Re:What is it with one-button mice?
on
Jef Raskin On The Mac
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
You said it.
As a Mac user, I'm annoyed that I have to "Option-Click", "Control-Click" and "Command-Click" --- i.e. make motions which require two hands, when a simple 3-button mouse would let me do all of these quickly and easily. How are these key-click combinations "more user-friendly" than single clicks on a multi-button mouse?
And I like your response to those who say "You can always buy a multi-button mouse". Yea. I have a Logitech USB scrollwheel mouse that I use, but why did I have to buy one??? Why didn't I just GET one that came with my Mac?
Regarding Raskin's comment that "there is only a little difference between using a Mac and a Windows machine.:
Is he accounting for the fact that a fair amount of the similarity is due to Microsoft incorporating elements of the innovative Mac interface(s) into Windows?
Why is believing that "the killing embryos in order to benefit other people is wrong" necessarily a religious position?
Even if it were, what's wrong with having "religious reasons", as opposed to no reasons, or reasons of opportunism?
Finally, if by ethics you mean how our actions affect other people, then you're really just begging the question. It is surely the ethics of killing these young humans that is the center of the debate.
It looks like you're considering some kind of low-velocity expansion of an equation for the full energy of a particle, which has a (1/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) in it. So, you're not even giving the "full" equation.
For my part, I was actually amazed that (what is typically called) "the Einstein equation", (TeX notation)
G_{\mu\nu} = 8\pi T_{\mu\nu}
didn't even appear in the article. I mean, if we're talking "greatest equations ever", something that describes the curvature of spacetime AND the motion of objects in it, which uses 10 nonlinear coupled partial differential equations to do it, but can be derived from a variational principle --- hell, yea it's messy, but it's also pretty simple, powerful and maybe even elegant. The fact that it's still keeping researchers busy to even SOLVE the thing 100 years later certainly makes it interesting.
(How come this didn't make the list, but "e^{i\pi}+1 = 0" did? Big deal.)
Thanks, this is a helpful distinction. However, I find that many people nevertheless DO try to use it as a basis of ethics.
It fact, I recall a prominent Parade magazine article in which none other than Carl Sagan was arguing precisely that, and was advocating that people base ALL their interpersonal relationships on Tit-for-Tat.
(Someone will counter that Sagan was a total quack... I won't try to defend him.:-) )
I agree that this defnition of the "Prisoner's Dilemma" is no more than a "meta-game," and not really a problem of philosophical ethics (though it may appear to be to some people.)
What I find disturbing this is the way that the problem is framed presupposes no underlying system of ethics. To wit.... * If you confess and your partner denies taking part in the crime, you go free and your partner goes to prison for five years.
* If your partner confesses and you deny participating in the crime, you go to prison for five years and yor partner goes free.
* If you both confess you will serve four years each.
* If you both deny taking part in the crime, you both go to prison for two years.
What do you do?
How about: Tell the truth? Regardless of what your partner does, tell the truth. I find it disturbing that the problem is framed in a way that the actual truth of the matter is irrelevant. (i.e. the problem would be unchanged if I replaced "You and your partner have committed a crime and are caught" with "You and a friend have been accused of a crime which you may or may not have committed.")
I'm not trolling or off-topic here. I'm dead serious. This formulation of the PD is ethically doomed from the get-go, and thus the results of the experiment may be of interest to mathematical game theorists of this particular game, but I find it unwise to think the results make any significant implications about ethics (or anything else for that matter).
Someone will counter that since this is a "Prisoner's" dilemma the person involved must be a criminal with no "ethical" principles other than an interest in self-preservation (i.e. the person is already debased as can contribute nothing meaningful on the subject of ethics!;-) ). I'd say that just because someone committed a crime does not mean they necessarily want to continue committing crimes...
It's not clear to me why this comment was modded redundant OR flamebait (ad hominem attacks by "orthogonal" notwithstanding).
The judicial usurpation of politics is a serious issue which I haven't really seen addressed in other posts, and is of interest to liberals and conservatives alike.
Given the power of the judiciary lately, and the potential for the upcoming president to select up to 2 Supreme Court justices (which WAS covered in an earlier post), not only the CHOICE of these particular judges, but the presidential candidate's attitude toward this problem is of grave importance to many of us. i.e. it is not merely where candidate's choice of judges stand on current issues, but on their view of the separation of powers in general.
Sorry... "Black students and lower to middle class students are unfairly targeted, as wealthier students can afford tuition and need not apply for financial aid."??
This is a tautology. You're saying that "people who need financial aid are unfairly targeted by this provision which is about financial aid." Cut that sentence from the question, and keep the rest.
I think both these points are valid: One turbine alone isn't likely to have a huge impact on birds, and birds that fly high aren't likely to hit turbines, however many of them there are.
