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  1. Re:Apple: it just works on Apple's New MacBook Pro Requires a $25 Dongle To Charge Your iOS Device (networkworld.com) · · Score: 1

    Apple's problem is that it isn't anything more then anything else. It is only just as morally corrupt as any other company. It only designs as badly as any other company.

  2. Re:I'm spending 60% of my monthly income on rent on The Vicious Circle That Is Sending Rents Spiraling Higher · · Score: 1

    Do you live in NYC? Your comment doesn't make sense. A lot of the old office buildings in the Financial District are being converted into living spaces. Check out 70 Pine, or 100 John. There are also new projects being built in areas that have the ability to build up. Look at 432Park or the Gehry NY. Up isn't an issue.

    The older buildings can't provide the electrical or communications needs as well any more. You have to remove office space to install A/C units and run new cables. That gets expensive. A lot of the back and middle office functions are being moved way back. Omaha, Kansas City, lots and lots to Houston and Atlanta, Rapid City. The big commodity trading communication links run almost due East West between NY and Chicago. Wall Street's data centers are being moved West into NJ along that link. Also, companies are moving international (i.e., moving the jobs to India, The Philippines, or now Columbia). We can expect more conversions.

    Also, building tall is expensive, you can't build tall, cheap, safe buildings. That was the great lesson of the Housing Projects.

  3. Re:No Keychain on Researchers Find Major Keychain Vulnerability in iOS and OS X · · Score: 2

    Either your passwords are weak, or you're really smart. That doesn't help me. I have just too many passwords to manage. Firefox stores it's passwords separately, but I don't know how much that helps. The truth is you have to trust the machine and the people who make it. Yea, I know that sux.

  4. Re:This isn't a question on Ireland Votes Yes To Same-Sex Marriage · · Score: 1

    While I'm glad you're supportive of SS marriage in NY, I want this done Federally. So if I travel to PA for some reason I don't get "downgraded" as a person when I cross the state line. I don't want to put it to a vote, No one should vote if I get to sit at the lunch counter or not.

    Your point of view is the one I specifically oppose the most. First and foremost I find it a huge arrogant overreach to compare your being able to change how a marriage contract is regulated with the horrors of Slavery and Segrigation. Your problems are trivial compared to what African Americans go through. Just think, all of the killings we hare hearing about now is the absolute best they have ever had it in America. You should take great comfort in, after 50 years of the Civil Rights Act and 150 after the Civil War, how well Washington has done integrating Blacks into America. It not like how those Catholics and Jews who worked with their fellow Americans are marginalized in Ghettos. You should rethink how you phrase your point.

    I think your point is wrong in fact and it values the illusion of efficiency made by tyranny over the responsibilities and freedoms of Democracy. I take it you oppose what happened in Ireland. The people should not have decided but instead some "Authority" should have done it. Your point assumes that there is some Authority that supersedes "The People".

    You won't escape a vote, you just shift who votes. It will be the judges who are unaccountable rather then your fellow citizens. As poster after poster on this tread has pointed out The States have the responsibility to regulate contracts. Marriages are one of the contracts that The States regulate. You seem to be saying that your contract is so special that it doesn't get to be regulated the same as mine did. If you don't think the regulations are right and fair you don't have to go through the legislative process. If you want me to go with you to PA and campaign for change from our fellow Americans then I will. I will, also, oppose you trying to go around us, "The People."

    If you feel downgraded as a person because the regulations shift as you pass from State to State you should realize that is how the Founding Fathers wanted it. It is the trick they used to keep the maximal freedoms for as many different groups as possible. We The People don't have to choose between legalizing Same Sex Marriage. We can have both. So there is no need to choose. We just can't have both everywhere.

    As an example of how badly that sort of thinking can go wrong that is how the Assads in Syria have kept power, playing a game of giving a number of different minority groups power over the majority Sunni Muslims. As long as they keep their coalition together and are willing to use any violence necessary they will stay in power. This way they avoid have to make an agreement with the various parities, and once they start the cycle of violence they can keep it going for generations.

