They are splitting the current Google Wallet app into two different apps; Android Pay, and the New Google Wallet. Google's blurb on this states that they are splitting it into "two simpler apps", which, while correct for the individual apps, actually makes using the functionality more complicated, because you have to remember which app can do which kinds of transactions. They also have a FAQ that answers all of the questions that their pow-wow thought might be frequently asked (Lets not kid ourselves, we all know that these lists are actually MBFAQs), but they did not include the one I wanted to ask: Why are they doing this?
I think I might have the answer to this, and it is a universal one from Google. As a frequently frustrated user of many other Google services, having asked dozens of questions about why seemingly nonsensical changes have been made to various services, and never having received a reasonable answer for a single one of them, Google's universal answer to the question "Why?" is simply, "Fuck You. That's why."
I have been slowly transferring my data off of other Google services for the last 6 months. I used Google Wallet just today before reading about this new idiocy. I'm probably going to miss this phone swipe ability, but I'm not changing to the new app. I am tired of the Google culture of disposability. There have been too many things that they made, and that I enjoyed, and that they then trashed. What they need to realize is that not offering any explanation for things like this makes me as a customer feel trashed. Bye Google. You finally broke this camel's back.
"The world should take steps to head that off, they argue, by locking up the bioengineered yeast strains and restricting access to the DNA that would let competing drug cartels reproduce them."
They probably already have the ability to get all the information they want/need regardless of encryption. This could just be a way to placate the public when this ridiculous idea is eventually shot down and declared "a victory for privacy". If this was really a thing, it seems likely that we would have heard about it pre-Snowden.
No, it is inherently NOT a "controlled inflation currency". It is by its very nature deflationary, which is not a bad thing, but it is not controlled the way an elastic currency could be if it were managed properly. It is designed to be permanently deflationary. It copes with this negative inflation by being able to be broken into smaller and smaller units as necessary. The inflation rate is determined purely by market demand and nothing else. There are no mechanisms built into Bitcoin for abating inflation.
"According to Hollier, a better way for everyone would be the use of emails to activate and verify users, instead of CAPTCHA"
...but how do they sign up for that email account?
Indeed, they seem to be pissing and moaning about inconvenience without really grasping the problem being solved, as evidenced by this gem:
"With time sensitive things like concerts, this can mean I miss out on the tickets as the transaction times out," Hollier said.
As opposed to everyone missing out as a bot buys all the tickets.
Accepting this idea as valid, can we then conclude that wherever you find the most advanced snakes, you will also find the most advanced people? And also that you will find the least advanced people where you find the fewest snakes?
This would seem to indicate that the superior advancements of people would be most prevalently found in the jungles and rainforests of the world. To avoid political incorrectness, I will just say: Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....
I couldn't figure out what this "visual novel engine" was from the summary so I thought I would RTFA for a change. After doing that I still wasn't clear about what kind of thing you could make with it. I downloaded one of the samples to see what they were talking about. For those of you like me who are out of the loop on this state of the art technology I offer you this 5 word summary: Zork with stills and sound.
How long did it take to make an "engine" to do this anyway? A whole day? two maybe? Lets see, a database with music samples, stills, and text, throw in some trivial branching, done. It seems to me that the only work in the first place was making the creative content, which, with this wonderful technology, is still the only work.
Also, once you know what they are talking about, saying this bit: "Visual Novels CAN be Dating Sim games, Ren'ai games, Bishoujo games but also can be Sci-Fi Blah Blah Blah..." is really moronic. It's like saying, "Did you know that when you buy magazines, they don't all have to be porn! There are also magazines about cars and computers, and hobbies like painting! Did you know that you can actually make a magazine about anything you want!?"
Is the whole point of this Blade engine just to establish some sort of standard? Because the problem it seems to be trying to solve just isn't that tough. I wouldn't pay money for it. Am I off the mark here? What am I not getting?
In many cases it is cheaper to make 1,000 similar crystals on Earth and throw away 999 of them, rather than to fly The Precious One from the orbit. There is no immediate, obvious industrial need in pretty much anything that microgravity offers
In many cases that is true, and why? Because there is no more efficient way to do it. The obvoius industrial need that you are overlooking is called "the competitive edge". If you can produce something cheaper than your rival, you beat him on price and prolong the success of your company. If you prefer to ignore this industrial need as pithy and inconsequential, then please explain to me why billions and billions of dollars are being spent to move manufacturing to China?
