The latter, since she comes across as an honest person who's not trying to manipulate me by replacing reality with hyperreality. I might lust after the former for a short while, but if I was considering a serious relationship, I'd always prefer the latter
I didn't put it in every sentence, but I was very specific within that post that I was comparing women of equal capabilities; I said "Those females who understand what has happened can completely trounce those who don't in any situation where performance is relatively equal" and "because hiring, or simply hanging with, a lovely, sexy woman who can handle the task at hand is a lot more desirable than hanging with an equally capable woman who dresses like a guy on his way to a pickup game."
...so it's really not fair to tar me with the misogynist brush. I simply don't discount sexuality, and that, I maintain, is a healthy attitude.
I've often found that I'm drawn to effeminate men
You made my point for me right there. If you like guys, if you're as "even-handed" as you seem to want to portray, then any guy should be as attractive to you as any other. But by your own account, you prefer an effeminate man; why is that any more inherently respectable than my preference for a feminine woman? You should really think that through!
and implying that attracting males, bearing children and caring for the family is all women are supposed to do in life is outright misogynistic.
Again, I didn't imply any such thing. Women (everyone, for that matter) can do anything they like. But choices have consequences, and as men are by and large more directly interested in women who are attractive, have particular body shapes, and certain facial features (science backs this up in spades, by the way), those ladies that demonstrate those characteristics have visually selected themselves into the first ranks for consideration. If there is nothing there mentally, or no competence for the job at hand, then they lose their place, of course (unless the guy is foolish.) But as my original postulate goes, all other things being equal, the lady with the better plumage is naturally positioned to win any such contest.
Different people like different things, and saying that women must wear dresses, stockings, lace bikinis and perfume in order to be attractive is simply not true
The thing is, we do know what the general population likes. You can see it any number of ways. For instance, when we go for magazines that use sexuality to motivate, you don't generally see women in pictorials with sneakers, no makeup and ghetto clothing. No. Instead, we see them in lace, stockings and garters, decent makeup, posed so as to appear inviting to the guy in the fantasy, IOW the reader / viewer. This is true for nudes, like playboy and its ilk, and it is true for non-nudes, like Maxim and its ilk. I'm not saying that there aren't people out there with likes of every kind, of course there are, but the mainstream has spoken and it hasn't changed its tastes since the 1920's. We like, and are preferential towards, feminine women - it is just that simple.
If you reduce feminism, demands for equality and the like to "women want to dress 'like a guy on his way to a pickup game'", you've completely missed the point.
I don't do that at all. I simply point out that when women interpret feminism as requiring that kind of loss of sexual plumage, they have missed the point, because feminism isn't about sexuality, and it never was. It was about parity in the workplace, in compensation, in opportunity. Which is what I said in the first place: "They could have been equal all along without giving up the sexually charged plumage they had; there is no question that "equality" is about performance, not plumage."
What is the point? Seriously? Well, do your hormones turn off at work? If so, how do you accomplish this? If not, well then, you should understand the point. People indulge in sexuality all the time at work. They stare at each other, they think sexual things, they date each other, they cop feels, they occasionally retire to the stockroom or home or a motel and relieve each other's tensions. They meet, they date, they swap around, they marry. All perfectly OK. And so on. Porn is just one vector of sexual interest, and like most other vectors, it is in no way a "bad" thing unless you get maniacal about it to the detriment of your other goals and responsibilities in life. The attempt to sterilize the office / work environment of sexuality is a social sickness, one we can lay the responsibility for directly at the feet of the mentally unsavory.
Proper corporate policy: "Sex on your monitor is perfectly OK. Unless you fall off."
I, on the other hand, have no sympathy for people who view porn as some kind of unnatural interest, somehow lower than, for instance, an interest in needlepoint or mythology.
It is highly unfortunate that the socially retarded contingent that fears and attempts to regulate sexuality has managed to get their attitudes enshrined into law in many venues. Just one more despicable aspect of mommy-style government.
Given two Earths which are identical in every regard, one with double the CO2 than the other, which do you expect to be hotter ON AVERAGE?
Neither one.
Let me tell you why. Water vapor: First, we know it has a lot more effect on temperature than CO2 does. 2nd, we know that the hotter the atmosphere gets, the faster the transport mechanism from surface to cloud cycles. 3rd, we know that the transport mechanism is a natural means to carry heat from the surface, where it is always warmer, to high in the atmosphere, where it is colder, where the heat radiates away into space. The rain that falls is then cold rain, essentially transporting more cold to the surface, where the only way that water can warm up again is by absorbing more heat from the environment around it. It is key to keep in mind that the warmer the environment gets, the faster this cycle will tend to run. The only place it won't run is where there is no water to support the cycle. So then we must consider how much of the earth is covered with water - and the answer is about 71%. These areas will directly support an accelerated cycle. But wait - as rainfall accelerates, more water resides on the surface in temporary form - that is, as runoff and moist topsoil conditions, all of which is subject to evaporation, the more so if it is any amount warmer. But, as noted, the evaporation cycle is uniformly a cooling cycle. Coming back to the fact that water in the atmosphere has a lot more effect on heat retention and heat transport than does CO2, I strongly suspect that you'll find that CO2 can vary all over the place and not make much difference. And that, in fact, is what current observations (not models) show: The current amount of CO2 in the air is very high compared to what we think is "normal", yet temperature rise has shown no particular spikes that are out of the ordinary.
