We've seen it before, but we usually stop at the "Doing too much or too little of this or that kills me in weeks or months." This usually involves very large or very small amounts and has the obvious result. A great example is the recommended daily allowance of vitamin C - basically enough to prevent scurvy in anyone, without examining the benefits of more vitamin C in your diet. A follow-on example is vitamin D, where they finally wrapped up a huge study, bumped up the recommended daily allowance to more what the 'health nuts' were recommending, and noted that those higher levels had a dramatic impact on cancer rates. And what's one of the top killers in modern society?
Now, imagine there are 20 or 30 important things (how vitamins and essential minerals are there, let alone little things like proteins, fats, carbohydrates, enzymes, etc.), they have various interactions, and genetics has a determining factor on some number of the levels of those items. How easy would it be to model that black box, when you can't even be sure your black boxes are all the same, and people have this pesky habit of doing things that are fun, not just what gives the optimal lifespan?
I'm not saying that genetics isn't a factor, but we've seen plenty to indicate that diet and behaviour is, too.
Now all you need to do is determine what the difference between "can" and "it's theoretically possible" are. Except in the smallest of details, I expect the answer is "none".
You can overbuild a house, it generally makes it stronger. You over code a piece of software it just adds to the number of possible points of failure. The two really aren't good analogies for each other. That doesn't even consider things like how maintenance of both is handled, interactions of hardware, varying setups, and just simple complexity.
Another factor worth considering - when your house fails, it's generally very expensive to get the house back in a working state. With software, restarting the application, or, failing that, restarting the computer will generally correct the problem. Granted, if the application is fundamentally flawed, most people aren't using it anyway.
Then let's examine a less great man. Would it have been wrong for Jeffrey Dahmer's parents to have killed their 18-year-old child, who was exhibiting textbook symptoms of psychopathic behaviour? How about if his situation had happened 2000 or 3000 years earlier (and you can be certain it did)?
Yes, I can certainly see your point, and that's another thing that reduces the effectiveness of unions (if they still have any). And sadly, the main goal of those in power seems to be to gain more power...
This isn't something limited to the PC party, although I expect they're worse than most. Both of my ex's parents were in a union (until her dad graduated out as junior management) and she had to listen to their complaints from childhood. They too worked for an essential service.
Losing union status, or even losing the protected status that unions have in virtually every province of Canada isn't the same as losing your job. In fact, being able to fire people who need to be fired without having to fear the repercussions from the union may improve the chances of your company's continued success, and therefore most of those jobs you were talking about.
While unions may have their place, and certainly did in the past, there isn't anything that couldn't be done at least as well with some decent regulations. This assumes that you are able to find some officials that aren't corrupt. Of course, when you have a union, you just have more corrupt officials. Where there's power, you'll find corruption, and unions are very powerful.
Hurt his feelings if that's called for, or hurt him physically if it's appropriate. Then she talks to him about it, drawing out how he felt about the experience, and drawing parallels with the damage he caused.
Even near-sociopaths or sociopaths still feel physical or emotional pain, and don't like it any more than normal people. Empathy is feeling a hint of what you cause to others. If your daughter is doing it in a reasonable way, it could very well make him into a well-adjusted near-sociopath. He may even desire to be a 'good person', and this could give him a set of rules to do that with.
Think of this as the difference between morals and ethics. A good set of ethics can be a reasonable facsimile of a good set of morals. It's just not something you see every day.
This is like telling the colour blind guy to avoid the red tiles. How do you give someone with virtually no capability to assess a certain situation the ability to do so? Well, you have someone who can see the difference to show you. Sure, you might not do as well as someone who can see those minute differences naturally, but you may have a better idea of what is definitely not acceptable, what is definitely acceptable, and you may narrow the (very broad) grey area this person lives with. The pain is a nice behavioural association in an area where almost nothing else can attach a negative feeling to your actions, and done in a way that closely associates it for him.
The point is that a very small average risk level might be outweighed by a very large potential or eventual risk level.
So, we can kill hundreds of people per year in relatively unspectacular ways, but not have truly spectacular accidents every few decades that kill significantly fewer people overall. Gotcha. I'm guessing you still feel better about driving than you do flying.
A five to tenfold reduction in the price of batteries sounds pretty significant.
What this means is that one or two companies will sell the batteries for 5 to 10% less (no others will because of the patent restrictions, and the exclusivity agreements of the aforementioned one or two companies), and make a handsome profit. The other likely result is that no one will use it because the royalties the patent holder is asking for are ridiculously high.