The downside to that is that solar energy is all you have. It's not enough for most industrial processes. Aluminum plants are built only where cheap hydro or nuclear energy is available, for example.
Solar energy on the moon is a completely different creature. You can get GOBS of power from it because there is no obstructive atmosphere in your way. Refining, since you went there, would probably be a highly plasma based process, engineered to the circumstances there.
I wonder why it isn't already? A hint: it isn't profitable.
No, what you mean to say is, "It isn't short-term profitable". And that was the point of my post. The big question is, can we collect and deliver energy more efficiently using solar on the moon and satellites than we can in some areas on earth? The answer is a resounding yes. The problem is that it is extremely expensive to get that ball rolling, and the length of time to recover initial costs is not appealing.
Sounds like magic; unfortunately, things are not that simple. If you don't want your microwave beam to circle the... blah blah blah
I was talking about freight, not beams. The beams thing is a simple matter of engineering, which people happen to be quite good at... or hadn't you noticed?
Oceangoing cargo ships are the cheapest transport on the planet. Besides, what lunar cargo do you plan to drop on Earth that is worth dropping and that will survive the drop? Raw materials will do, but they are better used in orbit, not on the surface.
Again, he who can do it cheaper, wins. Survive the drop? Again, engineering to the rescue. To re-use the silicon example, a lunar factory could make the huge silicon slugs, cut each one into numerous 40mm -square- slugs. They could then fire them with disposable glass rocket control systems (fuel made on the moon) in disposable dual-insulated glass shipping containers into earth orbit where satellite control could guide them to their drop destination. The landing pad might be a tank of water 80 meters across and 200 meters deep. The energy expenditure for this process would be miniscule.
Lunar manufacturing will need to come up with some real miracles to be worth of lugging all the way to Earth
Lugging all the way to Earth? Lugging is what happens from China on a barge. Moving cargo from the Moon to Earth would be nearly effortless.
Personally, I believe your real agenda here is about something else entirely. Any time I meet someone who argues a thing with such a complete lack of imagination and such determined pessimism, it is because they don't want to tell their true motive. In fact, your weak arguments make me feel that you actually agree with me, and that you only express your negativity because you are afraid that other people will agree with me as well (which somehow would not bode well for your true motive). So, to wash the bullshit off the table, why don't you just plainly tell us what you would rather see done with the money?
By the way, you wouldn't happen to be an anticapitalist, would you?
If you bother to look past the short term expenses I think you will start to realize how beneficial it would be to establish modes of efficient travel and a permanent presence on terra luna. There are physical characteristics there that make it ideal for a number of different industries, most obviously, an inconsequential atmosphere, and relatively low gravity.
For example, how big and how perfect of a pure silicon crystal could you grow there? And how much energy would it require? The low gravity means that you could make one much bigger (6 times as big? or is there an exponential factor there?). The near-nothing atmosphere means that probably all the energy you would need would be available via solar panels. Energy collection could be a business in itself (you want to stop using hydrocarbons, right?). And what about transport of these goods? What would it cost? How about almost nothing to any location on planet earth? I imagine even small towns would have a designated delivery port where lunar cargo could be dropped with the accuracy of a smart-bomb... cheaper and faster than a cargo ship from China.
Sure, it's incredibly expensive to establish a presence there, but in the long term, it's more expensive not to.
I consider development to be in a cathedral when the primary focus is on getting the software to do x, y, and z features.
I consider development to be a bazaar when the primary focus is on how features x, y, and z can be best implemented.
Based on this, I suggest that Java is more cathedralish than Linux simply because the Java core methodology and implementation rubs too many people the wrong way, yet there is little they can do about it. It is what it is.
I had an apartment at UTD and thought it was cool that I could get free Internet access through the schools wireless. I previously had a setup of three machines that were connected to a wired router and from there to a DSL line. When I moved into the UTD Waterview apartments, I just bought a wireless bridge to plug into the wan side of my router.
The lan side of my router was serving DHCP. I had to plug the bridge into the lan side in order to configure it. Once it was configured, there was an immediate tug of war between the campus dhcp serving 10.x.x.x and my router serving 192.168.x.x.
If I got a 10.x.x.x address, I could use the campus network with my bridge on the inside of my network. My anttenna was apparenlty stronger than the campus antennas at that point, because when I looked at my router's arp table, I saw that I had actually served 200+ campus machines a 192.168.x.x ip address. Since my router had nowhere to route that traffic, I had effectively broken the campus network for a signifigant number of machines.
