If you're outside at night with a flashlight and a fist-full of batteries, you've already made a mistake.
Ignoring that for a moment, if the polarity is embossed in the plastic, you don't need to see it. You should be able to distinguish plus from minus by touch alone.
Now, in most of the flashlights I have around the house, the batteries are all oriented the same way -- straight down the handle -- and polarity doesn't matter. (If i put them all in - first or + first, thy light-up just fine)
The one exception is a small led flashlight which uses a plastic battery holder. In total darkness, I can feel the springs and properly orient the batteries.
Think about this: How do blind people get batteries into their flashlights?
despite the fact it is with the worst carrier in America.
I really don't think that's a fair criticism. A few years ago, AT&T purchased Cellular One (my carrier) turning me into an instant customer. My experience with them so far has been excellent.
I've not had any issues with dropped calls. (While they have happened on occasion, the frequency is extraordinarily low -- less than 1 a month.)
I've only been without a data connection once, and that was the fault of my phone -- removing and replacing the battery resolved the issue.
I've not once been without signal, even at my place of work; where the Verizon phones only seem to work in a few random spots outside. (Which is reason enough for me to avoid Verizon!)
To top it off, customer service has handled every issue I've had (switching phones, address changes, etc.) quickly and easily.
I'm beginning to wonder if the dissatisfaction iPhone users are experiencing is truly carrier related...
Boy, girl is twice as likely in life as boy, boy. This is true. Flip a coin twice. I promise you the probability of getting 1 head and 1 tail is twice as high as the probability of getting 2 heads.
Let me ask you this, would you want to live in a world where everyone can sell "pain killers" and have it be anything from calcium carbonate to asbestos? That's what Patents and Trademarks protect you from, at least when applied correctly.
I must be the only person on the whole internet who didn't really care about this. Why bother visiting the Google homepage anyway? I just search from Firefox's search box.
I hope you meant to say "from the Firefox address bar".
Well, there is a search box right next to the address bar. I'm pretty sure he meant what he said.
I blame Microsoft for creating this confusion. Mistype an address? No problem, we'll do a search for you!
Then everyone copied is misfeature.
Now the majority of internet users don't know what a url is or what all that "crazy stuff" in the address bar means.
It's insanity, really. I don't know how many times I've watched a user type www.yahoo.com into the search box on google's main page. What a waste!
You're not missing anything, it's a silly "play-pretend people are innumerate" game.
I can only guess that the question was vague or poorly worded leading the respondents to assume it meant "who get's the better deal?" or "who gains more miles per gallon?".
Not that it matters, the author is just trying to make a case for a problem that exists only in his head: "So that's the problem: Americans can't accurately work out how to save the most gasoline."
They already know that the higher the mpg, the more fuel, and money, they personally save (which is all that matters) -- they don't need to know or care that they save 5 gallons in the first instance (10 to 20) vs 1 gallon in the second (33 to 50) over a 100 mile trip because it's completely meaningless to them! It's not like they have the choice (time travelers excepted) between upgrading from 10mpg to 20mpg vs 33mpg to 50mpg!
proved that consumers thought fuel consumption was cut at an even rate as mileage increased.
It is! Doubling the gas mileage saves half the gas! I'm don't see the logic hole! What am I missing?
I think the author was trying to imply that consumers thought something absurd like for every mpg of difference they save the same number of gallons per mile (e.g. for every 10mpg of difference, 5 gallons are saved over 100 miles). Not that you could tell from the article, it's just my guess at what the author means by "even rate".
I have a feeling the author is just as innumerate as he believes American consumers to be...
Why do I care about page numbers in a document that doesn't have pages?
It's not about what's important to you, it's about what's important for everyone else as well. Scholars, for example, need page numbers.
It's not that hard to make footnotes and margin notes appear on hover
In the case of margin notes, what would you hover over? Unlike foot notes, there isn't a mark in the text to associate with them (Neither are they necessarily associated with a specific paragraph). More importantly, how would you view them on devices where 'hover' isn't something that's possible like the kindle or where where hover isn't necessarily relevant like non-touchscreen smart phones?
The point? A proper ebook format will allow you to mark foot notes and margin notes semantically, allowing the ebook reader to handle them in the best way possible on the target device.
