No, a filesystem is actually complicated for many people. The metaphor is rock solid-- but haven't you known people who can't even manage their few real-world filing cabinets? If they can't handle the real world one, they are going to have trouble with the metaphorical one in the computer with relatively unlimited space.
iTunes started out less complicated. I don't know about iTunes leaking RAM on windows but it does include all the mac frameworks which make it take up more RAM. It's built-in browser can expand RAM use significantly, but it's not like they could have used Windows browser library... with IE being so broken. It's still a classic monolithic app (like most are) and doesn't learn from the unix it is designed to run upon.
Part of the problem is that they know there are millions of users who can't learn so they've shoehorned everything into their 1 app --- just like Flash had to do because getting people to use another plugin/app is a huge huge barrier, even if it works exactly the same-- getting it installed is the primary problem.
Personally, I've been looking for replacements since they started to bloat it up. I've not found any yet. Nothing compares so far. WinAmp doesn't either (plus I wouldn't go to anything that doesn't have a linux port.)
What was that expression?? oh yeah, "It isn't rocket science" which is used to convey that everything is relatively easy compared to rocket science.
It's not an iPhone... even the iPhone is an example of the pinnacle of human manufacturing (note the use of "an" not "the.) A mass produced wireless super computer that fits in a pocket and understands the spoken word better than a congressman.
I think iTunes was an extremely well designed program. Since around version 10 or 11 it has gone backwards significantly. It is pretty good for what is a essentially a database front end with tons of records... and then it added a customized web browser... and other junk.
As far as making it hard to delete something; it isn't that hard and it shouldn't be too easy because you don't want accidental deletions... think of all the computer illiterate people out there.
Somebody at Apple needs to be fired... perhaps he was? Mr. Pseudomorph is gone so maybe iTunes 12 will undo the damage?? Also, somebody at Mozilla also needs to be fired as well-- or we just need to know which person is to blame so we can start an internet rumor about him being anti-gay so he can at least get fired...aka "resign."
4. Winter is turning to spring in the SOUTHERN hemisphere (where Antarctica is) 5. 2D surface measurements over a short period of time, over ocean, not land. Land you can possibly find evidence, while the sea washes it away. 6. Sea ice melts quicker and is not as thick as the land ice (which is a problem if it goes into the sea.)
Fleas on a dog arguing how much the land goes up and down as the dog breaths: Short sighted flea: It's just the same natural cycle we've always seen. Wise flea: There is a long term trend, the dog is getting fatter - if this continues it'll increase space but shorten the life of our home.
People openly TELL corps like facebook in less time more than an agent could get spying on them. You can fool some of the people ALL THE TIME! You only need to appease and distract a majority, they won't care about small groups unless they get a ton of positive media attention.
Monitoring all your technology data is passive and unobtrusive but when people just volunteer everything without any thought... growing up tweeting their every shallow vapid thought... to gain some kind of validation; as if they didn't have a family life or peers or community for that... (the technology tends to make what they do have further away, not closer... plus it makes all the interactions easily recordable.)
Companies actually engineer FOOD so it loses taste quicker because you are not eating it fast enough! I'm NOT kidding! It's to the point where experts actually have to tell the public to CHEW YOUR FOOD for your own health! Not to mention all the addiction related things they do on purpose-- causing people the most exposed to have weight problems. Eventually, they'll figure out how to get those thin people too...(or create exercise freaks; not that thin people are healthy, they overeat bad food too.)
People openly TELL corps like facebook in less time more than an agent could get spying on them. You can fool some of the people ALL THE TIME! You only need to appease and distract a majority, they won't care about small groups unless they get a ton of positive media attention.
Monitoring all you technology data is passive and unobtrusive but when people just volunteer everything without any thought... growing up tweeting their every shallow vapid thought... to gain some kind of validation; as if they didn't have a family life or community for that (and it would seem many don't! an the technology tends to make what they do have further away, not closer.)
Companies actually engineer FOOD so it loses taste quicker because you are not eating it fast enough! I'm NOT kidding! It's to the point where experts actually have to tell the public to CHEW YOUR FOOD for your own health! Not to mention all the addiction related things they do on purpose-- causing people the most exposed to have weight problems. Eventually, they'll figure out how to get those thin people too...(or create exercise freaks; not that thin people are healthy, they overeat bad food too.)
Perhaps when the robots kill most jobs that will be the solution! The marketing economy -- for eating and weight loss! robots can't do that for us; just everything else.... until they master marketing... then all we are is PETS to the system of machines. Eat and crap while the "master" can take care of us (and train us using marketing) to gain some bit of purpose. Sorry, pet owners.
Everything seems to be way too complex just to provide sugar to our bacterial majority living in our gut. Wouldn't that be funny, we evolved by random chance for the sole purpose of housing our bacteria; who are the actual god favored lifeforms?
I read it multiple times in fact; it has the depth of thought that one simply can't grasp it all in one reading... well some people might. Having teens or even college students read it is NOT the right time, they are not ready to grasp it. It needs to be read later after some growing up and experience with humanity, plus some understanding of history. After reading Brave New World, again. These intellectual books of influence should have historical context - realizing the connections between Brave New World and 1984 changes perspective; it's an indirect rebuttal and while imaginative it's not on the level of BNW.
Animal Farm is great as well, but somehow the use of animals make people think it's a children's book and cartoon; oddly, adults who should realize animals are merely a device, make this mistake. This one is shown at an even younger age where it makes even less sense. It's hard for some adults to grasp the book; I've heard supposedly educated experts totally screw up on their comprehension of the book (on TV-- which as we know prefers entertaining frauds over competence, so that isn't saying much...)
Both books accurately reflect human nature and if they didn't model reality so well, they wouldn't be so compelling. Also, good ART "rhymes" like history does. It is vague enough to be interpreted and personalized but true enough in abstraction to convey something real (and hopefully meaningful.) Both realistically cover the brutal dark sides of human reality in politics but are different situations.
Old person explains something new to THEM or something THEIR peers are ignorant of but every younger person is aware of.... not news.
1984 wasn't about technology, it was about authoritarianism taken to the next level using primarily negative feedback. A realistic response (because history shows negative feedback is totally dominant) to the highly praised imaginative Brave New World which used positive feedback to control populations. It's a rebuttal based on historic human behavior. Both books need to be studied because techniques from both camps are used to control populations. Soft sciences make it more effective and technology is merely a tool.
When somebody has an epiphany; that is great, humor them for catching up. Then try to guide them to the next step and let them have another one. Technology isn't 1984; we have always been there as humans. Few societies are organized so well using the latest social science as 1984 did. It just allows things to go further and the technology allows for more micromanagement-- which is the holy grail for authoritarian systems... the end game solution. Oh, 1948 was the date of the book; 1984 is meaningless, just a future date taken from 1948 but close enough for people at the time to THINK about it.
The micromanagement technology is arguably is required for an end game solution like 1984 because it's been tried thru out human history but eventually it fails because they can't control all the people all the time-- 1984 is the end game solution, where they finally can. Nothing is different except that it's permanent an unable to be stopped. No revolutions. Likely, there are no other nations to invade or conquer either (likely just a smokescreen.)
