Solar and wind take up a lot of real estate, and might help with peak, but nowhere near are able to deal with the demand of more populated regions
Not true. The desert areas of the US southwest receive sufficient solar energy to power the entire nation. The problem, as I said, is storage. Without adequate storage, we can neither transport nor accrue energy as required to make practical use of the fact that there is enough energy incoming.
I expect we will have sufficient storage within a few decades. The problem is under rather intense scrutiny and development; commercially speaking, its an untapped gold mine. Right now, though, we're stuck with a model where nuclear is prevented by political forces (under which I lump law) and we are limited to the status quo in terms of generation methods and power transport.
There are many interesting methods for power transport that could be implemented -- for instance, contained water can be raised high at the power source, then run downhill to run numerous hydro regeneration installations, in a loop design that returns to base level where the loop returns to the source. With an enclosed body of water, there is no evaporation, no overage, no flooding, etc., and full power is always available as long as the power source can raise the input.
Contained hydro loop techniques also open up interesting high efficiency materials transport methods. Gravity is our friend.
The taxes are lowest on the upper class and keep going lower
Mostly agree with your post, but the part I quote there is just plain wrong. 10% of a $10000 income is $1000. Even if the rich pay half that percentage, 5% of a million dollar income is $50,000. The rich pay more than the poor in taxes, period, end of story.
There are a lot of ways to frame what you're trying to say correctly, and in such a way as to clearly demonstrate social injustice, and you should find one of them you like and use it. Don't say the rich pay less taxes than the poor -- it just makes you look math-impaired. They don't.
I guess that's this election, then, because none of the current Republican candidates is fit for office
Ron Paul? What makes him "unfit"? He's running neck-and-neck with the clown-shoes-of-the-week put forth by the party machine; he's fairly consistent, he has clearly articulated ideas. So how does he fit in with your evaluation?
See, here's the thing. The constitution only authorizes limited government. No sane person can read it any other way. The federal government, for its part, has found such actual authorization too limiting... seriously... and so basically ignores the constitution. In doing so, it has exercised the power to enable various things it doesn't actually have the authority to implement, such as a nationwide social safety net. It has also destroyed the bill of rights and unleashed a veritable laundry list of evils upon the population.
Now, if you want the federal government to be restrained, either you need an entirely new constitution to be put in place (how???), or you need the government's exercise of power to be chopped back to the current constitution's authorized limits, and then the constitution will need amendment so that the good things, which actually consist of a fairly long list despite the long, long list of evils, can be legitimized as functions of the federal government -- because really, the constitution as it stands doesn't authorize much power for the feds at all unless you read it with a mumble, two glass eyes, and a brain tumor.
On the other hand, if you want the federal government to be free to do whatever it wants, constrained only by what congress can agree upon, so that inconveniences like constitutional conventions aren't required to implement, for instance, nationwide medicare for old folks, nationwide schooling and standards for children, and making it legitimately illegal for your neighbor to own an anthrax factory or a nuke, then (a) we're already in that situation, but (b) it unfortunately has brought with it a whole host of evils, like the sundering of almost the entire bill of rights, the inversion of the commerce clause, ex post facto law, usurpation of article 5 powers under the guise of article 3, assassination of US citizens (aka premeditated killing by stealth without anything even remotely resembling due process), congress-folk voting in things like their own raises and being immune to insider trading laws. From my POV, government freedom has been tested and found extremely wanting.
But getting to a constitutionally restrained government... I haven't got even a clue about a workable process for that. I don't think anyone else does, either. The "ammo box", so beloved of Internet tough guyz, I can't see working. Supposing the unlikely event of a successful armed revolution, I truly can't imagine enough of a framework remaining to create a new government. OTOH, if the military does it for us, that'll leave us directly in the hands of a known conservative religious organization with huge firepower, and I think the only thing that would possibly arise successfully from that is a theocracy -- something considerably worse, IMHO, than what we have now, strange as that may sound. Certainly the congresscritters aren't going to limit themselves, they're quite literally fat and happy with the status quo, and looking at the political requirements for becoming one (basically you need to be corrupt) and the bennies once you're there, why wouldn't they be?