My point wasn't so much about birds hitting the turbines, as much as that the birds in fact ARE going around the turbines --- WAY around the turbines. The migration patterns have changed.
FYI, for those who think wind power has zero-to-very-low ecologial impact:
There have been some serious changes to migratory bird populations in California since the wind-turbine farms started springing up along the mountain ridges. Lots of birds die by hitting the towers or the turbines themselves (note: I don't think they get "sliced", the blades aren't so fast), and many others just plain adjust their flying patters around the ridges. This also has an effect on INSECT populations in the California heartland, which can be bad for AGRICULTURE, which has farmers fairly concerned...
Is there some reason why the US flag icon for this thread has only 12 stripes instead of the usual 13?
It looks like it was taken from a picture of a real US flag, and then the the top stripe was clipped off (one can see little bits of red in a couple places).
The article contains this statement: "True MIMO is one of the underlying technologies being considered for 802.11n, a standard in the works for the next generation of Wi-Fi technology. "...and then it has this quote from Greg Raleigh: "The immediate performance benefits realized with True MIMO, especially over expanded coverage areas, are why this technology has been chosen to power the upcoming 802.11n high-performance wireless standard. "
Has "True MIMO" already "been chosen" to power 802.11n, or is merely "being considered"?
The title for this/. forum is all hype. The lawyers are not saying that the maintainers of the website are not allowed to use ANY photographs of Kerry. They're just saying that this photographer --- who has every right to protect his copyrighted woks --- doesn't want them using HIS photographs. Are the people that run the website paying him for using his content? No? Then they should find a photograph that's in the public domain. This is not about free speech. They're not being told not to say what they want about Kerry, they're just being told to stop using this guy's content royalty-free. Why don't they take their own photos of Kerry?
And as far as domestic issues: How are two issues "most" issues?...and I'm happy to support a candidate who'll prevent the state from *forcing* me to accept gay marriage.
As computing power increases, 2048 will take very little time to brute-force (though this probably won't happen for a while).
Yea, like not until several million bajillion gazillion years go by! "2048 will take very little time to brute-force"?? Do the math, buddy. (If necessary, learn the math.)
Not susceptible to security breaches? Please.
Read your own post. They never claim that it's not susceptible to security breaches, just that it's not susceptible to the viruses and security breaches which Windows systems are vulnerable to.
The article didn't even mention the 9.2-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope in west Texas, which was built at a fraction of the cost required by other similarly-sized telescopes. (HET cost only $13.5 million.) The most notable cost-savings being that the telescope is always at a constant tilt, and is only configured for spectroscopy, not imaging. But for sheer size-of-light-bucket per dollar, such a design is hard to beat. There are also plans to build a much larger version of the HET --- I forgot how big and I have no URLs to share, but the new telescope would be at least as large as those mentioned in the article.
Please mod this and the previous message (Valegor's) up.
This is a key point, regarding the difference between the ideal of file "sharing" or "swapping", as opposed to what is actually done in nearly all cases: file "distribution" (of multiple copies).
Read your own quote. It doesn't say "no power supply," it says no ONBOARD power supply. The power supply is separate from the lifter, and power is delivered via wires.
(Yea, somebody let me know when these things can at least lift their own power supplies. Until then...)
And come on, moving electrons don't count as "moving parts"
Photons have no rest mass. You do. Figure out how to get rid of your rest mass, and you can travel at the speed of light...
The limitation on faster than light travel can be thought of as a requirement to preserve causality, if all reference frames (freely-falling ones, if you like) are regarded as equally good. Thus FTL travel would violate causality in the standard picture of relativity. But perhaps someone will show that a preferred frame exists. Even so, all alternative models I'm aware of which allow for a preferred frame (e.g. bimetric gravity) require causal behavior to stay within the "light cone."
It's true that Alcubierre's warp drive spacetime doesn't have any causality violation or other funny business going on locally (which is all relativity refers to), however, as has already been noted above, the warp drive requires matter with a negative energy density. Such matter can be defined mathematically but is physically meaningless. FYI, Alcubierre himself regards the solution as an interesting toy but not something to be taken seriously from a physical standpoint.
Wormholes also require negative energy. See above. Various people keep working to push the requirements so you need less negative-energy-matter. I say if you need any at all, the whole thing makes no sense.
Slashdot Mirror
You said it.
As a Mac user, I'm annoyed that I have to "Option-Click", "Control-Click" and "Command-Click" --- i.e. make motions which require two hands, when a simple 3-button mouse would let me do all of these quickly and easily. How are these key-click combinations "more user-friendly" than single clicks on a multi-button mouse?
And I like your response to those who say "You can always buy a multi-button mouse". Yea. I have a Logitech USB scrollwheel mouse that I use, but why did I have to buy one??? Why didn't I just GET one that came with my Mac?
