criticism", which it could not have because the "criticism" was inherently substanceless (i.e. "sounds like bullshit to me". OK, I accept that, but it doesn't *mean* anything).
Now, if you said, "I prefer behavior modification therapy because it is evidence based (see B.F. Skinner et al) and cognitive behavioral therapy is not," then you would be being substantive, but you'd also be wrong. If you said, "Cognitive behavioral therapy for smoking cessation has been tested against a placebo and found to be no more effective," then you'd really be being substantive, because "substantive" means "having evidence" not "having elaborate opinions which I am very sure of despite having no actual evidence."
No it's not free. You can't get your product page into the sponsored links without forking over money to Google.
Just because you are the *user* doesn't make you the *customer*. How do you think Windows became the dominant operating system on the planet? Because *users* loved it?
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Which is funny, because from a relational database standpoint MS SQL Server is mediocre. I won't say it's *bad* because that depends on what you need. It has two big advantages: its integration into Microsoft's tools, and the fact that its not sold by Oracle, the company with the most evil salesforce in the universe (at least since the demise of Cabletron). I once went to a meeting with some Oracle sales managers where we discussed possibly changing our product's support policies to Oracle only. The Oracle "people" at the meeting seemed friendly enough, until I realized they were all freshly dead zombies.
In any case, regarding the mediocrity of SQL Server, a mediocre known quantity is often a good choice for projects. While databases play a key role in modern systems, most projects are not database-centric, but rather UI and external system interface -centric.
Sucrose == fructose and glucose. There's no difference chemically, or in how it's absorbed by the body.
That's simply not true. Sucrose is a disaccharide. The fructose and glucose components are covalently bonded. It's the same kind of bond that forms starches, chitin or cellulose out of simple sugars.
Granted, the body readily converts sucrose into glucose and fructose -- but that this process must take place means that sucrose and HFCS are not exactly the same.
Both are equally bad for you.
That *may* be true. It is even *probably* true. But it is not *necessarily* true. The arguments that the body (for most people) breaks down sucrose into fructose and glucose is *plausible*, but it too crude to be convincing.
As yet, I have heard no news that there is any observed empirical difference on things like postprandial blood chemistry between sucrose and HFCS. This is not surprising. But these studies are relatively recent, and focus on research populations that are well chosen for this phase of research, but which may not tell the whole story (e.g. young, healthy, non-obese women).
We know there is at least one subset of people for whom the two sweeteners are definitely not the same -- sucrose intolerant people. Whether they are the only exception it is too early to tell.
Well, the name *is* a problem in that it implies that high fructose corn syrup is high in fructose for a *sweetener*, which the industry claims it is not when compared to table sugar (sucrose). It is high in fructose *for corn syrup*, which normally consists almost entirely of glucose. HFCS is engineered to match the sweetness of sucrose by converting some of the glucose in corn syrup to fructose. The result is a mix of glucose and fructose.
Sucrose consists of a fructose molecule and glucose molecule, joined by a weak bond. The industry argues that HFCS is nutritionally equivalent to surose because the body converts sucrose into the equivalent of HFCS in the small intestine. Now without endorsing all or any of the claims of the anti-HFCS crowd, I have to say the industry argument is a crock of bull. It assumes that the rate of fructose absorption into the bloodstream can have no possible significance.
Here I think is the kernel of truth in the industry argument. Given that a 20 oz. soda has the equivalent of almost exactly half a cup of granulated sugar, they may well be right *in that particular case*. That's asking the liver to metabolize so much fructose that it might be overwhelmed even if the small intestine takes some time extracting it all. On the other hand, in smaller quantities there might be a difference.
I was looking at a 1930s Coke ad featuring some young people at the soda fountain. I was drawn to the glasses they were drinking out of. I'd estimate the serving size in those glasses to be around 5 fluid ounces. Coke used to be sold in 6.5 fluid ounce bottles, which was upped in the 1950s to 10 ounces and now is 20 ounces. It's more plausible that sucrose vs. HFCS would make a difference if you're talking 16-22 g of sugar rather than 65.
When my kids ask for a bottle of soft drink, and that bottle contains 20 ounces, I remember that my mom used to buy a 32 ounce bottle for the entire family, *and I had seven siblings*. This supersizing of portions is due to the corn subsidies making sugar (in the form for HFCS) so cheap.
Good question. I think at the very last Powers interfered with the dissenter's First Amendment right to freely associate and petition the government for redress of grievances. If there were actual acts planned or discussed, that would be a different story.
