On the one hand, we are told that the race/gender/etc. of individuals results in very different experiences and desires, and sometimes these are so different that members of one group can't really understand members of another group. (E.g. "It's a black thing.") On the other hand, if individuals in these different groups then turn out to (on average) want different careers than pure statistics would predict (e.g. all professions aren't 51% women), then we are told it's a Terrible Social Problem and Something Must Be Done.
We are regularly told that advanced Western nations shouldn't worry about Ebola, because we have advanced Western medicine, and aren't like those poor and primitive African nations. And then things like this happen. Or the recent CDC biohazard scandals. Or the hospital in Texas, just trained about Ebola, sends a recent arrival from Liberia who is showing symptoms back to his relatives with some antibiotics. And then, after he vomits on the sidewalk on the way back to the hospital, people without protective gear "clean it up" with a pressure hose, while a sandal-wearing woman walks by. And they reuse the ambulance before they decontaminate it. And the family violates their quarantine.
So when Top Men tell us there's no danger of an outbreak here, I am not reassured.
But Hospitals are modifying their procedures as needed to deal with those new threats.
The Dallas hospital with the Ebola patient had recently been trained for Ebola, but a guy shows up from Liberia and they sent him home with antibiotics for two days before he came back and they realized what he had. This does not reassure me.
In 2009, Dell caught headlines with its premium Adamo slim laptop, which was considered a competitor to the MacBook Air at the time.
Yes. "at the time." And remember the Dell competitor to the iPod? There are several problems for Dell here. 1) They are a maker of commodity hardware trying to move upmarket. But the fewer units they sell, the worse their economies of scale, so how to really make something special, without having to charge too much? Apple doesn't have that problem, in part because they sell 6-8 figures of even their high-end products. 2) Sure, Slashdot readers may be an exception, but most people who want Android and Windows machines rarely want expensive ones. So most of their target market will either want a cheaper Android tablet, or, if they want to spend more, they'll get an iPad.
I think the best Dell can hope for is to be a niche player, a slightly bigger version of their subsidiary Alienware. 15 years ago, Dell and Microsoft both seemed unstoppable, but both have repeatedly stumbled since then. My, how the mighty have fallen.
But how many people in the U.S. acquire HIV or AIDS in a hospital setting? That's a much better comparison for how Ebola is transmitted.
Not at all. HIV is relatively hard to catch for various reasons. Ebola you can get from a cough or sneeze from an infected person (a small bit of saliva doesn't count as "airborne," apparently), or by touching something an infected person sweated on. It only takes a few virus particles. I read about reporters given a tour of a hospital in one infected country, and they were told "Don't touch the walls!"
Plus, even Ebola survivors can spread the disease: I've read that the semen of Ebola survivors can transmit Ebola for months after their clinical recovery. And what about symptomatic carriers? AFAIK there have been none reported, but what if there's even one "Typhoid Mary" of Ebola?
There's a great idea, let's put a highly infectious virus with a 50% kill rate into a hospital and not quarantine those known to be infected.
And note that even in the US, about 75,000 people a year die from infections they acquire in hospitals, and that's just pneumonia, C. difficile, MRSA, and other things much less scary that Ebola, which you can get from touching something with just a few virus particles in it. I think the people who are claiming Ebola is only a problem in Africa due to ignorance and substandard medical care are fooling themselves: if it gets to the U.S., the hospitals here are unlikely to perform up to the standards required.
Plus, every new infection means more chances for Ebola to mutate, possibly into an airborne form.
Some technologies just don't make sense. At least with our current battery and silicon constraints.
A nice tablet at $500 didn't make sense... until the iPad came out. (Some early speculation had it priced at @$1,000). An expensive smartphone without a keyboard didn't make sense... until the iPhone. A laptop that is.68 inches thick (and gets thinner from there) didn't make sense... until the MacBook Air.
Apple has a track record of pushing limits, and of not releasing products that aren't highly refined. If they come out with an "iWatch," I'd bet it will be something special. And the following iterations will only improve it.
True, but I think that's overrated as a problem for Apple. Jobs was there long enough to leave his mark, and he knew for a while that he was dying. He taught a lot to many people there, including starting the little-talked-about Apple University. Apple now (and for a long time) has been far more than Jobs. I think they'll be a bit different than when Jobs was in control, but those differences are more likely to be positive than negative.
Let's admit it: all these smart watches are like MP3 players, pre-iPod: early pioneers, but destined to be forgotten. Once Apple enters the field, the category will take off. You don't have to be an Apple fanboi to see that coming.