  5. Re:This isn't a question on Ireland Votes Yes To Same-Sex Marriage · · Score: 1

    A lot of my thinking on this grows out of the point that the US, and the West in general, is becoming less homogenous all the time. It's not just immigration. With the breakdown of Christianity as the underlying metaphysics of Western society all sorts of other ideologies are coming into play. Secularism is growing but still undefined in many ways. What is the secularist view on marriage? I don't think there is one. Eastern religions are gaining ground, Buddhism doesn't offer any rules on marriage. It just says if you are married you should be good about it. How vague is that?

    A second line of thought for me has been, it is necessary for all 50 States in the US to agree? They don't now on all sorts of things. In New Jersey you cannot have self service gas stations. They are common in New York. Marraiges aren't gas stations, but where is the line?

  6. Re:This isn't a question on Ireland Votes Yes To Same-Sex Marriage · · Score: 1

    I don't. I expect it to see legal polygamy in the US in my lifetime. There are already reality TV show showing Polygamous marriages. Sister Wives I think it's called.

  7. Re:This isn't a question on Ireland Votes Yes To Same-Sex Marriage · · Score: 1

    It's not - that is my point.

  8. Re:This isn't a question on Ireland Votes Yes To Same-Sex Marriage · · Score: 1

    That is the way I remember it being reported 10 or so years ago. The attitude among business changed when they discovered them amount of expendable income gay couples had. It does sound cynical though.

  9. Re:This isn't a question on Ireland Votes Yes To Same-Sex Marriage · · Score: 1

    This, this, a thousand times this. Telling people "fuck you, that's the way it is, and no you have no choice" is why the US still has a huge anti-abortion lobby.

    I've always been of the impression that democracy was about who got to decide, not if the decision was right.

  10. Re:This isn't a question on Ireland Votes Yes To Same-Sex Marriage · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In the broadest scope I've never understood why there has to be laws concerning marriage. It's a private contract. There shouldn't be a question of can two people of the same sex get married - the question should be why we need to regulate this at all. If some regulation is found to be useful, what should it be? I'm not happy about "The State" getting that far into my business.

    The lesson for the US in this is one that New York, a very Irish and Catholic City and State, learned. You do this by legislative authority, not juridical. The use of judicial fiat just creates anger and inhibits the building of consensus. It isn't something WE did, it's something THEY forced on us. Ireland agreed with itself on this. The way the US is doing it isn't about agreement, it's about power.

    This is why I find myself supporting same sex marriage in NY but hoping the US Supreme Court rules against the suit. In the US this isn't a Federal Case - it is something the States have to deal with. The NSA has given me all the evidence I need to not trust to Federal Authority to solve subtle problems. I can't help but worry that the court case isn't about Justice, it's about finding a shortcut around the slogging of the Legislative process.

  11. Re:How does one tell the difference? on Oldest Stone Tools Predate Previous Record Holder By 700,000 Years · · Score: 3, Informative

    There is a lot of controversy on this. As a rule you can't tell from one artifact, it's the number of them and their arrangement that matters most. Key to understanding is the Hollywood version is backwards. Usually in Hollywood you take the a stone and remove stuff till you are left with a tool, like whittling a point on a stick. In reality the bits you take off are the tools. What you have in your hand is a core.

    This gives you key pieces to look for, cores being high on the list. Cores are distinctive. The process of making many flakes of a similar size off the core creates a regular and distinct size and shape. They are more rounded at one end, the handle, and then it tapers roughly. There are clear angles and planes to cores. You can tell of the knapper was right handed or left handed. Then you have lots of very regular sized flakes and the core they are off. If you are anal enough - a defining characteristic of archaeologists - you can reassemble the original stone from the cores and flakes. You also have work places for this. It takes some work to make stone tools, so you made a batch at a time. So you have small stone tool work stations. Since they were temporary they were just abandoned as is. An archaeologist can sometimes just sit down and pick up where the original worker had left off.

    If you Google "Flint Core" in images you can see pics of many.

