True. But if these things become prevalent then the parents that don't track and log their children's movements will be seen as irresponsible. Woe to the parent in court having her children taken away by Social Services because she's a negligent parent that obviously doesn't care.
That is a fascinating post. I would actually argue that a linear progression in wealth actually provides a greater incentive than an exponential one. Does that make sense? Kind of. Firstly, if you look at another area where human motivation comes to the fore, look at exercise. Where there is a large gap between an individual and those above (for want of a better word), that individual often finds it hard to motivate themselves to attempt that next level - they perceive the gap as large and are thus less likely to attempt it. Where there is a steadier progression, they perceive smaller gaps between themselves and the next up and thus are more likely to strive for it. So if group A earns $50,000pa, and the next broadly visible group up earns $500,000pa, then memebers of Group A will likely stay where they are. If there are 'stepping stones', i.e. there are groups every $50,0000pa mark between A and B, then you'll see people clawing their way up.
And all this leaves out the likely "protectionism" that widely disparate groups produce. Seeing someone jump from a low group, to your high group, can upset things for the high group. Seeing someone nearer, join you, is less of an upset.
And when you reach the impassé of people who do not evaluate everything in terms of financial cost? People who no amount of money will compensate them for their child suffering brain damage from mercury in sea food or don't consider it possible to set a price on the extinction of a species or the destruction of the woodland or jungle they care about?
I'm sorry to see you've been modded troll as there was nothing in your post to deserve it. I think there are some puritan mods who when they see any put down of anyone (even light comments such as "many people are too ignorant" which is pretty much incontestable) they leap for the troll mod. Else you've either picked up some personal haters who now have mod points, or this issue of energy-saving is so divisive that some people are viewing any view-point different to their own as something to be suppressed. If it's the final option, then it's really disturbing that people lose their rationality on a subject like this.
At any rate, I was going for Funny with my post. I found the image of people thinking their new more-efficient TV doesn't give out enough heat and installing a new heater comical. But that doesn't take away from the points in your post. I've never had air-conditioning and it being a factor in all this never even occurred to me. Interesting points, all.
Don't worry about the energy lost from more efficient plasma TVs, It will just be made up by people needing to turn their heating higher to compensate.
Why do you assume they are acting with nefarious intent when a much simpler explanation is good old fashioned Governmental incompetence?
Because the parties responsible benefit from the behaviour, which suggests intent. The USA's military budget is a wonder of the Modern World. Politicians get away with deleting public records in the name of security, those that want to go on military adventures for the benefit of private companies they are associated with get to do so. Laws that make it harder to protest against unpopular actions get passed ("Free Speech Zones" - wtf?) resulting in greater freedom for those in power to act without visible criticism. Surveillance, warranted and unwarranted (literally) is passed with little criticism. And all on the ticket of fear.
So you tell me, if factions of people have the smarts to gain control of one of the biggest nations on Earth, institute policies that benefit them in myriad ways to your own detriment, why on Earth would you call them incompetent? Cost overruns on various government projects? Ask yourself where the overspend is going. It doesn't just vanish - it goes into someone's pocket.
I expect someone will jump in here and say I should be using LaTex, and maybe I should. I have just never made time to master it.
Well yes, you should learn LaTex, but not for the spreadsheet work.;) Seriously though, whilst Open Office is nearly as good as MS Office for most people's purposes (there are some long-time glitches though, like the "Adjusting Row Height" bug in Calc), neither feel anything other than clumsy once you're used to proper document-generation tools. If you don't want to take the time to learn LaTex, or find it a little limited by modern standards, try a DTP tool such as Scribus.. There is still a learning curve, but after producing immaculate looking PDFs or printout with tools like this, you may find Word (or Writer) quite frustrating. At least that's what happened to me.
I agree fully with the need to unplug the outside world, though in my case it's more an issue of not wanting Google or MS interns to be able to read through all my work.
