Seems to be a faux paux to inject reality into a SlashDot discussion, but here are some personal experiences. I've owned an iPhone since day 1; tried other smartphones but they never quite cut it for me. Windows Mobile was just awful, which elminated a whole class of phones, and the Treo was just too clunky.
I could never type successfully on a Treo , buttons were too damn small and there wasn't any autocorrection. iPhone has the same problem, but the auto-correction works pretty good, especially on longer words. It's kind of weird watching yourself type gppndy and having the iPhone turn that into foobar. Is the keyboard perfect? No. In vertical mode, the keyboard is a little bit small for perfect targeting, in horizontal mode its a stretch for "thumb typing".
So if you just pick up an iPhone in the store, you're not going to think the keyboard is that great, but you're going to think the web browser and email client kicks ass. For me, that was enough.
After using the iphone for a week you'll like the keyboard a lot better because it seems like magic to type d;sdjfpy and have that turned into "slashdot". Someone else commented they couldn't even type the first letter correctly, and that's part of the iPhone zen you have to get over. English is only really about 3 bits/letter of information. Factor that into the fact that when you're typing, the iphone knows the general area you were trying to hit, and that that's what makes the autocorrection seem like magic. It's not, its probably just running through all the permutations for the letters near what you typed and ranking them against its dictionary. That's why it seems so magical for long words like "permutation" but doesn't do as well for short words.
So I wouldn't want to type a post like this on the iPhone, but for "Hey, where are you? I'm ready to go." in a store to my wife it's great.
Typing passwords REALLY, REALLY SUCKS unless you know the secret, which is "dragging" your finger and releasing when the key is right (type via key-up not key-down). Typing a 128-bit hex key for my WiFi network was really painful as a first iPhone experience.
So there's the good and bad. Is typing as good as Apple's new kick-ass super-thin USB keyboard? No. Is it pretty good when coupled with the auto-correction for a mobile device? Yes. The auto-correction in my opinion makes the keyboard better then the Treo. Is it better then standard phone keyboards? Much, I could never figure out how to get my phone out of its weird "texting mode" (which they didn't give me any documentation for) so I could send "No". So texting is a way better experience for me on my iPhone then my old phone.
Engineering is about tradeoffs. If I had to carry around my desktop keyboard as my cellphone, I'd leave it at home. Holding it up to my ear to make a call would look bizarre.
As for non-geek feedback: My wife never, ever sent a text message from her old phone. She's now a texting fiend and reads her email on her phone most of the time.
I agree, I and II are Acts I and II in a 6 hour long movie. Phantom is mostly exposition, Clone is development, leaving Sith for the climax if we follow standard dramatic structure used since the ancient greeks. I and II had to be toned down a bit, because Lucas has to build dramatic tension up in III. If I was as intense as III, you would'nt be able to watch the whole thing.
As a Engineer who became a Qi Gong practitioner, I can easily verify that the mind-body link is very powerful.
You are very much in control of your own body, its just that most people haven't had the training to do anything with it.
The challenge for Western scientists is that studying the mind-body link is pretty hard because how do you study the effect of "thinking your cancer away" vs. "pretending to think your cancer away"? Once you involve the patients mind, its impossible to do a double-blind study.
However, the Chinese have actually done a lot of this sort of study in an effort to "rationalize" the last 3000 years of Qi Gong study. But they had to do things like have a "fake" qi gong master vs. a "real" qi gong master, then have people take classes from both...
For those who want a more western slant, I suppose you can Google behavioral medicine, but the western slant ignores the fact that while the mind can affect the body, so can the body affect the body. Sitting around thinking "my cancer is getting smaller" may help, but so will going for a walk every day.
The real thing to study from my point of view is why oncologists don't prescribe meditation and exercise...
Look, people are different. Most people are primarily verbal or primarily visual.
They will be more productive in an operating system that caters to that. A verbal person will prefer a command line, a visual person a well done GUI.
Mac OS X is visual/kinesthetic. Linux tends to be pure verbal. Windows is a bastard verbal GUI. (more on that later)
So if you're an artist, you'll find Mac OS X to be easier to use and you'll produce better work then you would on another operating system because the OS will synchronize with your cognitive mode.
If you're a lawyer, you might well be happier on Linux. If you ask a lawyer, they'll tell you they were happiest on Word Perfect 5.4 under MS-DOS.
No one can be productive on Windows, because Windows manages to be a verbal focused GUI. Under Windows, its all all about choosing verbs and nouns using a GUI, vs. Mac OS X which is more about the visual manipulation of objects. So there is no cognitive mode were Windows is really usable... Even worse for a visual person, the color scheme is like being screamed at all day. For most artists, using Windows is the death of a thousand stings. More subtly, art done under Windows is usually inferior to art done on Mac OS X, because Mac OS X is easiest to use in a visual cognitive mode. Windows, by forcing a shift to the verbal mode, hobbles the artist.
As an experiment, ask yourself this:
If you are drawing, do you use more or less keyboard commands? If you are writing, do you use more or less keyboard commands? If you are programming, do you use more or less keyboard commands? If you are designing programs, do you use more or less keyboard commands?
What you'll find is that depending on the primary cognitive mode of the task you're currently doing, you use the computer in different ways.
This is why all OS religious wars are stupid. Different people have different preferences depending on their particular cognitive preference.
Except for trashing Windows, because it sucks because it requires mutually exclusive cognitive modes. That's ok.:-)
Too bad its probably not true, given the history of the rumor above.