Terrorists like the founders of the USA would be caught early. No revolutions. Violent human struggles on the group level would end. ORDER is one of the top priorities of authoritarians. can't allow unrest. can't even allow protests -- you need a permit or it's disorderly --- we accept that despite it being in the 1st next to speech; we don't quite accept speech zones or permits for free speech... but we are not that far from it.
The ideal group work maybe has people learn better.
I've never had a group project in my life where we all learned that well. Usually, a few of us did most or all the work and even when a functional group did happen, the work was distributed so each person had a part of the whole picture and was missing out on the other parts. It only works if people share and want to learn--- when the group finishes the task, hardly anybody is interested in picking up on what parts they were not exposed to. Perhaps one could facilitate the ideal conditions but that is never done and I'd not be surprised if we had little on how to properly facilitate the desired outcome (and I'm not talking policy solutions which is all people ever discuss, having students rank each other etc are policy BS that is extremely limited.) For example, an alternative approach could be to have a series of group assignments which force rotate their roles; or even better... you have them rank each other or you rank them... then next step you purposely put all the weak ones in the worst positions and grade them as a whole... that would force them to help each other!
I wonder how they study the benefits of group work because the studies seem to always back up the theory. If you measure it wrong you'll end up with the same results and it's entirely possible the common techniques used produce biased results until the day somebody proves they have better techniques to study such things... Before that happens, most people will continue to adhere to the conventions they learned in school and even religiously stick to them even after they begin to be dis-proven.
I'm skeptical group work is so great; also, previous experience tells me that even a valid result gets overly generalized and over applied. It's like telling somebody to reboot their computer when they have a problem so then every time their ISP goes down they reboot their computer until the internet works again. I had a client who called me every time (for years) their ISP was down because their website didn't work! I'd have to prove it each time by having Microsoft.com not work either. ("oh, well if microsoft doesn't work either it must be a big problem..." heard that a few times too!) Now imagine having somebody that thick headed in a group project...
The last group study I read was teaching programming. Showing that pairs of students do better. not 1, 3,4,5 but 2 people did best. I didn't feel confident in the results because I wasn't given any idea what they tested them on. Depends on the kind of work and the kind of metric used if working in pairs helped or not. If the test involved nearly the same kind of thing as the assignment then the poor student could just recall and BS their way to a better score from being exposed to the solution, without a greater understanding... it's understanding that is the goal. (or was trends seem to be in the other direction. thinking must be too dangerous.)
Your education SUCKS if you can't tell the difference between an online course and a classroom course. think about that. Also if your high school is offering college, it means your high school sucks and so does the freshman portion of a college education. I remember taking AP and testing out; I took the course anyway-- AP really is a scam... if you don't get it, then your unaware or your education sucked.
All the sickos just becoming aware of these services because of the media attention are now going to have to go to another state.
I went from the south up to Disney once and I never noticed a car pool lane; I also could see why people would want to use their phones too... so much time is spent going nowhere during rush hour.
The objection is this is NOT car pooling because money is changing hands. This is really no different than the FAA rules about pilots, you can't take money for people rides in your plane and you can't even give people free rides in your plane if your only purpose is to transport them. You can take people along for the ride and that is it. As soon as you go out of the legal bounds you end up into the regulated commercial sector which doesn't want you hobby pilots messing with their jobs.
I object to GPS or MP3 while driving because what the apps are is not that important, people can't multitask and those apps also are a serious problem.
In my state, they regulate GPS apps so they can't have a distracting interface-- only then is GPS allowed and the cell phone ban applies to ANY TECH that is distracting. The exceptions require a law, like the GPS regulation.
MP3 and car stereos might be better now, but last time I looked into a car stereo (back when mp3 was new) I couldn't find a single car stereo that wasn't an example of horrible GUI... and they all were graphical with unlabeled buttons around the border (micro print does not count.)
Touch screen madness is everywhere today. That is distracting stuff; I want physical knobs and buttons back because they are provably superior under driving conditions. Oh, and animated diagrams prove these "UX" people are full of shit; if you understand interface design at all, you should be aware of the situation the thing is used. Nothing should move when driving except the child running out into the street you catch in the corner of your eye because your brains recognition system is BASED AROUND MOTION. no gps, app, billboard, TV should be in the peripheral.
Hopefully these laws restrict themselves to the DRIVER. Not that far from now the driver will be a computer and that day can't come soon enough for me. If you have to use apps and drive, learn to car pool and hand off your phone.
A bus holds so many people that their waste is undone by the fleet of cars they replace. You would do better to digitize management of the bus system where the routes differ on demand and add call boxes at bus stops etc. Ideas like that, including robot bus drivers. That would save more than replacing them. One could do something similar for taxi... but just look how the beginnings of that are turning out... can't wait to see the fight the robot google taxi causes...
How about automated trains where the robo taxi syncs up for going longer distances? lots of options possible. If you chuck public road funding completely you have a TON of money to invest in just about any kind of system; likely all of them are cheaper than what we do now in the USA. Just think of the insurance... oh, never mind, insurance will lobby away any possibilities.
If congress wasn't so corrupt, we could have had the USPS go electric in a big way and jump start the industry. City delivery is a perfect place for electric; more so than a bus-- especially when most stop every 30 feet and never go faster than 40mph peak.
Nuclear has emissions, of a different kind. + a disaster every decade. Fusion... is always 5 years away. More work on storage is needed.
Tax complainers are largely a bunch of selfish, ignorant, complaining jerks with character disorders. (some or all of those.)
I've had a millionaire bitch to me how taxes were "killing him" as he picked up the tab for lunch and just after how he was talking about the PAIN of owning 5 (FIVE) houses, one in Hawaii. I pay more taxes than he ever did and that % I pay is felt by me more than the lower % is felt by him! If you are wondering, educating these people is impossible; the behavior is a symptom of psychological problems so fixing an issue of ignorance or whatever just manifests as something else until they get their broken minds fixed. Sadly, my experience is that them having money makes them more mentally healthy and better than normal people; so they are far less likely to ever seek help or take advice. (If you luck your way into money, then you are less likely to think that way; it's a matter of perspective. Entitled superiority vs lucky joe )
Environmental taxes are not a significant problem. Way more tax money is spent on other things we don't need. In the USA, we don't have hardly any environmental taxes. I'm going to assume the poster is thinking of regulations as opposed to taxes but not address that BS to keep the post short.
The LACK of sane environmental policy is indirectly costing me FAR more than the taxes-- in MONEY. Non-monetary things matter too and should be a factor over just numbers. I WANT more environmental taxes!!
My insurance rates are HIGHER and despite shifting companies, the rate of increase is higher than decades ago; business owning friends have had it much worse.
The energy commodity trading market is a sham (Enron like) and adds MORE to the price of gas than gas taxes do; under the guise of stabilizing the market when at least in modern times it has not done so.
You are not being taxed "the hell out of" if you live in the USA. Look at all the other 1st world nations (which might not be fair since the USA arguably is no longer 1st world but in transition backwards with the majority of factors already there... not that all such metrics are equal which is why I'm not concluding it myself at this time.)
