Genetics = luck? Great teacher in school = luck? Choosing to follow intuition = luck?
Seems to me that, with a sufficiently large value of 'luck', you could encompass almost all circumstances. And I mean ALL.
How about;
Genetics at birth = luck, but study and intellectual exploration = merit Great teacher = luck, but putting forth the effort to learn and developing your intellect with challenges (from the teacher) = merit And I can't even touch the third one: if you develop the ability to use intuition to solve problems and choose the 'best' option, that's merit.
In other words, luck is a circumstance, but merit is the result of a series of choices.
They did a trial of the scooters in Portland (which has a river running thru downtown) and there is speculation about just how many of the scooters ended up at the bottom of the river. They were able to trace a few of them to that watery grave.
The biggest concern here was riders without experience and who did not use helmets. There was an uptick in ER visits for scooter accidents.
"I'm not sure it is. You're effectively saying "I much prefer Vinyl when I don't have a choice.""
I suppose, in a sense, yes. You're right.
If I listen to the B side of Time Further Out on vinyl and on CD, both on really good gear, and I clearly prefer vinyl every time, and I can identify the elements that I find 'better', and the CD version cannot provide those elements, then I suppose that is a 'choice of one'.
But I am generally talking about situations where there is both a vinyl and a CD version, so, in an absolute sense, there is a choice. And my preferences are not necessarily the preferences of others - I cannot speak for anyone but myself.
I buy vinyl. But I very rarely consider buying vinyl of something recorded in the last 20 years or so. For that, it's either a CD, or, more likely, stream it.
(Side note: audio has so many rabbit holes to draw you into. slashdot has lots of widely varying and often very opposed points of view. and so does audio...)
"The reason you think the older records are better is more likely to do with the quality of production, before the audio was stamped onto either media, in the 1970s, than it does the medium. "
And that is just as valid a reason to consider the reproduction from vinyl superior to CD in those instances.
If a session was recorded, mixed, mastered, etc. originally for vinyl, and it was done by great engineers, (and later remastering was full of compression for the CD format) it is possible that the recording will ultimately be more enjoyable on vinyl. I am not in any way trying to say that, on a theoretical level, vinyl is better. Not at all. Just that there are instances, quite common in 50+ year old recorded sessions, where I can always tell the difference and the vinyl is usually 'better' from an enjoyment perspective. I care less about something theoretical and more about how it really sounds subjectively.
"The higher-quality, lower price option (CDs) are fading yet the shitty quality high price (vinyl) is going up,"
While I agree that the price of new vinyl is too high (sometimes outrageous), for recordings made more than 30 years ago, I find vinyl is definitely higher quality than CD. (Yes, you need high-quality gear to play it on - nothing new there) I have done a lot of A-B testing on high-end audio gear, mainly of recordings from the 50's thru the 70's and vinyl almost always wins for quality.
For 'modern' recordings, streaming or CD's are generally the equal of vinyl, so there's no significant advantage to the big black disc.
(And buying used vinyl is a crap shoot: I've purchased used LP's for a buck or two that were perfect, and purchased used LP's for $10+ that were full of way too many pops and scratches. You factor the cost of the duds into the overall value equation.)
"A secondary borehole that acts as a well, its water back-pumped into the main hole after being filtered and sterilized, was started a night earlier, Priscu told Earther"
I'm glad they had the foresight to sterilize the water that would ultimately mix with the lake. Not doing so would have been just plain sad and stupid. (and counterproductive, if the goal was really to survey what was down there and *only* what was down there.)
Not *all* voice was down. If you had traditional TDM services (or if you used your cellphone), you could (most likely) still make voice calls, and thus get to 911 (except for western WA). From what I understand the outage was data-network related (read Internet). Services that rode the data network were affected. Most customers of telco's these days ask for VoIP-type services (packetized voice). That requires that both the voice and data run on the same network. And that makes a single outage doubly dangerous. (with the TDM network, voice and data were independent)
I'm not defending CenturyLink, just pointing out that we should be accurate when discussing something this serious.
Terrorists no longer have any need to sneak bombs past TSA. Just wait at the edge of the airfield for a jet to take off and have a medium-size drone ready to fly up and hit the engine intake. Equipped with a video camera and maybe a small explosive, it's the equivalent of a very slow missile.
