Strep throat and pneumonia are the common respiratory bacterial infections, and your doctor will certainly tell you if you have either of these. Anything else is likely to be viral, and there is no known cure for any virus, and prevention is possible for only a handful of viruses using vaccines.
I've always been under the impression that when you have green or yellow mucous, it's a sign of infection and you should go to the doctor...But when I haven't been able to beat a cold, or sinus infection, etc. and I'm worried about bronchitis, strep, pneumonia, I tend to schedule an appointment.
If you had strep or pneumonia, the doctor would mention it. If he doesn't tell you what you have, it's because you have an infection of one of several hundred possible common cold viruses. Bronchitis is also viral (although in some cases there can be a secondary bacterial infection), so again, there's nothing the doctor can give you for it.
My orinial point was that I'd like to know what kind of infection I have and what I could do to avoid it the next time a simple cold attacks me.
Well, you're asking for the holy grail. If we had a way to avoid infection, you'd surely know about it by now. The common sense approach is really the only answer modern medical science has; drink clear liquids to flush your system and keep resting so your body can focus its resources on fighting the infection. The fact is that you become more vulnerable to a secondary infection when your immune system is focusing on the primary infection, and there's nothing you can do about it except to give your body the rest and nutrients it needs. But it's likely just the cold infection spreading to various parts of your respiratory system, and there's no way to prevent that.
If/when the minimum wage matches or exceeds the cost of living, people wind up buying more (not many people wind up actually saving their money, whether they can or not). This increases the demand side, which then helps supply side businesses. Without a minimum wage increase since 1997 and with the decrease of public and private unions, buying power has gone down on the whole.
The problem is that the money has to come from somewhere. Companies can decrease profits and still hire the same amount of workers, but the real problem is that when you put more money in the hands of more people, inflation is just around the corner. When you increase minimum wage, people might initially have more buying power, but soon prices will raise to the highest level the markets will bear, then you'll have to increase minimum wage again, then prices will go up, ad infinitum.
Contrary to (popular?) belief, a rise in the minimum wage will not adversely affect the vast majority businesses ability to hire new workers.
Define the "vast majority" of businesses. According to http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.html, 50% of all employees work for small businesses, and small businesses represent greater than 99% of employers. Many small businesses survive on slim margins to begin with. Raising minimum wage for these businesses will directly affect their ability to retain current employees and hire new ones, at least until they can raise prices accordingly, which just gets you back in the same hole.
Another problem with a national minimum wage is that the cost of living varies widely around the country. $5.15/hr might be plenty for many rural communities, but you couldn't make enough to survive at that rate in someplace like NYC even if you worked 16 hour days. Many states have their own minimum wages which are higher than the federal minimum; in some cases much higher.
There will always be a dichotomy between rich and poor until all things are without value, which will never happen. There will always be a subset of the population who, through luck, skill, or less respectable means, manages to aquire more assets than he or she needs at the expense of the general populous. Communism claimed to stave off this imbalance by giving everyone equal pay, benefits, housing, etc., but that hasn't worked out too well for most countries. Meanwhile, Capitalism accepts that there will be a dichotomy, but (theoretically) tries to manage the playing field so that the people with the best ideas will be the most successful. We throw in a little socialism to support basic needs such as shelter, food stamps, welfare, etc., but there's no way to wipe out poverty; only to redefine it. 500 years ago, poverty may have been the same as homelessness, whereas today it means sleeping in a crappy apartment, eating government cheese, and using rabbit ear antennae.
The best way to redefine poverty to an acceptable quality of life is through socialist programs, not by placing artificial restraints on a free market economy. Many Scandenavian countries have a high standard of living because they realize that, for example, the benefit of having guaranteed healthcare, and thus a healthy and productive workforce, outweighs the cost. Sweden doesn't even have a minimum wage, and has only 2-3% unemployment.
My point is that minimum wage is only a band-aid on an infection. It might cover up the problem, but underneath the infection will fester, and in the long run the problem will only become worse.
Most people I know who had jobs in high school had a much more mature sense of responsibility. Whether that's because they were working or they were working because they were responsible in the first place is, of course, open to interpretation. Regardless, I don't think having a job is high school is a "Bad Thing."