It also wouldn't be super-hard to make a reference that searches out a specific spot in someone else's (scholarly html) document. When I remember Ted Nelson's words on hypertext, I think the notion is to make the material referenced directly available.
You're thinking too idealistically. Ted Nielsons vision for hypertext was equally naive. When you say link to the "material referenced directly" what do you link to? The publishers source? A retailers source? Some new (as yet undeveloped) database? ebooks don't live in "the cloud" nor would anyone sensible want them to.
When I think about preserving the paper experience without the use of a printer, it seems pointless and doomed to fail.
The question, of course, isn't "are ebooks as good as paper books?" but "is HTML + CSS a good solution for ebooks?" The answer, of course, is 'no'. What I think you have in mind is "a hypertext solution" (I agree with you there). HTML, however, isn't well suited to the task.
It's easy to dismiss the ebook problem as simple or trivial -- as many of the comments here show. But as I've mentioned before, the problem become more complex the longer you examine it. For example, it seems obvious at first that something like an index would simply be replaced by a search feature, rendering it obsolete. However, as anyone who's worked seriously with books will tell you, a properly developed index beats a simple search every time. Donald Knuth wrote a bit about this. A good index isn't just a list of words and where they appear in the text -- which is what a search will get you. Flip open a quality text and take a look -- you'll be impressed.
Put simply, HTML + CSS isn't well suited to the task.
Ignoring books where layout is important, there are dynamic elements to even fairly straight-forward text-only books that aren't can't be handled by simply re-rendering the pages (things like footnotes, margin notes, indexes, and page numbers).
Just looking at page numbers, it seems the obvious solution is to just renumber the pages and update any references in the text. Unfortunately, HTML doesn't provide a mechanism for marking page references, page boundries, or even for dynamic text. For scholarly works matters are worse; you'd also want to preserve the original page numbers for anyone needing to cite the text.
eBooks are a remarkable complicated problem that has yet to be solved. Even current solutions seem somewhat less-than-complete for many fairly common situations. HTML not only doesn't solve the problem, it lacks the semantic power to even try.
Explorer shouldn't be supporting FTP anyway. Explorer is for managing your local files, not the internet. This is inconsistent behavior right here, negating point 2.
Yes, I want my browser to support ftp. You know, so I can do things like download a file hosted on an ftp server without opening a new application.
I see no valid reason here why a web browser should only support http and https.
I especially love how you consider your opinions well informed -- it's people like you that lead the nation into the sink-hole it's in now. Now you're ACTIVELY fighting against those of us out to fix it!
This is how I know you haven't thought about this at all. -- The "counter" part of the article, put simply, doesn't. If anything, it validates the claims made in the AP article!
Then again, if you think Glenn Beck is 'accurate' I don't expect you to be terrible good at critical evaluation.
A simple example, because you obviously need the help: The article doesn't bother to counter the first claim: "Teachers in Texas will probably be required to cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation's Founding Fathers -- but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state." Instead, it lumps it together with the second claim, and hoped you wouldn't notice. (Hey, it worked! You didn't even think about it did you? I know, Glenn does your "thinking" for you.)
That particular claim, by the way, is one of the most frightening aspects of the curriculum changes. It's also the most obvious example of a 'far-right' change.
Newsbusters is one of the most bias sites I've run across. How you can claim it's "one of the best" is beyond me -- unless by "best" you mean "reinforces my beliefs". If that's the case, you've got a lot to learn about critical thinking.
Pay particular attention to critical question #4 "What sources does the speaker use, and how credible are they? Does the speaker cite statistics? If so, how were the data gathered, who gathered the data, and are the data being presented fully?" As you're a Fox viewer, you need to be especially careful -- Bill O'Reilly is notorious for not only inventing studies that support his claims, but even entire journals! (An example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo8K4YPi-v0 ) (Oh, he's also been known to outright lie about studies that actually exist. See this example: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/oreilly-46-physicians-may-leave-medical-pr )
Seriously, you really really need to learn to think critically. The future of our nation depends on people like you educating yourselves.
First I'm going to tell you all about my keys, then I'm going to criticize you. This makes me feel important.
I have my keys divided into two separate rings. The first ring has 1 house key and 3 car keys. The second ring has a redundant car key (for the car I drive primarily) and house key for convenience as well as 2 work keys, the key to my tool shed, 2 house keys which I can't identify, 1 mailbox key I forgot to return, and a key for a Kensington lock.