The potential for misuse is huge.
I'm not big on Big Brother regulation, but this tech screams out for some controls.
This seems like a dangerous/crazy step to take. How does this type of negotiation tactic end? (ie - has someone thought out the likely reactions and steps the Other Side is likely to take?) What's to stop other countries from following suit?
Traditional diplomacy rested on a sort of 'gentleman's agreement'. While some of that diplomacy took forever and yielded less than we wished, at least (on the surface) it was civilized and seemed to prevent harm. Our current course could get unpleasant quickly.
I share the dislike of really loud restaurants - you're usually there to socialize, not exercise your vocal chords.
On a related topic, I have a home office with a nice audio system and I wondered about the benefits of acoustics panels, since I thought I could hear echo in the room. So I bought a kit from Audimute (https://www.audimute.com/). It had 24 12"x24" panels and hardware to mount them on the walls.
I interspersed them with photographs (at least a couple panels on each wall) and also put a number near the floor in the corners behind the speakers.
While not a radical change, it was noticeable and definitely for the better. Sound from the speakers had fewer frequency ranges that seemed to buzz or self-reinforce. (cutting down standing waves). I could no longer say that I could hear slap echo.
I would highly recommend the use of acoustic panels - absolutely no doubt that they make a noticeable difference. Can't understand why they are not used in more public places - they're not really very expensive.
I hear ya on the meeting thing. Seems like there are a couple mandatory meetings a week talking about changes, most minor, occasionally major. If you don't keep up on the newest news, then someone will ask about something at a later date, you'll have outdated info, and your credibility suffers.
And don't get me started on M&A. If you can't get one large company running smoothly, why buy others, then ask groups to 'merge them into our culture'.
There seems to be a mentality that being all things to all people is actually possible and even desirable. Back to the old adage; If a lot is good, and more is better, then too much must be just right.
As a teenager, I thought that applied to horsepower and girls.
"Originally required to last 15 years, Hubble has now been at the forefront of scientific discovery for more than 28 years."
If we, as a civilization, could just set aside the petty sh*t that we seem to slide into, and do more of this kind of thing (well thought out, well made instruments that expand our knowledge of the universe), maybe we could reach a point where the conditions that motivate the 'radicals' could be overcome, kids could grow up happier and we could all enjoy a world with less fear.
While this (Helm) does not sound like the kind of device I would ever buy (too little control, despite all their hype), I would be interested in a piece of hardware that was dedicated to email and nothing else. Easy to use interface (deal-breaker, if it's complicated), supports multiple domains, well-made, supports all the normal protocols and is very stable.
FWIW, while I agree in general with what you're saying about inkjets having the heads dry out, I brought my concern to a local pro-photo supplier and they recommended the Canon Pixma Pro-10 printer. They said that they did not get complaints about heads drying out and the inks are pigment-based.
I bought the printer and could not be happier. I've had it a couple of years and it has never had a print head problem. I use it once every 4-8 weeks. (though, when I do use it, I generally do a couple dozen 8.5x11 or larger prints)
I'm an amateur photographer, so the photo-printing aspect was the whole reason for buying it. And I would much rather tweak prints at home, than farm it out, then have to ask them to reprint when I don't like something.
BTW - replacing a set of ink carts for the beast is $135., so you really have to want to use the printer to justify its ongoing costs.
I've had my own domain name for 20(?) years now, and I (and a couple friends) are the only ones who have even used it, so I don't get any misdirected email, but...
My telephone number has apparently been inadvertently entered many times for various people. So I get calls (not robocalls) from people saying that they got a message with this number, or it was on a form somewhere. I also have a personal tollfree number (for relatives/friends around the country). For a very short time, I was getting lots of calls because some business had published their new tollfree number, but typo'd it and published my number. It was a mortgage company. I got lots of calls asking about mortgage status, even calls from other mortgage companies. These people would start spilling confidential info before I could stop them.
"The neighborhood Navarro is standing in looks real..."
Seriously? So there are people out there who will view this animation and will need to be told that it is not real? They'll think someone 'filmed reality'?
