Well, sub-optimal, flawed, imperfect perhaps. But I don't think you can really support the stance that they are not ergonomic. Unless you have some other definition of ergonomics than the one I just looked up.
If techies in general want to make mega-corp managers listen, they'll all have to help me scream. They can do that by refusing to work for people who are idiots.
That works only if there are very few idiots. If the percentage of IT bosses who are idiots is significant, then everyone knows that there aren't enough non-idiot jobs to go around. Therefore not everyone will quit working for the idiots. Until working for an idiot is so bad that *most people* would rather change careers than do it, they will keep working for idiots.
I -chose- not to work for a mega-corp. (Translation: Didn't send them resumes.) I've already taken the first step in standing up and being heard.
Well you're certainly doing the right thing by making yourself happy (I assume you're happy with your job). But if you're talking about making the mega-corps hear you on the Windows issue (or any other), you certainly haven't done that. Or maybe you mean you're making yourself heard within your company, because it's small enough that you're listened to.
Do you honestly believe that we'd be a free country if only 1 person had fought back in 1776? NO. It took most of them.
This is no different. You get to either A Try to do something about it or B Deal with it and stop whinging.
First, this is totally different from the American Revolution, as I hope you can see if you think about it for a quarter of a second. Or maybe half. Second, your point is exactly right - it would take an entire IT department acting at once to change a Fortune 500 company, and maybe that wouldn't be enough. What can we conclude from the fact that that isn't happening? Third, there is always option C - whine about it. And IMO there's nothing wrong with a little bit of complaining about our jobs, as long as it doesn't get out of hand.
I don't even want to think about something triggering a massive release of methane from the World's oceans and what it could do to the global climate. (including the rate)
Then don't read Mother of Storms.:-) This explores a scenario where billions of tons of methane are released from the sea floor all of a sudden by a huge explosion. This has the results everybody's talking about, plus one. We hear about more hurricanes and bigger ones, but this book speculates that if the hurricane formation zones get big enough (due to increasing ocean temperatures) a hurricane could wander back and forth across the Pacific getting bigger and stronger over the course of weeks. It's a qualitative change rather than a quantitative one. There's lots of other interesting stuff in it and I recommend it unless you don't want to think about that sort of thing. As I said, this is science fiction and speculative and really the only thing I'm sure of about it is that if all that methane came up it would be bad.:-)
First off, human evolution became stalled the moment we started making our environment adapt to us, instead of adapting to it
The only way evolution could stall is if every possible genetic makeup has an equal chance of reproducing. I doubt this is true, and I'm certain you don't have any evidence for it. The only difference is we have managed to change the evolutionary pressures. Now someone born with, say, a bad foot is not at such a disadvantage in passing on their genes as they once would have been. But I guarantee other factors are still important. How quickly we might be evolving is another matter, and I've no doubt that changes over time, and we're probably in a slow spot.
Moving on from that, you dismissed his assertion that we would evolve to adapt to the lower Martian gravity without any counterargument. Why do you think we would not adapt? Clearly low gravity can have detrimental effects, so it seems at least possible that those who are better adapted to it have a better chance of passing on their genes. Unless you see some way we can change Mars so that it will have Earth gravity. I don't. Now as far as the rest of environment, we would probably adapt it as much as we could - temperature, atmospheric makeup, humidity, soil, etc. But whatever differences remained could possibly exert an evolutionary pressure.
There is no regulation in the US requiring speed governing of automobiles. I am not aware of any other country with any such regulation either. Any car sold in the US with a governor is that way because the manufacturer did it voluntarily. Sometimes this is done to prevent the car from exceeding the OE tires' speed rating.
I am paying for 1.5 mb/s. It is in my agreement that I had when signing up for service. It is a gauranteed speed.
I'm sure if you check your agreement, you will find at best no mention of a speed guarantee, and more likely an explicit disavowal of any such guarantee. The speed rating for the service really is just a name, because from what I've heard I'm not even sure it's possible to peak at the actual speed advertised, let alone plateau there. This is for some providers mind you, I'm sure there are small geeky broadband providers who actually give you all the bandwidth they say they give you. But for the mainstream providers, it would be more appropriate to name their services blue, green, etc. to avoid false expectations.
It may be abstract and not quite as apt, but clearly the pipes and the elctrons being served are discrete units that can be measured for each user. So yes, there is a physical object here - it's just not as easy to see as an acre of land.