USB keychains have three significant drawbacks: 1) They can be lost/damaged/stolen/forgotten. 2) They generally only work on MS Win2000 or later machines. 3) They may not be permissable in the workplace, or one may not have sufficient permissions to install it. When I need to transfer a file, I use network storage, AKA e-mailing it to myself on gmail. I don't have to remember to carry anything with me, and the data is then available at almost any computer I use. Also it costs me nothing. Obviously it's not a solution for the times I use a standalone network/computer, or a laptop on a flight or subway, but for me that's rare enough that I'd just use a CD/DVD/R/RW.
It's more of a punishment than most people believe. Juries should have to do 24 hours behind bars before handing out a sentence, separated from each other as well, and they wouldn't even experience half of it. If you're even arrested, you can probably kiss your job goodbye, even if you're only there for a day or two. Hope you didn't have any obligations to pets or children, because using the phone is a privelage, not a right. You definately won't get any sleep the first night, and probably not the first week. If you're lucky you might find someone other than a moron or a drug addict to talk to, or someone who's got more to say than, "These beds suck compared to the beds in Backwater County lockup." After a few hours you're already starting to understand why they took your shoelaces, and why you don't get anything to shave with until you've had a month to adjust. The sense of isolation is overwhelming. Those cushy "3 square meals" are the only thing to look forward to, even though they don't taste like anything. Hopefully your cellmate's shit doesn't stink too bad -- you won't have to worry about your own for a while because you'll be too constipated squeeze anything out -- and when he flushes you start to remember some 20/20 report about how flushing causes fecal matter to spread over a 6 foot radius, although you probably won't catch hepatitis from it. Probably. You'll want nothing more than for the lights to go out, because it means you're one day further along, but when they're finally extinguished, the silence is deafening. Although every once in a while you'll get to listen to a heroin junky going through withdrawls. On the bright side you'll be happy to learn that everyone in jail knows all the legal loopholes, (which explains why they're all behind bars, right? Don't point that out to them though; it worked for their cousin's half-sister). If you're lucky, you won't be in the city, with cars and voices and laughter tantalizing you from just out of view as the people go on with their lives without you.
I'm not saying anyone should feel sympathy for people who break the law, just that they should understand the full weight of the punishment.
In the military, there's the idea that "If you didn't lock it up, it wasn't stolen." The same thing applies for insurance. So while on one hand we penalize people with the justice system for the principle of the matter, on the other we recognize that the person who left their property vulnerable is at least as much to blame. An insurance company won't compensate you for a car you left unlocked with the keys in the visor. Obviously network security is far more complicated, but on some level we have to recognize that, for whatever reason, some people will violate the social contract, and it's much more effective to prevent them from doing so in the first place. A bank doesn't wait until it's been robbed to build a vualt.
As far as punishment, capital or otherwise, I think most people inherently feel that a) Intent is more important than actual damage, and b) Lives are more valuable than the actual monetary value they provide to society.
There's no question that we attempt to punish intent rather than actual damage. One person pulls a gun and shoots someone in the head. One driver looks down at the radio and runs over a child. Same result, different intents, different punishments. We don't differentiate because we like the person, but because we don't want to get the death sentence if we find outselves in the latter situation. A third person draws a gun and opens fire but completely misses the person he was shooting at. His intent was to kill, so regardless of the fact that the would-be victim is still alive, most of us believe he should get a much harsher punishment than the reckless driver. A hacker who releases a virus which happens to bring airports to a standstill may or may not have realized the consequences of his actions. It's reasonable to say that he was reckless, but malicious? I'm not so sure.
Measuring the actual cost to society is not the best way to dole out punishment. If we were strictly utilitarian creatures, without social ties that are immeasurably more valuable, then the cost/benefit analysis would be appropriate. But even if social cost/benefits were measurable, when we start punishing based on the cost of the criminal to society, it starts us down a slippery slope. If it's cost effective for society to kill hackers, then maybe it's cost effective to kill handicap people. No more ramps, or elevators in two story buildings, or special toilets. Maybe it's cost effective to kill people with an IQ under 100 every time the population reaches a certain size. Maybe it's cost effective to kill old people. It's not so hard for things to get out of line very quickly. History is rife with examples of societies gone amuck by failing to maintain perspective. Just because technology has progressed a hundred fold doesn't mean our thought processes have kept pace; a difficult thing for many people to accept.
I was under the impression that energy can't just disappear, even after work is done. I should have known better though; all my energy disappears before I even get to work. Stupid thermodynamics.
