"does the nature of the World Wide Web in fact give sites like Wonkette, Drudge, or even Slashdot a free pass on accuracy if it means the difference between getting the scoop or not?"
Why not? Much of the traditional media has already gone that road. Once very traditional and proper BBC News science reporting was accurate and precise. Now it's quite often FUD. And witness the fiascos that occurred in reporting the the results of Martha Stewart's trial (the FUBAR covered marvelously by The Daily Show), and despite their insistence they'll stop, much US media's over-projecting voting results.
Should we trust blogs as much as we do the media? Wrong question. We should trust the media as little as we do blogs. They both consist of, in large part, opinion, and implicit advertising in that they're marketing their outlet and its ad rates based on readership.
...and make no mistake, I not only work in a health care setting, and have a master's in healtcare administration, and also have more than one disability myself...
"I do not want to file a claim due to the stigma that it carries"
FUCK stigma, FUCK any whining from HR, FUCK any future possible employers who might look disfavorably, FUCK any insurance company that tries to disallow a charge.
Take care of YOURSELF. Get yourself evaluated and treated. By allowing yourself to be bullied by adminimonsters you only increase your chances of ending up with something worse than you have now and letting them off the hook.
Shit rolls down hill. If at any point someone tries to cause you grief, start a few steps above them in the food chain and file a complaint that's tough enough to make their boss's boss cringe, such as an ADA (Americans With Disabilities) suit, and make sure it's publicised. Discrimination of this sort is illegal. That means (1) they'll try to get away with it only if you let them think they can and (2) it can cost them far more money and other problems if you stick it to them for trying to stick it to you. Make them aware you're aware of these things.
The best defense is the BEST offense. If you don't do it, nobody is going to do it for you. They'll be more than happy to rip off your health instead.
It's your HANDS, man. Even if they all got away with their BS, it's not worth your hands.
That being said, consider a thumbwheel mouse. I have a maximal case of carpal because the bones of my right wrist have been replaced with a bar of titanium, and the surgeries really screwed up the tendons etc. I replaced my mouse with a thumbwheel and have had no problems since. Well, none attributable to repetative stress.
They did not map STWM, they mapped ONE visual-only application of one part of STWM, the visuo-spatial "scratchpad". They did not test spatial relationships, so they did not test the entirety of V-S STWM. There is no reason to assume that had they tested spatial memory, the result would have been in the same place. For that matter there's no reason to assume that if the stimuli were words instead of dots the result would be the same.
They also did not test the auditory portion of STWM, the "phonological loop". Nor did they test the functional control mechanism that operates these, the "central executive".
One particular application of STWM might appear this localized. There's no reason to expect a different application to be in the same place. In fact, it'd be ridiculous to expect it. It's far more likely that, given all the possible localizations that could be found for the various tasks STWM can tackle, the outcome would be exactly the opposite of what's stated: STWM *is* distributed around the cortex.
People are too easily swayed by the legalistic propoganda to remember their own rights.
UUNet/Worldcom tried the same back in 1998 when people were parodying them regarding their pro-spammer stance. When the UUNet lawyers sent out their opening salvo, people responded by sprouting numerous mirrors and other parody sites. Here's a page (most links fairly outdated) about it. http://www.sputum.com/uunot/
One of the resulting media articles that was written concluded with a particularly apt phrase, something along the lines of "No matter who has what to say, the Net is always going to speak the loudest."
autechre (121980) sez: "2-digit years? STILL? Gah. The worst is when people express a date like 01/04/03. Great; how the hell am I supposed to know which is which?"
I know, I have the same problem. I can't tell if the directory structure is referring to files generated in 2004 or 1904. Nor can I tell whether the files will did is beinged (please pardon the trans-temporal grammar) generated in 2104 and transmitted to me via time machine. I sent a complaint about the latter, but got back a form letter response from someplace called the "Terran Occupation Forces", saying something about being fed up with us broadcasting illogical bitwave formats into space, yada yada, your normal netcop BS. Oh, and something about eating our brains. Kind of harsh for a simple annoying little date format issue, I thought.
our attention is attracted to someone talking, which is the basic mechanism of socialization, and we are social animals. When we find out that their socialization procedure does not and connot possibly include us, we feel excluded from the social structure.
There is also an attribution error due to that fact that many people use their call phones to be seen and heard using their cell phones: we assume many people are doing so if we don't know better.