The web based surveillance was undertaken with a federal grant. Disclosing information collected under those funds to third parties might be illegal under federal information privacy statutes, unless a clear case can be made that there was a law enforcement purpose. Obviously, Mr. Powers *believed* there was such a purpose, but such a belief is not the same as there *being* one.
I agree. The DHS should share information about individuals and groups *who are planning or at least appear to be planning violence*.
I even think DHS has a right to do surveillance (consistent with constitutional rights) of groups who dissent from policies that favor shale oil exploration and exploitation, because those groups are where such acts are likely to originate.
However, I part ways with Mr. Powers here: it is improper to share surveillance information with outside parties where there is no evidence that a crime is being contemplated. This interferes with the target's First Amendment rights of free association and to petition the government. The collection of information on individuals who are (as yet) presumed innocent is necessary to the function of government. The sharing of that information with those persons' enemies is not, and does them harm.
with the Lenovo S10-3t tablet/netbook convertible. The Lenovo hardware is for the most part excellent; the Atom processor is a bit slow for some tasks, but the battery life makes that a reasonable trade-off for me. Around the time of the iPad launch, some people were saying the S10-3t might prove to be an iPad killer. It might not have been a killer, but it could have been a contender, but for its Achilles heel: the Windows tablet functionality is so bad that the device is almost non-functional as a tablet. This was true even after I upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium, which certainly alleviated some of the problems with touch control.
The biggest problem with the device the Windows interface, which wasn't designed for finger input. You can't see window decorations like the close button, because they're under your finger. Controls near the screen edge are hard to work. The Windows solution to this is a kind bizarre ghost mouse that you can configure to appear when you touch the screen. As with a real mouse, it is offset from the cursor, which moves as you drag it along. This kind of works, although the behavior is awkward when you approach the right side of the screen, but it is not configured on by default, probably because it would be too confusing.
The virtual keyboard is unreliable, not always popping when you need it. The solution to that is to have a kind of hotspot at the edge of the screen where it looks like the edge of the keyboard peeps into the frame. You click on the hotspot and the keyboard pops. This hotspot is only a couple of pixels wide, and very hard to activate on a capacitive touchscreen using your finger.
The touchscreen interface to Windows 7 is beyond clunky. It is practically unusable for general purposes... at least with fingertip input. Overall I'd say that anyone who wants Windows 7 on a tablet should opt for a resistive touchscreen with a stylus, which is much closer to the traditional mouse control Windows was designed for. While you lose multi-touch, this set-up has advantage for tasks like drawing or jotting notes longhand.
I like the Lenovo S10-3T overall as a netbook. I frequently use it when I need netbook-like properties (long battery life and compact size), but I almost never use it in tablet configuration, even though that takes only a quck twist of the screen hinge. It would also be possible to design applications for this device that exploit the touchscreen interface although manipulating windows and Windows menus though the Windows interface is not practical.
Yes, while you're driving. That has a rational purpose: to ensure that you conduct your vehicle with reasonable respect for the safety of others. If the car is sitting in my garage, it's nobody's business whether I sit in the driver's seat to drink a beer.
If A has the right to make the rules for B, surely that right is contingent on such rules serving a rational purpose. Of course, such rules are often an injustice to others. For example, not being able to carry my pocket knife in my pocket is an injustice of a sort to me, since I'm not going to hijack the plane. However, it is rational for me to accept this rule, since I don't want planes (even ones that I'm not on) being hijacked. You could think of it this way: rule minimizes the *net* injustice to me, so it's in my interest to accept this rule.
This particular argument doesn't apply to a private jet. Does that mean that the rule is irrational? Not necessarily.
I suspect this may involve scenarios that people aren't taking into account. One such scenario might go like this. We're talking about security at the perimeter, right? So Steven Jobs points out to the security screener that this is a private plane. Why would he want to hijack it? The screener agrees and Steve takes his Ninja stars inside the security perimeter. Once there, he transfers them to a confederate who takes them aboard a commercial flight.
But wait! Steve isn't a terrorist, and he would do no such thing. But neither am I, and *I* can't bring throwing stars inside the security perimeter.
Now I should point out I have no idea whether this scenario is possible. I'm just saying that there is often more to a situation than what is "obvious".
It's that Japanese mania for grading and evaluating. None of that stuff existed in the old days in Okinawa. Nor did it exist in China, where some of the roots of Karate originated. Which is not to say the ranking system is bad.
