The world is littered with throw away titles, they vary in quality from craptacular to superlative, but the common thread is they're good for a day, a week, perhaps even a few months, then you are done with them and there's not much interest in replaying them. Then there is that small subset that are not throwaway, that are able to hold people's interest indefinately. These invariable get the rave comments from fans, because they contain a depth of interaction that often goes beyond the developer's intentions and contains emergent qualities. Qualities that depend on the participants and what they choose to do.
At the same time though, what makes the title so great often isn't immediately apparent to neophytes, it's only once you have some familiarity with everything that's available for you to do that you begin to appreciate the depth and durability of the mechanics. Another way of looking at it is if you're a casual player, you might want to put less stock in raves from serious players. It's the same reason I never trust any foods that people tell me I absolutely have to try or are described as a "delicacy" because invariably it's something quite foul to the untrained palette. Something that goes far beyond everyday cuisine, I've heard people say that with tripe soup (stomach lining), beef tongue on rice, fried sheeps balls, snails, stinky cheeses, etc.
I guess what I'm getting at is don't confuse the gusto of a connaisseur with the mass appeal of pablum. McDonald's is popular because few people find the food foul, and at the same time it's rare to get someone raving about the food and recommending it to their friends as a must try.
In my opinion it's a stupid argument to make. As an observation it has some merit, but in no way justifies the conclusions being made.
Yes, as fast as today's video cards are, they still are the limiting factor when gaming at high resolutions with all the features turned on. CPUs are fast enough and getting a more powerful CPU isn't going to help when it's the video card that is maxing out.
So of course people shouldn't expect their games to play faster by buying a faster CPU, but I really don't see how that can then be stretched to conclude that there's no actual difference between the CPUs. If every part waited for the other components to catch up in performance would anything ever progress?
And that doesn't even get into all the areas that are CPU limited rather than GPU, like video and audio encoding/decoding, multiple apps running concurrently, encryption, etc.
The conclusion you draw that the CPUs are the same because of their performance on a task that is limited by another, unrelated component is akin to saying that a Ferarri is no more powerful than a Honda Fit because they're both doing 65 on the freeway. The conclusions are rigged from the start because of the test you are using to compare them.
Since use of the thumb is a big issue, I'd suggest showing her a built-in usability function that comes with windows, MouseKeys. When turned on it converts the number keys into mouse function keys (movement, single click, double click, drag, drop, etc). Now normally this is used to avoid all use of the mouse, but can be a little slow moving the cursor around. In your case thought it would allow moving the mouse with the right hand and using the left hand to do the clicking/dragging. Personally I use it a lot just because using the keyboard keys is a lot less stressful than clicking the mouse keys because you don't have to grip in order to push the buttons and there's less strain, especially when you have a lot of repeated clicking in a short period. There's of course a period of adjustment before it becomes second nature to use Mousekeys but it's a no cost, effective solution. And you can toggle it on and off just using the NUM Lock key so you still have access to the number pad for number entry.
"Technologically, Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe must have flunked Software Engineering 101."
Just goes to show you don't have to get everything right to make it rich, just have to get enough of it right, at the right time. Look at that other big flunkout, Bill Gates, same thing, got enough of it right, at the right time.
World is full of pedants and perfectionists that get 99% of what they do right, just not nearly enough of "what it takes" since they spend so much time on ultimately unimportant details, and never at the right time because in order to get everything right you basically have to be looking at things in retrospect, after that window has long since passed.
Not saying I don't agree with you in principle, just that it's hard to argue with results.
Posting on slashdot when it is big enough to encompass most searches slashdotters might throw at is one perspective. Another is a big chunk of the information you need in order to populate your free DB is possessed by slashdotters and you are posting to get their contributions. I'd suspect it's probably the latter that got this posted.
"Even if demand is created because of a new supply of a new item or service, it matters little as that demand is fixed -- it would have gone elsewhere."
I'd argue just the opposite, it's just as important.