My science teacher had similar comments; however, he was really careful with the stuff. It can cause a lot of problems, it's deceptively dangerous it is not like a poison. Different people have different thresholds, plus you also have younger generations growing up with higher exposure rates for their whole lifespan which makes them less tolerant. Handling it with your hands is one thing, eating it is another. In a powder or gas it's bad stuff --- which is why procedures are over protective, if you spill a liquid they act as if you atomized it into the air because legal policies are designed to fight future lawsuits-- they go to stupid extremes to make extra sure that employee who sucked on thermometers doesn't blame them for his problems simply because they had him near the stuff on the job. We need those laws that allow people to sue evil employers, but the result is over protection and greedy people who abuse the system (who are not much different than the greedy employers who started the mess.)
Also keep in mind, you didn't play with mercury as your job-- it was just an amusing thing you did for a short period until it was no longer amusing.
Personally, I've noticed the warnings about eating fish caught locally get worse every few years from when I was a kid fishing with my father. A smaller lake can be ruled off limits if contaminated and it takes an amazingly small amount to ruin a lake... you'd think some ex-spouse would think of devaluing a house/cabin by destroying a lake... Thank goodness it hasn't... there's another thing for insurance to jack you on...
His personal political views are separate from his work. Yes, even if they influence his work they are a separate matter. He may agree with the people he cites but putting their words in doesn't make his history work invalid. He doesn't lie or do the history wrong or even mislead but he does use the facts he chooses to collectively push central themes which are aligned to his opinions. That is no different than anybody else except that he is far more open about it; he doesn't hide it. People who disagree grasp at things to attack him; but the proper counter is to use history. His history is not invalid; now his opinions can be argued on that point but he is not sneaky like traditional history is under it's guise of being neutral or the modern technique of giving too much to weak positions (much like how the media gives equal time to crackpots under the guise of being fair.)
As far as omitting things-- that is a classic fallacy attack that is really hard to make actually stick. Anybody can be attacked for omission. I don't begrudge him for skipping things that are widely known or overly complicating matters-- which one can so easily do. At some point you have to edit for the space allotted. As far as big controversial matters, given how different most history is; I don't think he needs to waste space addressing things that are bound to be yelled about, discussed, or thought about critically.
What would be nice is a split textbook which mixes traditional along with Zinn. I don't think much would get left out (again, as an overview for a non historian, you can't cover everything.) Besides, we are talking school... students have an attention span less than a goldfish and zero interest in the past (unless it's TV reruns) everything has to be summarized. Now if Zinn can get people to think at all or get motivated in anyway-- that is GREAT. Besides, most people tend to get conservative with age so it's not going to turn society into Marxists or whatever.
As far as "I lived in" crap, I don't care. Doesn't make you an expert. Just because you saw things that are worse doesn't mean I'm wrong. It's not black and white. Politically, I'm outside the whole mainstream in the USA. The USA mainstream ranges from mild to strong authoritarian and I'm medium Anarchist, in absolute terms on the freedom scale. Economically, I'm not in the Anarchist half of the scale but the mainstream is. I do know what I'm talking about; I've dabbled quite a bit in both PoliSci and Anthropology, but I'm not an expert, just well read (and it's academic stuff not infotainment. I also never owned a TV.)
When you sue for damages you are in CIVIL COURT. That is a different system, you can't do jail time and about all you can do is deal with money.
Stealing is a criminal offense; you'd have to find a criminal law on the books you could get them for doing this. I hear that racketeering criminal law was somewhat broad...
As far as the amount of $$ as a civil case one shouldn't be able to sue as punishment but only for damages (which they seem to extend to the limit with mental harm etc.) This big corps always seem to get the money knocked down on some sort of grounds of the harm caused wasn't as big as the $ amount or just bribing judges like the supreme court did with the exon spill.
I read Zinn's book on my own; my schools never mentioned anything remotely like it.
I have no objections to Zinn's book. It's not dry history and seems more like modern anthropology vs old anthropology. The academic criticisms sound similar. He uses actual people's words instead of feeling he has to censor them by just describing their actions on a timeline. You can't avoid being called propagandist if you put in the words of historically influential people! If you put in the opposition you are likely to still be criticized because the losers are likely to be less convincing (historically, they did lose after all.) It is a stark contrast to old dry history which has considerable bias of it's own. I don't know why people think pop history or official history as completely neutral. It NEVER has been. Zinn is no worse than the other historians; arguably, he is above average. Given his purpose was to compensate for existing bias he obviously went bias in another direction; rather than repeat what was already done or widely known. Zinn's work is supplemental as a result. I'm not for it being used alone.
PROPER history will give you some of Hitler's speeches, his words and his propaganda. Not a bunch of battle crap and events! Which is what we get. The holocaust is a rare exception in history education in that they don't just tell you a sterile summation - they are more like Zinn. You don't learn anything worthwhile from Nazi history (in school) except the more Zinn like coverage of the holocaust. We don't learn why the Nazi rose to power why they were were good at destroying democracy how that tiny goofy looking man convinced a relatively highly educated modern democracy to become what it did. An easily forgotten and never understood summary of events is all we got (that is, you couldn't understand with what was presented.) You don't LEARN anything, you get FACTS. It's only by LEARNING; that is by gaining an understanding, that you can stop from repeating past mistakes because history never repeats but is does rhyme. Nazi history is extremely biased (we won) but it should include some of their stuff and one wouldn't need to worry much because it's so vilified already. Also given how anti communist we are here you think we'd get SOMETHING but we have zero coverage; it's pure propaganda.
Zinn isn't invalid. It's a different style but it is not false. I want to know what/how/why, not just the institutional log book. A great many changes in society are bottom up; often by a minority group (like the revolutionary war.) Revolutionary war history is pretty good and more Zinn like in how it was covered; it is inspiring stuff as it should be, one should "get it" and if it was handled like other topics in history it would be considerably different. I remember what I had in school for it, I knew more at the time so I could see as a teen how it was censored and sterilized despite it being more Zinn like. It also had a great amount of "bias" from the founders own words, it also didn't present the British side at all. Like Ben Franklin's speech which ended the constitutional convention was censored in the textbook; they didn't mention Franklin's son was jailed as a traitor or why his son was a loyalist (along with a large portion of the population or that it was a small group that got the whole thing going etc.)
Zinn dispels the authoritarian bias in our history; which also rubs people the wrong way, the US is after all, quite an authoritarian society (if you don't like that tough, perhaps you should unload that word and accept it's real meaning.)
Don't act like members of the human race! humans suck. Sound ridiculous? It kind of is. But it's not much worse than telling men to not be aggressive and violent against their natural inclinations. That doesn't work so well either, but we try... we don't evolve because we won't allow evolutionary pressures, artificial or natural.
Humans evolved to be petty tribal creatures living in small tribes. We are not evolving anymore and situations like our current global economics don't create evolutionary pressures -- at least not positive ones... If you are a smart ape you can do the majority of jobs in the world; that is, until robotics takes over (which is capable already and the transition is only beginning.) We are not competing for the best as much as we are competing for the most desperate. Manufacturing robotics won in the USA decades ago that is why worse-than-slave labor in the 3rd world was used-- because those desperate humans can still beat the robotics... until today. Now we shall see the transition as the desperate 3rd world people lose the last hold out position humans had against the robots (in manufacturing.) This isn't a new situation; technology transitions created similar situations in history.
