You guys are both foes of friends, so I find this whole thread amusing.
Personally, I can't imagine Apple losing any customers whatsoever about this. The super paranoid who are complaining about this stuff keep talking up alternatives, which makes me think they're already using those alternatives. Apple will probably lower the tracking window, or at least disguise it better, and these articles will stop. But the point is, people buy Apple products for reasons other than to hide their location. People buy cell phones because they want to be reachable. People like phone apps that know where they are. From what other people have said, this seems to just be to limit the need for calling up data from cell towers, which takes time and bandwidth. Some lone lazy programmer probably figured it was easier to just store data forever, rather than some vast conspiracy to tell thieves when to steal your TV.
Everything in life is a balance. If you need a absolute location privacy while in public places (they already know your private home location, since you pay a bill), buy a burner with cash, and keep it off until you need to make a phone call.
I remember this being talked about sometime last year, I think. I could have it wrong, but the fact this article is about an Apple statement a while back, makes me think I have the story right. Basically Apple was gathering location data to ram it down AT&T's throat to try and get them to add more towers. I would assume this is just a continuation of all that. Am I wrong?
I think sci fi writers are all a bit torn about wanting recognition from the big institutions and culture as a whole. Sci fi has, for much of its history, been relegated to being sort of pulpy, popular kinds of rubbish. I think every writer wants to be really famous, get all kinds of recognition, even if he or she can't admit that too publicly, so it hurts the ego when people dismiss it as not being serious literature, or whatever.
But here's the secret. Genre fiction is popular. Really really popular, and fans of genre fiction consume a ridiculous amount of the stuff. You can actually make a living doing it. There are plenty of examples, yet all these people are looked down upon by the literary elite. Well, screw 'em. The so-called literary elite may get all the New York Times book reviews and mentions on talk shows and the BBC, but ultimately none of those people are making a living from their writing. People don't actually buy and read their books. How do they live? They attach themselves to colleges and basically get sponsored so the college can claim them, or they work a second job bagging groceries. And that's the really "good" literary writers. People still know your name if you're not in the creme de la creme of literary authors, but you don't ever make enough to stop working full time in your real career.
Frankly, I'd rather toil in literary obscurity, and be famous to my fans, rather than famous to the elite but have no source of income. Does it piss me off that people think my writing isn't serious, or that I'm peddling silliness to a bunch of losers? Of course it does. But my readers know differently, my income seems serious enough, and that's good enough for me. People who read what I write are better educated, have higher incomes, and aren't so finicky about ridiculous trends and fashions. They treat me alright, and I love them for giving me the opportunity to do what I love full time. I don't worry about attention from the literary elite, because they have no actual bearing on my livelihood. Their words and their actions can be hurtful, but I decided early on to use a pen name and keep my private life away from my writing life. They can besmirch my literary name, but they can't actually put me down. I completely understand and appreciate the letter written by the above sci fi authors, but I think they're letting their egos get more involved than they ought to. They have plenty of fans who don't give a crap about the BBC's list.
This may have come off as harsh to literary writing, but those writers do have their purpose. Personally I can't stand to read any of that stuff because it bores me to tears and leaves me mentally vacant, but that writing serves to document where we are as a culture, makes important statements, and ultimately it helps to educate new generations of middle and high school kids. I don't think genre fiction should wage war and somehow destroy all literary fiction. The two complement each other. Literary fiction tells us how things are, and genre fiction tells us how things can be. Mind-numbing literary analysis teaches us to be better thinkers, reading genre fiction entertains us, and gives us things to think about. Okay, that still sounds a bit harsh, but that's the reality. As I said, nobody actually reads literary fiction. People don't usually talk about the money they make from publishing a book, but the truth is it's not even close. All the money is in romance, sci fi, and fantasy. The literary writers will say that true art doesn't make any money, of course, and that being successful as a writer is somehow a bad thing. I wouldn't trade their recognition for my income, though.
One advantage of the federal system here is that individual states can specialize, too, due to differences in regulation, taxes, etc. It gives us a diversity, along with immigration, that makes us competitive in more things, and lets us come up with all kinds of new ideas.
The reason the US is losing manufacturing jobs, and service jobs, is because American workers expect a higher standard of living than most other places around the world, and therefore aren't willing to work for low enough wages to keep those jobs here. Clearly the economy isn't so bad here, because we're not desperate enough to fight for keeping those jobs here. I guarantee you, if a bunch of factory workers told their corporate bosses that they'd be willing to take a pay cut and work for Chinese wages, iPads would be made here. But those workers don't do that, they prefer their cushy pensions, collective bargaining, benefits, and comfortable wages, so they let their jobs go overseas.
Well, welcome to the reality of economics. The job you factory workers are doing isn't worth the amount you want to be paid. Somebody else values it lower, and so they get your job.
For all the fuss, it's actually not that bad a deal. Those factory workers go and get new jobs. Those call center workers go and get new jobs. Those computer programmers go and get new jobs. If they weren't able to adapt and change profession, or start their own companies and join the bourgeoises, unemployment would be a lot higher than it currently is, and whole generations now would have been lost. The reality is, people are out of work for a little while, then they get off their lazy butts and find a new job, even if that means getting educated, or moving, or whatever.
The point is, we didn't want those jobs anyway. They aren't that valuable, and don't let us have the standard of living we want to have. If you notice, the previous transitions from agriculture to industry to service didn't destroy the countries that have so far transitioned through them. Standard of living in fact has continually gone up. Hey, we have iPads now, that's pretty cool. A farmer in the 1700s didn't have an iPad. A factory worker in the 1800s didn't have an iPad. A service worker in the 1900s didn't have an iPad. Lucky for all of us iPad-affording countries that there's still workers in the world willing to build them for us for very low wages and low standards of living.
So we outsource all our jobs. All of them, in every industry type ever. The rest of the world gets filthy stinking rich, and then decides that hey, it's cheaper to send jobs over to the poor US people who are desperate for work, and will work for pennies. Suddenly, the money all shifts back.
That basically happens all the time, though not quite so extreme or quite so quickly. In reality it's a constant balancing act. In the world economy, people, companies, nations specialize. This isn't a bad thing, in fact it's the best thing, because it promotes innovation and efficiency. We send all our mindless manufacturing jobs over to workers in countries that are desperate to work and will work for razor thin margins. Eventually as their unemployment drops, their wage improves to the point where more of them can get better educations, better jobs, and the rest of the world can't afford to pay them, and looks elsewhere for cheap labor. Perhaps another developing country. Perhaps a better robot.
Yes, there are booms and busts throughout all this, but these aren't bad things either. Natural flows of wealth around the world economy promotes innovation because everyone is trying to get an edge, and the flows always ensure somebody somewhere is willing to work for less to get cheaper products for somebody else. Ultimately, I think everyone would rather have a cheap iPad than work for pennies in an iPad factory. China is currently on the upswing with their average personal wealth. It's not going to hit US-levels and keep on going up and up, it'll hit the point where some other country can do the labor cheaper, and then China is going to lose a lot of jobs.
I'd rather be in the US, coming up with new iPads, or new whatevers, than always building the iPads or whatevers somebody else came up with, hoping someday I'll be paid enough to buy one. Would anybody here rather live with a Chinese average wage and Chinese average standard of living, over the US averages? Bearing that in mind, which nation is really doing better in the current trade situation?
Ultimately, it doesn't matter where the money is flowing to, as long as it keeps flowing. If it was the case where all the manufacturing jobs were in the US instead of China or wherever, that would just mean we have lots of money and nothing to spend it on. China right now has lots of money flowing into it, but that just means more Chinese can afford to buy more stuff from elsewhere. Maybe they're buying stuff from other Chinese, but certainly not exclusively, and eventually, that money flows outwards to everywhere else. Around and around it goes.
The thing to remember is, money is only as good as the stuff it gets you. Sure, right now we're sending lots of money to China. But hey, in return we're getting stuff. You can't run apps on your dollar bills, but you sure can run apps on an iPad. That's a net benefit for us. They're not draining our wealth by draining our pieces of green paper, because we're not overpaying them for the stuff we get in return, we're paying what the market has priced that stuff at. They may not be buying as much of our stuff as we're buying their stuff, but they're buying a lot of stuff from other people, and those people buy stuff from other people, and eventually that money comes back to us so we can buy more Chinese stuff. Even if this was a closed system, with just the US and China alone in an economic relationship, and we were sending them all our money for all their iPad manufacturing, the end result is us having lots of iPads and them having a bunch of money of equal value. I'd say at nothing has actually changed except there's more iPads in the world, and we've got them all. We can then use those iPads to come up with new ideas for stuff to sell. How is that a bad thing?
The reason the iPad is made in China is because their margins over there are low. It's not like Apple is doing charity, they figured out they can make the most money over here by paying the Chinese very little. It also means more people over here can afford and iPad. Ultimately sending all your money overseas isn't that big a deal if you get all your stuff in return. I'd rather have lots of stuff than lots of money. Money is only good if it lets you buy stuff. The cash must flow.
"Buying locally" is a nice bumper sticker, and it's good in the very short term, but ultimately it stifles everyone's growth. Specialization is more efficient across the board, which means more stuff for more people. The question is, what does the US specialize in?
I'm all for having manufacturing jobs over here, but we need to figure out what specifically we can manufacture better, and why we want to specialize in it. I'd say building crazy new fighter jets and tanks is probably a good thing, for national security. Building crazy new engines and power plants is probably a good thing for national security and economic security. Building an iPad 2? Eh... I'd rather we have all the smart people over here figuring out how to build an iPad 3, and what features to add to it, rather than have all the dumb people over here build it for somebody else.
Yeah, drugs are a problem. Usage of those can sometimes be detected as well. You're right though. Ultimately this is a waste of resources, and the only real security already exists. The government is reactionary, and it's theater. Regular citizens are the ones who repeatedly stop attempted attacks, from somebody noticing a smoking SUV in Times Square to somebody tackling a guy on a plane trying to blow up his shoe. Unfortunately, there is public outrage over these incidents and politicians make a bit deal out of what the government will do to prevent further failed attacks.
Except then instead of iTunes having music from all the labels, they'd only be able to sell the music from just their own label. Better to win market dominance in selling all the music vs. the other stores, and use that pressure to make higher profits for yourself.
1) Use smarter screeners. We don't need better scanners or more of them, just screeners able to stay alert and recognize a problem. 2) Anything that can take down a plane (aka the pilots). As far as I'm concerned, as soon as they secured the doors, a 9/11 style attack is no longer possible (and nobody's tried it again). Killing a few passengers doesn't matter because other passengers will react quickly now to defend themselves. 3) As long as it can't blow up the plane or kill the pilots, it shouldn't be on the list anyway. 4) There's a difference between irritation and nervousness. The former is a typical reaction associated with normal travelers, the latter is an atypical reaction associated with terrorists and criminals.
We shouldn't be worried about anything getting on a plane unless it can hijack the plane or cause parts of it to rain down in little pieces. Anything else can be just as effective as a terrorist act anywhere else on the ground. We've secured cockpit doors to prevent hijackings. Now the terrorists are more interested in explosives. They've used new methods pretty much each time, and we've only been playing catch-up. What's the one common factor in all of them? Passengers reacted quickly and put a stop to it. Personally I don't mind if there's a guy on my plane who tries to light his shoe on fire, as long as flight attendants and other passengers react quickly when they see him try. So for goodness sake, let me keep my shoes on in the security checkpoint.
And let's not forget, if the terrorists are smart enough to make it to a security checkpoint without detection already, they're smart enough to get through the security checkpoint without being stopped. TSA should be our last line of defense, not our only line of defense.
Science's models are always improving, too. You'd be hard pressed to point to any scientific model that hasn't eventually been changed. My favorite example is the plum pudding model (because pudding, mmmm). What it predicted, it did well, but ultimately experiments came along that forced us to throw out that model and replace it with a better one. The models we have now, will someday be tweaked or outright disproved, in all likelihood, because that's what happens to models, particularly with models that deal with things smaller than we can see and easily manipulate directly. Stuff like the atom, for example, is tricky because of the Uncertainty Principle.
Now, does science let us do practical things? Absolutely. Even with our flawed models that will someday be updated, they let us do some neat applications. But the practical things we can do with science is far, far behind what theoretical science is all about. When a news article comes out talking about some new scientific model, it is right to be skeptical, and it is right to put it in the realm of faith. Until the model is put through its paces in a practical way in a variety of conditions, and manages to stand up to new tests and applications we haven't even thought up of yet, it is really just magic. We'll never, ever, be working with all the variables, which makes science rather exciting each time we do discover a new one. But make no mistake, even physics realize and admit a lot of their theories are quasi-religious ideas, not to be taken as absolute truth. Yes, the evidence so far supports some of them, or at least some of the math suggests them, but ultimately the more we learn the more we learn how ignorant we are.
Personally I'm a religious scientist, and I see the appeal of both faiths, yes faiths. Both excite me, both give me joy, and both ask me to believe things I can't see with my own two eyes. Without a doubt both improve my life. Luckily, they're not mutually exclusive, and rather complement each other.
Yeah, I've used prime cycles to generate random-like occurrences before. Struck me as obvious, really, though my application of the concept isn't graphical. Anyway, it was a good read. I would love to see something like this put into video game textures for stuff like wood and stone.
My current commute is from my bedroom to a home office down the hall that would make some managers jealous. It's worth more to me than I could have ever dreamed. I'm not working in IT though (I'm self-employed). I pity people who go to work every morning to get stuck in traffic and whatnot, and anybody who has the opportunity to work from home, I highly recommend it. The one downside is the social aspect of seeing your coworkers and stuff, but in all the extra spare time you get, and the money you save on gas, you can certainly afford to have a much nicer social life outside of work.
Yeah, same here. I got one of these from Best Buy this morning. I smiled when I noticed the email had arrived in my catchall account, having been sent to a fake email address on my primary domain. I've been ignoring all the (legitimate) spam at that address for the entire time anyway, so it's no big deal.
Slashdot Mirror
You guys are both foes of friends, so I find this whole thread amusing.
Personally, I can't imagine Apple losing any customers whatsoever about this. The super paranoid who are complaining about this stuff keep talking up alternatives, which makes me think they're already using those alternatives. Apple will probably lower the tracking window, or at least disguise it better, and these articles will stop. But the point is, people buy Apple products for reasons other than to hide their location. People buy cell phones because they want to be reachable. People like phone apps that know where they are. From what other people have said, this seems to just be to limit the need for calling up data from cell towers, which takes time and bandwidth. Some lone lazy programmer probably figured it was easier to just store data forever, rather than some vast conspiracy to tell thieves when to steal your TV.
Everything in life is a balance. If you need a absolute location privacy while in public places (they already know your private home location, since you pay a bill), buy a burner with cash, and keep it off until you need to make a phone call.
I remember this being talked about sometime last year, I think. I could have it wrong, but the fact this article is about an Apple statement a while back, makes me think I have the story right. Basically Apple was gathering location data to ram it down AT&T's throat to try and get them to add more towers. I would assume this is just a continuation of all that. Am I wrong?
4. Where to put more cell towers.
I think sci fi writers are all a bit torn about wanting recognition from the big institutions and culture as a whole. Sci fi has, for much of its history, been relegated to being sort of pulpy, popular kinds of rubbish. I think every writer wants to be really famous, get all kinds of recognition, even if he or she can't admit that too publicly, so it hurts the ego when people dismiss it as not being serious literature, or whatever.
But here's the secret. Genre fiction is popular. Really really popular, and fans of genre fiction consume a ridiculous amount of the stuff. You can actually make a living doing it. There are plenty of examples, yet all these people are looked down upon by the literary elite. Well, screw 'em. The so-called literary elite may get all the New York Times book reviews and mentions on talk shows and the BBC, but ultimately none of those people are making a living from their writing. People don't actually buy and read their books. How do they live? They attach themselves to colleges and basically get sponsored so the college can claim them, or they work a second job bagging groceries. And that's the really "good" literary writers. People still know your name if you're not in the creme de la creme of literary authors, but you don't ever make enough to stop working full time in your real career.
Frankly, I'd rather toil in literary obscurity, and be famous to my fans, rather than famous to the elite but have no source of income. Does it piss me off that people think my writing isn't serious, or that I'm peddling silliness to a bunch of losers? Of course it does. But my readers know differently, my income seems serious enough, and that's good enough for me. People who read what I write are better educated, have higher incomes, and aren't so finicky about ridiculous trends and fashions. They treat me alright, and I love them for giving me the opportunity to do what I love full time. I don't worry about attention from the literary elite, because they have no actual bearing on my livelihood. Their words and their actions can be hurtful, but I decided early on to use a pen name and keep my private life away from my writing life. They can besmirch my literary name, but they can't actually put me down. I completely understand and appreciate the letter written by the above sci fi authors, but I think they're letting their egos get more involved than they ought to. They have plenty of fans who don't give a crap about the BBC's list.
This may have come off as harsh to literary writing, but those writers do have their purpose. Personally I can't stand to read any of that stuff because it bores me to tears and leaves me mentally vacant, but that writing serves to document where we are as a culture, makes important statements, and ultimately it helps to educate new generations of middle and high school kids. I don't think genre fiction should wage war and somehow destroy all literary fiction. The two complement each other. Literary fiction tells us how things are, and genre fiction tells us how things can be. Mind-numbing literary analysis teaches us to be better thinkers, reading genre fiction entertains us, and gives us things to think about. Okay, that still sounds a bit harsh, but that's the reality. As I said, nobody actually reads literary fiction. People don't usually talk about the money they make from publishing a book, but the truth is it's not even close. All the money is in romance, sci fi, and fantasy. The literary writers will say that true art doesn't make any money, of course, and that being successful as a writer is somehow a bad thing. I wouldn't trade their recognition for my income, though.
If communism worked the way you think it does, the Chinese would have invented the iPad, and the US would be building them.
One advantage of the federal system here is that individual states can specialize, too, due to differences in regulation, taxes, etc. It gives us a diversity, along with immigration, that makes us competitive in more things, and lets us come up with all kinds of new ideas.
The reason the US is losing manufacturing jobs, and service jobs, is because American workers expect a higher standard of living than most other places around the world, and therefore aren't willing to work for low enough wages to keep those jobs here. Clearly the economy isn't so bad here, because we're not desperate enough to fight for keeping those jobs here. I guarantee you, if a bunch of factory workers told their corporate bosses that they'd be willing to take a pay cut and work for Chinese wages, iPads would be made here. But those workers don't do that, they prefer their cushy pensions, collective bargaining, benefits, and comfortable wages, so they let their jobs go overseas.
Well, welcome to the reality of economics. The job you factory workers are doing isn't worth the amount you want to be paid. Somebody else values it lower, and so they get your job.
For all the fuss, it's actually not that bad a deal. Those factory workers go and get new jobs. Those call center workers go and get new jobs. Those computer programmers go and get new jobs. If they weren't able to adapt and change profession, or start their own companies and join the bourgeoises, unemployment would be a lot higher than it currently is, and whole generations now would have been lost. The reality is, people are out of work for a little while, then they get off their lazy butts and find a new job, even if that means getting educated, or moving, or whatever.
The point is, we didn't want those jobs anyway. They aren't that valuable, and don't let us have the standard of living we want to have. If you notice, the previous transitions from agriculture to industry to service didn't destroy the countries that have so far transitioned through them. Standard of living in fact has continually gone up. Hey, we have iPads now, that's pretty cool. A farmer in the 1700s didn't have an iPad. A factory worker in the 1800s didn't have an iPad. A service worker in the 1900s didn't have an iPad. Lucky for all of us iPad-affording countries that there's still workers in the world willing to build them for us for very low wages and low standards of living.
So we outsource all our jobs. All of them, in every industry type ever. The rest of the world gets filthy stinking rich, and then decides that hey, it's cheaper to send jobs over to the poor US people who are desperate for work, and will work for pennies. Suddenly, the money all shifts back.
That basically happens all the time, though not quite so extreme or quite so quickly. In reality it's a constant balancing act. In the world economy, people, companies, nations specialize. This isn't a bad thing, in fact it's the best thing, because it promotes innovation and efficiency. We send all our mindless manufacturing jobs over to workers in countries that are desperate to work and will work for razor thin margins. Eventually as their unemployment drops, their wage improves to the point where more of them can get better educations, better jobs, and the rest of the world can't afford to pay them, and looks elsewhere for cheap labor. Perhaps another developing country. Perhaps a better robot.
Yes, there are booms and busts throughout all this, but these aren't bad things either. Natural flows of wealth around the world economy promotes innovation because everyone is trying to get an edge, and the flows always ensure somebody somewhere is willing to work for less to get cheaper products for somebody else. Ultimately, I think everyone would rather have a cheap iPad than work for pennies in an iPad factory. China is currently on the upswing with their average personal wealth. It's not going to hit US-levels and keep on going up and up, it'll hit the point where some other country can do the labor cheaper, and then China is going to lose a lot of jobs.
I'd rather be in the US, coming up with new iPads, or new whatevers, than always building the iPads or whatevers somebody else came up with, hoping someday I'll be paid enough to buy one. Would anybody here rather live with a Chinese average wage and Chinese average standard of living, over the US averages? Bearing that in mind, which nation is really doing better in the current trade situation?
And we certainly have Hollywood too.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter where the money is flowing to, as long as it keeps flowing. If it was the case where all the manufacturing jobs were in the US instead of China or wherever, that would just mean we have lots of money and nothing to spend it on. China right now has lots of money flowing into it, but that just means more Chinese can afford to buy more stuff from elsewhere. Maybe they're buying stuff from other Chinese, but certainly not exclusively, and eventually, that money flows outwards to everywhere else. Around and around it goes.
The thing to remember is, money is only as good as the stuff it gets you. Sure, right now we're sending lots of money to China. But hey, in return we're getting stuff. You can't run apps on your dollar bills, but you sure can run apps on an iPad. That's a net benefit for us. They're not draining our wealth by draining our pieces of green paper, because we're not overpaying them for the stuff we get in return, we're paying what the market has priced that stuff at. They may not be buying as much of our stuff as we're buying their stuff, but they're buying a lot of stuff from other people, and those people buy stuff from other people, and eventually that money comes back to us so we can buy more Chinese stuff. Even if this was a closed system, with just the US and China alone in an economic relationship, and we were sending them all our money for all their iPad manufacturing, the end result is us having lots of iPads and them having a bunch of money of equal value. I'd say at nothing has actually changed except there's more iPads in the world, and we've got them all. We can then use those iPads to come up with new ideas for stuff to sell. How is that a bad thing?
The reason the iPad is made in China is because their margins over there are low. It's not like Apple is doing charity, they figured out they can make the most money over here by paying the Chinese very little. It also means more people over here can afford and iPad. Ultimately sending all your money overseas isn't that big a deal if you get all your stuff in return. I'd rather have lots of stuff than lots of money. Money is only good if it lets you buy stuff. The cash must flow.
"Buying locally" is a nice bumper sticker, and it's good in the very short term, but ultimately it stifles everyone's growth. Specialization is more efficient across the board, which means more stuff for more people. The question is, what does the US specialize in?
I'm all for having manufacturing jobs over here, but we need to figure out what specifically we can manufacture better, and why we want to specialize in it. I'd say building crazy new fighter jets and tanks is probably a good thing, for national security. Building crazy new engines and power plants is probably a good thing for national security and economic security. Building an iPad 2? Eh... I'd rather we have all the smart people over here figuring out how to build an iPad 3, and what features to add to it, rather than have all the dumb people over here build it for somebody else.
This story sounded rather familiar...
Yeah, drugs are a problem. Usage of those can sometimes be detected as well. You're right though. Ultimately this is a waste of resources, and the only real security already exists. The government is reactionary, and it's theater. Regular citizens are the ones who repeatedly stop attempted attacks, from somebody noticing a smoking SUV in Times Square to somebody tackling a guy on a plane trying to blow up his shoe. Unfortunately, there is public outrage over these incidents and politicians make a bit deal out of what the government will do to prevent further failed attacks.
Except then instead of iTunes having music from all the labels, they'd only be able to sell the music from just their own label. Better to win market dominance in selling all the music vs. the other stores, and use that pressure to make higher profits for yourself.
1) Use smarter screeners. We don't need better scanners or more of them, just screeners able to stay alert and recognize a problem.
2) Anything that can take down a plane (aka the pilots). As far as I'm concerned, as soon as they secured the doors, a 9/11 style attack is no longer possible (and nobody's tried it again). Killing a few passengers doesn't matter because other passengers will react quickly now to defend themselves.
3) As long as it can't blow up the plane or kill the pilots, it shouldn't be on the list anyway.
4) There's a difference between irritation and nervousness. The former is a typical reaction associated with normal travelers, the latter is an atypical reaction associated with terrorists and criminals.
We shouldn't be worried about anything getting on a plane unless it can hijack the plane or cause parts of it to rain down in little pieces. Anything else can be just as effective as a terrorist act anywhere else on the ground. We've secured cockpit doors to prevent hijackings. Now the terrorists are more interested in explosives. They've used new methods pretty much each time, and we've only been playing catch-up. What's the one common factor in all of them? Passengers reacted quickly and put a stop to it. Personally I don't mind if there's a guy on my plane who tries to light his shoe on fire, as long as flight attendants and other passengers react quickly when they see him try. So for goodness sake, let me keep my shoes on in the security checkpoint.
And let's not forget, if the terrorists are smart enough to make it to a security checkpoint without detection already, they're smart enough to get through the security checkpoint without being stopped. TSA should be our last line of defense, not our only line of defense.
Science's models are always improving, too. You'd be hard pressed to point to any scientific model that hasn't eventually been changed. My favorite example is the plum pudding model (because pudding, mmmm). What it predicted, it did well, but ultimately experiments came along that forced us to throw out that model and replace it with a better one. The models we have now, will someday be tweaked or outright disproved, in all likelihood, because that's what happens to models, particularly with models that deal with things smaller than we can see and easily manipulate directly. Stuff like the atom, for example, is tricky because of the Uncertainty Principle.
Now, does science let us do practical things? Absolutely. Even with our flawed models that will someday be updated, they let us do some neat applications. But the practical things we can do with science is far, far behind what theoretical science is all about. When a news article comes out talking about some new scientific model, it is right to be skeptical, and it is right to put it in the realm of faith. Until the model is put through its paces in a practical way in a variety of conditions, and manages to stand up to new tests and applications we haven't even thought up of yet, it is really just magic. We'll never, ever, be working with all the variables, which makes science rather exciting each time we do discover a new one. But make no mistake, even physics realize and admit a lot of their theories are quasi-religious ideas, not to be taken as absolute truth. Yes, the evidence so far supports some of them, or at least some of the math suggests them, but ultimately the more we learn the more we learn how ignorant we are.
Personally I'm a religious scientist, and I see the appeal of both faiths, yes faiths. Both excite me, both give me joy, and both ask me to believe things I can't see with my own two eyes. Without a doubt both improve my life. Luckily, they're not mutually exclusive, and rather complement each other.
Remember also that there's multiple species on differing cycles.
Yeah, I've used prime cycles to generate random-like occurrences before. Struck me as obvious, really, though my application of the concept isn't graphical. Anyway, it was a good read. I would love to see something like this put into video game textures for stuff like wood and stone.
Just be careful when you're returning copper for cash that you don't accidentally cut Armenia's fiber internet line.
Oh, and if you do get one new, will it have already been opened and played with by the people there and then repackaged and sold at full price?
But why would a pawn shop do it?
My question is will they actually stock any of these gaming tablets, or will they only sell them to you if you preordered?
Frankly, I'm not sure why it was necessary to explain who Enlil is.
My current commute is from my bedroom to a home office down the hall that would make some managers jealous. It's worth more to me than I could have ever dreamed. I'm not working in IT though (I'm self-employed). I pity people who go to work every morning to get stuck in traffic and whatnot, and anybody who has the opportunity to work from home, I highly recommend it. The one downside is the social aspect of seeing your coworkers and stuff, but in all the extra spare time you get, and the money you save on gas, you can certainly afford to have a much nicer social life outside of work.
It's going to be hard to sue others after this though. Certainly for anything like Cover Flow.
Yeah, if I was the judge, I'd have dismissed this case right away.
Your post-ending comma is going to bother me all day.
Yeah, same here. I got one of these from Best Buy this morning. I smiled when I noticed the email had arrived in my catchall account, having been sent to a fake email address on my primary domain. I've been ignoring all the (legitimate) spam at that address for the entire time anyway, so it's no big deal.