  12. This is a problem of idealism vs pragmatism on How To Increase the Number of Female Engineers · · Score: 1

    We will never know why people do or don't take the courses they do. We will never know why they act as groups the way they do. If we knew why women didn't take engineering courses we would know how to stop genocides.

    This article takes as an assumption that getting women to take more engineering courses and becoming engineers is a good thing. There has never been a good answer for why - but there isn't a good reason for why not. The real issue here isn't engineering. It's trusting people and letting them make up their own minds. In this sense we get a conflict between several different ideas of freedom. Rousseau vs Locke. We in America, IMHO, understand freedom to be something individuals exercise, not something we receive or have done for us by any external force. Freedom is limited because people do really bad things sometimes. Baltimore is not just an example of people now making bad, evil, choices. But an example of a history of evil or bad choices. Slavery and Jim Crow can't be defended.

    So we are left with a pragmatic statement that women in America take these sort of engineering courses. Since this has worked, and if we take it that getting more women to go into engineering to be a good thing, we should continue to do this.

    I'm good with this. The people who want to do this have the same freedom to do it as other have to ignore it. I can't see anything bad coming out of this.

             

  13. He seemed more concened about his job then my kid. on The Future Deconstruction of the K-12 Teacher · · Score: 1

    As a father with a daughter studying to be an English teacher this concerns me a lot. There are really two arguments here that are intertwined. One is what is the best way to teach children, the other is what is the best way for teachers to keep their jobs. The expectation is that you get the later by achieving the former. The linkage between these is the argument, but unless it is made specific I don't think this discussion can progress. Right now it is not specific. I want the best way to teach my kids. The teachers job is his/her own problem.

    TOA didn't make clear what the author thought, just that he was very worried about his job. I think he shouldn't have been so concerned. The great online colleges are failing faster and faster. The University of Phoenix just reported that it has lost half of its students.They also report that students learn less and remember less. I've tried a number of these going back to a programming school offered by Metrowerks when they still made Mac Programming environments. They never worked for me.

    Another issue not discussed is what about disabilities? Any variation from the norm may be disastrous.

    Still I think he is right in one way, it will allow for pressure to reduce the pay of teacher and reduce their numbers. We have to remember profit is the difference between the cost and the sale price. If schools with big screen cost half has much, many will call for them even if they only do two thirds as well. And, this won't effect the well off anyway.

  14. There isn't a scientific law of speech freedom ... on Pope Francis: There Are Limits To Freedom of Expression · · Score: 1

    ... or principal of nature. It is only a cultural construct that has been occasionally been enforced with limits in some societies in far western Eurasia. It exists to the extent that military power allows and the whims of political powers decide. Socrates only got so far - and as a Citizen of Athens he had more freedom of speech then anyone else at the time. It is a privilege provided by force of arms.

    When I was a kid on the streets of Brooklyn - Watch GoodFellas I was in the background of the reality of that piece of fiction - you had to take personal responsibility for what you said and did. If someone didn't like it you could get a flat nose, or be spread over several large black plastic bags in the Fountain Ave Dump.

    So to all of those who are busy screaming "FUCK YOU". Would you say that if you had to take personal responsibility for that? That old west "Thems fighting words"? Why yes you say, and after the second beating you'll be far more circumspect.

    But - you don't have to take that beating for being a jerk, Western Military Power prevents it. Usually And, now, less and less.

  15. Apple has consumers stuck with vender lock in on Tumblr Co-Founder: Apple's Software Is In a Nosedive · · Score: 1

    I was looking to buy my daughter a new laptop for college. We bought an ASUS laptop that had good ratings. It was on woot so it wasn't going to cost a fortune if it went bad. It had troubles right away and had to be sent off for repair. Now it seems to be fine. Apple hardware is still the best. Way not cheap. But ... Windows 8.1 is every inch as good as Mavericks, and better then Yosemite. On a laptop the touchscreen is useful - if only marginally. It is not better then Mountain Lion. Almost all of the new "features" in MacOS are useless and there are more and more bugs. I really don't need my computer to ring when I get a call. On Windows 8.1 for every piece of stupidity there is a really nice feature. Getting the Asus to work on the otherwise all Apple network is maddening. Those bugs are not on the MS side.