My 1st generation TiVO is already a box that sits in my living room, connected to my stereo, from which I could play songs/videos pulled off my hard drive. An I'm running Mac OS X. Considering I ended up buying a second device to do just the music piece of this http://www.slimdevices.com/ if Apple came out with a new TiVo that did this plus movies, I'd have to seriously consider upgrading my TiVO.
Its inevitable and obvious that Apple was going to eventually build a device to serve as the home entertainmentcomputer connection. For one thing, Steve Jobs said so about 8 years ago. They already have the codec to use for the video portion: H.264/AVC http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/index.html, and obviously they've also done the music portion.
Whether or not they do an iVideos store is probably moot in the end. TiVo is a success just doing broadcast TV, the real growth would be becoming the defacto standard for digital cable and satellite. TiVO hasn't really persued this, but I expect Apple might, there's nothing sacred about the settop box business, and Apple has already show willingness to license iPod to other vendors like HP/Motorola.
Nor does iVideos require broadband. DirecTV is already marketing cheap movies to PVR owners like myself. Come to think of it, even without broadband you could easily sell a service that was satellite based and offered you a menu of 100 different movies a month. After all, over pay per view, I already have a menu of about 25 movies/month, and the only reason its only 25 is because they repeat the movie all day long. With a Tivo, they would only have to broadcast a movie once.
Hmmm... The TiVo already has a modem, so it could connect to a master server, order any movie from a long list of movies, then get the movie downloaded in one burst via the satellite. Since multiple people could mooch off the same movie download, it might be possible to have a list of 1000 movies available. If you picked an obscure movie, you might have to wait 24 hours for a download slot to open. It would be inconvenient, but if new releases were instantaneous (since you could start in the middle of any running download), its proabably acceptable.
So say $500 for a new box that plugs into my existing video crap, lets me download from a list of 1000 movies over my satellite dish, replaces my sqeezebox for music (one less thing), stores all my DVDs for easy playback (less crap in the living room). In a word, hmm...
TiVO couldn't do it alone, but Apple and TiVO could do it together.
DVRs are obviously here to stay no matter what happens. People who own TiVos are addicted to them and the satellite and cable guys are moving to emulate them, not supplant them. So far, most of their offerings are lame from what I've seen so TiVO clearly has an opportunity.
Granted, stand-alone DVRs may not survive. Instead, your DVR will probably be integrated into your paid-TV pipe as more and more of those pipes go digital. I have a DirecTiVo and it rocks. If it stopped working, I'd drop my whole satellite subscription entirely and stop watching regular TV entirely. It wouldn't be much of a sacrifice as before my DirectTiVo, I didn't have regular TV, I just watched DVDs. I only got regular TV after 9/11, and since then I've found that the regular news coverage is so bad that you're better informed if you DON'T watch TV. Bottom line for me is that TV is only worth watching with a DVR.
So I see that TiVO could easily survive simply by being the standard "operating system" for set-top boxes and satellite recievers. The subscription fee can then be rolled into the fee for the monthly service, or subsidized like mine is. (DirectTV only charges $5/month for the TiVO part). Assuming its even necessary as my DirectTiVO gets all its program information from the satellite anyways.
However, at 3 million subscribers, that's easily enough to keep the company afloat no matter what happens.
So TiVO as separate box you buy at Circuit City? Probably not going to last. TiVo as a "feature" of your cable/satellite box? Inevitable.
Its important to distinguish between "allegations" and "proven". Especially if you're going to title a post "True Lies". Its also important to realize that "facts" culled from the mainstream media may not be "facts" at all.
You, allege that Bush had some connection with the Swift Boat guys, who made their own allegations about Kerry.
None of that is proof of a connection. Said collusion would be illegal under the terms of a 527. While perhaps there was some backroom stuff, there was much more evidence of collusion between say, moveon.org and the Kerry campaign then there was between the Swift Vet guys and the Bush campaign.
Since anyone can allege anything, I'm unimpressed.
Nor can you blame the Swift Vet guys 100% on Bush, Kerry really pissed them off with his testimony. If you read their book, its pretty clear that's what they were most upset about. To them, Kerry was the poster child for the anti-solider faction of the anti-war movement. That's probably not fair, but that's how they felt. over 50% of the swift vet ads were paid for by small individual donations, vs. moveon.org which was 90% funded by George Soros...
And you wrote 50M, not 60M. If you'd written 60, I wouldn't have bothered to correct you I'm not that much of a quibbler. This site reports it as 62M: http://uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/. The difference bewteen the 60M and the 62M is because of absentee and provisional ballots being counted since election day.
The armed forces being filled with the disadvantaged is a myth left over from the draft-era days. The armed forces are primarily filled with the middle class, not the disadvantaged or the advantaged. 96% of enlisted soldiers hold high schools diplomas as opposed to 75% of the equivalent civilian population, and they tend to score higher on verbal and math tests then the general populace.
"meatgrinder" doesn't seem particularly appropriate given that the losses in Iraq and Afghanistan are so far much, much smaller then Vietnam, and most soldiers in Iraq are still more in danger from not fastening their seatbelt then they are from an Iraqi insurgent.
As far as "hating me" goes, while I admire your passion for your beliefs, you're not going to convince anyone with hyperbole.