They're leaving us out, on purpose, in order to talk to someone else. It pisses us off. We often turn it into something more palatable to complain about, like not paying enough attention when they're driving, which does happen, but the vehemence with wihich it bothers people (and more so those people who are sensitive to social structure) makes it clear that the driving stuff is just an excuse.
Such phrasing is apparently all it takes to get something like this into/. Is there some reason the science can't stand on its own and requires fearmongering to make it worthy?
"First clinical trials planned for 2004."
They don't even know if it'll work. And if it does, these things are no more Orwellian than a joystick. RTFA and then act like you did, and stop submitting/releasing ScienceFUD. If you need a fix of Brain Eating Monsters, go turn on SciFi Channel or something.
IIRC, it was Clarke that said "Once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere."
Where to go becomes a variable once you have a good solid footing in orbit. Chesley Bonestall's artwork of vonBraun's ideas are still some of the best instant presentations of the best possibilities; multistage lift and transfer vehicles and wheel design space station, all for building craft to anyplace.
I have a Logitech Trackman Wheel thumbwheel mouse. I had extensive reconstruction of my right arm, and have no wrist at all (having been replaced with a metal rod). I can use a regular mouse but it's difficult and slow. This thumbwheel solves the problem. In fact, after having used it only a couple weeks, I managed to win Windows Solitaire in less than 100 seconds, my previous best time with a regular never having broke 120 seconds, even before the wrist replacement.
I consider the fact that it's difficult to use for someone who's never tried one before, to be a plus. It keeps people from trying to use my machine.
PitaBred (632671) sez: "Random thought: Why does everyone say IANAL?"
Because if you give an opinion and don't make clear it's not qualified legal advice, and someone takes it, and then everything goes to hell because it was a bad idea, they could sue you (and/.) for giving legal advice without being qualified.
Welcome to America.
I've noticed that the yellow pages have color coded page edges for major sections, such as phsyicians, restaurants, etc. They do not do so for lawyers. If they did, the lawyers' section in the yellow pages for the area around Yale University would be the largest section so marked, almost twice as large as that for physicians.
Not as large, but probably far more impressive to see in operation was a subwoofer contructed at Purdue University. A single 12" driver was attached to the bottom of a large vertical gas burner, essentially an enormous Bunsen burner. When turned on the flame was 30 feet tall. The driver modulated the air going in and the flame surface acted as the woofer. It did 1 Hz with no appreciable distortion. Of course, only the instruments could tell for sure.
"Putting weapons in earth orbit is not forbidden by any treaty or law."
Even if it were in a treaty, that means nothing to the US. We have broken most of the treaties we've signed. If one were proposed to prevent the militarization of space, we'd refuse to sign it. mIf a later, more enlightened administration were to sign such a treaty, another administration would break it whenever it was convenient for them to do so.
Besides as already noted they show correlation but not causation (despite the fact they try real hard to imply it), they don't even use a valid measure of ADD. They use a measure of hyperactivity. Hyperactivity is not ADD. ADD can occur with or without hyperactivity, and hyperactivity can be due to other than ADD.
It is well known that kids with ADD, even with hyperactivity, can sit and focus on active things for long periods of time (TV, video games, etc.). It is far more likely that lots of TV watching can be a sign of burgeoning ADD symptoms (or a very busy parent).
Anyone interested in what ADD is and isn't should read chapters 9 and 10 in Diane McGuiness's book "When Children Don't Learn". She pretty much tears a new one into the present tendency to diagnose any kid with any problems as having ADD.
... the greatest benefit to society would come from automating driving for the worst drivers, but they'd be the least likely to consent to it.
But at least now we can point to something and say "But look how SAFE it is," and watch the faces fall on the twits that have been using that line to justify driving a renamed truck with single digit gas milage.
"Will drinking 100 cups of coffee (the good kind, not that crappy decaf mocalatte crap) in 24 hours kill a person?"
Yes, it will. 6 gallons of water in 24 hours will cause water intoxication (hyponatremia). That's when the ion content of your body becomes too low for neural activity to be maintained. About half that amount has been known to cause coma (http://www.abc.net.au/dimensions/dimensions_healt h/Transcripts/s871112.htm).
An athelete drank that much and survived probably only because he was an athelete. (http://www.wonderquest.com/water-intox.htm)
There have been at least 2 deaths caused by a person drinking too much water (http://www.urban75.com/Drugs/drugxtc1.html ; http://www.pressrepublican.com/Archive/2004/02_200 4/022120045.htm), and one child abuse/murder (http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,455030824,0 0.html) caused by force feeding water.