My employer is willing to deduct the cost of a monthly transit pass (in Portland, OR) from my check *pre-tax*, so they are showing their support by offering this incentive and convenience. (The pass arrives by mail each month)
That pass is good for; bus lines, train lines, streetcars, and the buses that run between Portland and Vancouver. It's quite convenient. (easy)
That ease of access should never be underestimated. Even though I got the pass for commuting to work, I have used it to travel to concert venues - I then don't experience that right-after-the-concert-crush of people trying to drive out of a huge parking lot.
Yes, using transit takes longer. There are many instances where I would not dream of using it because of the total transit time involved. But for a lot of reasonably-short-distance travel, it's great.
If more employers installed more bike racks, offered convenience in buying transit passes, encouraged telecommuting, etc. we would all benefit in many (some subtle) ways.
Interesting that when the summary says "U.S. telecom companies", it assumes that we will all think wireless, rather than terrestrial. I wonder how the throttling compares on the two media....
(I do the bulk of my surfing on a terrestrial circuit.)
If I'm going thru a process (job seeking) where I will interact with many people (recruiters, et al) and I'm focused on a desired outcome (employment), I need to keep conversations going in order to harvest every chance I get to forward my agenda (I want this kind of job with this kind of pay).
It's not personal - it's business. Keep things polite and make your name 'familiar' to them.
I work in an industry where there are very few positions of the type I hold. Openings do not occur very often, and there are lots of people who would like the job.
Frankly, being a familiar name or a known quantity is probably *the* deciding factor sometimes. My last boss interviewed me, then promptly called a number of people in the industry (across several states) to see who knew me and what they thought of me. Having kept up my rep, I got a job offer the next day.
The only people I know who burned bridges (via their behavior) were leaving the industry anyway...
Slashdot Mirror
In the last year, I made a couple local purchases of over $1000 and offered to pay the vendors cash. (I had done business with them many times before)
They immediately offered me a non-posted reduced price because they now didn't pay the VISA/MasterCard tax. I saved a few hundred.
Smile.
So I'm on board with the Swiss.
Genetics = luck?
Great teacher in school = luck?
Choosing to follow intuition = luck?
Seems to me that, with a sufficiently large value of 'luck', you could encompass almost all circumstances. And I mean ALL.
How about;
Genetics at birth = luck, but study and intellectual exploration = merit
Great teacher = luck, but putting forth the effort to learn and developing your intellect with challenges (from the teacher) = merit
And I can't even touch the third one: if you develop the ability to use intuition to solve problems and choose the 'best' option, that's merit.
In other words, luck is a circumstance, but merit is the result of a series of choices.
And with that, my PhD thesis is complete.....
They did a trial of the scooters in Portland (which has a river running thru downtown) and there is speculation about just how many of the scooters ended up at the bottom of the river. They were able to trace a few of them to that watery grave.
The biggest concern here was riders without experience and who did not use helmets. There was an uptick in ER visits for scooter accidents.
"I'm not sure it is. You're effectively saying "I much prefer Vinyl when I don't have a choice.""
I suppose, in a sense, yes. You're right.
If I listen to the B side of Time Further Out on vinyl and on CD, both on really good gear, and I clearly prefer vinyl every time, and I can identify the elements that I find 'better', and the CD version cannot provide those elements, then I suppose that is a 'choice of one'.
But I am generally talking about situations where there is both a vinyl and a CD version, so, in an absolute sense, there is a choice. And my preferences are not necessarily the preferences of others - I cannot speak for anyone but myself.
I buy vinyl. But I very rarely consider buying vinyl of something recorded in the last 20 years or so. For that, it's either a CD, or, more likely, stream it.
(Side note: audio has so many rabbit holes to draw you into. slashdot has lots of widely varying and often very opposed points of view. and so does audio...)
"The reason you think the older records are better is more likely to do with the quality of production, before the audio was stamped onto either media, in the 1970s, than it does the medium. "
And that is just as valid a reason to consider the reproduction from vinyl superior to CD in those instances.
If a session was recorded, mixed, mastered, etc. originally for vinyl, and it was done by great engineers, (and later remastering was full of compression for the CD format) it is possible that the recording will ultimately be more enjoyable on vinyl. I am not in any way trying to say that, on a theoretical level, vinyl is better. Not at all. Just that there are instances, quite common in 50+ year old recorded sessions, where I can always tell the difference and the vinyl is usually 'better' from an enjoyment perspective. I care less about something theoretical and more about how it really sounds subjectively.