I don't think it's because the viewer knows they're watching an animation and thus rejects it, but because there are entirely too many details that we do notice, without noticing that we notice. Just look at something as simple as a finger. As you curl your finger, notice how the skin only stretches slightly at first? Notice how it stretched the most in the middle, and how it widens or fattens slightly? How the skin gets lighter and slightly more translucent at the joints? The little wrinkles, and the changing texture of the skin along the length of the finger? How you tend to curl the ends of your fingers first? How you can't easily curl one finger without moving the one next to it? And that's just one little part of an entire person. There are a mind-boggling amount of minute details that we may not notice, but when they're missing our minds say, "Something's not quite right." A stance might be a little off, or center of gravity, or friction, or movement might be too fluid, or too jerky, or anything. The tiniest details will ruin the illusion.
How To Enter. You will automatically be entered into the Promotion by: 1) downloading a song from iTunes (any free downloads will be deemed an ineligible entry); or 2) a free alternative means of sending an e-mail to Apple at itunes500@apple.com via the iTunes "Tell a Friend" feature (a song download or Tell a Friend e-mail will be deemed an "Entry(ies)"). The "Tell a Friend" feature can be easily accessed at iTunes by selecting a song, and clicking the "Tell a Friend" link that is displayed for that song. One Entry will be automatically submitted for each song downloaded or Tell a Friend e-mail sent. The Promotion begins following the downloading of the 480,000,000th iTunes song, and ends with the downloading of the 500 millionth Entry ("End Date"). Only Entries submitted in this time period will be accepted.
Unless, of course, you really want to hook up an S-Video/etc. out plug to a digital camera or VCR, record the playback to the camera, and transfer it back. It's just not feasible.
Yeah, that sounds a lot more difficult than, sneaking a digital camcorder into a theater, setting it up (inconspicuously?), and recording the entire movie... Then obtaining quality audio and synchronizing it with the video and transcoding it to xvid or VCD.
There's no way the people who do that could be bothered to record the S-Video out.
Even if you could talk and type at the same speed, typing is still considerably more accurate, at least for areas which require large amounts of precise information.
Plus there's that whole upside of not looking like a nutjob talking to yourself in a cubicle.
And it's sort of difficult to overhear what someone is typing.. The privacy (from casual observers) aspect of typing is something I think people tend to take for granted.
I can tell you from personal experience that comfort is never essential. Water is essential, oxygen, and maybe a little food from time to time. It may be true that you're only willing to spend money on comfort, but that's another matter altogether, and it doesn't really add any weight to the idea that the WIntel platform is poorly engineered.
Carefully and thoughtfully and elegantly designed products are a good in and of themselves; millions of iPod users sense this even if they don't quite realize why.
Well thanks for speaking for them, since they're obviously too obtuse to realize what they sense. I'm sure it's not even a remote possibility that there are millions of iPod users because of slick marketing and celeb name dropping. Oh no, it's all in the elegant design. Millions of people eat Cheerio's instead of Toasted Oh's. But I'm sure that's because the bee on the box makes it taste better.
Now I like to be coddled as much as the next pansy, but if the toilet paper is so soft that it falls apart in my hands, then forget it; at the end of the day, it's more important that my arse is clean. If OS X can give me all the functionality and interoperability of Windows with a more pleasant interface to boot, then I'm all for it. (And I fully intend to investigate this possibility once the switch to Intel is complete). In the meantime let's hear some rationale. I'm not a Windows lover, but I'm not going to buy the "grass is greener," argument for OS X without specific examples and evidence. Honestly, the above quote just makes you sound like a car salesman to me. Your statement may be true, but you've glossed over any relevant facts.
But at least we all know to avoid Soviet Airlines now.
Considering immortality seems to mean little more than preventing or repairing damage to DNA, I don't think it's all that far "out-there." I'm sure there will be other hurdles, such as lifetime accumulation of toxic substances (heavy metals, radioactive substances), and other degenerative diseases, but I certainly don't think it's unsolvable. Whether or not we, or our children, or our children's children will be around to see it is another question altogether.
The idea of immortality was much more fantastical when our ideas of aging were equally fantastical. When real causes are identified and real problems are tackled, it becomes much less a question of if than when.
...interesting than what you have to say now (that, after all, is why they have been preserved.)
Parenthetical parts of sentences should be avoided (when possible), but when used should be punctuated outside of the parentheses. (Only entirely parenthetical sentences are punctuated within the parentheses.)