People don't need to drink near as much water as they're usually told. Common "wisdom" says to drink half a gallon a day. That's wrong. You need 1 milliliter of water for every calorie of food. That *is* two liters for a 2Kcal diet. But all the food we eat is in large part water. The USDA recommendations are quite clear on including that. Unfortunately nobody reads them.
Yes, I do know what day this is. This is the answer anyway.
... my rice to produce endoglucanase, exoglucanase and beta-glucosidase. That way when I eat it I will be taking in the enzymes necessary to break down cellulose into glucose. And THEN I can eat the rest of the plant, or lawn clippings, or pretty much any plant material at all. As unpleasant as it sounds, it'll probably become necessary, since the patents on "improved" foods will make them cost so much more, and apparently if they cross-pollinate with native plants, the patent holder will own the hybrids produced too, meaning they'll end up owning entire plants species.
While altruism can indeed mexist in nature, it does not exist in the corporate lexicon.
"What ever happened to the concept that the simplest explaination is probably the best?"
Parsimony. For explanations, that's a nice policy. For theories (to which Occam's Razor* is applied), it's wrong in principle, although sometimes correct in practice.
Nature is as simple or complex as it is, and no policy is going to change it. A TOE that fits on a post card would be elegant. Just because Smilin' Albert lucked out and got a single-line Big Truth is no reason to expect everything to work that way. The TOE may fit on one line to it may cover a billboard at 8 point monospaced.
(* Named for its author, William of Ockham [1284-1347], who had a beard. If he had a razor, he didn't use it.)
"45 minutes to ship a package" "20 minutes to get there and back, and 25 minutes to get stuck" "Miss that light." "2 minutes gone." "- 1 more minute gone." "wait 2 minutes." "wait 2 more minutes." "wait 2 more minutes." "By now I'm pretty livid." "waiting for 4 freaking minutes" "I waited 3 minutes, 22 seconds there." "speed bumps at 5 mph. I passed him on a residential street"
Thank you for proving my point. You are suffering from Time Sickness.
"You say to relax, well, that's a typical day"
I most certainly do say "relax", more to you than most. It is not at all a typical day for anyone whether in Rochester of West Lafayette, when they so compulsively and with a predetermined negative attitude track their travel time down to the seconds.
"I left 45 minutes"
You could have left no consideration to time limit at all, and gone through all the situations you described with an entirely different attitude. Nothing at all would be different afterwards except how you felt. The down side to taking responsibility for how you feel is you can't blame anyone else for it anymore.
"60km is more than 180,000 ft. The article says 100,000, that's about 30km, which sounds more like it to me."
You're right, my bad. I had the 100km/62.5 mile figure stuck in my head from reading the X-prize docs.
"It's my understanding that sonic booms do indeed reach down to the ground from that altitude."
Detectable, probably. Audible, possibly, in a quiet country setting.
"I'm still quite sure that this vehicle gives a lot more drag. The only way to reduce the drag is to reduce the size, but Concorde is already tiny."
That's an odd use of the word "tiny".
The cross section (major determinant of drag, therefore size of hole to punch through the wall, therefore boom) of the Concorde is over 100 square feet. The X-43's cross section is about 10 square feet. Considering the latter, nobody is going to be riding it anywhere.
"What other options are out there for someone who doesn't want to fiddle around with tiny web pages on his phone while driving?"
Just sit back, relax and enjoy it. People, especially in the US, seem to develop a habit of making themselves frustrated over traffic. Poor time planning, habitual generalized aggression, assumed impatience for no real reason, whatever, people get irritated over something that getting irritated about only makes worse.
Give yourself plenty of time, take it easy and relax. How often do you get a good excuse to get away from everyone and chill? Use it. Hell, take the slow route.
Shouldn't be too difficult for OO to respond to these, point by point. Half the work has already been done, right here. Dollars to donuts, if they do and try to include a link or copy of M$'s document, they'll get threatened. M$ is scared. It wouldn't take much to make them act real st00pid.
Slashdot Mirror
Question: What criteria will people use to judge robots as artificial life forms, or artificial entities equivalent to life forms?
Comment: The neuroscientist Karl Pribram often said "Just make them cute and warm and fuzzy and huggable."
"does the nature of the World Wide Web in fact give sites like Wonkette, Drudge, or even Slashdot a free pass on accuracy if it means the difference between getting the scoop or not?"