I see it as part of the cultural genius of Japan to study and systematize. I've read a fair amount of Japanese literature (in translation), and you can see it in their poetry which becomes crystalized with convention over the centuries, then shoots off new creative buds.
Having studied in a no-rankings Chinese kwoon for many years, I can see advantages and disadvantages to the Japanese belt system. The greatest advantage is that it ensures consistent training, that everyone gets the full curriculum and the senior students continue to work on the basic curriculum. The biggest drawback is that people read too much into the ranking system, particularly the black belt rank, which becomes a goal in itself. That's good and bad. Black belt level should really the beginning of serious study, but it is often the point where people stop learning and drop out.
The phrase "Methinks the lady doth protest too much" springs to mind.
Indeed it does. From Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2:
"Protest" in Elizabethan English means "to declare solemnly," or "to vow". It's not entirely clear whether Gertrude means "The lady vows more than is wise to do," or "The lady vows so much she is not credible." Possibly both. Hamlet's rejoinder is ironic and threatening; he is saying Gertrude will lead a troubled life because of her crime.
In any case, most people use this quote to insinuate that some person's credibility has been impeached by his protestations of innocence, but that really doesn't make much sense. What Shakespeare is saying here is that people who claim to be unrealistically virtuous are unreliable. So you (unlike most) got it exactly right. Kudos.
For what it's worth: Most polls show Americans want smaller government.
Sure, who wouldn't, "ceteris paribus" (all other things being equal). We'd like smaller government, please, but don't cut my Medicare. We'd like smaller government, but you should also do something about salmonella in eggs. We'd like smaller government, and while you're at it do something about the horrible commute I have every day.
It's like my old bolshie Uncle Ivan used to tell me. "Kid," he'd say, "nobody believes in capitalism. Nobody believes in socialism either. It's 'Socialism for me, capitalism for you.'"
Well, I do think that this was at least flippant, if not smug:
My default privacy settings are the best available because I don't use Facebook.
While it is indisputable that this is the best privacy scenario for *you*, you can't reasonably say that has any applicability to somebody who wants to use Facebook. It's certainly reasonable to discuss whether Facebook provides services that people really need, or question the value of the services, but still many people will come to a different conclusion than you.
My advice on Facebook privacy controls is not to rely on them *at all*. Rather, treat everything you post there as if you were saying it on television.
It's almost a disservice to Facebook users to give them the "friend of a friend" choice, because not everyone is sophisticated enough to understand that people have interlocking circles of friends. You might think you are releasing information to the circle you share with someone, when in fact you might be releasing it to a different circle, or to practically anyone in the case of people who friend everybody in sight. My college age nephew asked to friend me, and I said OK, and the very first thing I saw was a "hubba-hubba" comment he made on a picture a female friend of his posted of herself posing provocatively in a bikini. It was tame stuff, but she probably didn't want it popping up on her friend's middle aged uncle's news page.
My sister-in-law's husband designed two of the largest shellfish aquaculture facilities in the world. The shellfish are raised to a certain size in the hatchery, then hung in small nets on long lines in the ocean to eat wild food. My sister-in-law designed the algae farm that provided food for the shellfish before they were transferred to the long lines. A large fraction of the final product was essentially recycled algae in the form of scallops and clams. That's an easy way to make an algae species that is unpalatable taste good. You feed it to livestock.
Anybody who's eaten "seaweed" as a salad or soup in a Japanese restaurant has eaten macroalgae in a dish that is intended to be tasty, although it's something of an acquired taste for an American. In general what you become accustomed to eating is what you find tasty.
In any case, at 15g/day consumption you're talking dietary supplementation. Still, I could easily eat over a 100g of wakame or kombu (kelp) because I happen to like it. It wouldn't be enough to keep me on my feet, but it would be a major dietary source of essential fatty acids (e.g. omega 3), minerals (potassium, iodine) and phytochemicals.
What this guy is doing pretty much amounts to diet hacking. You wouldn't do most kinds of hacking for their straight utility value. You do them because they're interesting.
Is shooting yourself in the head to avoid a pointless and severely unpleasant (but "sustainable") existence in a dystopian ecologically green world "the future"?
It depends on what you find "unpleasant". Some find aspects of modern life unpleasant, but others don't even notice them. Others find primitive living unpleasant, a few would prefer that life. In any case change happens, and mos people adapt to a new sense of what is "normal". In general I think we live better than our ancestors did, but it doesn't mean everything that's happened is positive. For one thing, most of us have got to trek a long way to find a decent fishing hole. That doesn't mean I want to live in a log cabin with dirt floors.