    I feel stuck. You have to pay close to Apple prices to get good hardware, but the software and just plain strangeness of Apple is making me regret buying so much Apple gear. Getting out of the Apple ecosystem is tough and expensive. One thing that hasn't been mentioned - at least as far as I can see, is Time Machine. It has gottne flaky too. When you try to get to your backups, sometimes they are there, and sometimes that slice is grayed out. You have to mount the backup as a drive to get it to work. Sometimes. Not Thrilled. Now my backups are locked, good luck if I need to get something - which is very likely with a big OS switch.

    Getting out of the lock in, even if i keep using some apple products, will be long and hard.

  16. Re:More like the Paleolithic than 18th Century on The Physics of Space Battles · · Score: 1

    May I suggest you RTFA.

    If you had RTFA you would see that such details are assumed to have been dealt with - or there would be no one to have a space war. You need at least two populations in different parts of "space" for this to happen. Since you count all of the "space" around the and between the population centers in calculating the population density then it is very low per cubic what ever you want to count in.

    The first time I came across this math and logic was "Citizen of the Galaxy" by Heinlein. Always recommended. The last really good one was Friday. I never liked it when Lazarus Long would pop up in those last few books.

  17. Re:More like the Paleolithic than 18th Century on The Physics of Space Battles · · Score: 1

    Any colonization of Space would drop the population density.

    We will colonize space in time cubed, but our population increases in exponential time. Colonization of space will not drop the population density.

    No. You get separate populations separated by large distances. Think islands. The density of any local population, like Earth, won't change much, but the total density will plummet when you have to include all of the space between Earth and Mars if there are two populations. Hence high local population densities, which will have conflicts much like ours, and a low total density which will have hit and run tactics.

  18. More like the Paleolithic than 18th Century on The Physics of Space Battles · · Score: 2

    Any colonization of Space would drop the population density. With out a dense population you cannot support a large military. So you have two scenarios, a very local one and a distant one. This is much closer to the Paleolithic then to any modern or near modern history.

    The local one would be like what we have today. If everything is one polity then you have police functions. It there is more then one polity then you have militaries. The Blue and Green colonies of Mars fighting over something. What they are doing is trying to change the nature of how power and resources are controlled by the polities. This is some sort of permanent reshuffling. You have to remember that the instability of the Middle East is driven by large, poor, young, male heavy populations.

    In a distant scenario you get hit and run tactics. Mars colony wants the ore that Europa colony has, so it launches a raid. Grab the ship and go. It doesn't try to change the nature of Europa's or it's own polity. This is what you see for most warfare in most of human history. This means a totally different kind of technology and tactics.

      I tend to think that Firefly got it most right. Space Wars are Civil Wars and the military exists to maintain the status quo. Fighting will take place within the Polity.

  19. Maybe not art on Researchers Say Neanderthals Created Cave Art · · Score: 1

    This is a mountain being made out of a mole hill. What we have is evidence that a series of hash marks were made for no reason we can see. Therefore, it must be symbolic. I'm not buying it, even if they are selling.

    First, we have to remember that the Neanderthals did not much change their tool set for something like 260,000 years. If you find a Mousterian tool set anywhere you have Neanderthals. That is weird in it's self. Think about it, for 2600 centuries everywhere from Afghanistan to Gibraltar all Neanderthals used the same set of technologies. Not a lot of original thinking going on there. This has all sorts of problems, like where did they all learn the same tool set? Where did that knowledge come from and why didn't it change?

    Second, the hash marks are not associated with anything else, nor is it reported that they are repeated anywhere else. One set, one place, once. Walk into a cave, find Mousterian tools, you have Neanderthal. Walk into a cave and it's painted like a '70s Brooklyn subway car, and everything else had been doodled on, the tools set is one of dozens locally, and you have humans.

    Third, the definition of art is off. Art may not serve a practical purpose, but does do something specific. The Soluterian culture, which was modern human and followed the Mousterian, would make flint blades several time larger then normal and so thin and delicate that the could never be used as a blade. They are being used as symbols. They are art. What was found is not understood and drawing conclusions is not warranted.