...they have adopted the phrase, without understanding it, in hopes that by emulating better writing, their own will be more favourably received.
Exessive use of commas can actually cloud the intended meaning of the sentence. "Without understanding it," is correctly contained within commas as it is outside the main idea of the sentence, however the need for a comma between writing and their is debatable. Commas are not the punctuation equivelant of a pause and should generally be accompanied by a conjunction, although it is not necessary to use a comma with every conjunction.
Also contractions should only be used in dialog.
My point was not to actually correct your errors, but to demonstrate that it's possible to take anything too far. Even rules are not absolute. For example, using non-contracted forms of words tends to put extra emphasis on the unshortened words, which may not be the author's intent. I make a conscious effort to obey as many rules of grammar as I can remember. I try to spell words to the best of my knowledge and look them up when I'm uncertain, but at some point I have to strike a balance between the effort required for perfect writing and the importance of what I'm writing. Perfection is a good goal, but when the need for perfection becomes an interferance, it's probably time to reevaluate your priorities.
You know, I've never even seen anyone write "should of," or else I've completely blocked it from memory, but now I'm worried that I'll start using it because I've seen it thirty times in the past 10 minutes.
On a side note: there's a brain teaser where the reader is told to count the F's in a sentence, and the number he actually finds is then said to correspond with his intelligence. The validity of any correlations aside, most people don't notice the F in "of" because they pronounce it as a V in their mind.
I still use WTF out of semi-politeness when I'm concerned that the other party might find the full phrase vulgar, but not concerned enough that I'll avoid it altogether. Actually I don't have a problem with acronyms in general.. it's words replaced with character homonyms that irritates me. At any rate, I've found that unintelligible writing is generally indicitave of a cluttered thought process, and the writer is probably not someone I'd want to communicate with in the first place.
I know many of you don't like the idea of Bush choosing 5 justices (perhaps more, there are rumors of retirement), but that is better than letting these 5 sit on then court. Write your congressmen and make it so.
I guess you're not familiar with the phrase "choose your battles?" Trying to unseat justices when you know they'd be replaced with people you're more likely to disagree with is just shooting yourself in the foot.
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Strep throat and pneumonia are the common respiratory bacterial infections, and your doctor will certainly tell you if you have either of these. Anything else is likely to be viral, and there is no known cure for any virus, and prevention is possible for only a handful of viruses using vaccines.
I've always been under the impression that when you have green or yellow mucous, it's a sign of infection and you should go to the doctor...But when I haven't been able to beat a cold, or sinus infection, etc. and I'm worried about bronchitis, strep, pneumonia, I tend to schedule an appointment.
If you had strep or pneumonia, the doctor would mention it. If he doesn't tell you what you have, it's because you have an infection of one of several hundred possible common cold viruses. Bronchitis is also viral (although in some cases there can be a secondary bacterial infection), so again, there's nothing the doctor can give you for it.
My orinial point was that I'd like to know what kind of infection I have and what I could do to avoid it the next time a simple cold attacks me.
Well, you're asking for the holy grail. If we had a way to avoid infection, you'd surely know about it by now. The common sense approach is really the only answer modern medical science has; drink clear liquids to flush your system and keep resting so your body can focus its resources on fighting the infection. The fact is that you become more vulnerable to a secondary infection when your immune system is focusing on the primary infection, and there's nothing you can do about it except to give your body the rest and nutrients it needs. But it's likely just the cold infection spreading to various parts of your respiratory system, and there's no way to prevent that.
Except Lousiana is in the middle of the Bible Belt, so 4 is more likely the number of citizens who don't watch religious channels.
If/when the minimum wage matches or exceeds the cost of living, people wind up buying more (not many people wind up actually saving their money, whether they can or not). This increases the demand side, which then helps supply side businesses. Without a minimum wage increase since 1997 and with the decrease of public and private unions, buying power has gone down on the whole.
The problem is that the money has to come from somewhere. Companies can decrease profits and still hire the same amount of workers, but the real problem is that when you put more money in the hands of more people, inflation is just around the corner. When you increase minimum wage, people might initially have more buying power, but soon prices will raise to the highest level the markets will bear, then you'll have to increase minimum wage again, then prices will go up, ad infinitum.
Contrary to (popular?) belief, a rise in the minimum wage will not adversely affect the vast majority businesses ability to hire new workers.