Human nature is tribal. Tons of science to back that up. People are all Little Eichmanns as proven in countless studies of various situations, where tribalism is at the root of some of them. It doesn't take hardly anything to abstract consequences for one's actions which makes it so easy to do evil. If people would just seriously study and learn about the nature of EVIL they would avoid systems which promote it. You'd think religious types would actually learn about the "devil" and thereby learn something useful... even if it's fictional, it's metaphorical for emergent behaviors in humans.
Belief aside, we don't study to avoid situations that promote bad things - in large part because we falsely believe (without evidence) that people are responsible for such things; instead of realizing the environment is a much much larger factor. Naturally, in a society that prides itself on individualization they are going to be the most blind to the truth. (I live in the USA, which is so ironically conformist.)
You don't think about or really care about sweat shops making your clothes - it's too far removed and those people suffering are not in your tribe... if they were, you couldn't ignore the problem so easily (it's not exactly tribal based; however, if you felt more connected to those people you'd not ignore it as easily.) You steal tiny things from your employer, that is normal-- not even thought of as stealing. pencil etc. It's not a big deal; plenty of studies on that. Well, when you save $5 on some clothing your stealing from others in a similar "harmless" situation. Besides, just look at how sales motivate people - now undo the sale and increase prices -- that is what fair trade does; relying on the consumer's to police everything with their $$$ is beyond crazy and all the science backs that up. Shopping is all about the experience; you pay for that gratification and a few minutes when you unpack it at home, then it's all gone and you have to shop more to get that experience again... which has to have roots in hunting/gathering behavior. Most ads are about the experience; making you shop and only a minority are getting you to switch brands (that is right out of modern advertizing 101.) Anyhow-- the point is, all that increasingly advanced psychology is to get you lost in the shopping experience which goes a long way in masking any minor considerations like fair trade. A 10% off coupon works really well-- now if you have Chinese vs US products and you don't need a coupon... Hopefully my rambling is making some connection; there are many aspects to outcome.
Globalization is NOT a good thing and we have to stop portraying it as such. Now don't go to extremes and think we should have none of it; but like most things it has a range of options. We are too extreme on 1 side
The powerful (winners) have been writing the mainstream history for a long time. In addition history is hardly even taught anymore; and the bit that is has been done poorly. They take great people like MLK and turn them into a phrase and an icon while it seems to be purposely removing the aspects that made them truly great. Summation is necessary, but it has been harmful either by accident or by intent - the academics seem to do a better job so one wonders how that gets lost on the mainstream education of the topics.
My public history education was quite poor. The only good aspect is we didn't have to memorize and recall dates; but we didn't do hardly any reading. Reading is the primary method (and best) for learning history... and any reading assignments are hacked around by technology for the simple homework (the homework/exam being the only modern means to force reading, it has been circumvented-- it's weaker than a 4 digit password.)
That made my day. Somebody else sees it permeating society too!
I often wonder if our authoritarian society fosters these kinds of mental coasting, a mental laziness which is habitual because of the nature of the society to allow one to run on autopilot for so many aspects of like. Technology being a big factor as well; however, more chaotic natural settings makes one routinely have to think about little things all the time which also do not fit a clear repetitive pattern. (The nature of modern jobs has to also has to be a factor. )
The attitudes regarding responsibility is another factor; you don't have to be concerned if you just delegate thinking to something else.
I know some people in academic research; retired and current. The system is fucked up; to use the expression of the youngest one.
In pursuit of "perfection" we have so much worrying about oversight to prevent waste and corruption that was already lower than everywhere else that we continually clamp down and harm the system more every "reform." This extends into the publishing system which also has a "gold stars" approach where it's all about quantity and not quality. A big earth shattering research paper is foolish; you milk it for dozens of lesser papers almost nobody reads (and creates more research work.) So now we need IBM to device an AI to handle the volume when it probably could go down by a factor of 100 (that said, active topics are still too much for a human to keep up with.)
Creative science isn't even required-- we just need to fund wasteful stuff that politicians ignorantly rail against as being pointless. Some marine biologist wasting time studying some creature we don't eat... like sharks... finding out why bacteria don't cling to their skin like other creatures might be a total waste; however, that led to super anti bacterial coverings (which you don't see because somebody was allowed a trivial patent on publicly funded research... the real invention was the "pointless" research.)
If you, the reader, has any experience with office politics or politics you know the popular underhanded technique of supporting something while undermining it.
Overhead, corruption, and incompetence are too often used as an excuse; many times it IS simply an underhanded attack by the "supporters." When NYPD spends $60,000 while saying it's going to cost more for only 60 cameras there are people involved who WANT it to be as expensive as possible of a deterrent. A high profile test group like NYPD will get cited all over the nation. Given how badly it is needed and demanded by the public, the costs are going to have to be high to deter widespread common use. Despite how actually cheap it would be - I bet their flash lights cost more... I had a cheap pen camera from china that was in that price range; it didn't last long or store much video but that was 6 years ago.
This is also where greedy capitalism comes in because that is all about how much the market is willing to pay--- and they've got to make sure this is a niche market so it doesn't have to compete with the extremely cheap mainstream market.
Sure, the way public budgets are managed is they take all projected costs (on the high side) then divide them out in ways that makes things like this seem like it's $10,000 a camera -- and one can sometimes spot the traitors because they'll focus on such false estimates.
Now it could be this is a totally honest move by NYPD and their high costs are because they are preparing for a full scale deployment with this just being a testing group. I'm just too cynical to take things at face value... wonder if any reporters exist who can hang around enough to pick up on such things anymore.
Oh, I did think about it. Accuracy in general predictions is different than Accuracy in specific detailed predictions. We can do a great job predicting it will be freezing in December; that is highly accurate and our model of the system is good enough for that. We can't accurately tell you that much about next week. Now perhaps I should have used Precision instead but I was trying to be easier to understand... A great simulation of the real fluid dynamic hell would have poor precision which would contradict previous simulated results... there is a point of diminishing returns but we do not know what that point is. Perhaps we are there already and should stop investing in that direction? doubt it.
I am sure not going to be a fool and pray to some higher power to show me a sign or place trust in some believer's ignorant guessing... Or people who simply like their money so much they don't dare "risk it" even though it is usually never risk but simply selfishness. They invent defensive behaviors to justify being self centered pricks who want nothing to change (because that benefits them in the present.) A lot of funding has been going into attacking the progress of science in this area.
It doesn't help people to bash the best stuff we currently have. It's not a junker car that is going to die anyway. It's science and when it doesn't work well you pour MORE resources into it. Now even the experts are not in strong support of simulated results for deciding huge things or the level specificity they strive for; however, it depends on what kinds of things you are asking. When you bash it as being worthless and something to dismiss you HARM the science and when it gets good enough to help scientists with their work (by their own expert opinion) it also harms anything they say that incorporates it and eventually it harms the working results. Which is easy to do when you can just nit pick the limitations and there always are limitations... It could be 100x more accurate and still be dismissed in the same way-- as if no progress was made-- again, harming science.
Picking on science reporting-- I'm all for that, they all suck big time. But to bash these expensive projects to advance science because they don't work as well as you (the non expert) like or because they fail is NOT WISE. In fact, failure is more important to science than success is. now you think about that.
I know people who do or have done research work. If people put the skepticism and cynicism science gets into advertizing, politics, or religion we'd all do better.
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WTF? They need to screen people, whomever put that feature in has to be a Microsoft employee! Don't think MS wouldn't stoop that low, they would.