It's not apt at all, because you're not paying your ISP for the product of electrons. You can tell this is true because if you replaced the entire thing with fiber-optic, then it would be photons and not electrons. Yet you would not care and would not be able to tell the difference. What you're paying your ISP to do is transfer data (notice I say paying them to do - you're buying a service not a product). The fact that they're doing it with electrons is an implementation detail.
Not really. I appreciate the effort, but what I was after was not *some definition* for the terms, which I can find for myself, but which definitions this particular person is using. They may very well be the ones you stated, but then again they may not, since there are multiple definitions for the terms "democracy" and "republic". However, I think we will not hear from him again on this topic.
Have you tried one again since then? Might be worth $5-10 to buy one, plug it in, and see if they've improved in the last five years. I use them several places in my house and haven't had any of the problems you described. No noise, no dimming, quick to turn on, pleasant light, good lifetime.
I wish I could edit your post, because there's already *been* an edit war about the contents of the edit war page (by definition lame) as you can see from the "Meta lameness" section of the linked article.
I doubt music rental will ever be a big market, but movie rental will remain big. This isn't for any technical reason, but just a social one. People expect to buy music, but they are used to renting movies. There are a few people who cycle through their Netflix queue and rip/burn/keep every disc they rent. But as long as this is a small enough group that their postage rates aren't cutting into profits, frankly Netflix (Blockbuster, whoever else is competing with them) doesn't care. They're still getting their money as long as the user pays the subscription fee. And they probably have no legal liability either. So, I would say movie rental has a very healthy future.
I was using the term "market" as it applies to economic models. In this context free goods and services are not properly part of a market.
Of course they're part of a market. Economics recognizes zero-price goods and services (to such an extent that they have the term "zero-price" to distinguish them from "free" which implies zero cost, which is different), and any economic model which fails to account for a large zero-price trade in goods is broken.
If it's already prohibited, why do we need DRM? It's plain to see that DRM does not stop people bypassing it if they wish, and making bypassing such DRM illegal makes no difference whatsoever if the original intent was illegal.
I think it's easier for the **AA to prove you're breaking the law when circumventing DRM is illegal. With only copyright law to rely on, they would have to prove that what you're doing doesn't fall within fair use. With the DMCA in effect, even if your activity is covered by fair use, if you had to bypass DRM to do it, it's illegal anyway.
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Well, sub-optimal, flawed, imperfect perhaps. But I don't think you can really support the stance that they are not ergonomic. Unless you have some other definition of ergonomics than the one I just looked up.
Sweeeeeeeet.
Where can I get in if I'm not sure of the answers to the quiz, but I know a "truck with double tires on the back" is called a dualie?
Moving on from that, you dismissed his assertion that we would evolve to adapt to the lower Martian gravity without any counterargument. Why do you think we would not adapt? Clearly low gravity can have detrimental effects, so it seems at least possible that those who are better adapted to it have a better chance of passing on their genes. Unless you see some way we can change Mars so that it will have Earth gravity. I don't. Now as far as the rest of environment, we would probably adapt it as much as we could - temperature, atmospheric makeup, humidity, soil, etc. But whatever differences remained could possibly exert an evolutionary pressure.
There is no regulation in the US requiring speed governing of automobiles. I am not aware of any other country with any such regulation either. Any car sold in the US with a governor is that way because the manufacturer did it voluntarily. Sometimes this is done to prevent the car from exceeding the OE tires' speed rating.
Then you would be U-Haul, and I don't see them going to jail. Though there is apparently some legal action succeeding against them.
LOVE your sig.
Have you tried one again since then? Might be worth $5-10 to buy one, plug it in, and see if they've improved in the last five years. I use them several places in my house and haven't had any of the problems you described. No noise, no dimming, quick to turn on, pleasant light, good lifetime.
I know, I just couldn't resist being a smart alec. Alek? Aleck?
I wish I could edit your post, because there's already *been* an edit war about the contents of the edit war page (by definition lame) as you can see from the "Meta lameness" section of the linked article.
I doubt music rental will ever be a big market, but movie rental will remain big. This isn't for any technical reason, but just a social one. People expect to buy music, but they are used to renting movies. There are a few people who cycle through their Netflix queue and rip/burn/keep every disc they rent. But as long as this is a small enough group that their postage rates aren't cutting into profits, frankly Netflix (Blockbuster, whoever else is competing with them) doesn't care. They're still getting their money as long as the user pays the subscription fee. And they probably have no legal liability either. So, I would say movie rental has a very healthy future.
You think it's better to establish a dialup connection with just a portion of a program?