Presumably those were just the documented cases, but the author has reason to believe that there were some number of cases that weren't documented (people without access to a doctor who just up and died from it undiagnosed).
That, and that one irritating gut that keeps dying and being brought back from the brink. It was either say 'more than 9' or '9.5', and they figured the former was less confusing.
This ignores some of the basic issues with democracy. The odds of a third party ever getting in power in the US is vanishingly small, simply because of the first to the post process, and the simple fact that, as annoying as MPAA/RIAA are, there are more important things going on. Couple this with the VAST sums of money required to get elected in the US, and the fact that the best places to get the required funds is from organizations (read, corporations), and the chances of changing the policies of the current two parties is almost nil. So what other options are there? Personally, I'm waiting for so many people to get sues, that the whole situation is perceived as ridiculous and the politicians put a stop to it, regardless of where the money came from, or that it directly or indirectly affects enough people that it becomes the first priority issue. In short, I don't expect it to change.
Sadly, there are people who believe in voodoo, as much (perhaps not as many) as there are those who believe in the God of the Bile, or who treat science as their religion. This makes it difficult for those who don't to be sure.
Of course, this completely ignores a few key issues.
First, vaccination is VERY polarized. What this means for someone like me, who hates the idea of using mercury for injections, as well as the idea of my kid suffering from a potentially risky disease, is that there is nowhere to go that actually tells you the truth about vaccines. They either say your kids going to die or be autistic if you give it to them, or they say nothing bad has ever been linked to vaccinations (not even sudden onset of fever and death within hours of getting the vaccination). So how do I determine who's lying to me more?
Second, there ARE reasons you shouldn't get a vaccination. The only place besides the internet where I've heard such things is in the media when they talk about egg-based vaccinations, such as when the H1N1 vaccination was first released. So, when I check out a vaccination my doctor was going to give my kid, and see that he has not one, not two, but three of the contraindications for that vaccinations, I'm somewhat less inclined to trust the experts.
Third, which I can't back up (and the data doubtless came from a rabidly anti-vaccination site, since measured and reasonable anti-vaccination sites don't exist), death rates from most infectious diseases have been trending downwards for the last century, primarily due to better hygiene and nutrition. So saying that vaccination has caused all these improvements without comparing trends prior to the inception and general use of vaccinations is disingenuous at best.
Fourth, some vaccinations are just stupid for some, if not all, people. I remember a few years back (about 10?) how there was a discussion to give all kids a hepatitis C (I think) vaccination at about the 10 to 12 year old range. The big issue was, you had a 1% chance to get hep C in the next 10 to 15 years while you had a 2% chance to get it from the actual vaccination. Now this is foggy, but even if the percentages were reversed, I'd rather take my 2% over 10 years and being careful than roll the dice and see if I get it right away (you know those averages include all the stupid people, not just the normal and unlucky people). Then there's the chickenpox vaccine. When it first came out and was being promoted (5 to 8 years ago, I think), they were talking about how 315 children died of chickenpox in the US in the previous year. Sure, that's a Big Scary Number, but 100 times more die from the flu every year, mostly children and the elderly. And exactly how many people get chickenpox every year anyway, reported or estimated? Do 10% die, 1%, 0.01%? The advertisers certainly weren't bothering to tell me, and if the number had been compelling, I'm sure they would have used that Big Scary Number, too...
Now, as far as the thimerisol is concerned, I don't know if studies were done to see how this behaved in your body, so I don't know how well bound the mercury is. I think the prudent choice would be to limit your exposure in any case (and now I look over to the CFL in my lamp...light bulbs never break, do they?). Having just reviewed the FDA site, it seems they agreed with me in 2004. Since I'm not American, and since my kids were born before then, that wouldn't have benefited me anyway.
My final analysis will be to get my kids current with the vaccinations they can take, after verification that they don't meet the contraindications. What I expect this will mean is that one won't get any vaccinations and the others won't get all of them. One of the reasons will be so we can travel abroad with fewer hassles, and more safety - not everywhere I want to go has the health and hygiene standards we enjoy at home. And those hassles won't entirely go away simply because of those vaccinations that my child shouldn't have in the first place.