So far you've made:
1. Pointless irrelevant accusations about Bush and the Swift Vets when the topic was CBS...
2. You've basically insulted all of our men and women in uniform, quite baselessly.
3. You've gotten a number wrong.
4. You've called a war where we've lost about 1,200 servicemen and women a "meatgrinder".
5. You've accused me of hating America and the facts because I corrected you on a couple of items.
And I hate America and the facts? Please. I just would just like criticism of the President to be factual, and well-reasoned, not tired, emotion-laden rehashes of untrue allegations culled from the New York Times, the Washington Post, or CBS.
One of the reasons I got interested in politics was I started reading the transcripts of the administration briefings. I was shocked at the difference between what the administration said, and what got reported they said.
Bottom line, CBS, NYT and WP are all capitalist organizations organized for profit. They make that profit by getting you to consume their product, and they get you to do that by making the news more exciting. One need not look for liberal bias, one need only look for "conflict bias".
The news we see or read every day is more and more just "made up" in the newrooms. If Professional Wresting isn't a "Sport" but "Sports Entertainment", our media h
Er, Bush always said "Kerry's service was better then my own".
And its 62M who voted for Bush.
And the armed forces have substantially improved since Vietnam, its no longer just "the disadvantaged".
You need to tone down the hatred and tone up the facts.
I can't believe anyone is still arguing that these documents could be "real".
Yes, Tibetan monks could have individually hand-carved each letter in soapstone to make the documents.
Did they? No.
The argument that it was "possible" is spurious, as none of the proposed scenarios are plausible. There were no machines available in 1974 that could produce the document in question. Sure, it could have been professionally typeset, but professional typesetting would have been a waste of time and money for a single page given the cost would have been at least $1000. Neither that or the Tibetan monks is a plausible answer.
It wasn't typeset, it was typed verbatim into Microsoft Word.
Don't let your hatred of Bush blind you to reality.
It seems to me that if a spam has an link in it (which they all do), then they are sending you that link in an attempt to get you to visit their site.
It was very nice of Lycos to automate the process for me and them. Now I need not bother reading the mail in order to make all those spam companies happy...by increasing the visitations to their site. Thanks Lycos!
It's not vigilantism, its just progress. As computer systems evolve, more and more tasks get done by the computer, with less intervention from the user.:-)
At some point, all this statistical analysis becomes masterbation. Its the same sort of analysis pollsters do, and its about as reliable...
So I think its perfectly valid for Ruffini to point out that Bush gained about the same % in both types of counties.
I'll meet your question head on though: Kerry was not Gore. I don't think Ruffini dodged it, I think it's just frigging obvious, and I think Ruffini's example demonstrates that. Kerry wasn't Gore, so the model doesn't match.
If you're still not convinced, the Berkeley guys analyzed Hispanic votes but not Black. Yet there was an interesting shift in the black vote this election towards Bush.
If you cherry pick your data, you can prove anything.
The conclusion that President Bush was more likely to improve his vote in counties with e-voting is laughable on its face. Using the Excel spreadsheet provided by the authors, I totaled the votes for counties with and without e-voting, and came up with this:
Percentage Change for Bush in Counties WITH E-Voting: 2.25%
Percentage Change for Bush in Counties WITHOUT E-Voting: 2.54%
It looks like e-voting suppressed the President's vote by about 0.29%_ -- or 7,800 votes!
Taking each of these counties as data points, was the President "significantly more likely" to have increased his support in counties with e-voting? Again, no.
E-Voting Counties with Increased Bush Vote: 13/15 (86.7%)
Non-E-Voting Counties with Increased Bush Vote: 46/52 (88.5%)
The polling companies slice their data up by demographic, and then recombine them to get a picture of the electorate. Its pretty easily, really.
If 33% of the population is green,
40% purple,
27% orange,
then if green people are 2-1 for pepsi vs. coke, purple people 1-2 for coke, and orange people mixed you get: 48% Pepsi, 52% Coke. It doesn't quite matter what the ratios of green, purple and orange people are that you end up talking to as long as you talk to enough people in each box.
So while its possible that there is a shift, its only if Kerry voters are more likely to be landline-less no so much because landlineless people are less likely to be polled.
Paper: All things have error rates. People have an error rate of about 2.8%, plus a "bias" rate, plus a maximum throughput. All of which are issues that need to be addressed. Pro-paper advocates love to talk about the error rate of paper, and ignore the bias issues. Paper also makes secrecy harder.
Venezuela: Well, it was a report based on a study from a group at MIT not the WSJ particularly. Go read up on the Venezuelan election and you'll see what I mean. The election results strongly disagreed with the polls...
Election Fraud Trivia: Traditionally in America, country sheriffs have been the most corrupt elections. I call this the "Roadhouse" effect, after the annoying Patrick Swayze movie my wife has inflicted on me about 1000 times...This is because in many stats, the county sheriff is also the local election official...plus a county sheriff has more power over his constituents then the POTUS.:-)
It was the "4" that convinced me. It's "closed" in the pdf.
I remember that typewriters used open-top 4s, because it caused less problems with ink blotches. Its only when people started using computers that they switched to closed 4's. Though my memory might be faulty, that's what this guy found too.
Which I think only highlights the importance of having each candidate sign a Form 180 so that we can be sure that all documentation of their service comes forward.
The major media are jumping on the Bush National Guard story with a glee they have yet to exhibit with John Kerry's record, even though media critics are questioning their timing. The major complaint against Bush is that he "gamed the system." I was there. We all gamed the system..... portion omitted, click the link for the whole thing, its short...
Bush didn't avoid his service anymore than I did. We both did what we could to avoid the worst thing a young man can face: boredom.