That's like saying sand isn't important in making a beach, because take away any given grain and you still have a beach. Every new product and service that has some level of demand creates increases the total amount of "wealth" that can be divided among all the people in the economy. So in this sense demand isn't at all "fixed". Sure taking away any single item or service doesn't have that much impact, but where do you stop? The more you take away the less there is to divvy up. And as the years go by and we become more productive, we consume more products and services. Compare a typical household of today with one of 50 years ago, 100 years ago.
I read Wikipedia everyday on all sorts of topics and I have yet to come across the word fuck in an article, used either appropriately or inappropriately. What you say about 12 year olds inserting it is indeed a problem, but so rare and so quickly fixed when it does happen that to call it a problem at all overstates the case I think.
I mean if you worry about what could happen or what might happen without any reference to the rates of actual occurrence and actual impact would be to spend your life in a perpetual state of morbid anxiety and obstuctivity.
You'd need a magnet far more powerful than most people have access to. Most people don't even know that there are two quite strong permanent magnets inside the drive itself used to control the motion of the head assemblies over the platters. I've taken drives apart from lots of vintages and while the platters get thinner (and once made of metal now made of a glass like substance), the support electronics get smaller and lighter, the magnets are always the same. And so strong that they can be difficult to remove by hand, you have to pry them out with a lever even though nothing is holding them in place other than their magnetism.
Since they don't seem to be capable of making a decision and hammering out a standard do you think it's within the realm of the possible for a grassroots consumer movement to influence this? That is if enough consumers got together and voted their choice with the understanding that whoever won, we'd throw our weight behind the one that won? I figure as soon as there's a presumptive winner people could save their money and lower their risk and it would become a self fullfilling action?
In the end one of them has to be the dominant format, why not decide now and save us the risk of investing in another dead format?
"Tell that to the students whose tuition helps subsidize the cost of MIT's "free" course ware."
The issue is whether it makes sense to limit something that has a fixed cost to a small population able to pay arbitrary distribution costs (physical books, salaried instructors, physical classrooms) or to allow it to scale indefinately for no additional (or little) cost by using digital distribution.
The fixed costs don't change (authors, editors, layout), so is it worth it to have that fixed cost bourne by say a university or government if it means the benefits scale without additional cost?
Probably not for everything, or even most things. But at the same time it seems to me it would be very hard to argue that it isn't worth it for at least some things.
I hate how the discussion is reduced to an either/or proposition. I believe there's room for both models, and that our laws need to be careful not to choose sides in that it forces everyone to utilize one model or the other. People should be free to restrict their own content any way they wish, but that should not include an ability to enforce that via the government. That is, the methods they use need depend wholly upon themselves for their efficacy. If broken, cicumvented or made ineffective it is the fault of the protection designers. Not that there is no value in preventing property theft, but that with intellectual property the size of the stick and the pervasiveness of the monitoring that would be required far far outweighs the benefit (something that isn't the case with physical property theft where the ratio is much more reasonable).
The difference is most of the people you mentioned are fairly interchangable (not all of them, and to varying degrees) but not nearly to the extent that the artisit is a unique contributor. With a different artist you'd end up with a very different product, one that would sell substantially more or less units than would any artist in particular.
Since when does singing songs entitle them to millions and millions of dollars? Well what's stopping the hard working, trained people from doing it and making the millions themselves? And that's the crux of it, hard work and lots of training don't guarantee you'll produce something that millions of people will pay good money to listen to, and that is the final arbiter.
Arguably the people cleaning your toilets and collecting your garbage work harder than anybody else, but are paid the least. In no small part it's because *anyone* could do those jobs. As American Idol demonstrates on a daily basis, there's not a whole lot people out there that are capable of producing music you'd pay money to hear (despite having reasonable talent and lots of desire).
And as for the curing cancer argument, is that really a society you'd want to live in? Where everyone lives in their plain square room, eating their bland 3 nutritious meals a day, with no significant health or financial problems. Letting one undifferentiated day blend into the next, because we only reward people that provide things that we *need*, not things that we *want*.
You've got it backwards. Reducing reproductive pressures increases variability in the population (more gene mutations survive) so evolution is actually sped up by our ability to survive and reproduce.