  20. Re:Corroborating Hieroglyphics? on How the Ancient Egyptians (Should Have) Built the Pyramids · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not in the Old Kingdom. The great extents of the Egyptian Empire are New Kingdom, 2000 or so years later. The Old Kingdom was early Bronze Age. Stone Tools were still the rule, not the exception. Bronze was difficult to make and copper tools were more common in the rare instances when metal tools were used. There are records of the gangs whose job it was to sharpen the copper chisels that were used.

    We should remember that this was not the first, or the second, or the third, huge pyramid they built, it was the sixth. They had an extensive knowledge to stone and had to deal with it. The Egyptologist Cyril Aldred had an illustrative story. He was traveling down a side branch of the Nile with a local boat crew. They found their way blocked by a rock fall. He assumed that they would have to go all the way back and find a new way. The crew said they could have it cleared in a few hours and it wasn't a big deal, they do this all of the time. He was astonished to watch then use techniques that he hadn't seen before to clear the stones. They would use mud backs to hold fires in place and either splash or pour cold water on the heated stone to shatter it. That, a few levers, and their knowledge was all that was needed to move tons and tons of stone out of the way.

  21. Re:Corroborating Hieroglyphics? on How the Ancient Egyptians (Should Have) Built the Pyramids · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That point of view is being argued. Read "The statues that walked" by Terry Hunt and Carl Lipo. They postulate that rats introduced by the colonists did most of the damage. The Easter Islanders dealt with this by eating the rats.

    NPR article: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulw...

  22. Re:Corroborating Hieroglyphics? on How the Ancient Egyptians (Should Have) Built the Pyramids · · Score: 2

    By tickling their toes. Everyone gets up for that!

  23. Re:Scientific American doesn't agree ... on The Evolution of Diet · · Score: 1

    That was accounted for in the study. Many mummies are accidental, as in the Chinese Desert Mummies and European Bog Bodies, or, were ritual sacrifices as in the Peruvian ones. The elite of society tend not to sacrifice themselves, that is what everyone else is for. The study also covered a large time frame with no fluctuation in findings. Even if they were elites why would bodies from different times and places have very similar disease profiles as modern western populations?

  24. Scientific American doesn't agree ... on The Evolution of Diet · · Score: 2

    The October 2013 issue of Scientific American had an article named "Long Live the Humans". It concerned why humans live so long. Part of the authors analysis was the radiological examination of as many mummies as they could find from all over the world. What that showed was a distribution of chronic diseases very similar to modern populations. This argues against the premise that diet is the root of modern chronic diseases. The article argues they are genetic in their origin.

    Here is a link to the article. It is only a preview, they want to to give them money to read it. A point I find reasonable.

    http://www.scientificamerican....

  25. Ya know Lincoln comment on this - on Snowden Publishes "A Manifesto For the Truth" · · Score: 1

    When he said that "you can't fool all of the people all of the time". Which is just a version of the the genus of crowds. Toss in Crowd Sourcing ... just because.

    And what has the crowd, the American Public, said about Snowden's comments on the aggressiveness of the NSA? "Yawn. It's nice to know were getting our money's worth out of them."

    I think Americans think of it this way: "You can have either a hunting dog, or a lap dog. You can't get a dog that's both. If you have a hunting dog, it's going to get out sometimes and chase stuff. I'm not going to be angry that the hunting dog is hunting. I'll think about a new leash, tomorrow. I'm too busy doing other stuff today. Oh, and by the way, telling the truth, sometimes, is a crime."

    For me, I agree with the American people. As for his concerns that his supervisors would punish him for speaking out - they very well might have. There are two other branches of government. The NSA has critics in the Congress and the Courts. He should have exhausted his other options before this. Failing to do so is a crime and he should be punished for it. It is the same as refusing to report a crime because you're convinced the police are corrupt. Did you try the State Police? The FBI?

    Next question, will I be modded down as flamebait because someone disagrees with me?