What's going to happen here -- IMHO, of course -- is that our society is going to continue this slide down to the outright ultimate power of the 535; elections will continue to be less and less subtly rigged, as we see with the media ignoring Paul, despite his essentially equal to front runner status, with the public being steered carefully to vote only for approved candidates, and/or voting machines rigged as required, when required, again as we have already seen; laws will continue to be made regardless of constitutionality, and then backed up by the bought-and-paid-for mouthpieces on the supreme court; and the vast majority of the country will continue to not care. Technology will step in with robotics and manufacture on demand, and keep the population generally happy with "stuff" and comfort, and all will be well, as long as you are willing to be the round peg in the round hole the government makes available fo
Naval reactors -- be they powering submarines, aircraft carriers, etc. -- don't have to show a profit. When they need money to run them, they just take it from you and me. Rinse, wash and repeat.
Compare that to one of the very few nuclear powered cargo ships, the NS Savannah. Truly beautiful ship; fast, clean, etc. Couldn't be run cost-effectively, some of which was due to a bit of overzealous streamlining and so forth, but in terms of propulsion costs, oil fueled cargo ships are simply less expensive.
That's why you're not going to see naval reactor designs in your back yard. Ever. Commercial reactors have to be practical.
The right answer is solar and/or wind and/or hydro plus storage. We just don't have cost-effective / space-effective storage. Yet.
And how does the system know which app is supposed to receive those keystrokes?
Typically, that's solved explicitly with named ports, and generally with some app identifier the system knows how to deal with. If you're unfamiliar with this kind of programming, don't worry about it. It's been solved repeatedly in other operating systems. It just isn't solved here.
That's idiotic. The SDR app uses keystrokes as well as a GUI. The keystrokes are for expert use. They're also an obvious and easy way to control the thing.
Only a positively terrible Mac application designed for scripted control while already open would lack AppleScript support.
Again, that's idiotic. This application isn't "designed for scripted control" it's designed for keyboard control. What I would have liked was to be able to script those keyboard commands, as they are already there. You're just being intentionally obtuse, aren't you? IHBT. HAND. Sigh.
Let me describe the problem again, perhaps more clearly:
If application X is over on monitor six, but the menu for it is over on monitor 1, then it's a long mouse journey from monitor six to monitor 1, and then back again, just to select a menu entry. If the menus were on the application window, instead of being stuck to the top of monitor 1, this journey would not be required.
Regarding windows and menus - 6 monitors, you could still Cmd-Q the wrong app no matter where the menus were.
Yes -- because cmd-Q is directed to the active app. However, you would be a great deal more likely to select the correct quit command using the actual menu if the menus were attached to the app window, as they are in a better UI design. This is because the menu is then not only associated with the active context (which can change in a heartbeat with an accidental click or tap), but also with the visual context of the application. Accessing it would change the focus to the correct application without any extra attention from the user.
Why would I want to send keystrokes to an app that doesn't have focus? Perhaps the one in focus needs those keystrokes?
Well, I don't know why YOU would, but in my case, my software defined radio uses keystrokes to adjust various settings, including tuning, bandwidth, and so forth. I use a midi control surface to send those keystrokes when its knobs are turned, thus controlling the radio. However, because the keystrokes cannot be directed specifically to the software defined radio app unless it is active, I cannot adjust the radio app at all, unless I make it active with the mouse. This is one example where one application (the midi input processor) could, under [linix|windows|amigados|etc] for example, easily control another (the radio app.) Likewise, a script running from cron or Apple's launchd could send a sequence of commands based on time, such as: "it's ten o'clock, tune to such and such a station, record for half an hour, save as station-10pm-date.soundformat." This could be done without disturbing what you're doing at the moment. BUT, because you MUST make the application active before it can even SEE a keystroke message under OS X... none of this can be done in this easy, convenient fashion. I should also add that OS X lacks a simple IPC mechanism that could be used as an alternate command mechanism, other than for menu commands.
If you are still control clicking with a trackpad, well....
Pad-tapping doesn't work for every workflow, you know. There are many cases in logic, for instance, when you're all over the UI, and quickly. Likewise, Apple's version of right-click-at-right-corner doesn't always get interpreted that way. Control-click, at least, works. There are other workflows than yours.
Yes, I'm aware I shouldn't feed the trolls. My bad.
No, your bad was failing to visualize that a workflow outside your own experience could exist and be valid.
Really? I think -- not dead certain, but I *think* -- then this must work because those are not actually keystroke events. OS X allows for menu shortcuts and certain other types of UI activity to be passed around, but not keystrokes. If I'm wrong, I'd be *delighted* -- this shortcoming is so in my way... if I could get around it, my user experience would be vastly enhanced. In short, I need to be able to send keystrokes to an app that isn't active, and doesn't need to become active -- and there would be quite a few of them sometimes, so making the app active and then coming back (a la applescript) becomes a very bad idea.