Where did you get that from? I've never heard that. NCLB includes more than just reading.
I got the part about phonics from reading Kessler's book "A Matter of Character" (My new rule is to only read positive political tracks this election...)
I didn't learn to read by sounding things out. Of course, as you point out, that is rare. So, it confused the hell out of my teachers. I learned to read by translating the word into an idea
That's interesting. How did you learn to associate a word with an idea? The shape? Anyways one of the reasons NCLB doesn't say the word "phonics" anymore is that "phonics" isn't the answer. Trying stuff, testing to see the result, and tweaking what you tried is the solution, not religious belief in a particular theory.
She didn't believe in learning disabilities.
Then she was stupid, incompetent, and ruining student's lives. I ran into one such teacher. She locked me in a closet during lunch, every lunch, for an entire school year. She didn't understand that I thought in a manner inconsistent with others (what others classify as a "learing disability").
Whew! Such violence! I think we agree more then we disagree. My mom wouldn't have locked you in a closet, she would have sat down with you and decoded what was going on with you. It doesn't seem to me like you had a learning disability, and it seems like you don't think that either. What are we arguing about?
Just threatening to take some money from a district that is already under funded isn't going to make a difference when you can't get them to a better school.
Er, think about this. NCLB is all extra money from the feds, schools are funded by the states. So you can't take away extra money. Anyways, NCLB provides funds for the transfers. Obviously, if that's not possible, its not possible, but generally, remote schools tend to be better then urban schools because local parents have more control. However, if you have a remote school, and it gets failing test scores, then at least the parents know and can do something about it.
Instead, it will result in the top students being under served, as they currently are, as well as paperwork, funding movement, and other such things with little effect to move a few students around from poorer districts.
Well, this is all at the parents discretion. And while that paragraph of yours sounded very righteous and good, NCLB is about the basics which are reading and arithmetic, which if a school can't teach, they can't teach anything else. So its important to insure that it happening. So testing is important.
Right now as a parent, how do you know if your school is any good or not? You have to test, which most states were doing already. So having national test makes all that simpler.
As far as vouchers go, it doesn't have to be school vouchers. The progression is such that vouchers only come into play if the schools get a failing grade for 5 years in a row. Before that, the district has to implement charter schools. If your local school can't teach kids to read for 5 years in a row, someone needs a kick in the butt.
It's all a little early to tell. What will happen I think is that with more information to the parents, they can make better decisions.
Yeah, here's where all this starts to degenerate into details which is where the media gets lost.
Before I respond to this detail, let's step back and look at it this way. He's accused of not showing up. Obviously he did. We could quibble about the details of whether those days were "creditable" or not, but that's kind of a pointless detail.
Most of the NG-knowledgeable websites I've read about this issue say that this training flexibility is typical in the NG, that the NG has to adapt to part-time soldiers, full-time civilians who may have other commitments.
1973 is the "Alabama" period, so if he was training in Houston, then he made a special trip to do so. Almost anything in any service is subject to the commander's discretion, and generally, commander's don't hassle people about this stuff.
ER, well, I did that in my "terse answers" post, but I think we were simultaneously posting.
As far as May to September goes, the main thing you're missing is that you don't understand National Guard service when you're on inactive duty.
However, if you've ever seen the "1 weekend a month" ads, then you know the answer. If you're on inactive duty in the NG, you have to show up for 28 days. (Yeah, I know 2 times 12 is 24, but if the government could multiply we wouldn't have a deficit.) It's perfectly reasonable for Bush not to show up for May through September as long as he showed up for 28 days total. No conspiracy or favoritism needed.
Was his last year in the NG stellar? No, but he did the job in a service that's for part-time soldiers, full-time civilians.
1. The media is going to take the time to understand how the national guard works. Not!
2. That the media actually cares about the "truth". More controversy, more viewers, more money. Every article about every candidate is always spun towards controversy.
3. That the media is as smart as me, so they're able to put it in such simple terms. Not!:-)
If you want to argue this, 3-4 people have come forward saying they remember him, and Bush signed the Notorious Form 180 releasing ALL his records. I don't think he's dodged this at all. The press has asked him for proof, which he did his best to provide about something that happened 30 years ago.
I noticed that everything has been moderated low in this discussion, maybe if I'm terse I can get moderated high. Here goes.
Facts:
Bush served for 5.5 years in the TANG. 4 years of those were on active duty, because you don't learn to fly planes one weekend a month.
Only the last year (1973) is in dispute, when he was on inactive duty and was living in Alabama.
National Guard rules:
1. Remember the "one weekend a month" ads? Well, its not every month. Its really 28 days/year you have to show up when you're on inactive duty. You can do it in batches.
2. If you're in a different state while on inactive duty, you can show up at the local NG place and do your service there. They won't have "extra" planes for you to fly, though. This rule makes sense if you think about it, people in the NG have day jobs.
Add all these up, and basically, his last year, Bush did his minimum number of days he had to do early in the year, and then didn't have to show up after that. His time in Alabama mostly involved sitting around being bored, because a fighter pilot without a plane is like lips on a chicken.
The Texas Air National Guard discharged him early, basically because all the National Guard units were stuffed with people.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems to be a faux paux to inject reality into a SlashDot discussion, but here are some personal experiences. I've owned an iPhone since day 1; tried other smartphones but they never quite cut it for me. Windows Mobile was just awful, which elminated a whole class of phones, and the Treo was just too clunky.