I was working in the environmental movement when the whole paradigm shift from "Crying Indian" environmentalism to sustainability was taking place. I've always been skeptical of "sustainability". While sustainability is a useful way of looking at things, here's my problem with making it the intellectual cornerstone of environmental thought: non-sustainability is a self-correcting problem.
Let's imagine a dialog between A the environmentalist and B the non-environmentalist.
A: You should stop doing that.
B: Why?
A: Because it isn't sustainable.
B: So?
A: So you won't be able to keep doing that indefinitely.
B: Sure, but I *can* do it *now*. Later on, I'll do something different.
B has a point that's seriously worth considering. Take coal mining. It's not sustainable in the sense that you can't get your energy from coal forever, but from a financial sense it may be sustainable; you take the wealth out of the ground today and you move your investments elsewhere tomorrow.
The real issue with non-sustainability isn't that you can't keep doing it. It's in the specifics of *why* something is not sustainable, and how to handle the consequences of doing the non-sustainable thing when the cash flow dries up. The corporate owners of a gold mine can extract all the market value of the gold, then let the company go bankrupt leaving other people to deal with the problem of leaking ponds with arsenic laden tailings in them.
The point of a "sustainability" analysis is not to say, "you can't keep doing things exactly this way forever, so you can't do this." A sufficiently detailed analysis would probably show *anything* is non-sustainable. The real work comes when you've identified a reason for something being unsustainable. Then you ask, "How will this stop working? What will be the consequences of doing this, and who will bear those consequences when we stop?" In the case of gold mining, you've got to make sure that the mining company invests its revenue in pollution control, maybe putting some in escrow, rather than saying "you can't mine here." If accounting for the cost of the mine's mess means the owners don't turn a profit, then the mine is simply not economical with all the costs taken into account. If any reasonable person would think that the consequences of mining are provided for, then its reasonable to go ahead and mine the gold, even though it's not sustainable. No process is perfectly sustainable.
So the point of environmentalism isn't to lower the quality of life *now*. It's to take our future quality of life into account when we make decisions.
There's one more dimension that needs to be mentioned, one that is orthogonal to "sustainability". That is justice. The costs and benefits of a practice aren't locked together. If I invest in a coal plant that pollutes a neighborhood, I may benefit financially enough that I can move to an unpolluted area. The people living near the plant also benefit by lower energy costs and increased economic development, but they don't benefit as much as I do. On the other hand, they pay a lot more in terms of reduced environmental quality than I do. I bear none of that cost.
Environmentalism often seems opposed to capitalism, because the mobility of capital is so important
If the credit card was stolen, then the loss should come out of the credit company's pocket, not Paypal or the Ebay seller.
Why?
Being pretty far to the left politically, I'm just about the least likely person I know to have sympathy for a bank, but I just don't see why the bank is responsible here.
The law in the US limits the liability of the cardholder, who may well be the one most at fault. So it is the merchant who bears the cost. When the fraudster uses a stolen credit card, he is stealing from the merchant, not the cardholder. What the GP is asking is for somebody else to compensate him for having been robbed of $600. I can understand that. A lot of "merchants" these days are consumers who occasionally sell as well as buy stuff off of eBay. It's natural for people who think of themselves as consumers rather than merchants to have a consumer's attitude toward fraud: if I'm honest, then fraud should be somebody else's problem.
The closest I can come out to this being the bank's fault is that (a) they encourage consumers and merchants to use their services with the assurance that the system is safe and (b) the credit cart companies have opposed laws that would reduce fraud but make using credit cards less convenient. These are rather thin justifications.
Why the heck should anyone be sad? One of the reasons open source is so important to the industry is to prevent the state of the art in software from becoming moribund. Microsoft practically stopped working on IE once it had what it thought was an unbreakable monopoly on browsers. Imagine where we'd be today without Firefox and the Apache Group. It might be a world of IE6 browsers served from VB ASPs on IIS 5.
Even people who don't use F/OSS benefit from it.
Do you have a right to breathe air? To occupy some region of spacetime?
It's silly to talk about the right to do something you can't avoid doing. What you need to talk about is what people *do* with those things. I have a right to breathe, but not to stick my face right in front of yours and breath on it. I have a right to occupy some region of space, but that doesn't entitle me to walk into your house and occupy some of *that* space.