Seriously, the menubar at the top is a key aspect of the Mac. You say "have to go all the way to the top", but the top is an infinite target. Just a flick gets you there, and you can't overshoot it.
Oy. Wrong in so many ways. I have six monitors on my Mac Pro. The menu for any one app probably isn't even on the same monitor. It is a HUGE pain in the neck to navigate back to the display that (currently) contains the menu. The menus belong on the window(s) of the app that owns them. Period. Top-of-the-main-monitor is a complete foul-up. Not just because you have to move the mouse further in almost every case than you would if the menus were where they belong -- on the app windows -- but because they'd at least be on the right monitor, and because there'd be no guessing late in the game if you're quitting the right application.
And then there's OS X's inability to send keystrokes to any application other than the one in front. What a huge UI fumble. Got the ability to remotely control an app by sending it keystrokes? Too bad. Won't work under OSX unless the app is already active, in which case, you're not remote controlling it, because the app attempting the control has lost the focus.
And then there's the whole one button mouse thing, although there are so many ways around that today you don't really get screwed solidly by it unless you buy an Apple mouse / trackpad. Even then, there are options besides the brain-dead "control-click."
And page animations... really? Seriously? You're going to exchange my TIME for eye candy? Unbelievable.
Seriously... Apple's UI designers all needs to go take a long walk off a short pier.
I love my mac pro for what it can do, but there are ui-specific reasons that constantly limit what it can do as well, and I sure as heck don't appreciate those. The stupid, stupid menus-at-the-top feature pretty much serving as the poster child for exactly how NOT to do something because it's BROKEN and gets in the user's way and requires more mouse travel and is less clear and breaks the multi-monitor paradigm.
IMO this case needs to be taken up by the ACLU (and/or any other competent rights-defending group) to be smacked down in appeal.
Oh. You mean the way ex post facto laws have been smacked down on appeal? You mean the way interstate commerce, interpreted as intrastate commerce, was smacked down on appeal? You mean the way searches without probable cause within 150 miles of the US border were smacked down on appeal? You mean the way the numerous infringements of the rights guaranteed by the second amendment, such as licensing, ownership, carrying... were smacked down on appeal? You mean the way the government's reading of our email and other private correspondence was smacked down on appeal? I look forward to this "smacked down on appeal." [grabs popcorn]
I agree, but I'm just trying to work out what the TV news counts as.
Propaganda. By skewing in the reporting, by insinuating opinion, and by (generally incredibly leading) choice of content (and I use the word "content" in it's most generic form, without regard for value.)
In my view, "news" is accurate, uncensored information about important events; it is for this reason that the press was given the enormous privilege of being singled out in the first amendment.
That would not include Britney Spears, the fact that "the McRib is back" [shudder], or the various bread and circuses such as sports, art installations, and religious tripe of any flavor (unless it has stepped over the line into terrorism or is attempting to insinuate itself (further) into government, in which case, we should be informed about that.) It would also not include favoring coverage of one political candidate over another: equal time for everyone or no time for anyone.
On the other hand, "news" would include events outside our borders; scientific discoveries, constitutional violations on the part of our state and federal congress, judiciary and executive levels; politicians caught in lies and making idiot remarks, etc., corruption wherever it occurs, and so on. You know, mostly the things they generally don't cover well, or at all. If I see five minutes on Michelle Bachman, then I want to see five minutes on Newt, five minutes on Romney, five minutes on Paul, etc. And in no case do I want to hear who I should be voting for. Just ask the candidates questions, or simply let them present their positions. Otherwise it's just blatant skew.
I am speaking, of course, of US news. In the UK, your kilometerage may differ somewhat. I spent many years listening to the BBC (on shortwave) in order to get news that wasn't making it through the corporate and political shell game we call news here in the US, and I felt that the experience was far superior to anything comparable in the US. I still go to the "Beeb" on the web, and still find it generally superior to US news, but alas, the shortwave broadcasts in our direction have been terminated. There are many other sources out there now, and thank goodness I don't have to watch TV any longer to learn about important events, sans opinion and agitprop.
Seriously, there is about zero content that isn't badly drawn cartoons, sitcoms/dramas written so as to be palatable to 90-IQ types, straight-up propaganda, or infomercials.
Almost the only things worth watching come from sources other than the networks. And if something DOES come along worth watching, they cancel it right around episode 14.