P.S. It's worth noting that my opinions aren't due to me not having to go through these childhood diseases. I've had chickenpox, measles, and german measles. I didn't have mumps or whooping cough (although I had a schoolmate who who had whooping cough, and it wasn't terribly pretty) - I was vaccinated for those. The success of vaccines didn't have much of a bearing on my personal experience, or my feelings about them. What I'd like is balanced, reasonable information.
It's feels more like an American cultural phenomenon where people expects celebrities to make shallow statements on how "world peace is great" and donate some money "to the cause". I'm not a big fan of Steve Jobs but the fact that he hasn't thrown away his money on some temporary Africa projects and rather invested them in the economy (the real eradicator of poverty) doesn't affect my view on him negatively the slightest bit.
Poverty has been around a lot longer than Americans, and quite likely from before civilization. The difference is, we have texts discussing alms for the poor going back thousands of years, whereas when a pre-historic hunter-gatherer tribe or individual needed the benefit of charity because of natural disaster, accidents, or conflict, no one wrote about it.
Now all we have to do is redesign the reactor to be refuelled/dismantled, and in such a way that it can be done by a robot or an EVA. Also, keep in mind that this will require handling the raw fuel in space, not a very forgiving environment for mechanical dexterity, and doubtless contaminating everything that comes in contact with it. Given that the only really good robotic tool for something like this is attached to the ISS (Canadarm), and even it is only operated from within sight, I guess our real option is do we want to risk a specially selected crew sent up to put fuel in the reactor, or do we risk the whole ISS? Either way, I hope the guys have the option of wearing a red shirt...
So the alternative to prebuilt menus is a build-your-own menu? This isn't a ringing endorsement for the ribbon (although I've done that), and indicates how broken the system is. Now, for fun, imagine doing phone support for that (or ribbons in general). At least with (non-auto-prioritizing) menus, you can give someone useful, accurate, verbal or written instructions for where various functions can be found.
Any benefit from ribbons (which I haven't seen any yet) is lost from me not being able to find stuff.
Having used ribbon office for the last 5 years, I experience the same inability to find things in Open Office or Office 2003. Seems to me that argument is more a function with familiarity than the interface design. It amounts to "I'm familiar with this thing, and I am not familiar with that thing, and therefore that thing is worse in every way."
That doesn't get around the fact that I've had slightly more complex than basic formatting tasks (in Excel) scattered over 2 or 3 different ribbons. So you either have a pile of ribbons, and 6 lines of spreadsheet data, or a dozen clicks to jump back and forth between ribbons. It's even more fun if you're trying to use a function that you can't quite remember the name of, and have to hover over a million icons to find the right one. Of course, you could search through the ribbon customizing dialog, which just happens to be reminiscent of the old menu system (with more icons).
The ribbon wouldn't be anywhere near so bad if it had a "quick search" feature. Either a box or some kind of keyboard focus capture where you can start typing a word and it would search all possible command names and descriptions, displaying the results in the ribbon. The number of commands is small enough that such a search could be extremely fast.
For example, search for "paste" and you get a ribbon bar with the options:
Paste | Paste Special | Paste as Text | Paste as HTML | Quick Paste | Paste as New Foo
I hate searching through all the ribbon panes to find a simple command. A good example another poster mentioned is where the "create zip archive" button is. A quick search for "zip" would make that painless.
Given the focus on searching in Windows Vista and 7 I can't fathom why they haven't done this yet.
Well, I'll do what I can to make sure that idea never happens. So, what you're saying is, what the ribbon needs more of is a command line? Gotcha.
I think it's a good idea, but they've been doing everything they can do to get rid of typing anything but content. So I really don't see it happening.
One of the reasons Rome developed into a major city was the creation of sanitary systems. Early Christians rejected Roman civilization and its trappings, including cleanliness, a trend that intensified over centuries. This provided ideal conditions for the black plague and other diseases. For many reasons, Christianity is to blame for the well-named dark ages.
Especially ironic, given the emphasis that cleanliness had in the Old Testament. Makes me curious about when the phrase "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" was coined.
Yes, if your idea of a good society is one where everyone thinks the same, and those that are different are severely punished(including death), then yeah I can see why you would think religion 'adds value'.
Putting words in his mouth just a bit, aren't you? From the GPP (emphasis mine):
Further, there has been some discussion of the value of shared rites (usually religious) in predicting who will reliably follow a society's rules. If a person can't/won't reliably adhere to shared religious rites that supposedly are beneficial at little/no cost to the individual, this would predict that person will be unlikely to adhere to more important societal norms as well.