Also predictable: Apple's entry will not be cheap, will be criticized for lacking features and openness, but buyers won't care. Samsung will rush a copycat revision of their entry, and the press will laud various "iWatch killers," but they won't be terribly successful.
Jane Q. Public: I just accidentally moderated one of your comments in the Antarctic ice thread as "Redundant," when I meant to click "Insightful." I can't figure out how to undo that, and I don't have an email address for you. Sorry!
Humans also have a lot more to learn than other primates: e.g. language and culture. It makes sense that we evolved with extended childhoods to give us time to learn things.
Neoteny: It's well-known that humans have an innate attraction for the general proportions of children: small, with big eyes and a large head. The longer kids look like kids, the more likely parents and other humans are likely to nuture, protect, and teach them.
Time to throw in the towel when it's the first time in years the company is making a profit? Why the fuck would BlackBerry want to do that?
Because it's the first time in years the company is making a profit? Won't that mean they'd get more for it?
Yes, people have been predicting doom for Blackberry for a while, but it's hard to see some big turnaround on the horizon, with millions of people abandoning Apple and Android.
(My, how times change. The first iPhone came out a little over seven years ago, to widespread mockery: "It has no keyboard!" "It's too expensive!" "Businesses and government will never abandon their Blackberries!" And now Blackberry is a shadow of it's former self, and we're arguing whether they're totally doomed or not....)
On the bright side (?) they don't likely have the tech to weaponize anything, and will wind up killing a lot of themselves instead.. or so one can hope.
Suicidal fanatics don't need tech to weaponize ebola. They can just infect themselves, hop on a plane, and leave spit and sweat on the bathroom door handles on the plane, plus whatever they can do when they get to their destination. The incubation period is long enough for them to fly to Mexico City, get to the US border, and join a group of illegals heading north, before they become too incapacitated to travel. But they need not bother with entering illegally: they can just fly straight in to a US airport.
Jerry Levey, a 6-foot-6, balding, mustachioed New Jersey volunteer fireman who wears his keys jingling on his belt, drinks Budweiser and crushes the cans when he finishes, stared dumbstruck at Mark Newman.
Mark Newman, a 6-foot-6, balding, mustachioed New Jersey volunteer fireman who wears his keys jingling on his belt, drinks Budweiser and crushes the cans when he finishes, stared dumbstruck at Jerry Levey.
The men were identical in almost every visible respect. [...]
For example, why do Newman and Levey have similar styles of dress, opinions and IQs? Is their shared taste for Budweiser inborn, the result of upbringing or mere coincidence? Was their passion for 3 a.m. takeout Chinese food determined in their childhood homes, or by chromosomes? [...]
Both men remember that, growing up in different households, in towns 65 miles apart, they were fascinated by fire trucks and firefighters.
Both became volunteer firemen but say they still yearn to be full-time firefighters.
When they met, Levey made his living installing fire-suppression equipment, such as sprinklers.
Newman made his living installing fire alarms.
Previously, Levey had worked for a lawn-chemical company; Newman installed lawn sprinklers.
"Before that," Newman said, "we both worked for supermarkets, both worked at gas stations, and he went to college for forestry, and I worked directly in the field, as a tree surgeon." [...]
People are often astonished to hear about the New Jersey twins' almost eerie similarities - and more astonished to learn that such striking similarities are the rule, not the exception, among the 100 sets of twins in the Minnesota study.
There is no gene which makes you "good at business".
And how do you know that? Studies of identical twins separated at birth and raised apart have found remarkable things: I remember an account of one case where as adults, both men had (among other similarities) chosen identical belt buckles, smoked the same brand of cigarettes, and held the packs in rolled up sleeves of their T-shirts in the same way. Of course, nobody says that proves there's a "belt-buckle choice gene," but it seems to indicate that genes can influence behavior in complex ways we do not understand. The idea that some genetic patterns might make you (on average) better at business is not outlandish at all.
Size matters. Desktop PCs are easy to make modular (unless you want an iMac). Laptops are harder, and besides removable batteries, only a few had any modular components (like a DVD drive swappable for an extra battery). Phones are much more space-constrained. Every millimeter counts, and modularity takes up quite a bit of space at that scale, because each part needs to be enclosed, securely attach to the others, etc.
In short, a modular phone is possible, but the trade-offs will be severe, and you'll be able to pick one or two things (e.g. speed, battery life, extra features, small size, etc.) but not all at the same time. And the prices won't be good, because manufacturer(s) will lose economies of scale: it'll be hard to compete with Apple and Samsung making millions and tens of millions of identical units.
Slashdot Mirror
I hereby coin the word "torpornauts," which had zero Google hits when I checked.