If it weren't for some of the productions you can buy on DVD and Bluray... and some streaming... I don't think I'd even own a TV today. But some of the movies make it all worth it for me.
My dad used to say something along these lines: "Of all the technologies that he was aware of, television both had the greatest potential, and was the furthest from even approaching its potential." It took me some exploring, but I've decided he was spot-on.
You think it'll be OK in America when it's like Afghanistan, where the locals are "winning"?
No. As I said, I think the American populace is complacent (and stupid, and ignorant) and will never rise up, period, assuming only that they have food and power.
We have an extremely high standard of living; the number of people who would put that at risk for abstracts, or who even understand those abstracts... that's a very, very small number.
Having said that, come a most improbable revolution, I don't think the military would be a factor. Honestly, I just can't see it. The oath is to the constitution and the country; the honor to the flag. Politicians - particularly lately - are known by pretty much everyone to not be doing any good for anyone. The military itself has an institutional disrespect for REMFs that only gets worse the higher up the chain one goes -- that's been true for many decades now. Order the rank and file to fire on the general populace, and I think they'd walk away, frankly. High functioners like aircraft pilots that much sooner. That's my opinion; the only way I can be proven wrong is if the populace WERE to revolt, and again, like you, I don't think we can get there from here.
In my view -- strictly my opinion -- Lion has leaned too far towards IOS. You want to use Lion, by all means. I'm going to hang back. I feel that IOS should come towards OSX, not the other way around, while OSX should forge on along its previous path -- that is, towards a more powerful desktop. The idea being, tablets should gain functionality as the hardware allows for it (more memory, faster cpus, more cores, more connectivity, wireless charging, nested folders, etc.) The idea of OSX embracing "one screen apps" and "sandboxes" and other IOS weaknesses... that's just not doing it for me, and I don't care to upgrade to Lion for that reason. We've got it on a new iMac, mind you -- that's what it came with -- so I'm somewhat familiar with it -- but (Snow) Leopard is sufficient for me, for now. And it's a great choice for hackintoshing.
This can be managed by choosing OSX versions, and being careful of how you update. Stay with Leopard - it is very compatible with hackintoshing, too. Or even Snow Leopard. Just stay away from Lion and later.
The problem is in assuming parity between Christianity and Islam as if they're cut from the same cloth.
They are. It's called "fantasy."
Whatever you may think of the Bible, you don't generally see Sunday schoolers planting IEDs or cheering on those who do.
Crusades, witchburnings, blood libel, abortion clinic bombings, slavery, the inquisitions, the burning of the jews of cologne, pope "Innocent" VIII's decree that cats are unholy creatures to be burned along with the witches that own them, tens of thousands of judicial murders consequent to Henrich Kramer & James Sprenger's "Malleus Maleficarum", Giordano Bruno's condemnation and subsequent burning at the stake for suggesting we weren't the center of the universe and space was boundless, the crimes against Galileo, the thirty years war, endorsement of slavery and subjugation of women and racism...
Don't even try to paint Christians as more peaceful than Muslims. They're all in the habit of committing acts based on an imaginary premise, without regard for human dignity, honor or actual wrongdoing. These religions are toxic. Today's Christians are being somewhat quiet (though you should really look into US soldiers putting Christian sayings on their weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan), but it's just a fad. The pendulum will swing back, and why? Because these religions aren't based on reality, and their behavior isn't based on reality. They do whatever they think might give them the upper hand. It's about control, power, oppression and repression. If you can't figure this out from 20 centuries of Christian wrongdoing, you're too clueless to figure it out at all, but that doesn't change the fact that this is the way they consistently act.
Our military can't defeat a bunch of idiot camel- and sheep-fuckers running around Afghanistan with 1970's era rifles. This is entirely without the added problem of being ordered to shoot at their moms.
The military isn't even trained to wage war any longer. And they're positively frightened to death of hurting civilians. The military, turned loose in the USA... totally not a credible threat to armed citizens.
The problem isn't, and has never been, an arms disparity. The problem is complacency among the populace. They're simply not going to revolt. They're revoltingly ignorant, but that's something else.
...to see the security issue land at the user's door. That would put the onus upon the manufacturers to provide secure computers for the general public, and let the market sort that out; rather than having a mommy-culture watch things "for" us/me. WRT states and corporations and so forth, they are responsible for protecting their data -- and they should guard it carefully. And if they don't, we should be able to take them to task for it. But I can't see sufficient justification to lock down the world just to make it easy for them.