All said, that's 13 keys. I keep both rings in my pocket. It hasn't been a problem.
I recommend that you buy pants which are in your correct size. It seems obvious to me that having too many keys isn't the problem -- it's just that your pockets are too small.
If you can't afford larger pants, might I recommend losing some weight? Anyhow, the point is that your keys shouldn't be eating holes in your pockets unless you're doing something wrong. (Are you sleeping in your work pants or something?)
Given the problems you have with managing simple everyday objects, I'd also suggest moving in with your girlfriend. She'll easily be able to handle little life details like selecting appropriate clothing, keeping track of important things like keys, and will more than happily tell you when it's time to change your pants.
My wife runs Ubuntu on her netbook. She loves it. So much so, in fact, she never touches her windows laptop.
The only thing she didn't like as being unable to watch netflix movies. Now that she has the netflix disc for her wii, she doesn't care. (It turns out that she didn't really want to watch movies on her computer, she just wanted to watch movies.)
Now that I'm thinking about it, I know a few non-technical users who use linux exclusively without issue.
It makes me wonder, is it linux that isn't ready, or are manufacturer just afraid to take the risk?
Slashdot Mirror
This seems unnecessarily cruel and unethical.
I disagree in that mathematics is applied philosophy, I think its a fundamental law of the universe.
This is how we know that you're not a mathematician...
If you're outside at night with a flashlight and a fist-full of batteries, you've already made a mistake.
Ignoring that for a moment, if the polarity is embossed in the plastic, you don't need to see it. You should be able to distinguish plus from minus by touch alone.
Now, in most of the flashlights I have around the house, the batteries are all oriented the same way -- straight down the handle -- and polarity doesn't matter. (If i put them all in - first or + first, thy light-up just fine)
The one exception is a small led flashlight which uses a plastic battery holder. In total darkness, I can feel the springs and properly orient the batteries.
Think about this: How do blind people get batteries into their flashlights?
despite the fact it is with the worst carrier in America.
I really don't think that's a fair criticism. A few years ago, AT&T purchased Cellular One (my carrier) turning me into an instant customer. My experience with them so far has been excellent.
I've not had any issues with dropped calls. (While they have happened on occasion, the frequency is extraordinarily low -- less than 1 a month.)
I've only been without a data connection once, and that was the fault of my phone -- removing and replacing the battery resolved the issue.
I've not once been without signal, even at my place of work; where the Verizon phones only seem to work in a few random spots outside. (Which is reason enough for me to avoid Verizon!)
To top it off, customer service has handled every issue I've had (switching phones, address changes, etc.) quickly and easily.
I'm beginning to wonder if the dissatisfaction iPhone users are experiencing is truly carrier related...
Boy, girl is twice as likely in life as boy, boy. This is true. Flip a coin twice. I promise you the probability of getting 1 head and 1 tail is twice as high as the probability of getting 2 heads.
Great, go try that at the roulette table.
My city's university offers free tuition PLUS addition $1000 to women who take engineering. Why in the world would women turn that down?
Because they learned at a very young age that "Math class is tough!"
Let me ask you this, would you want to live in a world where everyone can sell "pain killers" and have it be anything from calcium carbonate to asbestos? That's what Patents and Trademarks protect you from, at least when applied correctly.
That's not even the tiniest bit true.
Because then he couldn't tell us how awesome apple products are.
I must be the only person on the whole internet who didn't really care about this. Why bother visiting the Google homepage anyway? I just search from Firefox's search box.
I hope you meant to say "from the Firefox address bar".
Well, there is a search box right next to the address bar. I'm pretty sure he meant what he said.
I blame Microsoft for creating this confusion. Mistype an address? No problem, we'll do a search for you!
Then everyone copied is misfeature.
Now the majority of internet users don't know what a url is or what all that "crazy stuff" in the address bar means.
It's insanity, really. I don't know how many times I've watched a user type www.yahoo.com into the search box on google's main page. What a waste!
You're not missing anything, it's a silly "play-pretend people are innumerate" game.
I can only guess that the question was vague or poorly worded leading the respondents to assume it meant "who get's the better deal?" or "who gains more miles per gallon?".
Not that it matters, the author is just trying to make a case for a problem that exists only in his head: "So that's the problem: Americans can't accurately work out how to save the most gasoline."