The reason this happened is that the campus antenna network is pretty weak. So weak in fact that once I had everything set up to play nicely, I realized that My machine was often starving for an IP address or more bandwidth. I ended up ordering Comcast Cable. I actually considered plugging my bridge back into the lan side of my router so people could use my Comcast connection when I wasn't using it.
BTW, the UTD campus Wifi can be a pain to use, because when connecting, you must always use a web browser first. The UTD system intercepts your first web traffic and throws you back a campus wifi login page instead. Once you log in, all types of traffic are allowed. The problem with this is that if the first thing you do is open usenet, or check pop email, etc. It just appears that the connection is down because you have not logged in yet.
I didn't get around to it, but I was going to have a similar scheme where people who connected to my router would be served a page that said, "this is not UTD internet access, it is a private Comcast connection. click Ok to verify that you understand this, or click quit to attempt to get to the UTD network again" I also wanted the page to have a check boxes for "remember me and always accept this alternate connection when available", and another for "remember me, and always reject this alternate connection because I'm not sure I trust it". A record of mac addresses would allow me to do that.
another thing this experience made me realize, is that with my Comcast connection and the campus ssid, I could offer wireless access silently to anyone who was in range, which would allow me to eyeball all of their traffic at leisure.
The required complexity of a "game" to train doctors would tend to make it not fun. I think the same could also be said for games designed to guide many other professionals.
At some point the task that a "game" like this is trying to accomplish makes it no longer a game because it is not really entertaining. It is instead a simulation that the person is using to practice their trade. At that point, calling it a "game" seems like more of a marketing move than anything else.
Of course if you really like what you do, it may still be entertaining for you to practice. For instance, I imagine a military flight combat simulator could be pretty fun, but I still wouldn't call it a game (unless perhaps when you killed an enemy it blew up like Han Solo's final tie kill).
America already has the greatest wealth disparity in the industrialized world
Why is a large disparity a problem? Shouldn't you instead be looking at quality of life of the people on the low end? I ask because you seem to not understand the cause of the disparity, and seem to think that it is a negative thing.
Please notice that the largest income disparity is in the country that is the worlds leading economic powerhouse. By far. That is not just a coincidence, or a misfortunate set of laws. The two things are intrinsicly linked.
The freedom of the markets in the United States is the cause of the income disparity. It is also the cause of the disparity in range and quality of consumable goods, which is also a good thing.
I feel like we will get to the point where everyone carries around a digital speech profile/filter of themselves in all of their electronic devices. It would alter the input (and output?)of speech between the user and the app to account for the user's nuances.
"Trickle Down Economics" is just a catchy phrase, not an economic theory. It was invented to describe what naturally happens if you let the economy go it's own way.
Some will rise above others naturally, and they can leverage their greater wealth to do greater things to the world around them than the lesser achievers. The effect of doing these greater things is that opportunities are created for the entire spectrum of the population.
The opposing idea to this is managed dispersal of wealth by a centralized group. No thank you.
The more we get taxed, the closer we come to that managed dispersal kind of system.
I procrastinate a lot. I think it is just a naturally learned thing because I have never had anything bad happen because of it, so, why not? Right?
One side effect to my procrastination is that I know that it causes me a lot of stress. I think it is just the idea that I have something to do and I can't make myself start doing it yet.
The way I handle this stress is that I end up being extremely creative and motivated to work on one of my side projects. I'm not sure why this is, but I can do some of my best peripheral work on side projects during crunch time for another unrelated thing.
I noticed this first in college. I would always be stirring up new things to and working on old pet projects during testing times. I can't tell you how many times people told me, "aren't you going to study?" but I never needed more than one or two hours of study time before a test to pull out 85% to 95% test scores
The really interesting thing is that I would often make a lot of progress on these other things during testing time, but after taking the test I would be completely unmotivated to continue work on them or think of new things. I sometimes wish there was a pill I could take to make me that motivated whenever I wanted to be.
Slashdot Mirror
They are splitting the current Google Wallet app into two different apps; Android Pay, and the New Google Wallet. Google's blurb on this states that they are splitting it into "two simpler apps", which, while correct for the individual apps, actually makes using the functionality more complicated, because you have to remember which app can do which kinds of transactions. They also have a FAQ that answers all of the questions that their pow-wow thought might be frequently asked (Lets not kid ourselves, we all know that these lists are actually MBFAQs), but they did not include the one I wanted to ask: Why are they doing this?