The idea you refer to is based on an erroneous assumption that we are progressing towards something, that we're being shaped towards some ideal of one sort or another.
Evolution isn't good change or bad change or measured in aproximations towards something, it's just change over time.
If you corner any of those anthropologists, socioligists, and biologists you refer to you'll find that the whole "evolution is ending" is just a provocative slant, similar to how most psych courses might start with a discussion of free will vs deteriminism, even though few of those professors really considers the question meaningful. It's just a hook.
That's insane. How can you possibly expect a manufacturer to control variability outside the specification range? If I buy two cars of the same model why would I expect them to perform identically when driving them at 190mph? Quality control is expensive enough to maintain within the boundries of the specs given for a product. What purpose could it serve the manufacturer or 95% of the buying public for them to waste money and time working on getting consistent out of spec performance?
If Tom's wants to get a representative sample for his reviews then buy the product of the shelf. To whine about the freebies he's sent is both unrealistic and would just reward the people who would continue to cheat and send cherry picked samples. Because there's no way to authenticate a representative sample without actually buying off the shelf stuff to compare, you just have to assume bias in freebie samples and that lets you reach somewhat reasonable conclusions (by adjusting your expectations of actual product somewhat downward of what is reported).
I know I'm living in fantasy land, but I would love to see it changed to where before any vote on new legislation, all the senators or representatives are given a 10 question DMV style quiz on the bill's language. And only those that pass get to vote.
Realistically though, very few of these people are elected based on their reading comprehension, analytic ability, or attention to detail. The only real hope I suppose is having sufficient checks in the system to keep them from running too far amuck (ala ultra majority requirements like 75%+ to pass, minimum examination periods like 2 weeks between final revision and first vote, line item veto, etc).
Interesting you should mention how old your chair is. I've found that 90% of modern chairs are crap for long term usage. And what looks ergnomic is often just the opposite.
The one thing I would add is that if you can find it, steel springs in the seat make a huge difference in how long you can sit comfortably. Cushioning that conforms to pressure (foam padding etc) is terrible because it loses most of it's effectiveness under dynamic loads.
And if a person wins the lottery they have the capacity to take care of all their friends and family in comfort for the rest of their lives, or they can do something else with the money, it's a choice that the person with the money makes.
Just as all those things mentioned are possible in a complete police state (safety, prosperity, freedom from crime and fraud), it's just one of the possiblities made possible, what you get depends entirely on the decisions of the people in charge of the levers that control the police state.
Which is another way of saying we want a dictator as long as he/she is a benevolent one, but unfortunately you don't get to choose whether your dictator is good or bad, just whether you will have a dictator in the first place.
yes and no, we're genetically wired up to care about our "legacy" so the expectation of what will occur after your death can affect your life in the present, and as a consequence it's not unreasonable to take precautions about how such affairs will be handled so you can have peace now
granted what actually happens doesn't matter, but it's a mistake to think that the expectations have no consequences because they do
While dire, the time frame isn't quite as bad as you imply. He is suggesting that if we continue as we are we run a high chance of crossing a tipping point in a decade. Slowing emissions will lengthen the time to the tipping point which will give us hopefully enough time to not just slow the rate of emissions but being to reverse the damage that has already been done up to that point.
So basically the worst thing we can do right now is nothing (as you point out 10 years isn't long at all).
I guess a heck of a lot is riding now on what the big countries do in the next couple years, China, US, etc. And start heading for high ground if you live on the coasts.
You're right, I should just be able to say into my microphone "Make me a snazzy chart according to my data and design whims. Make it so."
Some things by their nature are always going to at least somewhat complicated if they give you any amount of control over the data layout and graphical design. Charting being one of them.
The reason has little to do with the software but rather with the fact that many of the decisions to be made are arbitrary. There's no one best way of doing it, and depending on what you happen to be doing in particular (the field, existing standards, your audience, your data set) you may have very different rankings on what would be "better" ways of laying things out or what to display and how.