No, a filesystem is actually complicated for many people. The metaphor is rock solid-- but haven't you known people who can't even manage their few real-world filing cabinets? If they can't handle the real world one, they are going to have trouble with the metaphorical one in the computer with relatively unlimited space.
iTunes started out less complicated. I don't know about iTunes leaking RAM on windows but it does include all the mac frameworks which make it take up more RAM. It's built-in browser can expand RAM use significantly, but it's not like they could have used Windows browser library... with IE being so broken. It's still a classic monolithic app (like most are) and doesn't learn from the unix it is designed to run upon.
Part of the problem is that they know there are millions of users who can't learn so they've shoehorned everything into their 1 app --- just like Flash had to do because getting people to use another plugin/app is a huge huge barrier, even if it works exactly the same-- getting it installed is the primary problem.
Personally, I've been looking for replacements since they started to bloat it up. I've not found any yet. Nothing compares so far. WinAmp doesn't either (plus I wouldn't go to anything that doesn't have a linux port.)
What was that expression?? oh yeah, "It isn't rocket science" which is used to convey that everything is relatively easy compared to rocket science.
It's not an iPhone... even the iPhone is an example of the pinnacle of human manufacturing (note the use of "an" not "the.) A mass produced wireless super computer that fits in a pocket and understands the spoken word better than a congressman.
I think iTunes was an extremely well designed program. Since around version 10 or 11 it has gone backwards significantly. It is pretty good for what is a essentially a database front end with tons of records... and then it added a customized web browser... and other junk.
As far as making it hard to delete something; it isn't that hard and it shouldn't be too easy because you don't want accidental deletions... think of all the computer illiterate people out there.
Somebody at Apple needs to be fired... perhaps he was? Mr. Pseudomorph is gone so maybe iTunes 12 will undo the damage?? Also, somebody at Mozilla also needs to be fired as well-- or we just need to know which person is to blame so we can start an internet rumor about him being anti-gay so he can at least get fired...aka "resign."
4. Winter is turning to spring in the SOUTHERN hemisphere (where Antarctica is)
5. 2D surface measurements over a short period of time, over ocean, not land. Land you can possibly find evidence, while the sea washes it away.
6. Sea ice melts quicker and is not as thick as the land ice (which is a problem if it goes into the sea.)
Fleas on a dog arguing how much the land goes up and down as the dog breaths:
Short sighted flea: It's just the same natural cycle we've always seen.
Wise flea: There is a long term trend, the dog is getting fatter - if this continues it'll increase space but shorten the life of our home.
People openly TELL corps like facebook in less time more than an agent could get spying on them. You can fool some of the people ALL THE TIME! You only need to appease and distract a majority, they won't care about small groups unless they get a ton of positive media attention.
Monitoring all your technology data is passive and unobtrusive but when people just volunteer everything without any thought... growing up tweeting their every shallow vapid thought... to gain some kind of validation; as if they didn't have a family life or peers or community for that... (the technology tends to make what they do have further away, not closer... plus it makes all the interactions easily recordable.)
Companies actually engineer FOOD so it loses taste quicker because you are not eating it fast enough! I'm NOT kidding! It's to the point where experts actually have to tell the public to CHEW YOUR FOOD for your own health! Not to mention all the addiction related things they do on purpose-- causing people the most exposed to have weight problems. Eventually, they'll figure out how to get those thin people too...(or create exercise freaks; not that thin people are healthy, they overeat bad food too.)
People openly TELL corps like facebook in less time more than an agent could get spying on them. You can fool some of the people ALL THE TIME! You only need to appease and distract a majority, they won't care about small groups unless they get a ton of positive media attention.
Monitoring all you technology data is passive and unobtrusive but when people just volunteer everything without any thought... growing up tweeting their every shallow vapid thought... to gain some kind of validation; as if they didn't have a family life or community for that (and it would seem many don't! an the technology tends to make what they do have further away, not closer.)
Companies actually engineer FOOD so it loses taste quicker because you are not eating it fast enough! I'm NOT kidding! It's to the point where experts actually have to tell the public to CHEW YOUR FOOD for your own health! Not to mention all the addiction related things they do on purpose-- causing people the most exposed to have weight problems. Eventually, they'll figure out how to get those thin people too...(or create exercise freaks; not that thin people are healthy, they overeat bad food too.)
Perhaps when the robots kill most jobs that will be the solution! The marketing economy -- for eating and weight loss! robots can't do that for us; just everything else.... until they master marketing... then all we are is PETS to the system of machines. Eat and crap while the "master" can take care of us (and train us using marketing) to gain some bit of purpose. Sorry, pet owners.
Everything seems to be way too complex just to provide sugar to our bacterial majority living in our gut. Wouldn't that be funny, we evolved by random chance for the sole purpose of housing our bacteria; who are the actual god favored lifeforms?
I read it multiple times in fact; it has the depth of thought that one simply can't grasp it all in one reading... well some people might. Having teens or even college students read it is NOT the right time, they are not ready to grasp it. It needs to be read later after some growing up and experience with humanity, plus some understanding of history. After reading Brave New World, again. These intellectual books of influence should have historical context - realizing the connections between Brave New World and 1984 changes perspective; it's an indirect rebuttal and while imaginative it's not on the level of BNW.
Animal Farm is great as well, but somehow the use of animals make people think it's a children's book and cartoon; oddly, adults who should realize animals are merely a device, make this mistake. This one is shown at an even younger age where it makes even less sense. It's hard for some adults to grasp the book; I've heard supposedly educated experts totally screw up on their comprehension of the book (on TV-- which as we know prefers entertaining frauds over competence, so that isn't saying much...)
Both books accurately reflect human nature and if they didn't model reality so well, they wouldn't be so compelling. Also, good ART "rhymes" like history does. It is vague enough to be interpreted and personalized but true enough in abstraction to convey something real (and hopefully meaningful.) Both realistically cover the brutal dark sides of human reality in politics but are different situations.
Old person explains something new to THEM or something THEIR peers are ignorant of but every younger person is aware of.... not news.
1984 wasn't about technology, it was about authoritarianism taken to the next level using primarily negative feedback. A realistic response (because history shows negative feedback is totally dominant) to the highly praised imaginative Brave New World which used positive feedback to control populations. It's a rebuttal based on historic human behavior. Both books need to be studied because techniques from both camps are used to control populations. Soft sciences make it more effective and technology is merely a tool.
When somebody has an epiphany; that is great, humor them for catching up. Then try to guide them to the next step and let them have another one. Technology isn't 1984; we have always been there as humans. Few societies are organized so well using the latest social science as 1984 did. It just allows things to go further and the technology allows for more micromanagement-- which is the holy grail for authoritarian systems... the end game solution. Oh, 1948 was the date of the book; 1984 is meaningless, just a future date taken from 1948 but close enough for people at the time to THINK about it.
The micromanagement technology is arguably is required for an end game solution like 1984 because it's been tried thru out human history but eventually it fails because they can't control all the people all the time-- 1984 is the end game solution, where they finally can. Nothing is different except that it's permanent an unable to be stopped. No revolutions. Likely, there are no other nations to invade or conquer either (likely just a smokescreen.)