That would be great. I would love to do something like this, and I could probably manage the graphics side of things, but the mathematics is currently beyond me. I would need to do quite a bit of studying before I understood what I was supposed to be generating pictures of.:( Maybe one day...
Somewhere, there are a group of very bright researches, clutching a very sophisticated new model for calculating optimum gravitational assists, wondering how in Hell's name a year of work got summed up by the Internet as "you fall along these tubes".
You're not "wrong", you just aren't familiar enough with the numbers to rely on your intuition. Take a CD or DVD and call it the Earth. Now trace an orbit around it about 18mm out from the CD's edge. That's Low Earth Orbit (LEO has a bit of a range, I've taken 1,000km which is in the middle). Now you can see how much of a difference flying up 5-8 miles (about 0.3mm above our CD) makes. Incidentally, atmosphere is pretty much negligible more than 2mm out from your CD-Earth.
Playing with the numbers involved in Space in ways like this is great fun. I hope this answer's been useful. IANARS (rocket scientist).
It's a neat picture, but I'm disappointed with it. The planets are in motion, so the corridors are changing shape. I want to see an animation of how these corridors move over time. Anything else is a simplification, surely.
Ah, but what if holistic treatment enhances the Placebo Effect. What if I do double-blind trials, give both groups a placebo, but one group gets the full chanting and waving experience to go with it? What if that group does better? The placebo effect is a proven phenomenon. If I can invoke it reliably for patients, does that not make my treatment an effective one?
Sadly not. People often live longer than doctors say... Your post was grammatically flawless and you have successfully passed the Grammar Nazis. However, you have no reached Level 2: Semantic Nazis. And we judge you: Guilty!
Wow! I've just read through about three pages of you arguing with people - incorrectly - that the truth of a statement isn't an absolute defense against libel & slander, and now I find you making even more incorrect statements in an authoritative manner. Techno-Vampire: this is plainly not your area of expertise, so stop talking with such absolute certainty on things. To respond to the GP, if an article is published in a foreign country, then British laws may still be relevant if that material is available in Britain. Which is probably as it should be you don't want me to be able to legally accuse you of all sorts of false and defamatory things simply by posting them on a website in the USA. That you can sue in Britain for material published abroad, is the reason that Britain is the favored place for bringing such lawsuits, much as i4i decided to sue Microsoft for patent infringement (software patents - *spit*) in the rubber-stamp court of East Texas.
Of course the penalties and damages assigned by a British court will be limited to British interests and law, but for big interests such as the Guardian newspaper, that's a big deal.
I had great fun with someone who had been reading "The God Delusion" and was gleefully slagging off Creationism (and upsetting a very friendly and quiet Christian present). I asked him where he thought the Universe came from and he declaimed confidently: "The Big Bang". It took about fifty seconds of my questioning him about "The Big Bang" before we'd established that he couldn't explain it or support it at all (he didn't even bring up how the Universe is "expanding") and that his belief in The Big Bang was nothing more than an article of faith based on the prevailing view of authoritative figures, much like those people who had believed the Earth was 4000 years old because the Catholic Church in control of the known world (Europe) had told them so.
The point wasn't that he was wrong (or right, in fact), merely that he was unaware of how much of his own belief he was unable to support. If he'd even argued that he was right to take scientist's words on trust because of the reproducibility of technology based on their science, I'd have cut him some slack. But he didn't. He was just a modern incarnation of the sort of person who a thousand years ago would be mocking heathens for not acknowledging the supremacy of Christ. Question, question, question - that's the attitude we need more of. The US government just announced a $10m project to engage in "synchronised influence websites" supporting "the War on Terror", to manipulate such recalcitrant populations as the UK's (making reference to using British spelling to be more convincing). Questioning is vital to our functioning of society. If we keep people questioning, then the most supportable beliefs (such as the Earth being older than 4,000 years) will come to the fore anyway. If we don't have that, then we just have cycles of dogma building up and then collapsing in socially destructive ways.