The problem is that people (on both sides of the issue) think that hate speech laws are intended to outlaw hate. Trying to outlaw hate would be nonsensical. It doesn't make sense to outlaw even *hateful* speech. For example I don't think there's any point to trying to outlaw the idiocy of these Bible thumping morons who want to burn the Quran. It's better for them to display their feeble-mindedness in public than encourage them to nurse it in private. All hate speech is odious, stupid and bigoted, but not all odious, stupid and bigoted speech is hate speech.
We ought to restrict the term "hate speech" to threats that a reasonable person would judge to restrict the legitimate freedoms of the target *and* (this is what makes it different from a simple threat) everybody like them. Burning a cross on somebody's front lawn is more than simple trespass. It is a message to an entire group of people to stop living as if they were free. This test ought to be applied strictly. If we do so, then these blockheads burning the Quran are not engaging in hate speech, just *hateful* speech. While they will certainly make some people feel threatened, this is not specific enough in its target to be a threat.
Things might be different if they were burning the Quran in front of a mosque. Unfortunately, this is one of those things were context matters. That happens all the time in free speech issues. If I say that "Blacks should be forced to move out of this town," at a university symposium on race, I'm just expressing an odious opinion. If I say that in front of an angry drunken mob that's formed after a rumor that a black man raped a white girl, that's an entirely different act although superficially the same. It's an incitement to riot and murder.
Hate speech is specifically speech which is intended to restrict the rights of others by instilling fear.
Citation? Which word processor EULA outlawed hate speech?
They are missing Marble Bar, WA Australia, which has the worlds record for the longest heat wave (set in 1924, when the temperatures exceeded 100 degrees F for 160 consecutive days).
Of course Monkey Mia, WA is better known because it's a tourist spot.
That's because you have to enter the name in Akkadian (ISO 15924 code "Xsux") rather than pseudo-phonetic English. Here is a crib sheet: http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U12000.pdf.
SO you're saying they can coexist, but they have to have different spins.
You're mixing up the chronology here. Deliberately?
Murdoch had to become a citizen under the old FCC rules. Once he was naturalized the FCC had no legal basis to deny his acquisition of Fox. He was just as American as any other US citizen, legally speaking.
Ownership concentration rules were further relaxed by the deregulation provisions in the Telecom act of 1996, passed by the 104th Congress (Republican control of both houses) and signed by Bill Clinton (Democrat, DLC wing).
The elimination of concentration of ownership regulation was completed with minimal public comment allowed in 2003, after Republicans got control of the FCC in 2001 under Michael Powell. This same set of commissioners quashed two internal studies showing the impact of deregulation on concentration of ownership, but those studies were subsequently leaked.
So it's very clear that the current media ownership situation is almost entirely a product of deliberate Republican policies. That doesn't make them bad, but if you support the policies you shouldn't be weasely about it and claim they were Democratic policies.
Not to mention that the supposedly jihadist Saudi prince who is the bogeyman in Fox News' account of the "ground zero mosque" is never named because he is a close business associate of Rupert Murdoch with connections to the Bush family. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is never mentioned by name, because a quick google search would show he owns 7% of ... Fox News.
So, by the Fox News argument that we should oppose the Cordoba House project because it is funded by jihadists, we should boycott Fox News because its revenues *go into the pockets of the very same alleged jihadists*.
Of course that argument is dependent on the assumption that Prince Alwaleed supports Al Qaeda, for which there is no evidence, whether you are trying to draw a connection between Cordoba House and Al Qaeda or Murdoch and Al Qaeda. It's all bullshit which none of the people who matter take seriously.
You didn't criticize. You (ironically) pontificated about something you don't really know anything about (cognitive therapy). You then pulled an "example" (smoking cessation) out of thin air which didn't have any bearing at all on your "criticism", which it could not have because the "criticism" was inherently substanceless (i.e. "sounds like bullshit to me". OK, I accept that, but it doesn't *mean* anything).
Now, if you said, "I prefer behavior modification therapy because it is evidence based (see B.F. Skinner et al) and cognitive behavioral therapy is not," then you would be being substantive, but you'd also be wrong. If you said, "Cognitive behavioral therapy for smoking cessation has been tested against a placebo and found to be no more effective," then you'd really be being substantive, because "substantive" means "having evidence" not "having elaborate opinions which I am very sure of despite having no actual evidence."
No it's not free. You can't get your product page into the sponsored links without forking over money to Google.
Just because you are the *user* doesn't make you the *customer*. How do you think Windows became the dominant operating system on the planet? Because *users* loved it?
You need to back up claims with evidence, not criticisms.