Terrorists like the founders of the USA would be caught early. No revolutions. Violent human struggles on the group level would end. ORDER is one of the top priorities of authoritarians. can't allow unrest. can't even allow protests -- you need a permit or it's disorderly --- we accept that despite it being in the 1st next to speech; we don't quite accept speech zones or permits for free speech... but we are not that far from it.
The ideal group work maybe has people learn better.
I've never had a group project in my life where we all learned that well. Usually, a few of us did most or all the work and even when a functional group did happen, the work was distributed so each person had a part of the whole picture and was missing out on the other parts. It only works if people share and want to learn--- when the group finishes the task, hardly anybody is interested in picking up on what parts they were not exposed to. Perhaps one could facilitate the ideal conditions but that is never done and I'd not be surprised if we had little on how to properly facilitate the desired outcome (and I'm not talking policy solutions which is all people ever discuss, having students rank each other etc are policy BS that is extremely limited.) For example, an alternative approach could be to have a series of group assignments which force rotate their roles; or even better... you have them rank each other or you rank them... then next step you purposely put all the weak ones in the worst positions and grade them as a whole... that would force them to help each other!
I wonder how they study the benefits of group work because the studies seem to always back up the theory. If you measure it wrong you'll end up with the same results and it's entirely possible the common techniques used produce biased results until the day somebody proves they have better techniques to study such things... Before that happens, most people will continue to adhere to the conventions they learned in school and even religiously stick to them even after they begin to be dis-proven.
I'm skeptical group work is so great; also, previous experience tells me that even a valid result gets overly generalized and over applied. It's like telling somebody to reboot their computer when they have a problem so then every time their ISP goes down they reboot their computer until the internet works again. I had a client who called me every time (for years) their ISP was down because their website didn't work! I'd have to prove it each time by having Microsoft.com not work either. ("oh, well if microsoft doesn't work either it must be a big problem..." heard that a few times too!) Now imagine having somebody that thick headed in a group project...
The last group study I read was teaching programming. Showing that pairs of students do better. not 1, 3,4,5 but 2 people did best. I didn't feel confident in the results because I wasn't given any idea what they tested them on. Depends on the kind of work and the kind of metric used if working in pairs helped or not. If the test involved nearly the same kind of thing as the assignment then the poor student could just recall and BS their way to a better score from being exposed to the solution, without a greater understanding... it's understanding that is the goal. (or was trends seem to be in the other direction. thinking must be too dangerous.)
Your education SUCKS if you can't tell the difference between an online course and a classroom course. think about that. Also if your high school is offering college, it means your high school sucks and so does the freshman portion of a college education. I remember taking AP and testing out; I took the course anyway-- AP really is a scam... if you don't get it, then your unaware or your education sucked.
All the sickos just becoming aware of these services because of the media attention are now going to have to go to another state.
I went from the south up to Disney once and I never noticed a car pool lane; I also could see why people would want to use their phones too... so much time is spent going nowhere during rush hour.
The objection is this is NOT car pooling because money is changing hands. This is really no different than the FAA rules about pilots, you can't take money for people rides in your plane and you can't even give people free rides in your plane if your only purpose is to transport them. You can take people along for the ride and that is it. As soon as you go out of the legal bounds you end up into the regulated commercial sector which doesn't want you hobby pilots messing with their jobs.
When Siri came out people figured out right away they just encode and send the audio to the "cloud" to do all the work.
I object to GPS or MP3 while driving because what the apps are is not that important, people can't multitask and those apps also are a serious problem.
In my state, they regulate GPS apps so they can't have a distracting interface-- only then is GPS allowed and the cell phone ban applies to ANY TECH that is distracting. The exceptions require a law, like the GPS regulation.
MP3 and car stereos might be better now, but last time I looked into a car stereo (back when mp3 was new) I couldn't find a single car stereo that wasn't an example of horrible GUI... and they all were graphical with unlabeled buttons around the border (micro print does not count.)
Touch screen madness is everywhere today. That is distracting stuff; I want physical knobs and buttons back because they are provably superior under driving conditions. Oh, and animated diagrams prove these "UX" people are full of shit; if you understand interface design at all, you should be aware of the situation the thing is used. Nothing should move when driving except the child running out into the street you catch in the corner of your eye because your brains recognition system is BASED AROUND MOTION. no gps, app, billboard, TV should be in the peripheral.
Hopefully these laws restrict themselves to the DRIVER. Not that far from now the driver will be a computer and that day can't come soon enough for me. If you have to use apps and drive, learn to car pool and hand off your phone.
A bus holds so many people that their waste is undone by the fleet of cars they replace. You would do better to digitize management of the bus system where the routes differ on demand and add call boxes at bus stops etc. Ideas like that, including robot bus drivers. That would save more than replacing them. One could do something similar for taxi... but just look how the beginnings of that are turning out... can't wait to see the fight the robot google taxi causes...
How about automated trains where the robo taxi syncs up for going longer distances? lots of options possible. If you chuck public road funding completely you have a TON of money to invest in just about any kind of system; likely all of them are cheaper than what we do now in the USA. Just think of the insurance... oh, never mind, insurance will lobby away any possibilities.
If congress wasn't so corrupt, we could have had the USPS go electric in a big way and jump start the industry. City delivery is a perfect place for electric; more so than a bus-- especially when most stop every 30 feet and never go faster than 40mph peak.
Nuclear has emissions, of a different kind. + a disaster every decade. Fusion... is always 5 years away. More work on storage is needed.
Tax complainers are largely a bunch of selfish, ignorant, complaining jerks with character disorders. (some or all of those.)
I've had a millionaire bitch to me how taxes were "killing him" as he picked up the tab for lunch and just after how he was talking about the PAIN of owning 5 (FIVE) houses, one in Hawaii. I pay more taxes than he ever did and that % I pay is felt by me more than the lower % is felt by him! If you are wondering, educating these people is impossible; the behavior is a symptom of psychological problems so fixing an issue of ignorance or whatever just manifests as something else until they get their broken minds fixed. Sadly, my experience is that them having money makes them more mentally healthy and better than normal people; so they are far less likely to ever seek help or take advice. (If you luck your way into money, then you are less likely to think that way; it's a matter of perspective. Entitled superiority vs lucky joe )
Environmental taxes are not a significant problem. Way more tax money is spent on other things we don't need. In the USA, we don't have hardly any environmental taxes. I'm going to assume the poster is thinking of regulations as opposed to taxes but not address that BS to keep the post short.
The LACK of sane environmental policy is indirectly costing me FAR more than the taxes-- in MONEY. Non-monetary things matter too and should be a factor over just numbers. I WANT more environmental taxes!!
My insurance rates are HIGHER and despite shifting companies, the rate of increase is higher than decades ago; business owning friends have had it much worse.
The energy commodity trading market is a sham (Enron like) and adds MORE to the price of gas than gas taxes do; under the guise of stabilizing the market when at least in modern times it has not done so.
You are not being taxed "the hell out of" if you live in the USA. Look at all the other 1st world nations (which might not be fair since the USA arguably is no longer 1st world but in transition backwards with the majority of factors already there... not that all such metrics are equal which is why I'm not concluding it myself at this time.)