Define the "vast majority" of businesses. According to http://www.sba.gov/advo/stats/sbfaq.html, 50% of all employees work for small businesses, and small businesses represent greater than 99% of employers. Many small businesses survive on slim margins to begin with. Raising minimum wage for these businesses will directly affect their ability to retain current employees and hire new ones, at least until they can raise prices accordingly, which just gets you back in the same hole.
Another problem with a national minimum wage is that the cost of living varies widely around the country. $5.15/hr might be plenty for many rural communities, but you couldn't make enough to survive at that rate in someplace like NYC even if you worked 16 hour days. Many states have their own minimum wages which are higher than the federal minimum; in some cases much higher.
There will always be a dichotomy between rich and poor until all things are without value, which will never happen. There will always be a subset of the population who, through luck, skill, or less respectable means, manages to aquire more assets than he or she needs at the expense of the general populous. Communism claimed to stave off this imbalance by giving everyone equal pay, benefits, housing, etc., but that hasn't worked out too well for most countries. Meanwhile, Capitalism accepts that there will be a dichotomy, but (theoretically) tries to manage the playing field so that the people with the best ideas will be the most successful. We throw in a little socialism to support basic needs such as shelter, food stamps, welfare, etc., but there's no way to wipe out poverty; only to redefine it. 500 years ago, poverty may have been the same as homelessness, whereas today it means sleeping in a crappy apartment, eating government cheese, and using rabbit ear antennae.
The best way to redefine poverty to an acceptable quality of life is through socialist programs, not by placing artificial restraints on a free market economy. Many Scandenavian countries have a high standard of living because they realize that, for example, the benefit of having guaranteed healthcare, and thus a healthy and productive workforce, outweighs the cost. Sweden doesn't even have a minimum wage, and has only 2-3% unemployment.
My point is that minimum wage is only a band-aid on an infection. It might cover up the problem, but underneath the infection will fester, and in the long run the problem will only become worse.
Most people I know who had jobs in high school had a much more mature sense of responsibility. Whether that's because they were working or they were working because they were responsible in the first place is, of course, open to interpretation. Regardless, I don't think having a job is high school is a "Bad Thing."
Lemmings aren't really suicidal.. that was just a Disney stunt.
And just when you thought you were exempt from the exploding head phenomenon...
USB keychains have three significant drawbacks: 1) They can be lost/damaged/stolen/forgotten. 2) They generally only work on MS Win2000 or later machines. 3) They may not be permissable in the workplace, or one may not have sufficient permissions to install it. When I need to transfer a file, I use network storage, AKA e-mailing it to myself on gmail. I don't have to remember to carry anything with me, and the data is then available at almost any computer I use. Also it costs me nothing. Obviously it's not a solution for the times I use a standalone network/computer, or a laptop on a flight or subway, but for me that's rare enough that I'd just use a CD/DVD/R/RW.
Or, say, a movie theater? Where some scoundrels might theater-hop after buying only one ticket?
The loss of sales is still speculative. Maybe they would have paid, maybe not.
It's more of a punishment than most people believe. Juries should have to do 24 hours behind bars before handing out a sentence, separated from each other as well, and they wouldn't even experience half of it. If you're even arrested, you can probably kiss your job goodbye, even if you're only there for a day or two. Hope you didn't have any obligations to pets or children, because using the phone is a privelage, not a right. You definately won't get any sleep the first night, and probably not the first week. If you're lucky you might find someone other than a moron or a drug addict to talk to, or someone who's got more to say than, "These beds suck compared to the beds in Backwater County lockup." After a few hours you're already starting to understand why they took your shoelaces, and why you don't get anything to shave with until you've had a month to adjust. The sense of isolation is overwhelming. Those cushy "3 square meals" are the only thing to look forward to, even though they don't taste like anything. Hopefully your cellmate's shit doesn't stink too bad -- you won't have to worry about your own for a while because you'll be too constipated squeeze anything out -- and when he flushes you start to remember some 20/20 report about how flushing causes fecal matter to spread over a 6 foot radius, although you probably won't catch hepatitis from it. Probably. You'll want nothing more than for the lights to go out, because it means you're one day further along, but when they're finally extinguished, the silence is deafening. Although every once in a while you'll get to listen to a heroin junky going through withdrawls. On the bright side you'll be happy to learn that everyone in jail knows all the legal loopholes, (which explains why they're all behind bars, right? Don't point that out to them though; it worked for their cousin's half-sister). If you're lucky, you won't be in the city, with cars and voices and laughter tantalizing you from just out of view as the people go on with their lives without you.