Why not? Much of the traditional media has already gone that road. Once very traditional and proper BBC News science reporting was accurate and precise. Now it's quite often FUD. And witness the fiascos that occurred in reporting the the results of Martha Stewart's trial (the FUBAR covered marvelously by The Daily Show), and despite their insistence they'll stop, much US media's over-projecting voting results.
Should we trust blogs as much as we do the media? Wrong question. We should trust the media as little as we do blogs. They both consist of, in large part, opinion, and implicit advertising in that they're marketing their outlet and its ad rates based on readership.
...and make no mistake, I not only work in a health care setting, and have a master's in healtcare administration, and also have more than one disability myself...
"I do not want to file a claim due to the stigma that it carries"
FUCK stigma, FUCK any whining from HR, FUCK any future possible employers who might look disfavorably, FUCK any insurance company that tries to disallow a charge.
Take care of YOURSELF. Get yourself evaluated and treated. By allowing yourself to be bullied by adminimonsters you only increase your chances of ending up with something worse than you have now and letting them off the hook.
Shit rolls down hill. If at any point someone tries to cause you grief, start a few steps above them in the food chain and file a complaint that's tough enough to make their boss's boss cringe, such as an ADA (Americans With Disabilities) suit, and make sure it's publicised. Discrimination of this sort is illegal. That means (1) they'll try to get away with it only if you let them think they can and (2) it can cost them far more money and other problems if you stick it to them for trying to stick it to you. Make them aware you're aware of these things.
The best defense is the BEST offense. If you don't do it, nobody is going to do it for you. They'll be more than happy to rip off your health instead.
It's your HANDS, man. Even if they all got away with their BS, it's not worth your hands.
That being said, consider a thumbwheel mouse. I have a maximal case of carpal because the bones of my right wrist have been replaced with a bar of titanium, and the surgeries really screwed up the tendons etc. I replaced my mouse with a thumbwheel and have had no problems since. Well, none attributable to repetative stress.
They did not map STWM, they mapped ONE visual-only application of one part of STWM, the visuo-spatial "scratchpad". They did not test spatial relationships, so they did not test the entirety of V-S STWM. There is no reason to assume that had they tested spatial memory, the result would have been in the same place. For that matter there's no reason to assume that if the stimuli were words instead of dots the result would be the same.
They also did not test the auditory portion of STWM, the "phonological loop". Nor did they test the functional control mechanism that operates these, the "central executive".
One particular application of STWM might appear this localized. There's no reason to expect a different application to be in the same place. In fact, it'd be ridiculous to expect it. It's far more likely that, given all the possible localizations that could be found for the various tasks STWM can tackle, the outcome would be exactly the opposite of what's stated: STWM *is* distributed around the cortex.
...failed. Eddington's measurements were flawed, and the good ones weren't good enough. He was lucky. His unsupportable "result" was correct.
People are too easily swayed by the legalistic propoganda to remember their own rights.
UUNet/Worldcom tried the same back in 1998 when people were parodying them regarding their pro-spammer stance. When the UUNet lawyers sent out their opening salvo, people responded by sprouting numerous mirrors and other parody sites. Here's a page (most links fairly outdated) about it. http://www.sputum.com/uunot/
One of the resulting media articles that was written concluded with a particularly apt phrase, something along the lines of "No matter who has what to say, the Net is always going to speak the loudest."
autechre (121980) sez: "2-digit years? STILL? Gah.
The worst is when people express a date like 01/04/03. Great; how the hell am I supposed to know which is which?"
I know, I have the same problem. I can't tell if the directory structure is referring to files generated in 2004 or 1904. Nor can I tell whether the files will did is beinged (please pardon the trans-temporal grammar) generated in 2104 and transmitted to me via time machine. I sent a complaint about the latter, but got back a form letter response from someplace called the "Terran Occupation Forces", saying something about being fed up with us broadcasting illogical bitwave formats into space, yada yada, your normal netcop BS. Oh, and something about eating our brains. Kind of harsh for a simple annoying little date format issue, I thought.
our attention is attracted to someone talking, which is the basic mechanism of socialization, and we are social animals. When we find out that their socialization procedure does not and connot possibly include us, we feel excluded from the social structure.
There is also an attribution error due to that fact that many people use their call phones to be seen and heard using their cell phones: we assume many people are doing so if we don't know better.
They're leaving us out, on purpose, in order to talk to someone else. It pisses us off. We often turn it into something more palatable to complain about, like not paying enough attention when they're driving, which does happen, but the vehemence with wihich it bothers people (and more so those people who are sensitive to social structure) makes it clear that the driving stuff is just an excuse.