I could never type successfully on a Treo , buttons were too damn small and there wasn't any autocorrection. iPhone has the same problem, but the auto-correction works pretty good, especially on longer words. It's kind of weird watching yourself type gppndy and having the iPhone turn that into foobar. Is the keyboard perfect? No. In vertical mode, the keyboard is a little bit small for perfect targeting, in horizontal mode its a stretch for "thumb typing".
So if you just pick up an iPhone in the store, you're not going to think the keyboard is that great, but you're going to think the web browser and email client kicks ass. For me, that was enough.
After using the iphone for a week you'll like the keyboard a lot better because it seems like magic to type d;sdjfpy and have that turned into "slashdot". Someone else commented they couldn't even type the first letter correctly, and that's part of the iPhone zen you have to get over. English is only really about 3 bits/letter of information. Factor that into the fact that when you're typing, the iphone knows the general area you were trying to hit, and that that's what makes the autocorrection seem like magic. It's not, its probably just running through all the permutations for the letters near what you typed and ranking them against its dictionary. That's why it seems so magical for long words like "permutation" but doesn't do as well for short words.
So I wouldn't want to type a post like this on the iPhone, but for "Hey, where are you? I'm ready to go." in a store to my wife it's great.
Typing passwords REALLY, REALLY SUCKS unless you know the secret, which is "dragging" your finger and releasing when the key is right (type via key-up not key-down). Typing a 128-bit hex key for my WiFi network was really painful as a first iPhone experience.
So there's the good and bad. Is typing as good as Apple's new kick-ass super-thin USB keyboard? No. Is it pretty good when coupled with the auto-correction for a mobile device? Yes. The auto-correction in my opinion makes the keyboard better then the Treo. Is it better then standard phone keyboards? Much, I could never figure out how to get my phone out of its weird "texting mode" (which they didn't give me any documentation for) so I could send "No". So texting is a way better experience for me on my iPhone then my old phone.
Engineering is about tradeoffs. If I had to carry around my desktop keyboard as my cellphone, I'd leave it at home. Holding it up to my ear to make a call would look bizarre.
As for non-geek feedback: My wife never, ever sent a text message from her old phone. She's now a texting fiend and reads her email on her phone most of the time.
Come to think of it, I text more now as well.
I agree, I and II are Acts I and II in a 6 hour long movie. Phantom is mostly exposition, Clone is development, leaving Sith for the climax if we follow standard dramatic structure used since the ancient greeks. I and II had to be toned down a bit, because Lucas has to build dramatic tension up in III. If I was as intense as III, you would'nt be able to watch the whole thing.
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Longer version of the same thing on my blog:
http://www.opinionatedbastard.com/archives/000379
Jar Jar is supposed to be an idiot, its his job to stand in for all the people deluded by the Chancellor. (i.e. Hindenberg in pre-Nazi Germany...)
As a Engineer who became a Qi Gong practitioner, I can easily verify that the mind-body link is very powerful.
r tial_arts.html has my occasional ramblings on Qi Gong for those who are interested.
You are very much in control of your own body, its just that most people haven't had the training to do anything with it.
The challenge for Western scientists is that studying the mind-body link is pretty hard because how do you study the effect of "thinking your cancer away" vs. "pretending to think your cancer away"? Once you involve the patients mind, its impossible to do a double-blind study.
However, the Chinese have actually done a lot of this sort of study in an effort to "rationalize" the last 3000 years of Qi Gong study. But they had to do things like have a "fake" qi gong master vs. a "real" qi gong master, then have people take classes from both...
http://www.opinionatedbastard.com/archives/cat_ma
For those who want a more western slant, I suppose you can Google behavioral medicine, but the western slant ignores the fact that while the mind can affect the body, so can the body affect the body. Sitting around thinking "my cancer is getting smaller" may help, but so will going for a walk every day.
The real thing to study from my point of view is why oncologists don't prescribe meditation and exercise...
Sigh.
:-)
Stupid religious war.
Look, people are different. Most people are primarily verbal or primarily visual.
They will be more productive in an operating system that caters to that. A verbal person will prefer a command line, a visual person a well done GUI.
Mac OS X is visual/kinesthetic.
Linux tends to be pure verbal.
Windows is a bastard verbal GUI. (more on that later)
So if you're an artist, you'll find Mac OS X to be easier to use and you'll produce better work then you would on another operating system because the OS will synchronize with your cognitive mode.
If you're a lawyer, you might well be happier on Linux. If you ask a lawyer, they'll tell you they were happiest on Word Perfect 5.4 under MS-DOS.
No one can be productive on Windows, because Windows manages to be a verbal focused GUI. Under Windows, its all all about choosing verbs and nouns using a GUI, vs. Mac OS X which is more about the visual manipulation of objects. So there is no cognitive mode were Windows is really usable... Even worse for a visual person, the color scheme is like being screamed at all day. For most artists, using Windows is the death of a thousand stings. More subtly, art done under Windows is usually inferior to art done on Mac OS X, because Mac OS X is easiest to use in a visual cognitive mode. Windows, by forcing a shift to the verbal mode, hobbles the artist.
As an experiment, ask yourself this:
If you are drawing, do you use more or less keyboard commands?
If you are writing, do you use more or less keyboard commands?
If you are programming, do you use more or less keyboard commands?
If you are designing programs, do you use more or less keyboard commands?
What you'll find is that depending on the primary cognitive mode of the task you're currently doing, you use the computer in different ways.
This is why all OS religious wars are stupid. Different people have different preferences depending on their particular cognitive preference.