I'm not saying anyone should feel sympathy for people who break the law, just that they should understand the full weight of the punishment.
In the military, there's the idea that "If you didn't lock it up, it wasn't stolen." The same thing applies for insurance. So while on one hand we penalize people with the justice system for the principle of the matter, on the other we recognize that the person who left their property vulnerable is at least as much to blame. An insurance company won't compensate you for a car you left unlocked with the keys in the visor. Obviously network security is far more complicated, but on some level we have to recognize that, for whatever reason, some people will violate the social contract, and it's much more effective to prevent them from doing so in the first place. A bank doesn't wait until it's been robbed to build a vualt.
As far as punishment, capital or otherwise, I think most people inherently feel that a) Intent is more important than actual damage, and b) Lives are more valuable than the actual monetary value they provide to society.
There's no question that we attempt to punish intent rather than actual damage. One person pulls a gun and shoots someone in the head. One driver looks down at the radio and runs over a child. Same result, different intents, different punishments. We don't differentiate because we like the person, but because we don't want to get the death sentence if we find outselves in the latter situation. A third person draws a gun and opens fire but completely misses the person he was shooting at. His intent was to kill, so regardless of the fact that the would-be victim is still alive, most of us believe he should get a much harsher punishment than the reckless driver. A hacker who releases a virus which happens to bring airports to a standstill may or may not have realized the consequences of his actions. It's reasonable to say that he was reckless, but malicious? I'm not so sure.
Measuring the actual cost to society is not the best way to dole out punishment. If we were strictly utilitarian creatures, without social ties that are immeasurably more valuable, then the cost/benefit analysis would be appropriate. But even if social cost/benefits were measurable, when we start punishing based on the cost of the criminal to society, it starts us down a slippery slope. If it's cost effective for society to kill hackers, then maybe it's cost effective to kill handicap people. No more ramps, or elevators in two story buildings, or special toilets. Maybe it's cost effective to kill people with an IQ under 100 every time the population reaches a certain size. Maybe it's cost effective to kill old people. It's not so hard for things to get out of line very quickly. History is rife with examples of societies gone amuck by failing to maintain perspective. Just because technology has progressed a hundred fold doesn't mean our thought processes have kept pace; a difficult thing for many people to accept.
I was under the impression that energy can't just disappear, even after work is done. I should have known better though; all my energy disappears before I even get to work. Stupid thermodynamics.
I don't think it's because the viewer knows they're watching an animation and thus rejects it, but because there are entirely too many details that we do notice, without noticing that we notice. Just look at something as simple as a finger. As you curl your finger, notice how the skin only stretches slightly at first? Notice how it stretched the most in the middle, and how it widens or fattens slightly? How the skin gets lighter and slightly more translucent at the joints? The little wrinkles, and the changing texture of the skin along the length of the finger? How you tend to curl the ends of your fingers first? How you can't easily curl one finger without moving the one next to it? And that's just one little part of an entire person. There are a mind-boggling amount of minute details that we may not notice, but when they're missing our minds say, "Something's not quite right." A stance might be a little off, or center of gravity, or friction, or movement might be too fluid, or too jerky, or anything. The tiniest details will ruin the illusion.
On the bright side (emphasis mine):
Unless, of course, you really want to hook up an S-Video/etc. out plug to a digital camera or VCR, record the playback to the camera, and transfer it back. It's just not feasible.
Yeah, that sounds a lot more difficult than, sneaking a digital camcorder into a theater, setting it up (inconspicuously?), and recording the entire movie... Then obtaining quality audio and synchronizing it with the video and transcoding it to xvid or VCD.
There's no way the people who do that could be bothered to record the S-Video out.
What if it's just a copy of your nose?
Even if you could talk and type at the same speed, typing is still considerably more accurate, at least for areas which require large amounts of precise information.
Plus there's that whole upside of not looking like a nutjob talking to yourself in a cubicle.
And it's sort of difficult to overhear what someone is typing.. The privacy (from casual observers) aspect of typing is something I think people tend to take for granted.
...comfort is essential.