"The higher-quality, lower price option (CDs) are fading yet the shitty quality high price (vinyl) is going up,"
While I agree that the price of new vinyl is too high (sometimes outrageous), for recordings made more than 30 years ago, I find vinyl is definitely higher quality than CD. (Yes, you need high-quality gear to play it on - nothing new there) I have done a lot of A-B testing on high-end audio gear, mainly of recordings from the 50's thru the 70's and vinyl almost always wins for quality.
For 'modern' recordings, streaming or CD's are generally the equal of vinyl, so there's no significant advantage to the big black disc.
(And buying used vinyl is a crap shoot: I've purchased used LP's for a buck or two that were perfect, and purchased used LP's for $10+ that were full of way too many pops and scratches. You factor the cost of the duds into the overall value equation.)
"A secondary borehole that acts as a well, its water back-pumped into the main hole after being filtered and sterilized, was started a night earlier, Priscu told Earther"
I'm glad they had the foresight to sterilize the water that would ultimately mix with the lake. Not doing so would have been just plain sad and stupid. (and counterproductive, if the goal was really to survey what was down there and *only* what was down there.)
Not *all* voice was down. If you had traditional TDM services (or if you used your cellphone), you could (most likely) still make voice calls, and thus get to 911 (except for western WA). From what I understand the outage was data-network related (read Internet). Services that rode the data network were affected. Most customers of telco's these days ask for VoIP-type services (packetized voice). That requires that both the voice and data run on the same network. And that makes a single outage doubly dangerous. (with the TDM network, voice and data were independent)
I'm not defending CenturyLink, just pointing out that we should be accurate when discussing something this serious.
There *were* national outages of Internet and voice, but the 911 outages were much more limited (mainly western Washington)
Terrorists no longer have any need to sneak bombs past TSA. Just wait at the edge of the airfield for a jet to take off and have a medium-size drone ready to fly up and hit the engine intake. Equipped with a video camera and maybe a small explosive, it's the equivalent of a very slow missile.
The potential for misuse is huge.
I'm not big on Big Brother regulation, but this tech screams out for some controls.
This seems like a dangerous/crazy step to take. How does this type of negotiation tactic end? (ie - has someone thought out the likely reactions and steps the Other Side is likely to take?) What's to stop other countries from following suit?
Traditional diplomacy rested on a sort of 'gentleman's agreement'. While some of that diplomacy took forever and yielded less than we wished, at least (on the surface) it was civilized and seemed to prevent harm. Our current course could get unpleasant quickly.
Or am I just overthinking this?
I share the dislike of really loud restaurants - you're usually there to socialize, not exercise your vocal chords.
On a related topic, I have a home office with a nice audio system and I wondered about the benefits of acoustics panels, since I thought I could hear echo in the room. So I bought a kit from Audimute (https://www.audimute.com/). It had 24 12"x24" panels and hardware to mount them on the walls.
I interspersed them with photographs (at least a couple panels on each wall) and also put a number near the floor in the corners behind the speakers.
While not a radical change, it was noticeable and definitely for the better. Sound from the speakers had fewer frequency ranges that seemed to buzz or self-reinforce. (cutting down standing waves). I could no longer say that I could hear slap echo.
I would highly recommend the use of acoustic panels - absolutely no doubt that they make a noticeable difference. Can't understand why they are not used in more public places - they're not really very expensive.
I hear ya on the meeting thing. Seems like there are a couple mandatory meetings a week talking about changes, most minor, occasionally major. If you don't keep up on the newest news, then someone will ask about something at a later date, you'll have outdated info, and your credibility suffers.
And don't get me started on M&A. If you can't get one large company running smoothly, why buy others, then ask groups to 'merge them into our culture'.
There seems to be a mentality that being all things to all people is actually possible and even desirable. Back to the old adage; If a lot is good, and more is better, then too much must be just right.
As a teenager, I thought that applied to horsepower and girls.
So Google says that only 1 in 10,000 of us have a Google account and disable Javascript?
I feel special.
"Originally required to last 15 years, Hubble has now been at the forefront of scientific discovery for more than 28 years."