Except for trashing Windows, because it sucks because it requires mutually exclusive cognitive modes. That's ok.
Too bad its probably not true, given the history of the rumor above.
l , and obviously they've also done the music portion.
My 1st generation TiVO is already a box that sits in my living room, connected to my stereo, from which I could play songs/videos pulled off my hard drive. An I'm running Mac OS X. Considering I ended up buying a second device to do just the music piece of this http://www.slimdevices.com/ if Apple came out with a new TiVo that did this plus movies, I'd have to seriously consider upgrading my TiVO.
Its inevitable and obvious that Apple was going to eventually build a device to serve as the home entertainmentcomputer connection. For one thing, Steve Jobs said so about 8 years ago. They already have the codec to use for the video portion: H.264/AVC http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/index.htm
Whether or not they do an iVideos store is probably moot in the end. TiVo is a success just doing broadcast TV, the real growth would be becoming the defacto standard for digital cable and satellite. TiVO hasn't really persued this, but I expect Apple might, there's nothing sacred about the settop box business, and Apple has already show willingness to license iPod to other vendors like HP/Motorola.
Nor does iVideos require broadband. DirecTV is already marketing cheap movies to PVR owners like myself. Come to think of it, even without broadband you could easily sell a service that was satellite based and offered you a menu of 100 different movies a month. After all, over pay per view, I already have a menu of about 25 movies/month, and the only reason its only 25 is because they repeat the movie all day long. With a Tivo, they would only have to broadcast a movie once.
Hmmm... The TiVo already has a modem, so it could connect to a master server, order any movie from a long list of movies, then get the movie downloaded in one burst via the satellite. Since multiple people could mooch off the same movie download, it might be possible to have a list of 1000 movies available. If you picked an obscure movie, you might have to wait 24 hours for a download slot to open. It would be inconvenient, but if new releases were instantaneous (since you could start in the middle of any running download), its proabably acceptable.
So say $500 for a new box that plugs into my existing video crap, lets me download from a list of 1000 movies over my satellite dish, replaces my sqeezebox for music (one less thing), stores all my DVDs for easy playback (less crap in the living room). In a word, hmm...
TiVO couldn't do it alone, but Apple and TiVO could do it together.
DVRs are obviously here to stay no matter what happens. People who own TiVos are addicted to them and the satellite and cable guys are moving to emulate them, not supplant them. So far, most of their offerings are lame from what I've seen so TiVO clearly has an opportunity.
Granted, stand-alone DVRs may not survive. Instead, your DVR will probably be integrated into your paid-TV pipe as more and more of those pipes go digital. I have a DirecTiVo and it rocks. If it stopped working, I'd drop my whole satellite subscription entirely and stop watching regular TV entirely. It wouldn't be much of a sacrifice as before my DirectTiVo, I didn't have regular TV, I just watched DVDs. I only got regular TV after 9/11, and since then I've found that the regular news coverage is so bad that you're better informed if you DON'T watch TV. Bottom line for me is that TV is only worth watching with a DVR.
So I see that TiVO could easily survive simply by being the standard "operating system" for set-top boxes and satellite recievers. The subscription fee can then be rolled into the fee for the monthly service, or subsidized like mine is. (DirectTV only charges $5/month for the TiVO part). Assuming its even necessary as my DirectTiVO gets all its program information from the satellite anyways.
However, at 3 million subscribers, that's easily enough to keep the company afloat no matter what happens.
So TiVO as separate box you buy at Circuit City? Probably not going to last. TiVo as a "feature" of your cable/satellite box? Inevitable.
Its important to distinguish between "allegations" and "proven". Especially if you're going to title a post "True Lies". Its also important to realize that "facts" culled from the mainstream media may not be "facts" at all.
You, allege that Bush had some connection with the Swift Boat guys, who made their own allegations about Kerry.
None of that is proof of a connection. Said collusion would be illegal under the terms of a 527. While perhaps there was some backroom stuff, there was much more evidence of collusion between say, moveon.org and the Kerry campaign then there was between the Swift Vet guys and the Bush campaign.
Since anyone can allege anything, I'm unimpressed.
Nor can you blame the Swift Vet guys 100% on Bush, Kerry really pissed them off with his testimony. If you read their book, its pretty clear that's what they were most upset about. To them, Kerry was the poster child for the anti-solider faction of the anti-war movement. That's probably not fair, but that's how they felt. over 50% of the swift vet ads were paid for by small individual donations, vs. moveon.org which was 90% funded by George Soros...
As far as the vote count goes here's a link to the final official tally (which isn't available yet). http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/electoral _college/2004/election_results.html
And you wrote 50M, not 60M. If you'd written 60, I wouldn't have bothered to correct you I'm not that much of a quibbler. This site reports it as 62M: http://uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/. The difference bewteen the 60M and the 62M is because of absentee and provisional ballots being counted since election day.
The armed forces being filled with the disadvantaged is a myth left over from the draft-era days. The armed forces are primarily filled with the middle class, not the disadvantaged or the advantaged. 96% of enlisted soldiers hold high schools diplomas as opposed to 75% of the equivalent civilian population, and they tend to score higher on verbal and math tests then the general populace.
"meatgrinder" doesn't seem particularly appropriate given that the losses in Iraq and Afghanistan are so far much, much smaller then Vietnam, and most soldiers in Iraq are still more in danger from not fastening their seatbelt then they are from an Iraqi insurgent.
As far as "hating me" goes, while I admire your passion for your beliefs, you're not going to convince anyone with hyperbole.