I think I might have the answer to this, and it is a universal one from Google. As a frequently frustrated user of many other Google services, having asked dozens of questions about why seemingly nonsensical changes have been made to various services, and never having received a reasonable answer for a single one of them, Google's universal answer to the question "Why?" is simply, "Fuck You. That's why."
I have been slowly transferring my data off of other Google services for the last 6 months. I used Google Wallet just today before reading about this new idiocy. I'm probably going to miss this phone swipe ability, but I'm not changing to the new app. I am tired of the Google culture of disposability. There have been too many things that they made, and that I enjoyed, and that they then trashed. What they need to realize is that not offering any explanation for things like this makes me as a customer feel trashed. Bye Google. You finally broke this camel's back.
... and McAfee needs to explain himself?
This will be used by at least one manufacturer to implement gradual device failure shortly after warranty.
Shouldn't it have said:
"The world should take steps to head that off, they argue, by locking up the bioengineered yeast strains and restricting access to the DNA that would let competing drug cartels reproduce them."
They probably already have the ability to get all the information they want/need regardless of encryption. This could just be a way to placate the public when this ridiculous idea is eventually shot down and declared "a victory for privacy". If this was really a thing, it seems likely that we would have heard about it pre-Snowden.
Just exploring the possibilities.
Anyone who has not been categorized as an extremist by now should be ashamed of their "fainting goat" status.
No, it is inherently NOT a "controlled inflation currency". It is by its very nature deflationary, which is not a bad thing, but it is not controlled the way an elastic currency could be if it were managed properly. It is designed to be permanently deflationary. It copes with this negative inflation by being able to be broken into smaller and smaller units as necessary. The inflation rate is determined purely by market demand and nothing else. There are no mechanisms built into Bitcoin for abating inflation.
Well they did give an alternative...
...but how do they sign up for that email account?
"According to Hollier, a better way for everyone would be the use of emails to activate and verify users, instead of CAPTCHA"
Indeed, they seem to be pissing and moaning about inconvenience without really grasping the problem being solved, as evidenced by this gem:
"With time sensitive things like concerts, this can mean I miss out on the tickets as the transaction times out," Hollier said.
As opposed to everyone missing out as a bot buys all the tickets.
Branching from an idea from over a decade ago. http://tech.mit.edu/V121/N63/Stealth.63f.html
Accepting this idea as valid, can we then conclude that wherever you find the most advanced snakes, you will also find the most advanced people? And also that you will find the least advanced people where you find the fewest snakes?
This would seem to indicate that the superior advancements of people would be most prevalently found in the jungles and rainforests of the world. To avoid political incorrectness, I will just say: Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....
I couldn't figure out what this "visual novel engine" was from the summary so I thought I would RTFA for a change. After doing that I still wasn't clear about what kind of thing you could make with it. I downloaded one of the samples to see what they were talking about. For those of you like me who are out of the loop on this state of the art technology I offer you this 5 word summary: Zork with stills and sound.
How long did it take to make an "engine" to do this anyway? A whole day? two maybe? Lets see, a database with music samples, stills, and text, throw in some trivial branching, done. It seems to me that the only work in the first place was making the creative content, which, with this wonderful technology, is still the only work.
Also, once you know what they are talking about, saying this bit: "Visual Novels CAN be Dating Sim games, Ren'ai games, Bishoujo games but also can be Sci-Fi Blah Blah Blah..." is really moronic. It's like saying, "Did you know that when you buy magazines, they don't all have to be porn! There are also magazines about cars and computers, and hobbies like painting! Did you know that you can actually make a magazine about anything you want!?"
Is the whole point of this Blade engine just to establish some sort of standard? Because the problem it seems to be trying to solve just isn't that tough. I wouldn't pay money for it. Am I off the mark here? What am I not getting?
We join the collective, of course.
In many cases it is cheaper to make 1,000 similar crystals on Earth and throw away 999 of them, rather than to fly The Precious One from the orbit. There is no immediate, obvious industrial need in pretty much anything that microgravity offers
In many cases that is true, and why? Because there is no more efficient way to do it. The obvoius industrial need that you are overlooking is called "the competitive edge". If you can produce something cheaper than your rival, you beat him on price and prolong the success of your company. If you prefer to ignore this industrial need as pithy and inconsequential, then please explain to me why billions and billions of dollars are being spent to move manufacturing to China?