As a software developer I just love telling my customers to buy a new computer so they can run the new version of my software that does the same thing as the old version. They never fail to applaud my programming and business acumen.
I develop in both, but when there's no compelling reason to use NET I continue to use VB6, there's a wider installed base of the runtimes and better resource use/performance.
"The AC/OP/TP is correct. This technique's code would be remarkably easy to record by a third party."
that assumes a static code
you can readily make the key device dockable (once inside the door of course) where it uploads some quantity of new codes, any of which will open the door, but once a code is used a single time it is discarded by both the key and the door
this is actually a rather ingenous device, and might be most useful in situations where you have a hidden door as it allows you to have zero visible interfacing
granted no door is perfect (undefeatable), but in general removing the current weakest link has the effect of improving overall strength of security and is therefore of some benefit
"Backing one group against another is only a problem when you back the losing side. When the US backed one group of Europeans against another group of Europeans in WW2, it turned out fine because they backed the winning side."
Another way of looking at that is when you decide to "back" individual people instead of principles of government, you inevitably end up backing people that do things against your own principles sooner or later, then what do you do?
It happens in all spheres I suppose, should you be loyal to the president the man or to the country? To your boss or to your company? To your family or your community? Being loyal to just principles means you will sometimes have to drop support of individuals that you previously supported, but it always comes as a consequence of their actions that violate those principles.
Sure there are reasons to form mutual aid compacts such that you allow them to do what they want and they allow you to do what you want. To support eachother as individuals without regard to conduct. Thieves, murderers, and other miscreants do it all the time and benefit enormously. But the just must resist the temptation, and hold themselves to the same rule of law they hold others to.
There's not really any national chains but it's not uncommon to find at least one really nice electronics surplus shop in most larger metropolitan areas. And by nice I mean they have a large range of components. But they rarely advertise and can be in off the beaten path locations, so it can be a challenge to find them. That and they are usually run by someone advancing in years who does it as much because they love it as to make money off it, and when they retire it's unlikely to continue as a going concern, so one by one these great places are winking out across the country. Unfortunate for people like us who love being able to physically browse all sorts quirky and hard to find electronic components, but in a changing world what are you going to do I guess.
This would make an excellent Ask Slashdot post I would imagine, to get a list going of all these out of the way shops as I'm sure there's a lot of slashdotters with favorite places they know about.
The closest to a national presence would probably be Fry's which has a pretty decent range of stuff if you live in a state where they operate (mostly west coast from what I understand).
"Ecological environmentalism hasn't exactly been a success story.""
I think you have probably fallen into the trap of thinking that what is currently being fought for encompasses the sum total of all that has ever been fought for. If you look back over the last fifty years and see what practices have changed as a result of environmental activism you'd come to a very different conclusion. We don't continue talking about things that have changed, and naturally so. But it is a mistake to think that things were always the way they are now, or that they had to be this way.
Unsurprisingly, all the major concerns of current environmental activists haven't been resolved satisfactorily. That is precisely why they remain major concerns. Once an issue is mitigated, we move on and take it for granted.
What would the world around right now be like without recycling, emissions standards, vehicle fuel economy standards, regulation of industrial discharges into rivers and oceans, modern sewage treatment facilities, national parklands and reserves, solar wind and hydro power, Energy Star power saving technology on computers and other electronics, regulation on the use of toxic materials in all sorts of things like plastics, cookware, paint etc, and so on.
The most reasonable compromise I've seen suggested is to have them expire by default, but allow extensions for a fee. Making available all the out of print works that would languish in obscurity otherwise, while still allowing the truely valuable properties to continue.
But I would like to suggest one further refinement that would make it fair, any application for extension would automatically make ownership revert to the original creator or their heirs. Forty or fifty years ago when the rights were signed away it was under a framework that the rights were of limited duration. If they are going to continue in perpetuity, then fair selling price needs to be renegotiated.