So far you've made:
1. Pointless irrelevant accusations about Bush and the Swift Vets when the topic was CBS...
2. You've basically insulted all of our men and women in uniform, quite baselessly.
3. You've gotten a number wrong.
4. You've called a war where we've lost about 1,200 servicemen and women a "meatgrinder".
5. You've accused me of hating America and the facts because I corrected you on a couple of items.
And I hate America and the facts? Please. I just would just like criticism of the President to be factual, and well-reasoned, not tired, emotion-laden rehashes of untrue allegations culled from the New York Times, the Washington Post, or CBS.
One of the reasons I got interested in politics was I started reading the transcripts of the administration briefings. I was shocked at the difference between what the administration said, and what got reported they said.
Bottom line, CBS, NYT and WP are all capitalist organizations organized for profit. They make that profit by getting you to consume their product, and they get you to do that by making the news more exciting. One need not look for liberal bias, one need only look for "conflict bias".
The news we see or read every day is more and more just "made up" in the newrooms. If Professional Wresting isn't a "Sport" but "Sports Entertainment", our media h
Er, Bush always said "Kerry's service was better then my own". And its 62M who voted for Bush. And the armed forces have substantially improved since Vietnam, its no longer just "the disadvantaged". You need to tone down the hatred and tone up the facts.
I can't believe anyone is still arguing that these documents could be "real". Yes, Tibetan monks could have individually hand-carved each letter in soapstone to make the documents. Did they? No. The argument that it was "possible" is spurious, as none of the proposed scenarios are plausible. There were no machines available in 1974 that could produce the document in question. Sure, it could have been professionally typeset, but professional typesetting would have been a waste of time and money for a single page given the cost would have been at least $1000. Neither that or the Tibetan monks is a plausible answer. It wasn't typeset, it was typed verbatim into Microsoft Word. Don't let your hatred of Bush blind you to reality.
It seems to me that if a spam has an link in it (which they all do), then they are sending you that link in an attempt to get you to visit their site. It was very nice of Lycos to automate the process for me and them. Now I need not bother reading the mail in order to make all those spam companies happy...by increasing the visitations to their site. Thanks Lycos! It's not vigilantism, its just progress. As computer systems evolve, more and more tasks get done by the computer, with less intervention from the user. :-)
While that's true, it doesn't change the math...
At some point, all this statistical analysis becomes masterbation. Its the same sort of analysis pollsters do, and its about as reliable...
So I think its perfectly valid for Ruffini to point out that Bush gained about the same % in both types of counties.
I'll meet your question head on though: Kerry was not Gore. I don't think Ruffini dodged it, I think it's just frigging obvious, and I think Ruffini's example demonstrates that. Kerry wasn't Gore, so the model doesn't match.
If you're still not convinced, the Berkeley guys analyzed Hispanic votes but not Black. Yet there was an interesting shift in the black vote this election towards Bush.
If you cherry pick your data, you can prove anything.
Here's what he found:
It's ironic, but meaningless. The owner/editor is a Democrat who has run for office, been defeated, and doesn't live in Crawford.
Most of the town residents have started boycotting the paper since the editorial ran.
http://realclearpolitics.com/index.html
It's basically a link-blog, but its good to get the news.
And I got within 1-2% of the final result.
The polling companies slice their data up by demographic, and then recombine them to get a picture of the electorate. Its pretty easily, really.
If 33% of the population is green,
40% purple,
27% orange,
then if green people are 2-1 for pepsi vs. coke, purple people 1-2 for coke, and orange people mixed you get: 48% Pepsi, 52% Coke. It doesn't quite matter what the ratios of green, purple and orange people are that you end up talking to as long as you talk to enough people in each box.
So while its possible that there is a shift, its only if Kerry voters are more likely to be landline-less no so much because landlineless people are less likely to be polled.
Paper: All things have error rates. People have an error rate of about 2.8%, plus a "bias" rate, plus a maximum throughput. All of which are issues that need to be addressed. Pro-paper advocates love to talk about the error rate of paper, and ignore the bias issues. Paper also makes secrecy harder.
:-)
Venezuela: Well, it was a report based on a study from a group at MIT not the WSJ particularly. Go read up on the Venezuelan election and you'll see what I mean. The election results strongly disagreed with the polls...
Election Fraud Trivia: Traditionally in America, country sheriffs have been the most corrupt elections. I call this the "Roadhouse" effect, after the annoying Patrick Swayze movie my wife has inflicted on me about 1000 times...This is because in many stats, the county sheriff is also the local election official...plus a county sheriff has more power over his constituents then the POTUS.
http://www.opinionatedbastard.com/archives/000103. html
The guy at indcjournal called a document specialist friend of his:
http://www.indcjournal.com/archives/000838.php
It was the "4" that convinced me. It's "closed" in the pdf.
I remember that typewriters used open-top 4s, because it caused less problems with ink blotches. Its only when people started using computers that they switched to closed 4's. Though my memory might be faulty, that's what this guy found too.
Which I think only highlights the importance of having each candidate sign a Form 180 so that we can be sure that all documentation of their service comes forward.
because when they do, they all say "Big deal".
People in the National Guard are part time soldiers, full time civilians, so the Guard has to accommodate that.
Here's what a guardsman at the time said:
http://frontburner2.dmagazine.com/archives/005868
The major media are jumping on the Bush National Guard story with a glee they have yet to exhibit with John Kerry's record, even though media critics are questioning their timing. The major complaint against Bush is that he "gamed the system." I was there. We all gamed the system.