My science teacher had similar comments; however, he was really careful with the stuff. It can cause a lot of problems, it's deceptively dangerous it is not like a poison. Different people have different thresholds, plus you also have younger generations growing up with higher exposure rates for their whole lifespan which makes them less tolerant. Handling it with your hands is one thing, eating it is another. In a powder or gas it's bad stuff --- which is why procedures are over protective, if you spill a liquid they act as if you atomized it into the air because legal policies are designed to fight future lawsuits-- they go to stupid extremes to make extra sure that employee who sucked on thermometers doesn't blame them for his problems simply because they had him near the stuff on the job. We need those laws that allow people to sue evil employers, but the result is over protection and greedy people who abuse the system (who are not much different than the greedy employers who started the mess.)
Also keep in mind, you didn't play with mercury as your job-- it was just an amusing thing you did for a short period until it was no longer amusing.
Personally, I've noticed the warnings about eating fish caught locally get worse every few years from when I was a kid fishing with my father. A smaller lake can be ruled off limits if contaminated and it takes an amazingly small amount to ruin a lake... you'd think some ex-spouse would think of devaluing a house/cabin by destroying a lake... Thank goodness it hasn't... there's another thing for insurance to jack you on...
His personal political views are separate from his work. Yes, even if they influence his work they are a separate matter. He may agree with the people he cites but putting their words in doesn't make his history work invalid. He doesn't lie or do the history wrong or even mislead but he does use the facts he chooses to collectively push central themes which are aligned to his opinions. That is no different than anybody else except that he is far more open about it; he doesn't hide it. People who disagree grasp at things to attack him; but the proper counter is to use history. His history is not invalid; now his opinions can be argued on that point but he is not sneaky like traditional history is under it's guise of being neutral or the modern technique of giving too much to weak positions (much like how the media gives equal time to crackpots under the guise of being fair.)
As far as omitting things-- that is a classic fallacy attack that is really hard to make actually stick. Anybody can be attacked for omission. I don't begrudge him for skipping things that are widely known or overly complicating matters-- which one can so easily do. At some point you have to edit for the space allotted. As far as big controversial matters, given how different most history is; I don't think he needs to waste space addressing things that are bound to be yelled about, discussed, or thought about critically.
What would be nice is a split textbook which mixes traditional along with Zinn. I don't think much would get left out (again, as an overview for a non historian, you can't cover everything.) Besides, we are talking school... students have an attention span less than a goldfish and zero interest in the past (unless it's TV reruns) everything has to be summarized. Now if Zinn can get people to think at all or get motivated in anyway-- that is GREAT. Besides, most people tend to get conservative with age so it's not going to turn society into Marxists or whatever.
As far as "I lived in" crap, I don't care. Doesn't make you an expert. Just because you saw things that are worse doesn't mean I'm wrong. It's not black and white. Politically, I'm outside the whole mainstream in the USA. The USA mainstream ranges from mild to strong authoritarian and I'm medium Anarchist, in absolute terms on the freedom scale. Economically, I'm not in the Anarchist half of the scale but the mainstream is. I do know what I'm talking about; I've dabbled quite a bit in both PoliSci and Anthropology, but I'm not an expert, just well read (and it's academic stuff not infotainment. I also never owned a TV.)
When you sue for damages you are in CIVIL COURT. That is a different system, you can't do jail time and about all you can do is deal with money.
Stealing is a criminal offense; you'd have to find a criminal law on the books you could get them for doing this. I hear that racketeering criminal law was somewhat broad...
As far as the amount of $$ as a civil case one shouldn't be able to sue as punishment but only for damages (which they seem to extend to the limit with mental harm etc.) This big corps always seem to get the money knocked down on some sort of grounds of the harm caused wasn't as big as the $ amount or just bribing judges like the supreme court did with the exon spill.
I read Zinn's book on my own; my schools never mentioned anything remotely like it.
I have no objections to Zinn's book. It's not dry history and seems more like modern anthropology vs old anthropology. The academic criticisms sound similar. He uses actual people's words instead of feeling he has to censor them by just describing their actions on a timeline. You can't avoid being called propagandist if you put in the words of historically influential people! If you put in the opposition you are likely to still be criticized because the losers are likely to be less convincing (historically, they did lose after all.) It is a stark contrast to old dry history which has considerable bias of it's own. I don't know why people think pop history or official history as completely neutral. It NEVER has been. Zinn is no worse than the other historians; arguably, he is above average. Given his purpose was to compensate for existing bias he obviously went bias in another direction; rather than repeat what was already done or widely known. Zinn's work is supplemental as a result. I'm not for it being used alone.
PROPER history will give you some of Hitler's speeches, his words and his propaganda. Not a bunch of battle crap and events! Which is what we get. The holocaust is a rare exception in history education in that they don't just tell you a sterile summation - they are more like Zinn. You don't learn anything worthwhile from Nazi history (in school) except the more Zinn like coverage of the holocaust. We don't learn why the Nazi rose to power why they were were good at destroying democracy how that tiny goofy looking man convinced a relatively highly educated modern democracy to become what it did. An easily forgotten and never understood summary of events is all we got (that is, you couldn't understand with what was presented.) You don't LEARN anything, you get FACTS. It's only by LEARNING; that is by gaining an understanding, that you can stop from repeating past mistakes because history never repeats but is does rhyme. Nazi history is extremely biased (we won) but it should include some of their stuff and one wouldn't need to worry much because it's so vilified already. Also given how anti communist we are here you think we'd get SOMETHING but we have zero coverage; it's pure propaganda.
Zinn isn't invalid. It's a different style but it is not false. I want to know what/how/why, not just the institutional log book. A great many changes in society are bottom up; often by a minority group (like the revolutionary war.) Revolutionary war history is pretty good and more Zinn like in how it was covered; it is inspiring stuff as it should be, one should "get it" and if it was handled like other topics in history it would be considerably different. I remember what I had in school for it, I knew more at the time so I could see as a teen how it was censored and sterilized despite it being more Zinn like. It also had a great amount of "bias" from the founders own words, it also didn't present the British side at all. Like Ben Franklin's speech which ended the constitutional convention was censored in the textbook; they didn't mention Franklin's son was jailed as a traitor or why his son was a loyalist (along with a large portion of the population or that it was a small group that got the whole thing going etc.)
Zinn dispels the authoritarian bias in our history; which also rubs people the wrong way, the US is after all, quite an authoritarian society (if you don't like that tough, perhaps you should unload that word and accept it's real meaning.)
Don't act like members of the human race! humans suck. Sound ridiculous? It kind of is. But it's not much worse than telling men to not be aggressive and violent against their natural inclinations. That doesn't work so well either, but we try... we don't evolve because we won't allow evolutionary pressures, artificial or natural.
Humans evolved to be petty tribal creatures living in small tribes. We are not evolving anymore and situations like our current global economics don't create evolutionary pressures -- at least not positive ones... If you are a smart ape you can do the majority of jobs in the world; that is, until robotics takes over (which is capable already and the transition is only beginning.) We are not competing for the best as much as we are competing for the most desperate. Manufacturing robotics won in the USA decades ago that is why worse-than-slave labor in the 3rd world was used-- because those desperate humans can still beat the robotics... until today. Now we shall see the transition as the desperate 3rd world people lose the last hold out position humans had against the robots (in manufacturing.) This isn't a new situation; technology transitions created similar situations in history.