(One might further observe that this remains largely true, at least in the US. The left is politically characterized as individualist and chaotic, and the (religious) right as collectivist and 'marching in lockstep'. This has resulted in a balanced political landscape, despite a clear majority of voters self-identifying as Democrats (left of center).)
So the value of religion to early societies is pretty clear.
Would you care to point out where he says this is beneficial in modern society, or that the results match his preferences? I don't see it. Moreover, when society was just forming, and people were one catastrophe from the collapse of civilization, yes, the vast majority of people having the same goals and desires would be beneficial.
I saw nothing where is stated that single individuals were sending thousands of emails. I did see where single individuals were receiving thousands of emails. Perhaps I missed that detail in the legal document. That said, it would be trivial to remove all those emails. If the email system was at all useful, I wouldn't even see them after the first day (if email is from Bob Smartypants, put in trash). If their system can't even handle that, then I wouldn't merely describe it as "idiosyncratic", I would describe it as useless. I'd also forgo the CFAA suit and simply charge them with harassment. They'd certainly have the proof for it.
And how many individually stamped postcards from thousands of individuals count as harassment? We're now one step from outlawing letter-writing campaigns. How else shall the masses make it known to the powers that be (corporate and government) that we are displeased? We already can't protest meaningfully (feel free to wave your signs and shout your slogans from behind this 10 meter wall, conveniently located out of earshot of the G20 delegates), and we can't send emails en masse (if the hardware/software can't handle it, which I expect will now be the norm), based on your statements and this interpretation of the CF&A. So, shall we wander through the phone system's voice menu hell, or send a postcard complaining, while those haven't yet been criminalized?
Was the Union's intent good? The judge doesn't seem to think so.
On the other hand, was the corporation's intent good? If a suggestion box had a stack of standard 3" x 5" cards by it, and the slot to insert the comment card was 2" wide, and the space inside the box was 3" x 3" x 1" deep, would you get the impression that the company wasn't interested in your suggestion?
If the company has feeble and ridiculous capacities for its size, then maybe they need to beef up their systems before whining about other people breaking them.
...And this is why I try to avoid generalities. I didn't expect there to be a day when I would be defending a union's actions.
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We've seen it before, but we usually stop at the "Doing too much or too little of this or that kills me in weeks or months." This usually involves very large or very small amounts and has the obvious result. A great example is the recommended daily allowance of vitamin C - basically enough to prevent scurvy in anyone, without examining the benefits of more vitamin C in your diet. A follow-on example is vitamin D, where they finally wrapped up a huge study, bumped up the recommended daily allowance to more what the 'health nuts' were recommending, and noted that those higher levels had a dramatic impact on cancer rates. And what's one of the top killers in modern society?
Now, imagine there are 20 or 30 important things (how vitamins and essential minerals are there, let alone little things like proteins, fats, carbohydrates, enzymes, etc.), they have various interactions, and genetics has a determining factor on some number of the levels of those items. How easy would it be to model that black box, when you can't even be sure your black boxes are all the same, and people have this pesky habit of doing things that are fun, not just what gives the optimal lifespan?
I'm not saying that genetics isn't a factor, but we've seen plenty to indicate that diet and behaviour is, too.
Now all you need to do is determine what the difference between "can" and "it's theoretically possible" are. Except in the smallest of details, I expect the answer is "none".
You can overbuild a house, it generally makes it stronger. You over code a piece of software it just adds to the number of possible points of failure. The two really aren't good analogies for each other. That doesn't even consider things like how maintenance of both is handled, interactions of hardware, varying setups, and just simple complexity.
Another factor worth considering - when your house fails, it's generally very expensive to get the house back in a working state. With software, restarting the application, or, failing that, restarting the computer will generally correct the problem. Granted, if the application is fundamentally flawed, most people aren't using it anyway.
Then let's examine a less great man. Would it have been wrong for Jeffrey Dahmer's parents to have killed their 18-year-old child, who was exhibiting textbook symptoms of psychopathic behaviour? How about if his situation had happened 2000 or 3000 years earlier (and you can be certain it did)?
Yes, I can certainly see your point, and that's another thing that reduces the effectiveness of unions (if they still have any). And sadly, the main goal of those in power seems to be to gain more power...
This isn't something limited to the PC party, although I expect they're worse than most. Both of my ex's parents were in a union (until her dad graduated out as junior management) and she had to listen to their complaints from childhood. They too worked for an essential service.