The downside to that is that solar energy is all you have. It's not enough for most industrial processes. Aluminum plants are built only where cheap hydro or nuclear energy is available, for example.
Solar energy on the moon is a completely different creature. You can get GOBS of power from it because there is no obstructive atmosphere in your way. Refining, since you went there, would probably be a highly plasma based process, engineered to the circumstances there.
I wonder why it isn't already? A hint: it isn't profitable.
No, what you mean to say is, "It isn't short-term profitable". And that was the point of my post. The big question is, can we collect and deliver energy more efficiently using solar on the moon and satellites than we can in some areas on earth? The answer is a resounding yes. The problem is that it is extremely expensive to get that ball rolling, and the length of time to recover initial costs is not appealing.
Sounds like magic; unfortunately, things are not that simple. If you don't want your microwave beam to circle the... blah blah blah
I was talking about freight, not beams. The beams thing is a simple matter of engineering, which people happen to be quite good at... or hadn't you noticed?
Oceangoing cargo ships are the cheapest transport on the planet. Besides, what lunar cargo do you plan to drop on Earth that is worth dropping and that will survive the drop? Raw materials will do, but they are better used in orbit, not on the surface.
Again, he who can do it cheaper, wins. Survive the drop? Again, engineering to the rescue. To re-use the silicon example, a lunar factory could make the huge silicon slugs, cut each one into numerous 40mm -square- slugs. They could then fire them with disposable glass rocket control systems (fuel made on the moon) in disposable dual-insulated glass shipping containers into earth orbit where satellite control could guide them to their drop destination. The landing pad might be a tank of water 80 meters across and 200 meters deep. The energy expenditure for this process would be miniscule.
Lunar manufacturing will need to come up with some real miracles to be worth of lugging all the way to Earth
Lugging all the way to Earth? Lugging is what happens from China on a barge. Moving cargo from the Moon to Earth would be nearly effortless.
Personally, I believe your real agenda here is about something else entirely. Any time I meet someone who argues a thing with such a complete lack of imagination and such determined pessimism, it is because they don't want to tell their true motive. In fact, your weak arguments make me feel that you actually agree with me, and that you only express your negativity because you are afraid that other people will agree with me as well (which somehow would not bode well for your true motive). So, to wash the bullshit off the table, why don't you just plainly tell us what you would rather see done with the money?
By the way, you wouldn't happen to be an anticapitalist, would you?
and if their new products suck, it might lead to MAD I.T.
If you bother to look past the short term expenses I think you will start to realize how beneficial it would be to establish modes of efficient travel and a permanent presence on terra luna. There are physical characteristics there that make it ideal for a number of different industries, most obviously, an inconsequential atmosphere, and relatively low gravity.
For example, how big and how perfect of a pure silicon crystal could you grow there? And how much energy would it require? The low gravity means that you could make one much bigger (6 times as big? or is there an exponential factor there?). The near-nothing atmosphere means that probably all the energy you would need would be available via solar panels. Energy collection could be a business in itself (you want to stop using hydrocarbons, right?). And what about transport of these goods? What would it cost? How about almost nothing to any location on planet earth? I imagine even small towns would have a designated delivery port where lunar cargo could be dropped with the accuracy of a smart-bomb... cheaper and faster than a cargo ship from China.
Sure, it's incredibly expensive to establish a presence there, but in the long term, it's more expensive not to.
Look here for the answer:e -ORTC.pdf
http://www.itrs.net/Common/2005ITRS/Litho2005.pdf
http://public.itrs.net/Files/2002Update/2002Updat
well to me anyway...
I consider development to be in a cathedral when the primary focus is on getting the software to do x, y, and z features.
I consider development to be a bazaar when the primary focus is on how features x, y, and z can be best implemented.
Based on this, I suggest that Java is more cathedralish than Linux simply because the Java core methodology and implementation rubs too many people the wrong way, yet there is little they can do about it. It is what it is.
I had an apartment at UTD and thought it was cool that I could get free Internet access through the schools wireless. I previously had a setup of three machines that were connected to a wired router and from there to a DSL line. When I moved into the UTD Waterview apartments, I just bought a wireless bridge to plug into the wan side of my router.
The lan side of my router was serving DHCP. I had to plug the bridge into the lan side in order to configure it. Once it was configured, there was an immediate tug of war between the campus dhcp serving 10.x.x.x and my router serving 192.168.x.x.