No. You're assuming that assertions with no weight in evidence have equal value with those assertions which have support in evidence. That is fundamentally unsound thinking. It's the same kind of cognitive error that makes newspapers give equal time to evolution and "gawd didit." The reason that science shows regularity is because science looks at what is real and attempts to reveal it in human terms of metaphor, from math to rules to randomness. In the process, it consistently finds regularity. If irregularity were present, it would find that just as well (see quantum mechanics for a good example of this.)
Don't remember his name but he commanded a small carrier in the Atlantic during WW2. He said that if a soldier prays before going into battle he is going into battle with the wrong mind set. A soldier should take charge, not leave it up the fate/beard in the sky.
Reminds me of the throwaway line "There are no atheists in foxholes." Aside from often being wrong, to any degree it is true, this isn't a problem with atheism, it's a problem with foxholes.
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Not true. The desert areas of the US southwest receive sufficient solar energy to power the entire nation. The problem, as I said, is storage. Without adequate storage, we can neither transport nor accrue energy as required to make practical use of the fact that there is enough energy incoming.
I expect we will have sufficient storage within a few decades. The problem is under rather intense scrutiny and development; commercially speaking, its an untapped gold mine. Right now, though, we're stuck with a model where nuclear is prevented by political forces (under which I lump law) and we are limited to the status quo in terms of generation methods and power transport.
There are many interesting methods for power transport that could be implemented -- for instance, contained water can be raised high at the power source, then run downhill to run numerous hydro regeneration installations, in a loop design that returns to base level where the loop returns to the source. With an enclosed body of water, there is no evaporation, no overage, no flooding, etc., and full power is always available as long as the power source can raise the input.
Contained hydro loop techniques also open up interesting high efficiency materials transport methods. Gravity is our friend.
Mostly agree with your post, but the part I quote there is just plain wrong. 10% of a $10000 income is $1000. Even if the rich pay half that percentage, 5% of a million dollar income is $50,000. The rich pay more than the poor in taxes, period, end of story.
There are a lot of ways to frame what you're trying to say correctly, and in such a way as to clearly demonstrate social injustice, and you should find one of them you like and use it. Don't say the rich pay less taxes than the poor -- it just makes you look math-impaired. They don't.
Ron Paul? What makes him "unfit"? He's running neck-and-neck with the clown-shoes-of-the-week put forth by the party machine; he's fairly consistent, he has clearly articulated ideas. So how does he fit in with your evaluation?
See, here's the thing. The constitution only authorizes limited government. No sane person can read it any other way. The federal government, for its part, has found such actual authorization too limiting... seriously... and so basically ignores the constitution. In doing so, it has exercised the power to enable various things it doesn't actually have the authority to implement, such as a nationwide social safety net. It has also destroyed the bill of rights and unleashed a veritable laundry list of evils upon the population.
Now, if you want the federal government to be restrained, either you need an entirely new constitution to be put in place (how???), or you need the government's exercise of power to be chopped back to the current constitution's authorized limits, and then the constitution will need amendment so that the good things, which actually consist of a fairly long list despite the long, long list of evils, can be legitimized as functions of the federal government -- because really, the constitution as it stands doesn't authorize much power for the feds at all unless you read it with a mumble, two glass eyes, and a brain tumor.
On the other hand, if you want the federal government to be free to do whatever it wants, constrained only by what congress can agree upon, so that inconveniences like constitutional conventions aren't required to implement, for instance, nationwide medicare for old folks, nationwide schooling and standards for children, and making it legitimately illegal for your neighbor to own an anthrax factory or a nuke, then (a) we're already in that situation, but (b) it unfortunately has brought with it a whole host of evils, like the sundering of almost the entire bill of rights, the inversion of the commerce clause, ex post facto law, usurpation of article 5 powers under the guise of article 3, assassination of US citizens (aka premeditated killing by stealth without anything even remotely resembling due process), congress-folk voting in things like their own raises and being immune to insider trading laws. From my POV, government freedom has been tested and found extremely wanting.
But getting to a constitutionally restrained government... I haven't got even a clue about a workable process for that. I don't think anyone else does, either. The "ammo box", so beloved of Internet tough guyz, I can't see working. Supposing the unlikely event of a successful armed revolution, I truly can't imagine enough of a framework remaining to create a new government. OTOH, if the military does it for us, that'll leave us directly in the hands of a known conservative religious organization with huge firepower, and I think the only thing that would possibly arise successfully from that is a theocracy -- something considerably worse, IMHO, than what we have now, strange as that may sound. Certainly the congresscritters aren't going to limit themselves, they're quite literally fat and happy with the status quo, and looking at the political requirements for becoming one (basically you need to be corrupt) and the bennies once you're there, why wouldn't they be?