Losing union status, or even losing the protected status that unions have in virtually every province of Canada isn't the same as losing your job. In fact, being able to fire people who need to be fired without having to fear the repercussions from the union may improve the chances of your company's continued success, and therefore most of those jobs you were talking about.
While unions may have their place, and certainly did in the past, there isn't anything that couldn't be done at least as well with some decent regulations. This assumes that you are able to find some officials that aren't corrupt. Of course, when you have a union, you just have more corrupt officials. Where there's power, you'll find corruption, and unions are very powerful.
Hurt his feelings if that's called for, or hurt him physically if it's appropriate. Then she talks to him about it, drawing out how he felt about the experience, and drawing parallels with the damage he caused.
Even near-sociopaths or sociopaths still feel physical or emotional pain, and don't like it any more than normal people. Empathy is feeling a hint of what you cause to others. If your daughter is doing it in a reasonable way, it could very well make him into a well-adjusted near-sociopath. He may even desire to be a 'good person', and this could give him a set of rules to do that with.
Think of this as the difference between morals and ethics. A good set of ethics can be a reasonable facsimile of a good set of morals. It's just not something you see every day.
This is like telling the colour blind guy to avoid the red tiles. How do you give someone with virtually no capability to assess a certain situation the ability to do so? Well, you have someone who can see the difference to show you. Sure, you might not do as well as someone who can see those minute differences naturally, but you may have a better idea of what is definitely not acceptable, what is definitely acceptable, and you may narrow the (very broad) grey area this person lives with. The pain is a nice behavioural association in an area where almost nothing else can attach a negative feeling to your actions, and done in a way that closely associates it for him.
Not quite sure what your point is.
The point is that a very small average risk level might be outweighed by a very large potential or eventual risk level.
So, we can kill hundreds of people per year in relatively unspectacular ways, but not have truly spectacular accidents every few decades that kill significantly fewer people overall. Gotcha. I'm guessing you still feel better about driving than you do flying.
A five to tenfold reduction in the price of batteries sounds pretty significant.
What this means is that one or two companies will sell the batteries for 5 to 10% less (no others will because of the patent restrictions, and the exclusivity agreements of the aforementioned one or two companies), and make a handsome profit. The other likely result is that no one will use it because the royalties the patent holder is asking for are ridiculously high.
Presumably those were just the documented cases, but the author has reason to believe that there were some number of cases that weren't documented (people without access to a doctor who just up and died from it undiagnosed).
That, and that one irritating gut that keeps dying and being brought back from the brink. It was either say 'more than 9' or '9.5', and they figured the former was less confusing.
This ignores some of the basic issues with democracy. The odds of a third party ever getting in power in the US is vanishingly small, simply because of the first to the post process, and the simple fact that, as annoying as MPAA/RIAA are, there are more important things going on. Couple this with the VAST sums of money required to get elected in the US, and the fact that the best places to get the required funds is from organizations (read, corporations), and the chances of changing the policies of the current two parties is almost nil. So what other options are there? Personally, I'm waiting for so many people to get sues, that the whole situation is perceived as ridiculous and the politicians put a stop to it, regardless of where the money came from, or that it directly or indirectly affects enough people that it becomes the first priority issue. In short, I don't expect it to change.
Sadly, there are people who believe in voodoo, as much (perhaps not as many) as there are those who believe in the God of the Bile, or who treat science as their religion. This makes it difficult for those who don't to be sure.
Of course, this completely ignores a few key issues.
First, vaccination is VERY polarized. What this means for someone like me, who hates the idea of using mercury for injections, as well as the idea of my kid suffering from a potentially risky disease, is that there is nowhere to go that actually tells you the truth about vaccines. They either say your kids going to die or be autistic if you give it to them, or they say nothing bad has ever been linked to vaccinations (not even sudden onset of fever and death within hours of getting the vaccination). So how do I determine who's lying to me more?
Second, there ARE reasons you shouldn't get a vaccination. The only place besides the internet where I've heard such things is in the media when they talk about egg-based vaccinations, such as when the H1N1 vaccination was first released. So, when I check out a vaccination my doctor was going to give my kid, and see that he has not one, not two, but three of the contraindications for that vaccinations, I'm somewhat less inclined to trust the experts.