Regarding Raskin's comment that "there is only a little difference between using a Mac and a Windows machine.:
Is he accounting for the fact that a fair amount of the similarity is due to Microsoft incorporating elements of the innovative Mac interface(s) into Windows?
Grad skul joke:
Knowlege = Power
Power = Work / Time
Time = Money
Therefore,
Knowledge = Work / Money
(The more you work, the more you know. And if you want to know alot, you go to grad skul, where you hardly get paid...)
Hi. A couple questions:
Why is believing that "the killing embryos in order to benefit other people is wrong" necessarily a religious position?
Even if it were, what's wrong with having "religious reasons", as opposed to no reasons, or reasons of opportunism?
Finally, if by ethics you mean how our actions affect other people, then you're really just begging the question. It is surely the ethics of killing these young humans that is the center of the debate.
It looks like you're considering some kind of low-velocity expansion of an equation for the full energy of a particle, which has a (1/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) in it. So, you're not even giving the "full" equation.
For my part, I was actually amazed that (what is typically called) "the Einstein equation", (TeX notation)
G_{\mu\nu} = 8\pi T_{\mu\nu}
didn't even appear in the article. I mean, if we're talking "greatest equations ever", something that describes the curvature of spacetime AND the motion of objects in it, which uses 10 nonlinear coupled partial differential equations to do it, but can be derived from a variational principle --- hell, yea it's messy, but it's also pretty simple, powerful and maybe even elegant. The fact that it's still keeping researchers busy to even SOLVE the thing 100 years later certainly makes it interesting.
(How come this didn't make the list, but "e^{i\pi}+1 = 0" did? Big deal.)
Thanks, this is a helpful distinction. However, I find that many people nevertheless DO try to use it as a basis of ethics. It fact, I recall a prominent Parade magazine article in which none other than Carl Sagan was arguing precisely that, and was advocating that people base ALL their interpersonal relationships on Tit-for-Tat. (Someone will counter that Sagan was a total quack... I won't try to defend him. :-) )
I agree that this defnition of the "Prisoner's Dilemma" is no more than a "meta-game," and not really a problem of philosophical ethics (though it may appear to be to some people.)
;-) ). I'd say that just because someone committed a crime does not mean they necessarily want to continue committing crimes...
What I find disturbing this is the way that the problem is framed presupposes no underlying system of ethics. To wit....
* If you confess and your partner denies taking part in the crime, you go free and your partner goes to prison for five years. * If your partner confesses and you deny participating in the crime, you go to prison for five years and yor partner goes free. * If you both confess you will serve four years each. * If you both deny taking part in the crime, you both go to prison for two years. What do you do?
How about: Tell the truth? Regardless of what your partner does, tell the truth. I find it disturbing that the problem is framed in a way that the actual truth of the matter is irrelevant. (i.e. the problem would be unchanged if I replaced "You and your partner have committed a crime and are caught" with "You and a friend have been accused of a crime which you may or may not have committed.")
I'm not trolling or off-topic here. I'm dead serious. This formulation of the PD is ethically doomed from the get-go, and thus the results of the experiment may be of interest to mathematical game theorists of this particular game, but I find it unwise to think the results make any significant implications about ethics (or anything else for that matter).
Someone will counter that since this is a "Prisoner's" dilemma the person involved must be a criminal with no "ethical" principles other than an interest in self-preservation (i.e. the person is already debased as can contribute nothing meaningful on the subject of ethics!
How did this get modded "Troll"?? This may be "redundant", but it's still making a viable point. Somebody's ass needs to get Meta-Moderated.
Maybe this is "-1, Offtopic", but how do I find out who my Electors are?
And why is it, on the ballot, I only see the names of the candidates (Bush, Kerry, etc) and not the names of the ELECTORS that I'm REALLY voting for?
Thanks.
Sombody mod this up. This is a point which many people fail to appreciate.
It's not clear to me why this comment was modded redundant OR flamebait (ad hominem attacks by "orthogonal" notwithstanding).
The judicial usurpation of politics is a serious issue which I haven't really seen addressed in other posts, and is of interest to liberals and conservatives alike.
Given the power of the judiciary lately, and the potential for the upcoming president to select up to 2 Supreme Court justices (which WAS covered in an earlier post), not only the CHOICE of these particular judges, but the presidential candidate's attitude toward this problem is of grave importance to many of us. i.e. it is not merely where candidate's choice of judges stand on current issues, but on their view of the separation of powers in general.
Sorry... "Black students and lower to middle class students are unfairly targeted, as wealthier students can afford tuition and need not apply for financial aid."??
This is a tautology. You're saying that "people who need financial aid are unfairly targeted by this provision which is about financial aid." Cut that sentence from the question, and keep the rest.