What's going to happen here -- IMHO, of course -- is that our society is going to continue this slide down to the outright ultimate power of the 535; elections will continue to be less and less subtly rigged, as we see with the media ignoring Paul, despite his essentially equal to front runner status, with the public being steered carefully to vote only for approved candidates, and/or voting machines rigged as required, when required, again as we have already seen; laws will continue to be made regardless of constitutionality, and then backed up by the bought-and-paid-for mouthpieces on the supreme court; and the vast majority of the country will continue to not care. Technology will step in with robotics and manufacture on demand, and keep the population generally happy with "stuff" and comfort, and all will be well, as long as you are willing to be the round peg in the round hole the government makes available fo
Naval reactors -- be they powering submarines, aircraft carriers, etc. -- don't have to show a profit. When they need money to run them, they just take it from you and me. Rinse, wash and repeat.
Compare that to one of the very few nuclear powered cargo ships, the NS Savannah. Truly beautiful ship; fast, clean, etc. Couldn't be run cost-effectively, some of which was due to a bit of overzealous streamlining and so forth, but in terms of propulsion costs, oil fueled cargo ships are simply less expensive.
That's why you're not going to see naval reactor designs in your back yard. Ever. Commercial reactors have to be practical.
The right answer is solar and/or wind and/or hydro plus storage. We just don't have cost-effective / space-effective storage. Yet.
Typically, that's solved explicitly with named ports, and generally with some app identifier the system knows how to deal with. If you're unfamiliar with this kind of programming, don't worry about it. It's been solved repeatedly in other operating systems. It just isn't solved here.
That's idiotic. The SDR app uses keystrokes as well as a GUI. The keystrokes are for expert use. They're also an obvious and easy way to control the thing.
Again, that's idiotic. This application isn't "designed for scripted control" it's designed for keyboard control. What I would have liked was to be able to script those keyboard commands, as they are already there. You're just being intentionally obtuse, aren't you? IHBT. HAND. Sigh.
I answered Gr8Apes. In detail. However, he doesn't have any legitimate concerns -- what he has is a limited view of what computers can and should do.
Let me describe the problem again, perhaps more clearly:
If application X is over on monitor six, but the menu for it is over on monitor 1, then it's a long mouse journey from monitor six to monitor 1, and then back again, just to select a menu entry. If the menus were on the application window, instead of being stuck to the top of monitor 1, this journey would not be required.
Yes -- because cmd-Q is directed to the active app. However, you would be a great deal more likely to select the correct quit command using the actual menu if the menus were attached to the app window, as they are in a better UI design. This is because the menu is then not only associated with the active context (which can change in a heartbeat with an accidental click or tap), but also with the visual context of the application. Accessing it would change the focus to the correct application without any extra attention from the user.
Well, I don't know why YOU would, but in my case, my software defined radio uses keystrokes to adjust various settings, including tuning, bandwidth, and so forth. I use a midi control surface to send those keystrokes when its knobs are turned, thus controlling the radio. However, because the keystrokes cannot be directed specifically to the software defined radio app unless it is active, I cannot adjust the radio app at all, unless I make it active with the mouse. This is one example where one application (the midi input processor) could, under [linix|windows|amigados|etc] for example, easily control another (the radio app.) Likewise, a script running from cron or Apple's launchd could send a sequence of commands based on time, such as: "it's ten o'clock, tune to such and such a station, record for half an hour, save as station-10pm-date.soundformat." This could be done without disturbing what you're doing at the moment. BUT, because you MUST make the application active before it can even SEE a keystroke message under OS X... none of this can be done in this easy, convenient fashion. I should also add that OS X lacks a simple IPC mechanism that could be used as an alternate command mechanism, other than for menu commands.
Pad-tapping doesn't work for every workflow, you know. There are many cases in logic, for instance, when you're all over the UI, and quickly. Likewise, Apple's version of right-click-at-right-corner doesn't always get interpreted that way. Control-click, at least, works. There are other workflows than yours.
No, your bad was failing to visualize that a workflow outside your own experience could exist and be valid.
Really? I think -- not dead certain, but I *think* -- then this must work because those are not actually keystroke events. OS X allows for menu shortcuts and certain other types of UI activity to be passed around, but not keystrokes. If I'm wrong, I'd be *delighted* -- this shortcoming is so in my way... if I could get around it, my user experience would be vastly enhanced. In short, I need to be able to send keystrokes to an app that isn't active, and doesn't need to become active -- and there would be quite a few of them sometimes, so making the app active and then coming back (a la applescript) becomes a very bad idea.
Oy. Wrong in so many ways. I have six monitors on my Mac Pro. The menu for any one app probably isn't even on the same monitor. It is a HUGE pain in the neck to navigate back to the display that (currently) contains the menu. The menus belong on the window(s) of the app that owns them. Period. Top-of-the-main-monitor is a complete foul-up. Not just because you have to move the mouse further in almost every case than you would if the menus were where they belong -- on the app windows -- but because they'd at least be on the right monitor, and because there'd be no guessing late in the game if you're quitting the right application.
And then there's OS X's inability to send keystrokes to any application other than the one in front. What a huge UI fumble. Got the ability to remotely control an app by sending it keystrokes? Too bad. Won't work under OSX unless the app is already active, in which case, you're not remote controlling it, because the app attempting the control has lost the focus.
And then there's the whole one button mouse thing, although there are so many ways around that today you don't really get screwed solidly by it unless you buy an Apple mouse / trackpad. Even then, there are options besides the brain-dead "control-click."
And page animations... really? Seriously? You're going to exchange my TIME for eye candy? Unbelievable.
Seriously... Apple's UI designers all needs to go take a long walk off a short pier.
I love my mac pro for what it can do, but there are ui-specific reasons that constantly limit what it can do as well, and I sure as heck don't appreciate those. The stupid, stupid menus-at-the-top feature pretty much serving as the poster child for exactly how NOT to do something because it's BROKEN and gets in the user's way and requires more mouse travel and is less clear and breaks the multi-monitor paradigm.
Oh. You mean the way ex post facto laws have been smacked down on appeal? You mean the way interstate commerce, interpreted as intrastate commerce, was smacked down on appeal? You mean the way searches without probable cause within 150 miles of the US border were smacked down on appeal? You mean the way the numerous infringements of the rights guaranteed by the second amendment, such as licensing, ownership, carrying... were smacked down on appeal? You mean the way the government's reading of our email and other private correspondence was smacked down on appeal? I look forward to this "smacked down on appeal." [grabs popcorn]
Propaganda. By skewing in the reporting, by insinuating opinion, and by (generally incredibly leading) choice of content (and I use the word "content" in it's most generic form, without regard for value.)
In my view, "news" is accurate, uncensored information about important events; it is for this reason that the press was given the enormous privilege of being singled out in the first amendment.
That would not include Britney Spears, the fact that "the McRib is back" [shudder], or the various bread and circuses such as sports, art installations, and religious tripe of any flavor (unless it has stepped over the line into terrorism or is attempting to insinuate itself (further) into government, in which case, we should be informed about that.) It would also not include favoring coverage of one political candidate over another: equal time for everyone or no time for anyone.
On the other hand, "news" would include events outside our borders; scientific discoveries, constitutional violations on the part of our state and federal congress, judiciary and executive levels; politicians caught in lies and making idiot remarks, etc., corruption wherever it occurs, and so on. You know, mostly the things they generally don't cover well, or at all. If I see five minutes on Michelle Bachman, then I want to see five minutes on Newt, five minutes on Romney, five minutes on Paul, etc. And in no case do I want to hear who I should be voting for. Just ask the candidates questions, or simply let them present their positions. Otherwise it's just blatant skew.
I am speaking, of course, of US news. In the UK, your kilometerage may differ somewhat. I spent many years listening to the BBC (on shortwave) in order to get news that wasn't making it through the corporate and political shell game we call news here in the US, and I felt that the experience was far superior to anything comparable in the US. I still go to the "Beeb" on the web, and still find it generally superior to US news, but alas, the shortwave broadcasts in our direction have been terminated. There are many other sources out there now, and thank goodness I don't have to watch TV any longer to learn about important events, sans opinion and agitprop.
Yes, I am.
You're over-complicating the content.
Seriously, there is about zero content that isn't badly drawn cartoons, sitcoms/dramas written so as to be palatable to 90-IQ types, straight-up propaganda, or infomercials.
Almost the only things worth watching come from sources other than the networks. And if something DOES come along worth watching, they cancel it right around episode 14.