In the political arena, you're after a consensus of agreement which is acceptable. You can start with something like "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." and if society as a whole agrees on them, then they become your axioms.
Not saying that the GP is correct, but Jew != Israeli, despite what the Israeli lobby endlessly puts out. You can be Jewish and disapprove of Israeli government policy and you can criticize the Israeli government without having any negative feelings toward Jewish people in general. Note that the GP quite clearly "Israeli" and "Zionist", at no point referring to Jewish people in general. You, very ironically, have made a sweeping generalisation about Jewish people and actually one that many Jewish people that denounce what they see as the Israeli government's appalling behaviour, would be very put out by. There are few things more irritating that someone you disagree with speaking on your behalf.
It's extremely unlikely to affect the end user. Pretty much anyone should be able to use ZFS in theory (and probably should - it's far ahead of anything else). But the GPL2 license that Linux is released under requires anything linked into the kernel to also be GPL2, and ZFS's license, while apparently similar, isn't actually the GPL2 license, hence it doesn't get integrated. So you either have to support an additional OS (as the GP was talking about) or fudge it to work with Linux, i.e. by using FUSE. I say 'fudge', I've no idea how well it works with FUSE and would be interested to hear a comment from anyone who has used it in anger in this way. My impression was that you wouldn't want to be doing this in a production environment, but I might be out of date.
Yup! Praise, after dinging it - like every Clarkson bit since the dawn of recorded history.
Simple analysis: Saying something is good = not very insightful. Leading people to believe it's bad and then pointing out how they're wrong = insightful. It's a basic technique for making what you say appear more intelligent than it is.
The only thing standing in the way of anyone becoming a scientist is their innate intelligence...
I'm reminded of Einstein's demurring his genius, remarking that he was only "passionately curious." Few people reach their intellectual potential and someone with enthusiasm and curiosity will likely achieve a higher effective level than someone with a greater potential that lacks those traits.
Slashdot Mirror
True. But if these things become prevalent then the parents that don't track and log their children's movements will be seen as irresponsible. Woe to the parent in court having her children taken away by Social Services because she's a negligent parent that obviously doesn't care.
That is a fascinating post. I would actually argue that a linear progression in wealth actually provides a greater incentive than an exponential one. Does that make sense? Kind of. Firstly, if you look at another area where human motivation comes to the fore, look at exercise. Where there is a large gap between an individual and those above (for want of a better word), that individual often finds it hard to motivate themselves to attempt that next level - they perceive the gap as large and are thus less likely to attempt it. Where there is a steadier progression, they perceive smaller gaps between themselves and the next up and thus are more likely to strive for it. So if group A earns $50,000pa, and the next broadly visible group up earns $500,000pa, then memebers of Group A will likely stay where they are. If there are 'stepping stones', i.e. there are groups every $50,0000pa mark between A and B, then you'll see people clawing their way up.
And all this leaves out the likely "protectionism" that widely disparate groups produce. Seeing someone jump from a low group, to your high group, can upset things for the high group. Seeing someone nearer, join you, is less of an upset.
And when you reach the impassé of people who do not evaluate everything in terms of financial cost? People who no amount of money will compensate them for their child suffering brain damage from mercury in sea food or don't consider it possible to set a price on the extinction of a species or the destruction of the woodland or jungle they care about?
I'm sorry to see you've been modded troll as there was nothing in your post to deserve it. I think there are some puritan mods who when they see any put down of anyone (even light comments such as "many people are too ignorant" which is pretty much incontestable) they leap for the troll mod. Else you've either picked up some personal haters who now have mod points, or this issue of energy-saving is so divisive that some people are viewing any view-point different to their own as something to be suppressed. If it's the final option, then it's really disturbing that people lose their rationality on a subject like this.