I can tell you from personal experience that comfort is never essential. Water is essential, oxygen, and maybe a little food from time to time. It may be true that you're only willing to spend money on comfort, but that's another matter altogether, and it doesn't really add any weight to the idea that the WIntel platform is poorly engineered.
Carefully and thoughtfully and elegantly designed products are a good in and of themselves; millions of iPod users sense this even if they don't quite realize why.
Well thanks for speaking for them, since they're obviously too obtuse to realize what they sense. I'm sure it's not even a remote possibility that there are millions of iPod users because of slick marketing and celeb name dropping. Oh no, it's all in the elegant design. Millions of people eat Cheerio's instead of Toasted Oh's. But I'm sure that's because the bee on the box makes it taste better.
Now I like to be coddled as much as the next pansy, but if the toilet paper is so soft that it falls apart in my hands, then forget it; at the end of the day, it's more important that my arse is clean. If OS X can give me all the functionality and interoperability of Windows with a more pleasant interface to boot, then I'm all for it. (And I fully intend to investigate this possibility once the switch to Intel is complete). In the meantime let's hear some rationale. I'm not a Windows lover, but I'm not going to buy the "grass is greener," argument for OS X without specific examples and evidence. Honestly, the above quote just makes you sound like a car salesman to me. Your statement may be true, but you've glossed over any relevant facts.
But at least we all know to avoid Soviet Airlines now.
Or if he'd made a movie that didn't suck..
Think CSI in space :-)
I try not to think about CSI on Earth, but unfortunately you've just ruined that for me.
Considering immortality seems to mean little more than preventing or repairing damage to DNA, I don't think it's all that far "out-there." I'm sure there will be other hurdles, such as lifetime accumulation of toxic substances (heavy metals, radioactive substances), and other degenerative diseases, but I certainly don't think it's unsolvable. Whether or not we, or our children, or our children's children will be around to see it is another question altogether.
The idea of immortality was much more fantastical when our ideas of aging were equally fantastical. When real causes are identified and real problems are tackled, it becomes much less a question of if than when.
...like missing the C in excessive. :)
Parenthetical parts of sentences should be avoided (when possible), but when used should be punctuated outside of the parentheses. (Only entirely parenthetical sentences are punctuated within the parentheses.)
Exessive use of commas can actually cloud the intended meaning of the sentence. "Without understanding it," is correctly contained within commas as it is outside the main idea of the sentence, however the need for a comma between writing and their is debatable. Commas are not the punctuation equivelant of a pause and should generally be accompanied by a conjunction, although it is not necessary to use a comma with every conjunction.
Also contractions should only be used in dialog.
My point was not to actually correct your errors, but to demonstrate that it's possible to take anything too far. Even rules are not absolute. For example, using non-contracted forms of words tends to put extra emphasis on the unshortened words, which may not be the author's intent. I make a conscious effort to obey as many rules of grammar as I can remember. I try to spell words to the best of my knowledge and look them up when I'm uncertain, but at some point I have to strike a balance between the effort required for perfect writing and the importance of what I'm writing. Perfection is a good goal, but when the need for perfection becomes an interferance, it's probably time to reevaluate your priorities.
You know, I've never even seen anyone write "should of," or else I've completely blocked it from memory, but now I'm worried that I'll start using it because I've seen it thirty times in the past 10 minutes.
On a side note: there's a brain teaser where the reader is told to count the F's in a sentence, and the number he actually finds is then said to correspond with his intelligence. The validity of any correlations aside, most people don't notice the F in "of" because they pronounce it as a V in their mind.
I still use WTF out of semi-politeness when I'm concerned that the other party might find the full phrase vulgar, but not concerned enough that I'll avoid it altogether. Actually I don't have a problem with acronyms in general.. it's words replaced with character homonyms that irritates me. At any rate, I've found that unintelligible writing is generally indicitave of a cluttered thought process, and the writer is probably not someone I'd want to communicate with in the first place.
If true, the irony would be that badly is the opposite of goodly. The word he should have used is poorly.
I know many of you don't like the idea of Bush choosing 5 justices (perhaps more, there are rumors of retirement), but that is better than letting these 5 sit on then court. Write your congressmen and make it so.
I guess you're not familiar with the phrase "choose your battles?" Trying to unseat justices when you know they'd be replaced with people you're more likely to disagree with is just shooting yourself in the foot.
Change for change's sake is a fool's creed.
Also you're not Picard, and I'm not your #2.