Human nature is tribal. Tons of science to back that up. People are all Little Eichmanns as proven in countless studies of various situations, where tribalism is at the root of some of them. It doesn't take hardly anything to abstract consequences for one's actions which makes it so easy to do evil. If people would just seriously study and learn about the nature of EVIL they would avoid systems which promote it. You'd think religious types would actually learn about the "devil" and thereby learn something useful... even if it's fictional, it's metaphorical for emergent behaviors in humans.
Belief aside, we don't study to avoid situations that promote bad things - in large part because we falsely believe (without evidence) that people are responsible for such things; instead of realizing the environment is a much much larger factor. Naturally, in a society that prides itself on individualization they are going to be the most blind to the truth. (I live in the USA, which is so ironically conformist.)
You don't think about or really care about sweat shops making your clothes - it's too far removed and those people suffering are not in your tribe... if they were, you couldn't ignore the problem so easily (it's not exactly tribal based; however, if you felt more connected to those people you'd not ignore it as easily.) You steal tiny things from your employer, that is normal-- not even thought of as stealing. pencil etc. It's not a big deal; plenty of studies on that. Well, when you save $5 on some clothing your stealing from others in a similar "harmless" situation. Besides, just look at how sales motivate people - now undo the sale and increase prices -- that is what fair trade does; relying on the consumer's to police everything with their $$$ is beyond crazy and all the science backs that up. Shopping is all about the experience; you pay for that gratification and a few minutes when you unpack it at home, then it's all gone and you have to shop more to get that experience again... which has to have roots in hunting/gathering behavior. Most ads are about the experience; making you shop and only a minority are getting you to switch brands (that is right out of modern advertizing 101.) Anyhow-- the point is, all that increasingly advanced psychology is to get you lost in the shopping experience which goes a long way in masking any minor considerations like fair trade. A 10% off coupon works really well-- now if you have Chinese vs US products and you don't need a coupon... Hopefully my rambling is making some connection; there are many aspects to outcome.
Globalization is NOT a good thing and we have to stop portraying it as such. Now don't go to extremes and think we should have none of it; but like most things it has a range of options. We are too extreme on 1 side
The powerful (winners) have been writing the mainstream history for a long time. In addition history is hardly even taught anymore; and the bit that is has been done poorly. They take great people like MLK and turn them into a phrase and an icon while it seems to be purposely removing the aspects that made them truly great. Summation is necessary, but it has been harmful either by accident or by intent - the academics seem to do a better job so one wonders how that gets lost on the mainstream education of the topics.
My public history education was quite poor. The only good aspect is we didn't have to memorize and recall dates; but we didn't do hardly any reading. Reading is the primary method (and best) for learning history... and any reading assignments are hacked around by technology for the simple homework (the homework/exam being the only modern means to force reading, it has been circumvented-- it's weaker than a 4 digit password.)
http://historyisaweapon.com/
That made my day. Somebody else sees it permeating society too!
I often wonder if our authoritarian society fosters these kinds of mental coasting, a mental laziness which is habitual because of the nature of the society to allow one to run on autopilot for so many aspects of like. Technology being a big factor as well; however, more chaotic natural settings makes one routinely have to think about little things all the time which also do not fit a clear repetitive pattern. (The nature of modern jobs has to also has to be a factor. )
The attitudes regarding responsibility is another factor; you don't have to be concerned if you just delegate thinking to something else.
Little Eichmann are also something to ponder.
I know some people in academic research; retired and current.
The system is fucked up; to use the expression of the youngest one.
In pursuit of "perfection" we have so much worrying about oversight to prevent waste and corruption that was already lower than everywhere else that we continually clamp down and harm the system more every "reform." This extends into the publishing system which also has a "gold stars" approach where it's all about quantity and not quality. A big earth shattering research paper is foolish; you milk it for dozens of lesser papers almost nobody reads (and creates more research work.) So now we need IBM to device an AI to handle the volume when it probably could go down by a factor of 100 (that said, active topics are still too much for a human to keep up with.)
Creative science isn't even required-- we just need to fund wasteful stuff that politicians ignorantly rail against as being pointless. Some marine biologist wasting time studying some creature we don't eat... like sharks... finding out why bacteria don't cling to their skin like other creatures might be a total waste; however, that led to super anti bacterial coverings (which you don't see because somebody was allowed a trivial patent on publicly funded research... the real invention was the "pointless" research.)
If you, the reader, has any experience with office politics or politics you know the popular underhanded technique of supporting something while undermining it.
Overhead, corruption, and incompetence are too often used as an excuse; many times it IS simply an underhanded attack by the "supporters." When NYPD spends $60,000 while saying it's going to cost more for only 60 cameras there are people involved who WANT it to be as expensive as possible of a deterrent. A high profile test group like NYPD will get cited all over the nation. Given how badly it is needed and demanded by the public, the costs are going to have to be high to deter widespread common use. Despite how actually cheap it would be - I bet their flash lights cost more... I had a cheap pen camera from china that was in that price range; it didn't last long or store much video but that was 6 years ago.
This is also where greedy capitalism comes in because that is all about how much the market is willing to pay--- and they've got to make sure this is a niche market so it doesn't have to compete with the extremely cheap mainstream market.
Sure, the way public budgets are managed is they take all projected costs (on the high side) then divide them out in ways that makes things like this seem like it's $10,000 a camera -- and one can sometimes spot the traitors because they'll focus on such false estimates.
Now it could be this is a totally honest move by NYPD and their high costs are because they are preparing for a full scale deployment with this just being a testing group. I'm just too cynical to take things at face value... wonder if any reporters exist who can hang around enough to pick up on such things anymore.
Oh, I did think about it. Accuracy in general predictions is different than Accuracy in specific detailed predictions. We can do a great job predicting it will be freezing in December; that is highly accurate and our model of the system is good enough for that. We can't accurately tell you that much about next week. Now perhaps I should have used Precision instead but I was trying to be easier to understand... A great simulation of the real fluid dynamic hell would have poor precision which would contradict previous simulated results... there is a point of diminishing returns but we do not know what that point is. Perhaps we are there already and should stop investing in that direction? doubt it.
I am sure not going to be a fool and pray to some higher power to show me a sign or place trust in some believer's ignorant guessing... Or people who simply like their money so much they don't dare "risk it" even though it is usually never risk but simply selfishness. They invent defensive behaviors to justify being self centered pricks who want nothing to change (because that benefits them in the present.) A lot of funding has been going into attacking the progress of science in this area.
It doesn't help people to bash the best stuff we currently have. It's not a junker car that is going to die anyway. It's science and when it doesn't work well you pour MORE resources into it. Now even the experts are not in strong support of simulated results for deciding huge things or the level specificity they strive for; however, it depends on what kinds of things you are asking. When you bash it as being worthless and something to dismiss you HARM the science and when it gets good enough to help scientists with their work (by their own expert opinion) it also harms anything they say that incorporates it and eventually it harms the working results. Which is easy to do when you can just nit pick the limitations and there always are limitations... It could be 100x more accurate and still be dismissed in the same way-- as if no progress was made-- again, harming science.
Picking on science reporting-- I'm all for that, they all suck big time. But to bash these expensive projects to advance science because they don't work as well as you (the non expert) like or because they fail is NOT WISE. In fact, failure is more important to science than success is. now you think about that.
I know people who do or have done research work. If people put the skepticism and cynicism science gets into advertizing, politics, or religion we'd all do better.