At any rate, I was going for Funny with my post. I found the image of people thinking their new more-efficient TV doesn't give out enough heat and installing a new heater comical. But that doesn't take away from the points in your post. I've never had air-conditioning and it being a factor in all this never even occurred to me. Interesting points, all.
Regards,
H.
Don't worry about the energy lost from more efficient plasma TVs, It will just be made up by people needing to turn their heating higher to compensate.
Because the parties responsible benefit from the behaviour, which suggests intent. The USA's military budget is a wonder of the Modern World. Politicians get away with deleting public records in the name of security, those that want to go on military adventures for the benefit of private companies they are associated with get to do so. Laws that make it harder to protest against unpopular actions get passed ("Free Speech Zones" - wtf?) resulting in greater freedom for those in power to act without visible criticism. Surveillance, warranted and unwarranted (literally) is passed with little criticism. And all on the ticket of fear.
So you tell me, if factions of people have the smarts to gain control of one of the biggest nations on Earth, institute policies that benefit them in myriad ways to your own detriment, why on Earth would you call them incompetent? Cost overruns on various government projects? Ask yourself where the overspend is going. It doesn't just vanish - it goes into someone's pocket.
Obligatory Red Dwarf:
Rimmer: Kryten, take us to Blue Alert. Kryten: Are you sure, sir? It does mean changing the bulb.
Well yes, you should learn LaTex, but not for the spreadsheet work. ;) Seriously though, whilst Open Office is nearly as good as MS Office for most people's purposes (there are some long-time glitches though, like the "Adjusting Row Height" bug in Calc), neither feel anything other than clumsy once you're used to proper document-generation tools. If you don't want to take the time to learn LaTex, or find it a little limited by modern standards, try a DTP tool such as Scribus.. There is still a learning curve, but after producing immaculate looking PDFs or printout with tools like this, you may find Word (or Writer) quite frustrating. At least that's what happened to me.
I agree fully with the need to unplug the outside world, though in my case it's more an issue of not wanting Google or MS interns to be able to read through all my work.
That would be great. I would love to do something like this, and I could probably manage the graphics side of things, but the mathematics is currently beyond me. I would need to do quite a bit of studying before I understood what I was supposed to be generating pictures of.
Somewhere, there are a group of very bright researches, clutching a very sophisticated new model for calculating optimum gravitational assists, wondering how in Hell's name a year of work got summed up by the Internet as "you fall along these tubes".
You're not "wrong", you just aren't familiar enough with the numbers to rely on your intuition. Take a CD or DVD and call it the Earth. Now trace an orbit around it about 18mm out from the CD's edge. That's Low Earth Orbit (LEO has a bit of a range, I've taken 1,000km which is in the middle). Now you can see how much of a difference flying up 5-8 miles (about 0.3mm above our CD) makes. Incidentally, atmosphere is pretty much negligible more than 2mm out from your CD-Earth.
Playing with the numbers involved in Space in ways like this is great fun. I hope this answer's been useful. IANARS (rocket scientist).
It's a neat picture, but I'm disappointed with it. The planets are in motion, so the corridors are changing shape. I want to see an animation of how these corridors move over time. Anything else is a simplification, surely.
Well you've just validated my preference for KDE. These are clearly the healthier group of developers.
Ah, but what if holistic treatment enhances the Placebo Effect. What if I do double-blind trials, give both groups a placebo, but one group gets the full chanting and waving experience to go with it? What if that group does better? The placebo effect is a proven phenomenon. If I can invoke it reliably for patients, does that not make my treatment an effective one?
Sadly not. People often live longer than doctors say... Your post was grammatically flawless and you have successfully passed the Grammar Nazis. However, you have no reached Level 2: Semantic Nazis. And we judge you: Guilty!