On the one hand, we are told that the race/gender/etc. of individuals results in very different experiences and desires, and sometimes these are so different that members of one group can't really understand members of another group. (E.g. "It's a black thing.") On the other hand, if individuals in these different groups then turn out to (on average) want different careers than pure statistics would predict (e.g. all professions aren't 51% women), then we are told it's a Terrible Social Problem and Something Must Be Done.
You can't have it both ways, folks.
We are regularly told that advanced Western nations shouldn't worry about Ebola, because we have advanced Western medicine, and aren't like those poor and primitive African nations. And then things like this happen. Or the recent CDC biohazard scandals. Or the hospital in Texas, just trained about Ebola, sends a recent arrival from Liberia who is showing symptoms back to his relatives with some antibiotics. And then, after he vomits on the sidewalk on the way back to the hospital, people without protective gear "clean it up" with a pressure hose, while a sandal-wearing woman walks by . And they reuse the ambulance before they decontaminate it. And the family violates their quarantine.
So when Top Men tell us there's no danger of an outbreak here, I am not reassured.
But Hospitals are modifying their procedures as needed to deal with those new threats.
The Dallas hospital with the Ebola patient had recently been trained for Ebola, but a guy shows up from Liberia and they sent him home with antibiotics for two days before he came back and they realized what he had. This does not reassure me.
Dell thinks they can be Apple, but don't have the walled garden that makes it work.
So, how does the "walled garden" make the MacBook Air such a popular laptop?
I've read that the semen of Ebola survivors can transmit Ebola for months after their clinical recovery.
You're way into [ citation needed ] territory there.
People remain infectious as long as their blood and body fluids, including semen and breast milk, contain the virus. Men who have recovered from the disease can still transmit the virus through their semen for up to 7 weeks after recovery from illness.
In 2009, Dell caught headlines with its premium Adamo slim laptop, which was considered a competitor to the MacBook Air at the time.
Yes. "at the time." And remember the Dell competitor to the iPod? There are several problems for Dell here. 1) They are a maker of commodity hardware trying to move upmarket. But the fewer units they sell, the worse their economies of scale, so how to really make something special, without having to charge too much? Apple doesn't have that problem, in part because they sell 6-8 figures of even their high-end products. 2) Sure, Slashdot readers may be an exception, but most people who want Android and Windows machines rarely want expensive ones. So most of their target market will either want a cheaper Android tablet, or, if they want to spend more, they'll get an iPad.
I think the best Dell can hope for is to be a niche player, a slightly bigger version of their subsidiary Alienware. 15 years ago, Dell and Microsoft both seemed unstoppable, but both have repeatedly stumbled since then. My, how the mighty have fallen.
But how many people in the U.S. acquire HIV or AIDS in a hospital setting? That's a much better comparison for how Ebola is transmitted.
Not at all. HIV is relatively hard to catch for various reasons. Ebola you can get from a cough or sneeze from an infected person (a small bit of saliva doesn't count as "airborne," apparently), or by touching something an infected person sweated on. It only takes a few virus particles. I read about reporters given a tour of a hospital in one infected country, and they were told "Don't touch the walls!"
Plus, even Ebola survivors can spread the disease: I've read that the semen of Ebola survivors can transmit Ebola for months after their clinical recovery. And what about symptomatic carriers? AFAIK there have been none reported, but what if there's even one "Typhoid Mary" of Ebola?
There's a great idea, let's put a highly infectious virus with a 50% kill rate into a hospital and not quarantine those known to be infected.
And note that even in the US, about 75,000 people a year die from infections they acquire in hospitals, and that's just pneumonia, C. difficile, MRSA, and other things much less scary that Ebola, which you can get from touching something with just a few virus particles in it. I think the people who are claiming Ebola is only a problem in Africa due to ignorance and substandard medical care are fooling themselves: if it gets to the U.S., the hospitals here are unlikely to perform up to the standards required.
Plus, every new infection means more chances for Ebola to mutate, possibly into an airborne form.
A tech billionaire should hire a team of mercenaries to track down and kill scammers, spammers, and malware authors.
Some technologies just don't make sense. At least with our current battery and silicon constraints.
A nice tablet at $500 didn't make sense... until the iPad came out. (Some early speculation had it priced at @$1,000). An expensive smartphone without a keyboard didn't make sense... until the iPhone. A laptop that is .68 inches thick (and gets thinner from there) didn't make sense... until the MacBook Air.
Apple has a track record of pushing limits, and of not releasing products that aren't highly refined. If they come out with an "iWatch," I'd bet it will be something special. And the following iterations will only improve it.
This time there is no SJobs.