If we, as a civilization, could just set aside the petty sh*t that we seem to slide into, and do more of this kind of thing (well thought out, well made instruments that expand our knowledge of the universe), maybe we could reach a point where the conditions that motivate the 'radicals' could be overcome, kids could grow up happier and we could all enjoy a world with less fear.
--guess I'm in a mood today...--
While this (Helm) does not sound like the kind of device I would ever buy (too little control, despite all their hype), I would be interested in a piece of hardware that was dedicated to email and nothing else. Easy to use interface (deal-breaker, if it's complicated), supports multiple domains, well-made, supports all the normal protocols and is very stable.
FWIW, while I agree in general with what you're saying about inkjets having the heads dry out, I brought my concern to a local pro-photo supplier and they recommended the Canon Pixma Pro-10 printer. They said that they did not get complaints about heads drying out and the inks are pigment-based.
I bought the printer and could not be happier. I've had it a couple of years and it has never had a print head problem. I use it once every 4-8 weeks. (though, when I do use it, I generally do a couple dozen 8.5x11 or larger prints)
I'm an amateur photographer, so the photo-printing aspect was the whole reason for buying it. And I would much rather tweak prints at home, than farm it out, then have to ask them to reprint when I don't like something.
BTW - replacing a set of ink carts for the beast is $135., so you really have to want to use the printer to justify its ongoing costs.
Even if the true figure were 90% or 80%, it is still pretty overwhelming.
It really grinds that it becomes such a challenge in our Information Age to separate truth from truthiness.
I've had my own domain name for 20(?) years now, and I (and a couple friends) are the only ones who have even used it, so I don't get any misdirected email, but...
My telephone number has apparently been inadvertently entered many times for various people. So I get calls (not robocalls) from people saying that they got a message with this number, or it was on a form somewhere. I also have a personal tollfree number (for relatives/friends around the country). For a very short time, I was getting lots of calls because some business had published their new tollfree number, but typo'd it and published my number. It was a mortgage company. I got lots of calls asking about mortgage status, even calls from other mortgage companies. These people would start spilling confidential info before I could stop them.
So many typo's, so little time to fix them...
"The neighborhood Navarro is standing in looks real..."
Seriously? So there are people out there who will view this animation and will need to be told that it is not real? They'll think someone 'filmed reality'?
No wonder we have the government that we do....
My employer is willing to deduct the cost of a monthly transit pass (in Portland, OR) from my check *pre-tax*, so they are showing their support by offering this incentive and convenience. (The pass arrives by mail each month)
That pass is good for; bus lines, train lines, streetcars, and the buses that run between Portland and Vancouver. It's quite convenient. (easy)
That ease of access should never be underestimated. Even though I got the pass for commuting to work, I have used it to travel to concert venues - I then don't experience that right-after-the-concert-crush of people trying to drive out of a huge parking lot.
Yes, using transit takes longer. There are many instances where I would not dream of using it because of the total transit time involved. But for a lot of reasonably-short-distance travel, it's great.
If more employers installed more bike racks, offered convenience in buying transit passes, encouraged telecommuting, etc. we would all benefit in many (some subtle) ways.
Interesting that when the summary says "U.S. telecom companies", it assumes that we will all think wireless, rather than terrestrial. I wonder how the throttling compares on the two media....
(I do the bulk of my surfing on a terrestrial circuit.)
"Unlike a computer -- even an old one -- it was heavy and ungainly."
Just how young are you? I can remember taking a disk drive out of a PDP-11 rack and it took two adults to manhandle the drive.
I'm gonna guess you can't drive a stick shift either....
Wasn't this story posted yesterday?
If I'm going thru a process (job seeking) where I will interact with many people (recruiters, et al) and I'm focused on a desired outcome (employment), I need to keep conversations going in order to harvest every chance I get to forward my agenda (I want this kind of job with this kind of pay).
It's not personal - it's business. Keep things polite and make your name 'familiar' to them.
I work in an industry where there are very few positions of the type I hold. Openings do not occur very often, and there are lots of people who would like the job.
Frankly, being a familiar name or a known quantity is probably *the* deciding factor sometimes. My last boss interviewed me, then promptly called a number of people in the industry (across several states) to see who knew me and what they thought of me. Having kept up my rep, I got a job offer the next day.
The only people I know who burned bridges (via their behavior) were leaving the industry anyway...