Slashdot Mirror
The world is littered with throw away titles, they vary in quality from craptacular to superlative, but the common thread is they're good for a day, a week, perhaps even a few months, then you are done with them and there's not much interest in replaying them. Then there is that small subset that are not throwaway, that are able to hold people's interest indefinately. These invariable get the rave comments from fans, because they contain a depth of interaction that often goes beyond the developer's intentions and contains emergent qualities. Qualities that depend on the participants and what they choose to do.
At the same time though, what makes the title so great often isn't immediately apparent to neophytes, it's only once you have some familiarity with everything that's available for you to do that you begin to appreciate the depth and durability of the mechanics. Another way of looking at it is if you're a casual player, you might want to put less stock in raves from serious players. It's the same reason I never trust any foods that people tell me I absolutely have to try or are described as a "delicacy" because invariably it's something quite foul to the untrained palette. Something that goes far beyond everyday cuisine, I've heard people say that with tripe soup (stomach lining), beef tongue on rice, fried sheeps balls, snails, stinky cheeses, etc.
I guess what I'm getting at is don't confuse the gusto of a connaisseur with the mass appeal of pablum. McDonald's is popular because few people find the food foul, and at the same time it's rare to get someone raving about the food and recommending it to their friends as a must try.
In my opinion it's a stupid argument to make. As an observation it has some merit, but in no way justifies the conclusions being made.
Yes, as fast as today's video cards are, they still are the limiting factor when gaming at high resolutions with all the features turned on. CPUs are fast enough and getting a more powerful CPU isn't going to help when it's the video card that is maxing out.
So of course people shouldn't expect their games to play faster by buying a faster CPU, but I really don't see how that can then be stretched to conclude that there's no actual difference between the CPUs. If every part waited for the other components to catch up in performance would anything ever progress?
And that doesn't even get into all the areas that are CPU limited rather than GPU, like video and audio encoding/decoding, multiple apps running concurrently, encryption, etc.
The conclusion you draw that the CPUs are the same because of their performance on a task that is limited by another, unrelated component is akin to saying that a Ferarri is no more powerful than a Honda Fit because they're both doing 65 on the freeway. The conclusions are rigged from the start because of the test you are using to compare them.
Since use of the thumb is a big issue, I'd suggest showing her a built-in usability function that comes with windows, MouseKeys. When turned on it converts the number keys into mouse function keys (movement, single click, double click, drag, drop, etc). Now normally this is used to avoid all use of the mouse, but can be a little slow moving the cursor around. In your case thought it would allow moving the mouse with the right hand and using the left hand to do the clicking/dragging. Personally I use it a lot just because using the keyboard keys is a lot less stressful than clicking the mouse keys because you don't have to grip in order to push the buttons and there's less strain, especially when you have a lot of repeated clicking in a short period. There's of course a period of adjustment before it becomes second nature to use Mousekeys but it's a no cost, effective solution. And you can toggle it on and off just using the NUM Lock key so you still have access to the number pad for number entry.
p /mousekeys.aspx
i ning/windows95/mouse.html
Here is a link to Microsofts description of how to turn them on:
http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsx
and a nice tutorial on what keys do what and tweaks:
http://www.disability.uiuc.edu/infotechaccess/tra
"Technologically, Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe must have flunked Software Engineering 101."
Just goes to show you don't have to get everything right to make it rich, just have to get enough of it right, at the right time. Look at that other big flunkout, Bill Gates, same thing, got enough of it right, at the right time.
World is full of pedants and perfectionists that get 99% of what they do right, just not nearly enough of "what it takes" since they spend so much time on ultimately unimportant details, and never at the right time because in order to get everything right you basically have to be looking at things in retrospect, after that window has long since passed.
Not saying I don't agree with you in principle, just that it's hard to argue with results.
Posting on slashdot when it is big enough to encompass most searches slashdotters might throw at is one perspective. Another is a big chunk of the information you need in order to populate your free DB is possessed by slashdotters and you are posting to get their contributions. I'd suspect it's probably the latter that got this posted.
"Even if demand is created because of a new supply of a new item or service, it matters little as that demand is fixed -- it would have gone elsewhere."
I'd argue just the opposite, it's just as important.
That's like saying sand isn't important in making a beach, because take away any given grain and you still have a beach. Every new product and service that has some level of demand creates increases the total amount of "wealth" that can be divided among all the people in the economy. So in this sense demand isn't at all "fixed". Sure taking away any single item or service doesn't have that much impact, but where do you stop? The more you take away the less there is to divvy up. And as the years go by and we become more productive, we consume more products and services. Compare a typical household of today with one of 50 years ago, 100 years ago.
I read Wikipedia everyday on all sorts of topics and I have yet to come across the word fuck in an article, used either appropriately or inappropriately. What you say about 12 year olds inserting it is indeed a problem, but so rare and so quickly fixed when it does happen that to call it a problem at all overstates the case I think.
I mean if you worry about what could happen or what might happen without any reference to the rates of actual occurrence and actual impact would be to spend your life in a perpetual state of morbid anxiety and obstuctivity.
You'd need a magnet far more powerful than most people have access to. Most people don't even know that there are two quite strong permanent magnets inside the drive itself used to control the motion of the head assemblies over the platters. I've taken drives apart from lots of vintages and while the platters get thinner (and once made of metal now made of a glass like substance), the support electronics get smaller and lighter, the magnets are always the same. And so strong that they can be difficult to remove by hand, you have to pry them out with a lever even though nothing is holding them in place other than their magnetism.
Since they don't seem to be capable of making a decision and hammering out a standard do you think it's within the realm of the possible for a grassroots consumer movement to influence this? That is if enough consumers got together and voted their choice with the understanding that whoever won, we'd throw our weight behind the one that won? I figure as soon as there's a presumptive winner people could save their money and lower their risk and it would become a self fullfilling action?
In the end one of them has to be the dominant format, why not decide now and save us the risk of investing in another dead format?
"Tell that to the students whose tuition helps subsidize the cost of MIT's "free" course ware."
The issue is whether it makes sense to limit something that has a fixed cost to a small population able to pay arbitrary distribution costs (physical books, salaried instructors, physical classrooms) or to allow it to scale indefinately for no additional (or little) cost by using digital distribution.
The fixed costs don't change (authors, editors, layout), so is it worth it to have that fixed cost bourne by say a university or government if it means the benefits scale without additional cost?
Probably not for everything, or even most things. But at the same time it seems to me it would be very hard to argue that it isn't worth it for at least some things.
I hate how the discussion is reduced to an either/or proposition. I believe there's room for both models, and that our laws need to be careful not to choose sides in that it forces everyone to utilize one model or the other. People should be free to restrict their own content any way they wish, but that should not include an ability to enforce that via the government. That is, the methods they use need depend wholly upon themselves for their efficacy. If broken, cicumvented or made ineffective it is the fault of the protection designers. Not that there is no value in preventing property theft, but that with intellectual property the size of the stick and the pervasiveness of the monitoring that would be required far far outweighs the benefit (something that isn't the case with physical property theft where the ratio is much more reasonable).
The difference is most of the people you mentioned are fairly interchangable (not all of them, and to varying degrees) but not nearly to the extent that the artisit is a unique contributor. With a different artist you'd end up with a very different product, one that would sell substantially more or less units than would any artist in particular.
Since when does singing songs entitle them to millions and millions of dollars? Well what's stopping the hard working, trained people from doing it and making the millions themselves? And that's the crux of it, hard work and lots of training don't guarantee you'll produce something that millions of people will pay good money to listen to, and that is the final arbiter.
Arguably the people cleaning your toilets and collecting your garbage work harder than anybody else, but are paid the least. In no small part it's because *anyone* could do those jobs. As American Idol demonstrates on a daily basis, there's not a whole lot people out there that are capable of producing music you'd pay money to hear (despite having reasonable talent and lots of desire).
And as for the curing cancer argument, is that really a society you'd want to live in? Where everyone lives in their plain square room, eating their bland 3 nutritious meals a day, with no significant health or financial problems. Letting one undifferentiated day blend into the next, because we only reward people that provide things that we *need*, not things that we *want*.