True, but I think that's overrated as a problem for Apple. Jobs was there long enough to leave his mark, and he knew for a while that he was dying. He taught a lot to many people there, including starting the little-talked-about Apple University. Apple now (and for a long time) has been far more than Jobs. I think they'll be a bit different than when Jobs was in control, but those differences are more likely to be positive than negative.
Let's admit it: all these smart watches are like MP3 players, pre-iPod: early pioneers, but destined to be forgotten. Once Apple enters the field, the category will take off. You don't have to be an Apple fanboi to see that coming.
Also predictable: Apple's entry will not be cheap, will be criticized for lacking features and openness, but buyers won't care. Samsung will rush a copycat revision of their entry, and the press will laud various "iWatch killers," but they won't be terribly successful.
iPod, IPhone, iPad: we've seen this story before.
Jane Q. Public: I just accidentally moderated one of your comments in the Antarctic ice thread as "Redundant," when I meant to click "Insightful." I can't figure out how to undo that, and I don't have an email address for you. Sorry!
There are other related factors that seem to fit.
Time to throw in the towel when it's the first time in years the company is making a profit? Why the fuck would BlackBerry want to do that?
Because it's the first time in years the company is making a profit? Won't that mean they'd get more for it?
Yes, people have been predicting doom for Blackberry for a while, but it's hard to see some big turnaround on the horizon, with millions of people abandoning Apple and Android.
(My, how times change. The first iPhone came out a little over seven years ago, to widespread mockery: "It has no keyboard!" "It's too expensive!" "Businesses and government will never abandon their Blackberries!" And now Blackberry is a shadow of it's former self, and we're arguing whether they're totally doomed or not....)
On the bright side (?) they don't likely have the tech to weaponize anything, and will wind up killing a lot of themselves instead.. or so one can hope.
Suicidal fanatics don't need tech to weaponize ebola. They can just infect themselves, hop on a plane, and leave spit and sweat on the bathroom door handles on the plane, plus whatever they can do when they get to their destination. The incubation period is long enough for them to fly to Mexico City, get to the US border, and join a group of illegals heading north, before they become too incapacitated to travel. But they need not bother with entering illegally: they can just fly straight in to a US airport.
If the SmartThings people have class, they'll take a small portion of their windfall and pay back every Kickstarter donor 150%, or maybe 200%.
Here's where the anecdotes come from.
I thought I made it quite clear that I was not ignoring that.
Or it indicates that you or the source of that information is utterly full of shit. Sounds like an urban myth, to me.
Here you go.
Jerry Levey, a 6-foot-6, balding, mustachioed New Jersey volunteer fireman who wears his keys jingling on his belt, drinks Budweiser and crushes the cans when he finishes, stared dumbstruck at Mark Newman.
Mark Newman, a 6-foot-6, balding, mustachioed New Jersey volunteer fireman who wears his keys jingling on his belt, drinks Budweiser and crushes the cans when he finishes, stared dumbstruck at Jerry Levey.
The men were identical in almost every visible respect. [...]
For example, why do Newman and Levey have similar styles of dress, opinions and IQs? Is their shared taste for Budweiser inborn, the result of upbringing or mere coincidence? Was their passion for 3 a.m. takeout Chinese food determined in their childhood homes, or by chromosomes? [...]
Both men remember that, growing up in different households, in towns 65 miles apart, they were fascinated by fire trucks and firefighters.
Both became volunteer firemen but say they still yearn to be full-time firefighters.
When they met, Levey made his living installing fire-suppression equipment, such as sprinklers.
Newman made his living installing fire alarms.
Previously, Levey had worked for a lawn-chemical company; Newman installed lawn sprinklers.
"Before that," Newman said, "we both worked for supermarkets, both worked at gas stations, and he went to college for forestry, and I worked directly in the field, as a tree surgeon." [...]
People are often astonished to hear about the New Jersey twins' almost eerie similarities - and more astonished to learn that such striking similarities are the rule, not the exception, among the 100 sets of twins in the Minnesota study.
There is no gene which makes you "good at business".
And how do you know that? Studies of identical twins separated at birth and raised apart have found remarkable things: I remember an account of one case where as adults, both men had (among other similarities) chosen identical belt buckles, smoked the same brand of cigarettes, and held the packs in rolled up sleeves of their T-shirts in the same way. Of course, nobody says that proves there's a "belt-buckle choice gene," but it seems to indicate that genes can influence behavior in complex ways we do not understand. The idea that some genetic patterns might make you (on average) better at business is not outlandish at all.
Google's been pissing away cash on monorail projects ever since the IPO.
Robert X. Cringely's opinion is that many Google research projects are Larry Page's way to keep Sergey Brin out of his hair.
I said it last month, but will say it again: