So why not just use the dodgy-details card when you have cash, and leave it in your pocket when you have to pay with a card/cheque?
That still leaves you a loser in both situations.
When you make a non-cash payment, you're losing your discounts and your anonymity.
You can't take advantage of unexpected sales to stock up using the discount card (unless you carry a lot of cash).
Personally I don't bother with reward cards at all
I had one that I got for one sale at one store back in October (I'm still eating the results). I carried it until I had to pry back a bolt on a door... it made such a good emergency key I think I am going to get another one.;-)
I may make a practice of this. Those cards have to cost money. Having each one appear in the store's database once or twice and then never again makes it look like their shopper loyalty is reduced on top of their direct costs. It may make them more likely to terminate it. --
If you ever give them real info (such as paying by check, ATM card or credit card) in the same transaction as you use your club card, you've just de-anonymized every club-card purchase you've ever made, and every one you ever make in the future. Doesn't that just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?
Yet another reason why I'm a cash customer and make no apologies for it. --
If the Microwave showed a little bit of intelligence and took into account the wattage of the microwave when computing cooking time it could save a lot of guesswork when working with an unfamilar microwave or when cooking something you've never cooked before.
And when the user keys in "45 sec" and gets something else, do you think they're not going to be confused/upset/ready to return the unit as defective?
Sure, it takes a reasonably constant amount of energy to cook most microwave foods; cooking energy doesn't vary seriously until you have time variations which change the heat loss a lot. This suggests a rather simple workaround: print the cooking requirements in kilojoules, and let the user divide that by watts to get seconds. Okay, simple for geeks. The average person cannot even understand the difference between a kilowatt and a kilowatt-hour (and believe me, I've run into it); when their oven doesn't even list the wattage for the various power settings (and how many do?) they are going to be completely out of their depth. Even a geek would have trouble with that; imagine taking 5 minutes digging through the user manual so you can cook a 2-minute burrito. This is convenience? Here, gimme those two sticks, I think I can rub them together and make a fire (and my steak might just get done first).
The advent of Internet-delivered cooking instructions is a privacy nightmare, of course. It's bad enough that the shopper-privacy-invasion card (or your ATM card, or your checking account number) keeps track of everything you buy, this would let Big Business see exactly when you ate it. But for the consumer who has so far had to guess at the translation from "3-5 minutes on medium" to the settings for their under-cupboard or full-size microwave, this is a godsend. The UPC code goes out, the packet that comes back encodes "Defrost requirements 9 KJ at 150 watts typical, cook requirements 60 KJ at 500 watts typical" and the oven can play it from there with power levels and duty cycles. No muss, no fuss. People will love it, and have no idea what they're revealing about themselves or what it will do to the rest of their lives. And that is a shame. --
People learn by being stretched, not by being pampered.
This bears repeating. It's somewhat related to my language-clarity mini-rant here; there is a need to actually do (practice) mental work of any kind to become good at it.
Just like muscles, the brain has to be worked to stay strong. --
In the meanwhile, don't buy a product with a license you don't like -- that is YOUR choice. If you open the license and decide you don't like it, return it -- that is YOUR choice.
Given that:
You can't see the license until you've already paid for the software and taken it home (and maybe already installed it), and
You are not allowed to return the software after installing it,
exactly how do you do what you propose? The software company doesn't care, they have your money and immunity from suit. Any negative consequences for them are months or years away, and in the mean time, you suffer. Not a good deal. --
Maybe Im a pessimist, but I think you are fooling yourselves if you think the big, wealthy corporations are going to let open source cut their profit margins that much.
The Information Age notwithstanding, most big, wealthy corporations would gain if all software became free tomorrow. Think of the amount of money that General Motors or Mobil spends on commercial software. Even some businesses supported by software make not a cent from sales; AOL gives it away in order to sell their services and content.
Of course this insanely stupid proposal will probably be a benefit to OSS in the short term, but wont that very fact lead to anti-OSS legislation?
That's utterly impossible in the USA. The First Amendment trumps "national security"; there is no way that an anti-OSS law could survive a free-speech court challenge. Besides, all the huge corporations whose lifesblood currently flows thorugh networks powered by Linux would have a lot to say about this before it ever got out of committee... which it probably wouldn't. --
Life on Mars, if it existed, will likely be extinct by now. So comparing existing life on Mars with life on Earth will probably not be possible.
There's reason to believe this isn't so. Life on Earth gets along just fine near undersea volcanic vents ("black smokers") where there is no energy input from sunlight at all. If hot springs or vents still exist on Mars, they'd probably provide similar sources of chemical energy for microbes. In our oceans, these microbes form the base of a whole food chain; if there are microbes, there might even be more complex organisms on Mars.
What you're asking for is direct, observational evidence i.e. find life on Mars, and compare. If we can't find any existing life on Mars, reject the theory.
Reject? All I said was "it has no support". Lack of support doesn't prove anything, it just doesn't give any grounds for believing it. If someone uncovers supporting evidence later you can always change your evaluation. --
If anything the Biblical literalists of the fundamentalist churches have defined themselves in opposition to science, not the reverse.
If A is in opposition to B, does that not imply that B is in opposition to A?
Note, I said defined themselves. Science isn't going around opposing anything as such, just uncovering facts; reactionaries are defined by what they oppose. The role of "opposition" seems pretty clearly defined in this case. --
It's a broad church and I'm disturbed by how often it's championed uncritically just because it's the visible opposition to fundamental christianity.
"The" visible opposition? It's interesting that you pin that label on the scientific theory of evolution, when the gay- and women's-rights movements fit the shoe much better.
Evolution (as a scientific theory) started along with modern geology when it became glaringly obvious that other historical explanations of the origin and history of the Earth (the Bible's literal account of Genesis among them) were inadequate at best. In the process of pursuing the truth, the researchers have come to a few conclusions, well-supported by evidence and stringent peer review, which just happen to make a few people uncomfortable. So be it. If anything the Biblical literalists of the fundamentalist churches have defined themselves in opposition to science, not the reverse. --
I think you fail to appreciate that the fossil record is not good proof.
Even before molecular biology came along and backed up the tree of descent almost 100%, there wasn't any serious question among scientists that the fossil record wasn't proof. Certain details might be lacking to answer one question or another, but the overall broad picture has not been in doubt for a century.
Sure, it's suggestive and contributes factually to the support of the theory, but it has been badly mis-handled on both sides.
Both sides, of what? In the scientific community there is no "other side" to speak of. Except for a few crackpots the discussion about evolution among scientists is about how it works (gradualism, Gould's PunkEek, etc.); nobody questions that it happened and is happening. You might as well go to an astronomy conference and push platygeanism. --
Too many reporters and media companies are not just clueless, but they don't care.
It's going to take a bit more.
I think you missed my point; I'm proposing to embarrass and discredit the clueless reporters (and implicitly, their editors) in front of the readers. If the readers start changing allegiance as a result, page loads go down, banner ad revenue goes down.... This hits the bottom line, and the organization is either going to notice, or bleed to death. Problem solved either way. --
The reason I'm stepping forward is to start this discussion: how can a techie community browbeat the media into reporting with a clue?
If the news service has a message board, you could post a nicely-worded but strongly negative response pointing out the reporter's errors in detail. To add further injury, you could add the URL's of discussions, FAQs or other resources where the facts have been hashed out already. If you can get the common reader to distrust the accuracy and spin of the news organization and/or reporter, the news organization will either have to improve or die. If this means dumping the reporter or sending all their material through a review process before publication, does it matter? --
There's such a thing as scientific inference and deduction. We may not be able to conclusively "prove" (is there ever such a thing in science?) that life on Earth originated from Mars, but we can find good evidence for or against such a theory.
And I gave you an example of a test of such a theory: you look at the life (if any) on Mars and see if Earth life bears a biochemical resemblance to some fraction of it, especially if that fraction has organisms which could have made the journey to Earth protected inside a rock.
If Earth life looks like a tree rooted from a cutting off the Martian bush, the theory is supported. (You'd expect this if Earth was colonized; it's the "founder effect".)
If Earth life bears no biochemical resemblance to Martian life, the theory has no support.
I think you and I both know that your explanation isn't what really happened.
Why would I "know" the truth is not the truth? For a very long time before evolution became the accepted explanation in biology, geologists knew that the earth was millions of years old. They could see, and count, annual layers in sediments (spring floods deposit a thick layer of coarse material, summer flows deposit a thinner layer of fine material). There's just one deposit from one ancient lakebed which has twenty million of these "varves". The evidence for the ancient origin of the Earth is iron-clad.
Did you know that "young-earth" creationist organizations do not send people out to do geological fieldwork any more? There's a reason for this; exposure to the evidence casts doubt on their dogma, and they wind up recanting it. It's much easier to sit behind a computer screen where you can just deny it.;-)
Fossils that are similar to one another have been found, but none that actually attest to one organism changing into another. Remember the whole neanderthol man? It was a hoax.
It's Neandertal, and they are anything but hoaxes. New evidence about Homo Neanderthalis and their relationship to Homo Sapiens keeps popping up... of course, you'd know this if you read anything other than creationist tracts.;-)
Piltdown Man was a hoax, but who exposed it as a hoax? Hint: It wasn't creationists.
There have been no fossils that show a link between two seperate species. Plenty of variation within a species, yes, but not between *seperate* species.
The old dogma of "separate kinds", I see. Yawn. This is more than adequately refuted by the talk.origins evolution FAQ. Anyway, this has been proven false in this century; the phenomenon of one species breaking off into two populations which cannot inter-breed (the biologists definition of a species) has been observed.
Oh, and as far as the bacteria getting pesticide resistance.. have they changed into anything else? Are there any single-cell bacteria that have converted themselves into multi-cell versions?
Depends if you count slime-molds or not; they go back and forth! Your question makes no sense in scientific terms; according to evolution, multi-cellularity only has to arise once, and from there it is "variations on a theme".
The dramatic change of the horse from an animal the size of a small dog to something the size of a Clydesdale is one of many powerful testimonies to evolution.
Westley grew immune to the effects of iocaine powder
Ah, you've been confusing fiction and reality. No wonder you're so messed up!:) --
(Next time, preview to catch those un-closed HTML tags.)
Untrue, the ALH84001, (can't remember themeteorite that was found in the Antarctic in, I think, 1997 contained what were argued to be evidence of life by David McKay et al.
It was found in 1984, but not analyzed until later. But that's beside the point; AH84001 was supposed to be the point of origin of which Earth life forms, exactly? Hint: the title of this piece is "Yet Another Are We Martians?" --
I read an article... about how the asteroid belt was formed. A planet in an orbit about where the asteroid belt is was destroyed, sending large pieces of itself down to earth.
Only problem with that theory is there isn't enough matter in the asteroid belt to form a planet. The best theory today is that it is just a bunch of planetesimals and their collision fragments, and they wound up where they are because the gravitational perturbations of Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter make other orbits much less stable (even if they don't hit a planet). --
It's kinda like those that say "because evolution *could* work, it must have happened."
Which isn't the issue at all. What happened is that a whole lot of people observed that modern life forms could be found in recent deposits. Modern forms didn't exist in lower (and certainly older) fossil strata, but other things did. They further observed that the forms in between (in depth and age) more closely resembled the ones closer than those farther away; there was a progression in features over time. As some forms disappeared from the record, others branched off from forms existing before that.
We observe evolution working; what do you think pesticide resistance in insects comes from? Speciation has been observed a number of times in just the last century. You can deny it, but if you believe that God made the world denying evolution implicitly makes you a heretic.;-) --
Although this does happen during a slow freeze (say in a home freezer), this does not happen when a body is frozen more or less immediately (such as being placed in liquid nitrogen). The ice crystals thing is not really relevant to cryogenics.
Maybe, but freezing large items (like human bodies) in LN2 gives you other problems. For instance, I hear that heads crack due to the mechanical stresses. (Isn't that just so appetizing to read about right after lunch?) --
The show argued that this would explain why the Earth has an iron core
If that's the impression you carried away from the program, it wasn't much better than that awful Wired article. Earth would have had an iron core anyway; the thing that needed explaining was why the Moon doesn't. The answer is, the Earth got that part. The impact theory also explains why there isn't much in the way of volatile elements (like sodium) on the Moon; during the shock-heating of the impact, most of the volatiles boiled off and were lost.
Scientific American had some pretty nice stuff about this theory when it first came out. Unfortunately, you'll probably have to track the story down in a dead-tree edition. --
Slashdot Mirror
- When you make a non-cash payment, you're losing your discounts and your anonymity.
- You can't take advantage of unexpected sales to stock up using the discount card (unless you carry a lot of cash).
I had one that I got for one sale at one store back in October (I'm still eating the results). I carried it until I had to pry back a bolt on a door... it made such a good emergency key I think I am going to get another one.I may make a practice of this. Those cards have to cost money. Having each one appear in the store's database once or twice and then never again makes it look like their shopper loyalty is reduced on top of their direct costs. It may make them more likely to terminate it.
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Yet another reason why I'm a cash customer and make no apologies for it.
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Click on the word "reports", it's a different URL.
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I've stopped shopping at stores that have club cards (which means I have dumped my former-favorite supermarket).
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Sure, it takes a reasonably constant amount of energy to cook most microwave foods; cooking energy doesn't vary seriously until you have time variations which change the heat loss a lot. This suggests a rather simple workaround: print the cooking requirements in kilojoules, and let the user divide that by watts to get seconds. Okay, simple for geeks. The average person cannot even understand the difference between a kilowatt and a kilowatt-hour (and believe me, I've run into it); when their oven doesn't even list the wattage for the various power settings (and how many do?) they are going to be completely out of their depth. Even a geek would have trouble with that; imagine taking 5 minutes digging through the user manual so you can cook a 2-minute burrito. This is convenience? Here, gimme those two sticks, I think I can rub them together and make a fire (and my steak might just get done first).
The advent of Internet-delivered cooking instructions is a privacy nightmare, of course. It's bad enough that the shopper-privacy-invasion card (or your ATM card, or your checking account number) keeps track of everything you buy, this would let Big Business see exactly when you ate it. But for the consumer who has so far had to guess at the translation from "3-5 minutes on medium" to the settings for their under-cupboard or full-size microwave, this is a godsend. The UPC code goes out, the packet that comes back encodes "Defrost requirements 9 KJ at 150 watts typical, cook requirements 60 KJ at 500 watts typical" and the oven can play it from there with power levels and duty cycles. No muss, no fuss. People will love it, and have no idea what they're revealing about themselves or what it will do to the rest of their lives. And that is a shame.
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Just like muscles, the brain has to be worked to stay strong.
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Heck of an opportunity for an apartment developer, isn't it?
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Thank you, Doctor Lederman!
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- You can't see the license until you've already paid for the software and taken it home (and maybe already installed it), and
- You are not allowed to return the software after installing it,
exactly how do you do what you propose? The software company doesn't care, they have your money and immunity from suit. Any negative consequences for them are months or years away, and in the mean time, you suffer. Not a good deal.--
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Evolution (as a scientific theory) started along with modern geology when it became glaringly obvious that other historical explanations of the origin and history of the Earth (the Bible's literal account of Genesis among them) were inadequate at best. In the process of pursuing the truth, the researchers have come to a few conclusions, well-supported by evidence and stringent peer review, which just happen to make a few people uncomfortable. So be it. If anything the Biblical literalists of the fundamentalist churches have defined themselves in opposition to science, not the reverse.
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If Earth life looks like a tree rooted from a cutting off the Martian bush, the theory is supported. (You'd expect this if Earth was colonized; it's the "founder effect".)
If Earth life bears no biochemical resemblance to Martian life, the theory has no support.
Is that clear enough?
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Quick response: See link in here.
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Did you know that "young-earth" creationist organizations do not send people out to do geological fieldwork any more? There's a reason for this; exposure to the evidence casts doubt on their dogma, and they wind up recanting it. It's much easier to sit behind a computer screen where you can just deny it. ;-)
It's Neandertal, and they are anything but hoaxes. New evidence about Homo Neanderthalis and their relationship to Homo Sapiens keeps popping up... of course, you'd know this if you read anything other than creationist tracts.Piltdown Man was a hoax, but who exposed it as a hoax? Hint: It wasn't creationists.
The old dogma of "separate kinds", I see. Yawn. This is more than adequately refuted by the talk.origins evolution FAQ. Anyway, this has been proven false in this century; the phenomenon of one species breaking off into two populations which cannot inter-breed (the biologists definition of a species) has been observed. Depends if you count slime-molds or not; they go back and forth! Your question makes no sense in scientific terms; according to evolution, multi-cellularity only has to arise once, and from there it is "variations on a theme".The dramatic change of the horse from an animal the size of a small dog to something the size of a Clydesdale is one of many powerful testimonies to evolution.
Ah, you've been confusing fiction and reality. No wonder you're so messed up!--
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We observe evolution working; what do you think pesticide resistance in insects comes from? Speciation has been observed a number of times in just the last century. You can deny it, but if you believe that God made the world denying evolution implicitly makes you a heretic. ;-)
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Scientific American had some pretty nice stuff about this theory when it first came out. Unfortunately, you'll probably have to track the story down in a dead-tree edition.
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