You've got it backwards. Reducing reproductive pressures increases variability in the population (more gene mutations survive) so evolution is actually sped up by our ability to survive and reproduce.
The idea you refer to is based on an erroneous assumption that we are progressing towards something, that we're being shaped towards some ideal of one sort or another.
Evolution isn't good change or bad change or measured in aproximations towards something, it's just change over time.
If you corner any of those anthropologists, socioligists, and biologists you refer to you'll find that the whole "evolution is ending" is just a provocative slant, similar to how most psych courses might start with a discussion of free will vs deteriminism, even though few of those professors really considers the question meaningful. It's just a hook.
That's insane. How can you possibly expect a manufacturer to control variability outside the specification range? If I buy two cars of the same model why would I expect them to perform identically when driving them at 190mph? Quality control is expensive enough to maintain within the boundries of the specs given for a product. What purpose could it serve the manufacturer or 95% of the buying public for them to waste money and time working on getting consistent out of spec performance?
If Tom's wants to get a representative sample for his reviews then buy the product of the shelf. To whine about the freebies he's sent is both unrealistic and would just reward the people who would continue to cheat and send cherry picked samples. Because there's no way to authenticate a representative sample without actually buying off the shelf stuff to compare, you just have to assume bias in freebie samples and that lets you reach somewhat reasonable conclusions (by adjusting your expectations of actual product somewhat downward of what is reported).
I know I'm living in fantasy land, but I would love to see it changed to where before any vote on new legislation, all the senators or representatives are given a 10 question DMV style quiz on the bill's language. And only those that pass get to vote.
Realistically though, very few of these people are elected based on their reading comprehension, analytic ability, or attention to detail. The only real hope I suppose is having sufficient checks in the system to keep them from running too far amuck (ala ultra majority requirements like 75%+ to pass, minimum examination periods like 2 weeks between final revision and first vote, line item veto, etc).
Interesting you should mention how old your chair is. I've found that 90% of modern chairs are crap for long term usage. And what looks ergnomic is often just the opposite.
The one thing I would add is that if you can find it, steel springs in the seat make a huge difference in how long you can sit comfortably. Cushioning that conforms to pressure (foam padding etc) is terrible because it loses most of it's effectiveness under dynamic loads.
And if a person wins the lottery they have the capacity to take care of all their friends and family in comfort for the rest of their lives, or they can do something else with the money, it's a choice that the person with the money makes.
Just as all those things mentioned are possible in a complete police state (safety, prosperity, freedom from crime and fraud), it's just one of the possiblities made possible, what you get depends entirely on the decisions of the people in charge of the levers that control the police state.
Which is another way of saying we want a dictator as long as he/she is a benevolent one, but unfortunately you don't get to choose whether your dictator is good or bad, just whether you will have a dictator in the first place.
yes and no, we're genetically wired up to care about our "legacy" so the expectation of what will occur after your death can affect your life in the present, and as a consequence it's not unreasonable to take precautions about how such affairs will be handled so you can have peace now
granted what actually happens doesn't matter, but it's a mistake to think that the expectations have no consequences because they do
While dire, the time frame isn't quite as bad as you imply. He is suggesting that if we continue as we are we run a high chance of crossing a tipping point in a decade. Slowing emissions will lengthen the time to the tipping point which will give us hopefully enough time to not just slow the rate of emissions but being to reverse the damage that has already been done up to that point.
So basically the worst thing we can do right now is nothing (as you point out 10 years isn't long at all).
I guess a heck of a lot is riding now on what the big countries do in the next couple years, China, US, etc. And start heading for high ground if you live on the coasts.
You're right, I should just be able to say into my microphone "Make me a snazzy chart according to my data and design whims. Make it so."
Some things by their nature are always going to at least somewhat complicated if they give you any amount of control over the data layout and graphical design. Charting being one of them.
The reason has little to do with the software but rather with the fact that many of the decisions to be made are arbitrary. There's no one best way of doing it, and depending on what you happen to be doing in particular (the field, existing standards, your audience, your data set) you may have very different rankings on what would be "better" ways of laying things out or what to display and how.