If it weren't for some of the productions you can buy on DVD and Bluray... and some streaming... I don't think I'd even own a TV today. But some of the movies make it all worth it for me.
My dad used to say something along these lines: "Of all the technologies that he was aware of, television both had the greatest potential, and was the furthest from even approaching its potential." It took me some exploring, but I've decided he was spot-on.
No. As I said, I think the American populace is complacent (and stupid, and ignorant) and will never rise up, period, assuming only that they have food and power.
We have an extremely high standard of living; the number of people who would put that at risk for abstracts, or who even understand those abstracts... that's a very, very small number.
Having said that, come a most improbable revolution, I don't think the military would be a factor. Honestly, I just can't see it. The oath is to the constitution and the country; the honor to the flag. Politicians - particularly lately - are known by pretty much everyone to not be doing any good for anyone. The military itself has an institutional disrespect for REMFs that only gets worse the higher up the chain one goes -- that's been true for many decades now. Order the rank and file to fire on the general populace, and I think they'd walk away, frankly. High functioners like aircraft pilots that much sooner. That's my opinion; the only way I can be proven wrong is if the populace WERE to revolt, and again, like you, I don't think we can get there from here.
In my view -- strictly my opinion -- Lion has leaned too far towards IOS. You want to use Lion, by all means. I'm going to hang back. I feel that IOS should come towards OSX, not the other way around, while OSX should forge on along its previous path -- that is, towards a more powerful desktop. The idea being, tablets should gain functionality as the hardware allows for it (more memory, faster cpus, more cores, more connectivity, wireless charging, nested folders, etc.) The idea of OSX embracing "one screen apps" and "sandboxes" and other IOS weaknesses... that's just not doing it for me, and I don't care to upgrade to Lion for that reason. We've got it on a new iMac, mind you -- that's what it came with -- so I'm somewhat familiar with it -- but (Snow) Leopard is sufficient for me, for now. And it's a great choice for hackintoshing.
This can be managed by choosing OSX versions, and being careful of how you update. Stay with Leopard - it is very compatible with hackintoshing, too. Or even Snow Leopard. Just stay away from Lion and later.
They are. It's called "fantasy."
Crusades, witchburnings, blood libel, abortion clinic bombings, slavery, the inquisitions, the burning of the jews of cologne, pope "Innocent" VIII's decree that cats are unholy creatures to be burned along with the witches that own them, tens of thousands of judicial murders consequent to Henrich Kramer & James Sprenger's "Malleus Maleficarum", Giordano Bruno's condemnation and subsequent burning at the stake for suggesting we weren't the center of the universe and space was boundless, the crimes against Galileo, the thirty years war, endorsement of slavery and subjugation of women and racism...
Don't even try to paint Christians as more peaceful than Muslims. They're all in the habit of committing acts based on an imaginary premise, without regard for human dignity, honor or actual wrongdoing. These religions are toxic. Today's Christians are being somewhat quiet (though you should really look into US soldiers putting Christian sayings on their weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan), but it's just a fad. The pendulum will swing back, and why? Because these religions aren't based on reality, and their behavior isn't based on reality. They do whatever they think might give them the upper hand. It's about control, power, oppression and repression. If you can't figure this out from 20 centuries of Christian wrongdoing, you're too clueless to figure it out at all, but that doesn't change the fact that this is the way they consistently act.
Doc...
Our military can't defeat a bunch of idiot camel- and sheep-fuckers running around Afghanistan with 1970's era rifles. This is entirely without the added problem of being ordered to shoot at their moms.
The military isn't even trained to wage war any longer. And they're positively frightened to death of hurting civilians. The military, turned loose in the USA... totally not a credible threat to armed citizens.
The problem isn't, and has never been, an arms disparity. The problem is complacency among the populace. They're simply not going to revolt. They're revoltingly ignorant, but that's something else.
Interesting questions. What's the joke?
But I suppose it's too late for any of that.
No. You're assuming that assertions with no weight in evidence have equal value with those assertions which have support in evidence. That is fundamentally unsound thinking. It's the same kind of cognitive error that makes newspapers give equal time to evolution and "gawd didit." The reason that science shows regularity is because science looks at what is real and attempts to reveal it in human terms of metaphor, from math to rules to randomness. In the process, it consistently finds regularity. If irregularity were present, it would find that just as well (see quantum mechanics for a good example of this.)
Reminds me of the throwaway line "There are no atheists in foxholes." Aside from often being wrong, to any degree it is true, this isn't a problem with atheism, it's a problem with foxholes.