If I got a 10.x.x.x address, I could use the campus network with my bridge on the inside of my network. My anttenna was apparenlty stronger than the campus antennas at that point, because when I looked at my router's arp table, I saw that I had actually served 200+ campus machines a 192.168.x.x ip address. Since my router had nowhere to route that traffic, I had effectively broken the campus network for a signifigant number of machines.
The reason this happened is that the campus antenna network is pretty weak. So weak in fact that once I had everything set up to play nicely, I realized that My machine was often starving for an IP address or more bandwidth. I ended up ordering Comcast Cable. I actually considered plugging my bridge back into the lan side of my router so people could use my Comcast connection when I wasn't using it.
BTW, the UTD campus Wifi can be a pain to use, because when connecting, you must always use a web browser first. The UTD system intercepts your first web traffic and throws you back a campus wifi login page instead. Once you log in, all types of traffic are allowed. The problem with this is that if the first thing you do is open usenet, or check pop email, etc. It just appears that the connection is down because you have not logged in yet.
I didn't get around to it, but I was going to have a similar scheme where people who connected to my router would be served a page that said, "this is not UTD internet access, it is a private Comcast connection. click Ok to verify that you understand this, or click quit to attempt to get to the UTD network again" I also wanted the page to have a check boxes for "remember me and always accept this alternate connection when available", and another for "remember me, and always reject this alternate connection because I'm not sure I trust it". A record of mac addresses would allow me to do that.
another thing this experience made me realize, is that with my Comcast connection and the campus ssid, I could offer wireless access silently to anyone who was in range, which would allow me to eyeball all of their traffic at leisure.
The required complexity of a "game" to train doctors would tend to make it not fun. I think the same could also be said for games designed to guide many other professionals.
At some point the task that a "game" like this is trying to accomplish makes it no longer a game because it is not really entertaining. It is instead a simulation that the person is using to practice their trade. At that point, calling it a "game" seems like more of a marketing move than anything else.
Of course if you really like what you do, it may still be entertaining for you to practice. For instance, I imagine a military flight combat simulator could be pretty fun, but I still wouldn't call it a game (unless perhaps when you killed an enemy it blew up like Han Solo's final tie kill).
I think I would probably loop "Mars Attacks" on them when my mother in law was over.
America already has the greatest wealth disparity in the industrialized world
Why is a large disparity a problem? Shouldn't you instead be looking at quality of life of the people on the low end? I ask because you seem to not understand the cause of the disparity, and seem to think that it is a negative thing.
Please notice that the largest income disparity is in the country that is the worlds leading economic powerhouse. By far. That is not just a coincidence, or a misfortunate set of laws. The two things are intrinsicly linked.
The freedom of the markets in the United States is the cause of the income disparity. It is also the cause of the disparity in range and quality of consumable goods, which is also a good thing.
I feel like we will get to the point where everyone carries around a digital speech profile/filter of themselves in all of their electronic devices. It would alter the input (and output?)of speech between the user and the app to account for the user's nuances.
"Trickle Down Economics" is just a catchy phrase, not an economic theory. It was invented to describe what naturally happens if you let the economy go it's own way.
Some will rise above others naturally, and they can leverage their greater wealth to do greater things to the world around them than the lesser achievers. The effect of doing these greater things is that opportunities are created for the entire spectrum of the population.
The opposing idea to this is managed dispersal of wealth by a centralized group. No thank you.
The more we get taxed, the closer we come to that managed dispersal kind of system.
I procrastinate a lot. I think it is just a naturally learned thing because I have never had anything bad happen because of it, so, why not? Right?
One side effect to my procrastination is that I know that it causes me a lot of stress. I think it is just the idea that I have something to do and I can't make myself start doing it yet.
The way I handle this stress is that I end up being extremely creative and motivated to work on one of my side projects. I'm not sure why this is, but I can do some of my best peripheral work on side projects during crunch time for another unrelated thing.
I noticed this first in college. I would always be stirring up new things to and working on old pet projects during testing times. I can't tell you how many times people told me, "aren't you going to study?" but I never needed more than one or two hours of study time before a test to pull out 85% to 95% test scores
The really interesting thing is that I would often make a lot of progress on these other things during testing time, but after taking the test I would be completely unmotivated to continue work on them or think of new things. I sometimes wish there was a pill I could take to make me that motivated whenever I wanted to be.
"There does not seem to be any way to gracefully undo such errors"
They wouldn't have to be gracefully undone, if there was a simple check to gracefully prevent them from being made.