"Brain chips sound pretty Orwellian"
/. Is there some reason the science can't stand on its own and requires fearmongering to make it worthy?
Such phrasing is apparently all it takes to get something like this into
"First clinical trials planned for 2004."
They don't even know if it'll work. And if it does, these things are no more Orwellian than a joystick. RTFA and then act like you did, and stop submitting/releasing ScienceFUD. If you need a fix of Brain Eating Monsters, go turn on SciFi Channel or something.
IIRC, it was Clarke that said "Once you're in orbit, you're halfway to anywhere."
Where to go becomes a variable once you have a good solid footing in orbit. Chesley Bonestall's artwork of vonBraun's ideas are still some of the best instant presentations of the best possibilities; multistage lift and transfer vehicles and wheel design space station, all for building craft to anyplace.
I have a Logitech Trackman Wheel thumbwheel mouse. I had extensive reconstruction of my right arm, and have no wrist at all (having been replaced with a metal rod). I can use a regular mouse but it's difficult and slow. This thumbwheel solves the problem. In fact, after having used it only a couple weeks, I managed to win Windows Solitaire in less than 100 seconds, my previous best time with a regular never having broke 120 seconds, even before the wrist replacement.
I consider the fact that it's difficult to use for someone who's never tried one before, to be a plus. It keeps people from trying to use my machine.
PitaBred (632671) sez: "Random thought: Why does everyone say IANAL?"
/.) for giving legal advice without being qualified.
Because if you give an opinion and don't make clear it's not qualified legal advice, and someone takes it, and then everything goes to hell because it was a bad idea, they could sue you (and
Welcome to America.
I've noticed that the yellow pages have color coded page edges for major sections, such as phsyicians, restaurants, etc. They do not do so for lawyers. If they did, the lawyers' section in the yellow pages for the area around Yale University would be the largest section so marked, almost twice as large as that for physicians.
I wonder why they don't do it. Embarassed?
I wonder if this will result in more layoffs from the company that once boasted it would never do so. How times change.
Not as large, but probably far more impressive to see in operation was a subwoofer contructed at Purdue University. A single 12" driver was attached to the bottom of a large vertical gas burner, essentially an enormous Bunsen burner. When turned on the flame was 30 feet tall. The driver modulated the air going in and the flame surface acted as the woofer. It did 1 Hz with no appreciable distortion. Of course, only the instruments could tell for sure.
"Putting weapons in earth orbit is not forbidden by any treaty or law."
Even if it were in a treaty, that means nothing to the US. We have broken most of the treaties we've signed. If one were proposed to prevent the militarization of space, we'd refuse to sign it. mIf a later, more enlightened administration were to sign such a treaty, another administration would break it whenever it was convenient for them to do so.
Besides as already noted they show correlation but not causation (despite the fact they try real hard to imply it), they don't even use a valid measure of ADD. They use a measure of hyperactivity. Hyperactivity is not ADD. ADD can occur with or without hyperactivity, and hyperactivity can be due to other than ADD.
It is well known that kids with ADD, even with hyperactivity, can sit and focus on active things for long periods of time (TV, video games, etc.). It is far more likely that lots of TV watching can be a sign of burgeoning ADD symptoms (or a very busy parent).
Anyone interested in what ADD is and isn't should read chapters 9 and 10 in Diane McGuiness's book "When Children Don't Learn". She pretty much tears a new one into the present tendency to diagnose any kid with any problems as having ADD.
... the greatest benefit to society would come from automating driving for the worst drivers, but they'd be the least likely to consent to it.
But at least now we can point to something and say "But look how SAFE it is," and watch the faces fall on the twits that have been using that line to justify driving a renamed truck with single digit gas milage.
Can't say much for the dogfights, but I was rececntly very impressed with what's an otherwise minor detail in Andromeda's pilot show.
In preparing to fight, Dylan says he's going to dump the atmosphere in most of the ship to reduce its mass.
DUH. That makes perfect sense. In over 40 years of sci fi reading and watching, I'd never seen that before.
"Will drinking 100 cups of coffee (the good kind, not that crappy decaf mocalatte crap) in 24 hours kill a person?"
t h/Transcripts/s871112.htm).
0 4/022120045.htm), and one child abuse/murder (http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,455030824,0 0.html) caused by force feeding water.