They already know that the higher the mpg, the more fuel, and money, they personally save (which is all that matters) -- they don't need to know or care that they save 5 gallons in the first instance (10 to 20) vs 1 gallon in the second (33 to 50) over a 100 mile trip because it's completely meaningless to them! It's not like they have the choice (time travelers excepted) between upgrading from 10mpg to 20mpg vs 33mpg to 50mpg!
proved that consumers thought fuel consumption was cut at an even rate as mileage increased.
It is! Doubling the gas mileage saves half the gas! I'm don't see the logic hole! What am I missing?
I think the author was trying to imply that consumers thought something absurd like for every mpg of difference they save the same number of gallons per mile (e.g. for every 10mpg of difference, 5 gallons are saved over 100 miles). Not that you could tell from the article, it's just my guess at what the author means by "even rate".
I have a feeling the author is just as innumerate as he believes American consumers to be...
Same goes for Postscript - after all, PDF is a subset of Postscript.
PDF is neither a subset nor a superset of Postscript.
Why do I care about page numbers in a document that doesn't have pages?
It's not about what's important to you, it's about what's important for everyone else as well. Scholars, for example, need page numbers.
It's not that hard to make footnotes and margin notes appear on hover
In the case of margin notes, what would you hover over? Unlike foot notes, there isn't a mark in the text to associate with them (Neither are they necessarily associated with a specific paragraph). More importantly, how would you view them on devices where 'hover' isn't something that's possible like the kindle or where where hover isn't necessarily relevant like non-touchscreen smart phones?
The point? A proper ebook format will allow you to mark foot notes and margin notes semantically, allowing the ebook reader to handle them in the best way possible on the target device.
It also wouldn't be super-hard to make a reference that searches out a specific spot in someone else's (scholarly html) document. When I remember Ted Nelson's words on hypertext, I think the notion is to make the material referenced directly available.
You're thinking too idealistically. Ted Nielsons vision for hypertext was equally naive. When you say link to the "material referenced directly" what do you link to? The publishers source? A retailers source? Some new (as yet undeveloped) database? ebooks don't live in "the cloud" nor would anyone sensible want them to.
When I think about preserving the paper experience without the use of a printer, it seems pointless and doomed to fail.
The question, of course, isn't "are ebooks as good as paper books?" but "is HTML + CSS a good solution for ebooks?" The answer, of course, is 'no'. What I think you have in mind is "a hypertext solution" (I agree with you there). HTML, however, isn't well suited to the task.
It's easy to dismiss the ebook problem as simple or trivial -- as many of the comments here show. But as I've mentioned before, the problem become more complex the longer you examine it. For example, it seems obvious at first that something like an index would simply be replaced by a search feature, rendering it obsolete. However, as anyone who's worked seriously with books will tell you, a properly developed index beats a simple search every time. Donald Knuth wrote a bit about this. A good index isn't just a list of words and where they appear in the text -- which is what a search will get you. Flip open a quality text and take a look -- you'll be impressed.
Put simply, HTML + CSS isn't well suited to the task.
Ignoring books where layout is important, there are dynamic elements to even fairly straight-forward text-only books that aren't can't be handled by simply re-rendering the pages (things like footnotes, margin notes, indexes, and page numbers).
Just looking at page numbers, it seems the obvious solution is to just renumber the pages and update any references in the text. Unfortunately, HTML doesn't provide a mechanism for marking page references, page boundries, or even for dynamic text. For scholarly works matters are worse; you'd also want to preserve the original page numbers for anyone needing to cite the text.
eBooks are a remarkable complicated problem that has yet to be solved. Even current solutions seem somewhat less-than-complete for many fairly common situations. HTML not only doesn't solve the problem, it lacks the semantic power to even try.
Explorer shouldn't be supporting FTP anyway. Explorer is for managing your local files, not the internet. This is inconsistent behavior right here, negating point 2.
Yes, I want my browser to support ftp. You know, so I can do things like download a file hosted on an ftp server without opening a new application.
I see no valid reason here why a web browser should only support http and https.
this is legit why, exactly?
The protocol isn't always http.
you can enter any link with or without http and it will still open just fine, since we have that good ole dns thing.
DNS has nothing to do with the protocol.
Meanwhile, people don't even understand "slash slash" because they're computer retarded.