;)
Wow! I've just read through about three pages of you arguing with people - incorrectly - that the truth of a statement isn't an absolute defense against libel & slander, and now I find you making even more incorrect statements in an authoritative manner. Techno-Vampire: this is plainly not your area of expertise, so stop talking with such absolute certainty on things. To respond to the GP, if an article is published in a foreign country, then British laws may still be relevant if that material is available in Britain. Which is probably as it should be you don't want me to be able to legally accuse you of all sorts of false and defamatory things simply by posting them on a website in the USA. That you can sue in Britain for material published abroad, is the reason that Britain is the favored place for bringing such lawsuits, much as i4i decided to sue Microsoft for patent infringement (software patents - *spit*) in the rubber-stamp court of East Texas.
Of course the penalties and damages assigned by a British court will be limited to British interests and law, but for big interests such as the Guardian newspaper, that's a big deal.
I had great fun with someone who had been reading "The God Delusion" and was gleefully slagging off Creationism (and upsetting a very friendly and quiet Christian present). I asked him where he thought the Universe came from and he declaimed confidently: "The Big Bang". It took about fifty seconds of my questioning him about "The Big Bang" before we'd established that he couldn't explain it or support it at all (he didn't even bring up how the Universe is "expanding") and that his belief in The Big Bang was nothing more than an article of faith based on the prevailing view of authoritative figures, much like those people who had believed the Earth was 4000 years old because the Catholic Church in control of the known world (Europe) had told them so.
The point wasn't that he was wrong (or right, in fact), merely that he was unaware of how much of his own belief he was unable to support. If he'd even argued that he was right to take scientist's words on trust because of the reproducibility of technology based on their science, I'd have cut him some slack. But he didn't. He was just a modern incarnation of the sort of person who a thousand years ago would be mocking heathens for not acknowledging the supremacy of Christ. Question, question, question - that's the attitude we need more of. The US government just announced a $10m project to engage in "synchronised influence websites" supporting "the War on Terror", to manipulate such recalcitrant populations as the UK's (making reference to using British spelling to be more convincing). Questioning is vital to our functioning of society. If we keep people questioning, then the most supportable beliefs (such as the Earth being older than 4,000 years) will come to the fore anyway. If we don't have that, then we just have cycles of dogma building up and then collapsing in socially destructive ways.
In the political arena, you're after a consensus of agreement which is acceptable. You can start with something like "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." and if society as a whole agrees on them, then they become your axioms.
Not saying that the GP is correct, but Jew != Israeli, despite what the Israeli lobby endlessly puts out. You can be Jewish and disapprove of Israeli government policy and you can criticize the Israeli government without having any negative feelings toward Jewish people in general. Note that the GP quite clearly "Israeli" and "Zionist", at no point referring to Jewish people in general. You, very ironically, have made a sweeping generalisation about Jewish people and actually one that many Jewish people that denounce what they see as the Israeli government's appalling behaviour, would be very put out by. There are few things more irritating that someone you disagree with speaking on your behalf.
Well it rather depends on whether they're drinking soup at the time or not. I'm not Jesus as sponsored by Campbells, you know.
It's extremely unlikely to affect the end user. Pretty much anyone should be able to use ZFS in theory (and probably should - it's far ahead of anything else). But the GPL2 license that Linux is released under requires anything linked into the kernel to also be GPL2, and ZFS's license, while apparently similar, isn't actually the GPL2 license, hence it doesn't get integrated. So you either have to support an additional OS (as the GP was talking about) or fudge it to work with Linux, i.e. by using FUSE. I say 'fudge', I've no idea how well it works with FUSE and would be interested to hear a comment from anyone who has used it in anger in this way. My impression was that you wouldn't want to be doing this in a production environment, but I might be out of date.
Did you?
Simple analysis: Saying something is good = not very insightful. Leading people to believe it's bad and then pointing out how they're wrong = insightful. It's a basic technique for making what you say appear more intelligent than it is.
I'm reminded of Einstein's demurring his genius, remarking that he was only "passionately curious." Few people reach their intellectual potential and someone with enthusiasm and curiosity will likely achieve a higher effective level than someone with a greater potential that lacks those traits.