Third, which I can't back up (and the data doubtless came from a rabidly anti-vaccination site, since measured and reasonable anti-vaccination sites don't exist), death rates from most infectious diseases have been trending downwards for the last century, primarily due to better hygiene and nutrition. So saying that vaccination has caused all these improvements without comparing trends prior to the inception and general use of vaccinations is disingenuous at best.
Fourth, some vaccinations are just stupid for some, if not all, people. I remember a few years back (about 10?) how there was a discussion to give all kids a hepatitis C (I think) vaccination at about the 10 to 12 year old range. The big issue was, you had a 1% chance to get hep C in the next 10 to 15 years while you had a 2% chance to get it from the actual vaccination. Now this is foggy, but even if the percentages were reversed, I'd rather take my 2% over 10 years and being careful than roll the dice and see if I get it right away (you know those averages include all the stupid people, not just the normal and unlucky people). Then there's the chickenpox vaccine. When it first came out and was being promoted (5 to 8 years ago, I think), they were talking about how 315 children died of chickenpox in the US in the previous year. Sure, that's a Big Scary Number, but 100 times more die from the flu every year, mostly children and the elderly. And exactly how many people get chickenpox every year anyway, reported or estimated? Do 10% die, 1%, 0.01%? The advertisers certainly weren't bothering to tell me, and if the number had been compelling, I'm sure they would have used that Big Scary Number, too...
Now, as far as the thimerisol is concerned, I don't know if studies were done to see how this behaved in your body, so I don't know how well bound the mercury is. I think the prudent choice would be to limit your exposure in any case (and now I look over to the CFL in my lamp...light bulbs never break, do they?). Having just reviewed the FDA site, it seems they agreed with me in 2004. Since I'm not American, and since my kids were born before then, that wouldn't have benefited me anyway.
My final analysis will be to get my kids current with the vaccinations they can take, after verification that they don't meet the contraindications. What I expect this will mean is that one won't get any vaccinations and the others won't get all of them. One of the reasons will be so we can travel abroad with fewer hassles, and more safety - not everywhere I want to go has the health and hygiene standards we enjoy at home. And those hassles won't entirely go away simply because of those vaccinations that my child shouldn't have in the first place.
P.S. It's worth noting that my opinions aren't due to me not having to go through these childhood diseases. I've had chickenpox, measles, and german measles. I didn't have mumps or whooping cough (although I had a schoolmate who who had whooping cough, and it wasn't terribly pretty) - I was vaccinated for those. The success of vaccines didn't have much of a bearing on my personal experience, or my feelings about them. What I'd like is balanced, reasonable information.
It's feels more like an American cultural phenomenon where people expects celebrities to make shallow statements on how "world peace is great" and donate some money "to the cause". I'm not a big fan of Steve Jobs but the fact that he hasn't thrown away his money on some temporary Africa projects and rather invested them in the economy (the real eradicator of poverty) doesn't affect my view on him negatively the slightest bit.
Poverty has been around a lot longer than Americans, and quite likely from before civilization. The difference is, we have texts discussing alms for the poor going back thousands of years, whereas when a pre-historic hunter-gatherer tribe or individual needed the benefit of charity because of natural disaster, accidents, or conflict, no one wrote about it.
Now all we have to do is redesign the reactor to be refuelled/dismantled, and in such a way that it can be done by a robot or an EVA. Also, keep in mind that this will require handling the raw fuel in space, not a very forgiving environment for mechanical dexterity, and doubtless contaminating everything that comes in contact with it. Given that the only really good robotic tool for something like this is attached to the ISS (Canadarm), and even it is only operated from within sight, I guess our real option is do we want to risk a specially selected crew sent up to put fuel in the reactor, or do we risk the whole ISS? Either way, I hope the guys have the option of wearing a red shirt...
So the alternative to prebuilt menus is a build-your-own menu? This isn't a ringing endorsement for the ribbon (although I've done that), and indicates how broken the system is. Now, for fun, imagine doing phone support for that (or ribbons in general). At least with (non-auto-prioritizing) menus, you can give someone useful, accurate, verbal or written instructions for where various functions can be found.
Any benefit from ribbons (which I haven't seen any yet) is lost from me not being able to find stuff.
Having used ribbon office for the last 5 years, I experience the same inability to find things in Open Office or Office 2003. Seems to me that argument is more a function with familiarity than the interface design. It amounts to "I'm familiar with this thing, and I am not familiar with that thing, and therefore that thing is worse in every way."