See above
What a wonderfully hypocritical post.
I especially love how you consider your opinions well informed -- it's people like you that lead the nation into the sink-hole it's in now. Now you're ACTIVELY fighting against those of us out to fix it!
I pray you don't have any children.
Wow, you really are a moron.
"I see no problem with highlighting the judeo-Christian influences of the Founding Fathers."
Add history to the list of things you need to learn.
This is how I know you haven't thought about this at all. -- The "counter" part of the article, put simply, doesn't. If anything, it validates the claims made in the AP article!
Then again, if you think Glenn Beck is 'accurate' I don't expect you to be terrible good at critical evaluation.
A simple example, because you obviously need the help: The article doesn't bother to counter the first claim: "Teachers in Texas will probably be required to cover the Judeo-Christian influences of the nation's Founding Fathers -- but not highlight the philosophical rationale for the separation of church and state." Instead, it lumps it together with the second claim, and hoped you wouldn't notice. (Hey, it worked! You didn't even think about it did you? I know, Glenn does your "thinking" for you.)
That particular claim, by the way, is one of the most frightening aspects of the curriculum changes. It's also the most obvious example of a 'far-right' change.
Newsbusters is one of the most bias sites I've run across. How you can claim it's "one of the best" is beyond me -- unless by "best" you mean "reinforces my beliefs". If that's the case, you've got a lot to learn about critical thinking.
Let me help you get started. Read this site: http://rhetorica.net/bias.htm
Pay particular attention to critical question #4 "What sources does the speaker use, and how credible are they? Does the speaker cite statistics? If so, how were the data gathered, who gathered the data, and are the data being presented fully?" As you're a Fox viewer, you need to be especially careful -- Bill O'Reilly is notorious for not only inventing studies that support his claims, but even entire journals! (An example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo8K4YPi-v0 ) (Oh, he's also been known to outright lie about studies that actually exist. See this example: http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/oreilly-46-physicians-may-leave-medical-pr )
Seriously, you really really need to learn to think critically. The future of our nation depends on people like you educating yourselves.
Newsbusters? Really? They make Glenn Beck look sane!
How about an actual news source -- Or better yet, the actual curriculum.
The goal was to create the impression of scarcity, not actual scarcity. What do you think the OP meant by 'artificial'? Try to keep up here.
The people with six-digit id's are greater in number. Someday, we will rise up and toss-off the shackles of oppression and servitude!
You'll be the first with your back against the wall when the revolution comes.
People who talked more time would be more exposed to it than someone who used it once a month to wish granny happy birthday.
Why would anyone wish their granny a happy birthday once every month?
Apple's business strategy seems to work very well. They make a lot of money and they have stayed in business for 40+ years.
You're either incredibly bad at math or a time traveler.
First I'm going to tell you all about my keys, then I'm going to criticize you. This makes me feel important.
I have my keys divided into two separate rings. The first ring has 1 house key and 3 car keys. The second ring has a redundant car key (for the car I drive primarily) and house key for convenience as well as 2 work keys, the key to my tool shed, 2 house keys which I can't identify, 1 mailbox key I forgot to return, and a key for a Kensington lock.
All said, that's 13 keys. I keep both rings in my pocket. It hasn't been a problem.
I recommend that you buy pants which are in your correct size. It seems obvious to me that having too many keys isn't the problem -- it's just that your pockets are too small.
If you can't afford larger pants, might I recommend losing some weight? Anyhow, the point is that your keys shouldn't be eating holes in your pockets unless you're doing something wrong. (Are you sleeping in your work pants or something?)
Given the problems you have with managing simple everyday objects, I'd also suggest moving in with your girlfriend. She'll easily be able to handle little life details like selecting appropriate clothing, keeping track of important things like keys, and will more than happily tell you when it's time to change your pants.
My wife runs Ubuntu on her netbook. She loves it. So much so, in fact, she never touches her windows laptop.
The only thing she didn't like as being unable to watch netflix movies. Now that she has the netflix disc for her wii, she doesn't care. (It turns out that she didn't really want to watch movies on her computer, she just wanted to watch movies.)
Now that I'm thinking about it, I know a few non-technical users who use linux exclusively without issue.
It makes me wonder, is it linux that isn't ready, or are manufacturer just afraid to take the risk?