I don't have any friends, you insensitive clod! (Unless you count the robots...)
So two wrongs make a right?
Both corporations and and individuals must be prepared to accept the legal consequences of their illegitimate actions.
I think both these points are valid: One turbine alone isn't likely to have a huge impact on birds, and birds that fly high aren't likely to hit turbines, however many of them there are.
My point wasn't so much about birds hitting the turbines, as much as that the birds in fact ARE going around the turbines --- WAY around the turbines. The migration patterns have changed.
FYI, for those who think wind power has zero-to-very-low ecologial impact:
There have been some serious changes to migratory bird populations in California since the wind-turbine farms started springing up along the mountain ridges. Lots of birds die by hitting the towers or the turbines themselves (note: I don't think they get "sliced", the blades aren't so fast), and many others just plain adjust their flying patters around the ridges. This also has an effect on INSECT populations in the California heartland, which can be bad for AGRICULTURE, which has farmers fairly concerned...
There's no free lunch, gang.
Is there some reason why the US flag icon for this thread has only 12 stripes instead of the usual 13?
It looks like it was taken from a picture of a real US flag, and then the the top stripe was clipped off (one can see little bits of red in a couple places).
The article contains this statement: ...and then it has this quote from Greg Raleigh:
"True MIMO is one of the underlying technologies being considered for 802.11n, a standard in the works for the next generation of Wi-Fi technology. "
"The immediate performance benefits realized with True MIMO, especially over expanded coverage areas, are why this technology has been chosen to power the upcoming 802.11n high-performance wireless standard. "
Has "True MIMO" already "been chosen" to power 802.11n, or is merely "being considered"?
I think this is funny, not flaimbait. What, (Moderator,) you mean you're not slacking when you read /.?!
The title for this /. forum is all hype. The lawyers are not saying that the maintainers of the website are not allowed to use ANY photographs of Kerry. They're just saying that this photographer --- who has every right to protect his copyrighted woks --- doesn't want them using HIS photographs. Are the people that run the website paying him for using his content? No? Then they should find a photograph that's in the public domain. This is not about free speech. They're not being told not to say what they want about Kerry, they're just being told to stop using this guy's content royalty-free. Why don't they take their own photos of Kerry?
...and I'm happy to support a candidate who'll prevent the state from *forcing* me to accept gay marriage.
And as far as domestic issues: How are two issues "most" issues?
Yea, like not until several million bajillion gazillion years go by! "2048 will take very little time to brute-force"?? Do the math, buddy. (If necessary, learn the math.)
Not susceptible to security breaches? Please.
Read your own post. They never claim that it's not susceptible to security breaches, just that it's not susceptible to the viruses and security breaches which Windows systems are vulnerable to.
The article didn't even mention the 9.2-meter Hobby-Eberly Telescope in west Texas, which was built at a fraction of the cost required by other similarly-sized telescopes. (HET cost only $13.5 million.) The most notable cost-savings being that the telescope is always at a constant tilt, and is only configured for spectroscopy, not imaging. But for sheer size-of-light-bucket per dollar, such a design is hard to beat. There are also plans to build a much larger version of the HET --- I forgot how big and I have no URLs to share, but the new telescope would be at least as large as those mentioned in the article.
Please mod this and the previous message (Valegor's) up.
This is a key point, regarding the difference between the ideal of file "sharing" or "swapping", as opposed to what is actually done in nearly all cases: file "distribution" (of multiple copies).
Read your own quote. It doesn't say "no power supply," it says no ONBOARD power supply. The power supply is separate from the lifter, and power is delivered via wires.
(Yea, somebody let me know when these things can at least lift their own power supplies. Until then...)
And come on, moving electrons don't count as "moving parts"
Photons have no rest mass. You do. Figure out how to get rid of your rest mass, and you can travel at the speed of light...
The limitation on faster than light travel can be thought of as a requirement to preserve causality, if all reference frames (freely-falling ones, if you like) are regarded as equally good. Thus FTL travel would violate causality in the standard picture of relativity. But perhaps someone will show that a preferred frame exists. Even so, all alternative models I'm aware of which allow for a preferred frame (e.g. bimetric gravity) require causal behavior to stay within the "light cone."
It's true that Alcubierre's warp drive spacetime doesn't have any causality violation or other funny business going on locally (which is all relativity refers to), however, as has already been noted above, the warp drive requires matter with a negative energy density. Such matter can be defined mathematically but is physically meaningless. FYI, Alcubierre himself regards the solution as an interesting toy but not something to be taken seriously from a physical standpoint.
Wormholes also require negative energy. See above. Various people keep working to push the requirements so you need less negative-energy-matter. I say if you need any at all, the whole thing makes no sense.