That doesn't get around the fact that I've had slightly more complex than basic formatting tasks (in Excel) scattered over 2 or 3 different ribbons. So you either have a pile of ribbons, and 6 lines of spreadsheet data, or a dozen clicks to jump back and forth between ribbons. It's even more fun if you're trying to use a function that you can't quite remember the name of, and have to hover over a million icons to find the right one. Of course, you could search through the ribbon customizing dialog, which just happens to be reminiscent of the old menu system (with more icons).
The ribbon wouldn't be anywhere near so bad if it had a "quick search" feature. Either a box or some kind of keyboard focus capture where you can start typing a word and it would search all possible command names and descriptions, displaying the results in the ribbon. The number of commands is small enough that such a search could be extremely fast.
For example, search for "paste" and you get a ribbon bar with the options:
Paste | Paste Special | Paste as Text | Paste as HTML | Quick Paste | Paste as New Foo
I hate searching through all the ribbon panes to find a simple command. A good example another poster mentioned is where the "create zip archive" button is. A quick search for "zip" would make that painless.
Given the focus on searching in Windows Vista and 7 I can't fathom why they haven't done this yet.
Well, I'll do what I can to make sure that idea never happens. So, what you're saying is, what the ribbon needs more of is a command line? Gotcha.
I think it's a good idea, but they've been doing everything they can do to get rid of typing anything but content. So I really don't see it happening.
One of the reasons Rome developed into a major city was the creation of sanitary systems. Early Christians rejected Roman civilization and its trappings, including cleanliness, a trend that intensified over centuries. This provided ideal conditions for the black plague and other diseases. For many reasons, Christianity is to blame for the well-named dark ages.
Especially ironic, given the emphasis that cleanliness had in the Old Testament. Makes me curious about when the phrase "Cleanliness is next to Godliness" was coined.
Yes, if your idea of a good society is one where everyone thinks the same, and those that are different are severely punished(including death), then yeah I can see why you would think religion 'adds value'.
Putting words in his mouth just a bit, aren't you? From the GPP (emphasis mine):
Further, there has been some discussion of the value of shared rites (usually religious) in predicting who will reliably follow a society's rules. If a person can't/won't reliably adhere to shared religious rites that supposedly are beneficial at little/no cost to the individual, this would predict that person will be unlikely to adhere to more important societal norms as well.
(One might further observe that this remains largely true, at least in the US. The left is politically characterized as individualist and chaotic, and the (religious) right as collectivist and 'marching in lockstep'. This has resulted in a balanced political landscape, despite a clear majority of voters self-identifying as Democrats (left of center).)
So the value of religion to early societies is pretty clear.
Would you care to point out where he says this is beneficial in modern society, or that the results match his preferences? I don't see it. Moreover, when society was just forming, and people were one catastrophe from the collapse of civilization, yes, the vast majority of people having the same goals and desires would be beneficial.
I saw nothing where is stated that single individuals were sending thousands of emails. I did see where single individuals were receiving thousands of emails. Perhaps I missed that detail in the legal document. That said, it would be trivial to remove all those emails. If the email system was at all useful, I wouldn't even see them after the first day (if email is from Bob Smartypants, put in trash). If their system can't even handle that, then I wouldn't merely describe it as "idiosyncratic", I would describe it as useless. I'd also forgo the CFAA suit and simply charge them with harassment. They'd certainly have the proof for it.
And how many individually stamped postcards from thousands of individuals count as harassment? We're now one step from outlawing letter-writing campaigns. How else shall the masses make it known to the powers that be (corporate and government) that we are displeased? We already can't protest meaningfully (feel free to wave your signs and shout your slogans from behind this 10 meter wall, conveniently located out of earshot of the G20 delegates), and we can't send emails en masse (if the hardware/software can't handle it, which I expect will now be the norm), based on your statements and this interpretation of the CF&A. So, shall we wander through the phone system's voice menu hell, or send a postcard complaining, while those haven't yet been criminalized?
Was the Union's intent good? The judge doesn't seem to think so.
On the other hand, was the corporation's intent good? If a suggestion box had a stack of standard 3" x 5" cards by it, and the slot to insert the comment card was 2" wide, and the space inside the box was 3" x 3" x 1" deep, would you get the impression that the company wasn't interested in your suggestion?
If the company has feeble and ridiculous capacities for its size, then maybe they need to beef up their systems before whining about other people breaking them.
...And this is why I try to avoid generalities. I didn't expect there to be a day when I would be defending a union's actions.