Bush didn't avoid his service anymore than I did. We both did what we could to avoid the worst thing a young man can face: boredom.
Where did you get that from? I've never heard that. NCLB includes more than just reading.
I got the part about phonics from reading Kessler's book "A Matter of Character" (My new rule is to only read positive political tracks this election...)
I didn't learn to read by sounding things out. Of course, as you point out, that is rare. So, it confused the hell out of my teachers. I learned to read by translating the word into an idea
That's interesting. How did you learn to associate a word with an idea? The shape? Anyways one of the reasons NCLB doesn't say the word "phonics" anymore is that "phonics" isn't the answer. Trying stuff, testing to see the result, and tweaking what you tried is the solution, not religious belief in a particular theory.
She didn't believe in learning disabilities.
Then she was stupid, incompetent, and ruining student's lives. I ran into one such teacher. She locked me in a closet during lunch, every lunch, for an entire school year. She didn't understand that I thought in a manner inconsistent with others (what others classify as a "learing disability").
Whew! Such violence! I think we agree more then we disagree. My mom wouldn't have locked you in a closet, she would have sat down with you and decoded what was going on with you. It doesn't seem to me like you had a learning disability, and it seems like you don't think that either. What are we arguing about?
Just threatening to take some money from a district that is already under funded isn't going to make a difference when you can't get them to a better school.
Er, think about this. NCLB is all extra money from the feds, schools are funded by the states. So you can't take away extra money. Anyways, NCLB provides funds for the transfers. Obviously, if that's not possible, its not possible, but generally, remote schools tend to be better then urban schools because local parents have more control. However, if you have a remote school, and it gets failing test scores, then at least the parents know and can do something about it.
Instead, it will result in the top students being under served, as they currently are, as well as paperwork, funding movement, and other such things with little effect to move a few students around from poorer districts.
Well, this is all at the parents discretion. And while that paragraph of yours sounded very righteous and good, NCLB is about the basics which are reading and arithmetic, which if a school can't teach, they can't teach anything else. So its important to insure that it happening. So testing is important.
Right now as a parent, how do you know if your school is any good or not? You have to test, which most states were doing already. So having national test makes all that simpler.
As far as vouchers go, it doesn't have to be school vouchers. The progression is such that vouchers only come into play if the schools get a failing grade for 5 years in a row. Before that, the district has to implement charter schools. If your local school can't teach kids to read for 5 years in a row, someone needs a kick in the butt.
It's all a little early to tell. What will happen I think is that with more information to the parents, they can make better decisions.
Yeah, here's where all this starts to degenerate into details which is where the media gets lost.
Before I respond to this detail, let's step back and look at it this way. He's accused of not showing up. Obviously he did. We could quibble about the details of whether those days were "creditable" or not, but that's kind of a pointless detail.
Most of the NG-knowledgeable websites I've read about this issue say that this training flexibility is typical in the NG, that the NG has to adapt to part-time soldiers, full-time civilians who may have other commitments.
1973 is the "Alabama" period, so if he was training in Houston, then he made a special trip to do so. Almost anything in any service is subject to the commander's discretion, and generally, commander's don't hassle people about this stuff.
ER, well, I did that in my "terse answers" post, but I think we were simultaneously posting.
As far as May to September goes, the main thing you're missing is that you don't understand National Guard service when you're on inactive duty.
However, if you've ever seen the "1 weekend a month" ads, then you know the answer. If you're on inactive duty in the NG, you have to show up for 28 days. (Yeah, I know 2 times 12 is 24, but if the government could multiply we wouldn't have a deficit.) It's perfectly reasonable for Bush not to show up for May through September as long as he showed up for 28 days total. No conspiracy or favoritism needed.
Was his last year in the NG stellar? No, but he did the job in a service that's for part-time soldiers, full-time civilians.
You're assuming that:
:-)
4 0.asp
1. The media is going to take the time to understand how the national guard works. Not!
2. That the media actually cares about the "truth". More controversy, more viewers, more money. Every article about every candidate is always spun towards controversy.
3. That the media is as smart as me, so they're able to put it in such simple terms. Not!
If you want to argue this, 3-4 people have come forward saying they remember him, and Bush signed the Notorious Form 180 releasing ALL his records. I don't think he's dodged this at all. The press has asked him for proof, which he did his best to provide about something that happened 30 years ago.
Here's a long answer. http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york2004021808
I noticed that everything has been moderated low in this discussion, maybe if I'm terse I can get moderated high. Here goes.
Facts:
Bush served for 5.5 years in the TANG. 4 years of those were on active duty, because you don't learn to fly planes one weekend a month.
Only the last year (1973) is in dispute, when he was on inactive duty and was living in Alabama.
National Guard rules:
1. Remember the "one weekend a month" ads? Well, its not every month. Its really 28 days/year you have to show up when you're on inactive duty. You can do it in batches.
2. If you're in a different state while on inactive duty, you can show up at the local NG place and do your service there. They won't have "extra" planes for you to fly, though. This rule makes sense if you think about it, people in the NG have day jobs.
Add all these up, and basically, his last year, Bush did his minimum number of days he had to do early in the year, and then didn't have to show up after that. His time in Alabama mostly involved sitting around being bored, because a fighter pilot without a plane is like lips on a chicken.
The Texas Air National Guard discharged him early, basically because all the National Guard units were stuffed with people.
So this is just election year FUBAR.