"Is it the machine or is it the code?"
As a software developer I just love telling my customers to buy a new computer so they can run the new version of my software that does the same thing as the old version. They never fail to applaud my programming and business acumen.
I develop in both, but when there's no compelling reason to use NET I continue to use VB6, there's a wider installed base of the runtimes and better resource use/performance.
"The AC/OP/TP is correct. This technique's code would be remarkably easy to record by a third party."
that assumes a static code
you can readily make the key device dockable (once inside the door of course) where it uploads some quantity of new codes, any of which will open the door, but once a code is used a single time it is discarded by both the key and the door
this is actually a rather ingenous device, and might be most useful in situations where you have a hidden door as it allows you to have zero visible interfacing
granted no door is perfect (undefeatable), but in general removing the current weakest link has the effect of improving overall strength of security and is therefore of some benefit
"Backing one group against another is only a problem when you back the losing side. When the US backed one group of Europeans against another group of Europeans in WW2, it turned out fine because they backed the winning side."
Another way of looking at that is when you decide to "back" individual people instead of principles of government, you inevitably end up backing people that do things against your own principles sooner or later, then what do you do?
It happens in all spheres I suppose, should you be loyal to the president the man or to the country? To your boss or to your company? To your family or your community? Being loyal to just principles means you will sometimes have to drop support of individuals that you previously supported, but it always comes as a consequence of their actions that violate those principles.
Sure there are reasons to form mutual aid compacts such that you allow them to do what they want and they allow you to do what you want. To support eachother as individuals without regard to conduct. Thieves, murderers, and other miscreants do it all the time and benefit enormously. But the just must resist the temptation, and hold themselves to the same rule of law they hold others to.
There's not really any national chains but it's not uncommon to find at least one really nice electronics surplus shop in most larger metropolitan areas. And by nice I mean they have a large range of components. But they rarely advertise and can be in off the beaten path locations, so it can be a challenge to find them. That and they are usually run by someone advancing in years who does it as much because they love it as to make money off it, and when they retire it's unlikely to continue as a going concern, so one by one these great places are winking out across the country. Unfortunate for people like us who love being able to physically browse all sorts quirky and hard to find electronic components, but in a changing world what are you going to do I guess.
This would make an excellent Ask Slashdot post I would imagine, to get a list going of all these out of the way shops as I'm sure there's a lot of slashdotters with favorite places they know about.
The closest to a national presence would probably be Fry's which has a pretty decent range of stuff if you live in a state where they operate (mostly west coast from what I understand).
"Ecological environmentalism hasn't exactly been a success story.""
I think you have probably fallen into the trap of thinking that what is currently being fought for encompasses the sum total of all that has ever been fought for. If you look back over the last fifty years and see what practices have changed as a result of environmental activism you'd come to a very different conclusion. We don't continue talking about things that have changed, and naturally so. But it is a mistake to think that things were always the way they are now, or that they had to be this way.
Unsurprisingly, all the major concerns of current environmental activists haven't been resolved satisfactorily. That is precisely why they remain major concerns. Once an issue is mitigated, we move on and take it for granted.
What would the world around right now be like without recycling, emissions standards, vehicle fuel economy standards, regulation of industrial discharges into rivers and oceans, modern sewage treatment facilities, national parklands and reserves, solar wind and hydro power, Energy Star power saving technology on computers and other electronics, regulation on the use of toxic materials in all sorts of things like plastics, cookware, paint etc, and so on.
The most reasonable compromise I've seen suggested is to have them expire by default, but allow extensions for a fee. Making available all the out of print works that would languish in obscurity otherwise, while still allowing the truely valuable properties to continue.
But I would like to suggest one further refinement that would make it fair, any application for extension would automatically make ownership revert to the original creator or their heirs. Forty or fifty years ago when the rights were signed away it was under a framework that the rights were of limited duration. If they are going to continue in perpetuity, then fair selling price needs to be renegotiated.