Yes, it will. 6 gallons of water in 24 hours will cause water intoxication (hyponatremia). That's when the ion content of your body becomes too low for neural activity to be maintained. About half that amount has been known to cause coma (http://www.abc.net.au/dimensions/dimensions_heal
An athelete drank that much and survived probably only because he was an athelete. (http://www.wonderquest.com/water-intox.htm)
There have been at least 2 deaths caused by a person drinking too much water (http://www.urban75.com/Drugs/drugxtc1.html ; http://www.pressrepublican.com/Archive/2004/02_20
People don't need to drink near as much water as they're usually told. Common "wisdom" says to drink half a gallon a day. That's wrong. You need 1 milliliter of water for every calorie of food. That *is* two liters for a 2Kcal diet. But all the food we eat is in large part water. The USDA recommendations are quite clear on including that. Unfortunately nobody reads them.
Yes, I do know what day this is. This is the answer anyway.
... my rice to produce endoglucanase, exoglucanase and beta-glucosidase. That way when I eat it I will be taking in the enzymes necessary to break down cellulose into glucose. And THEN I can eat the rest of the plant, or lawn clippings, or pretty much any plant material at all. As unpleasant as it sounds, it'll probably become necessary, since the patents on "improved" foods will make them cost so much more, and apparently if they cross-pollinate with native plants, the patent holder will own the hybrids produced too, meaning they'll end up owning entire plants species.
While altruism can indeed mexist in nature, it does not exist in the corporate lexicon.
"What ever happened to the concept that the simplest explaination is probably the best?"
Parsimony. For explanations, that's a nice policy. For theories (to which Occam's Razor* is applied), it's wrong in principle, although sometimes correct in practice.
Nature is as simple or complex as it is, and no policy is going to change it. A TOE that fits on a post card would be elegant. Just because Smilin' Albert lucked out and got a single-line Big Truth is no reason to expect everything to work that way. The TOE may fit on one line to it may cover a billboard at 8 point monospaced.
(* Named for its author, William of Ockham [1284-1347], who had a beard. If he had a razor, he didn't use it.)
"45 minutes to ship a package" "20 minutes to get there and back, and 25 minutes to get stuck" "Miss that light." "2 minutes gone." "- 1 more minute gone." "wait 2 minutes." "wait 2 more minutes." "wait 2 more minutes." "By now I'm pretty livid." "waiting for 4 freaking minutes" "I waited 3 minutes, 22 seconds there." "speed bumps at 5 mph. I passed him on a residential street"
Thank you for proving my point. You are suffering from Time Sickness.
"You say to relax, well, that's a typical day"
I most certainly do say "relax", more to you than most. It is not at all a typical day for anyone whether in Rochester of West Lafayette, when they so compulsively and with a predetermined negative attitude track their travel time down to the seconds.
"I left 45 minutes"
You could have left no consideration to time limit at all, and gone through all the situations you described with an entirely different attitude. Nothing at all would be different afterwards except how you felt. The down side to taking responsibility for how you feel is you can't blame anyone else for it anymore.
"60km is more than 180,000 ft. The article says 100,000, that's about 30km, which sounds more like it to me."
You're right, my bad. I had the 100km/62.5 mile figure stuck in my head from reading the X-prize docs.
"It's my understanding that sonic booms do indeed reach down to the ground from that altitude."
Detectable, probably. Audible, possibly, in a quiet country setting.
"I'm still quite sure that this vehicle gives a lot more drag. The only way to reduce the drag is to reduce the size, but Concorde is already tiny."
That's an odd use of the word "tiny".
The cross section (major determinant of drag, therefore size of hole to punch through the wall, therefore boom) of the Concorde is over 100 square feet. The X-43's cross section is about 10 square feet. Considering the latter, nobody is going to be riding it anywhere.
"What other options are out there for someone who doesn't want to fiddle around with tiny web pages on his phone while driving?"
Just sit back, relax and enjoy it. People, especially in the US, seem to develop a habit of making themselves frustrated over traffic. Poor time planning, habitual generalized aggression, assumed impatience for no real reason, whatever, people get irritated over something that getting irritated about only makes worse.
Give yourself plenty of time, take it easy and relax. How often do you get a good excuse to get away from everyone and chill? Use it. Hell, take the slow route.
Shouldn't be too difficult for OO to respond to these, point by point. Half the work has already been done, right here. Dollars to donuts, if they do and try to include a link or copy of M$'s document, they'll get threatened. M$ is scared. It wouldn't take much to make them act real st00pid.