And what's with the political rant about the public sector?
Here in the USA, our government is hugely out of control. They don't spend enough time on the problems that are in our face right now. We don't need them spending time on speculative material like global warming. Scientists, sure, there is no upper bound to useful information, or at least attempts to get useful information - politicians, no. With our constitution reduced to "just a goddamned piece of paper" in the view of the executive, and courts mangling basic ideas like the constitutional clause to justify interfering with state's internal operations and a whole lot more, our legislators would have their work cut out for them if they were simply paying any attention. I object to putting issues like global warming in front of them on the basis that it distracts a very incompetent set of workers from a job they really need to do in favor of a matter that doesn't need their attention.
Generally speaking, desktop based applications will have more features and better integration, but web based applications have the advantage of being portable
Well, but so are laptops, palmtops, and etc; so are server accounts where you leave the mail on the server and can download it into multiple clients, so that you can get your mail at work, but that still leaves it retrievable at home, both on real (that is, non-web) clients.
I'm not comfortable, frankly, with Google or whomever handling my mail. I know my backup strategies, I know my mail (since about 1985, including all my old Compuserve mail) is all intact, and I like being able to search it, prod it, use it as reference material. I can get at my mail, in my laptop, during those times I cannot get on the net - that's worth something too.
I don't think web mail (or any web application, for that matter) is a very good solution for users who make more than cursory use of email or any other data. I understand the urge to create web based applications, but that doesn't mean its actually a good thing.:-)
At the risk of driving chill right out of his or her mind, no problem. I did post, upon being prodded, elsewhere how you can get to the specifics of arranging your TV viewing situation so you can take advantage of the resolution it has. Math warning, though.:-)
When the question is if HD resolution is generally useful, why would you try to analyze it with a specific TV size to try and resolve an answer useful across all display sizes? Of course, you wouldn't, and I didn't. It isn't that simple. Which is what I said in the first place. You have to look at more factors, and you have to deconstruct the problem so that any TV size and viewing distance can be looked over, plus you have to work within the human capacity for vision. I didn't address any *specific* size, because almost no matter what I pick, it'll be wrong for someone.
For what it's worth, if you don't know this already, you can calculate your field of view as arc cos of the result of screen width (horizontally, not diagonally, unless you sit with a cocked head) over your eye's distance from the screen. You probably want 1080p to land in 33 degrees or more because 33 degrees works out to about 2000 pixels acuity at your eye's focal point. If it is much under 33 degrees, you'll begin to lose the ability to resolve single pixels. Unless you like having sub-pixel accuracy that you usually can't perceive. For a TV that is 1280x720 or so (a common LCD "HD" TV), you can go down to about 16 degrees without losing the ability to see single pixels. You have to do the math, or at least, someone does - there's no single TV size / resolution that answers the pertinent questions for everyone. That is why the 3 foot TV at 8 feet is a poor way to think about this.
Well, I hope you are wearing some sweet HD VR goggles. I'm pretty sure my 48" home theater system does not take up 100 degrees of my field of view.
There is no question that all systems are different; my theater uses a 17' diagonal 1080p projection arrangement, where the seating (that is, the seating that we intend to be theater seating) is all in a line at about 18'. So the display does cover very well in terms of average visual acuity and what 1080p offers. The distances were partially dictated by the building's interior floor plan (pre-existing; it was a church) and partially by the available screen real estate / wall space, which we used 100% of. But I knew this going in; I actually bought the building based on the potential for the theater, plus the ability to retrofit the remainder of the interior into anything we liked - it was basically an empty box when we purchased it.
Some systems will cover all 100 degrees; some systems will be way too far away and too small to allow pixels to be resolved by any viewer in the room's normal seating. Some will cover more than 100 degrees and require scanning, or perhaps could be characterized as being "all-enveloping" - overscan for your mind. "Sweet VR goggles", indeed.
The issue at hand, as postulated by the summary was: "Is this performance improvement [as represented by 1080p] manifest under real world viewing conditions?" The answer is certainly yes if you set your system up so as to make sure all the factors work together, but there are caveats (color, luma, center of vision, viewing preferences) that are not inconsequential and that is what I was bringing up so as to try, in my own feeble way, to address the performance improvement question a little more broadly.
If you don't set your system up so that you can actually see the resolution of the set you choose, you have made some choices that have visual quality reducing consequences in your viewing situation. But turning that around, they have no consequences at all upon people who set their systems up so as to take best advantage of the resolution available. So I think it is still useful to go over how this all works generally, which is what I tried to do.
And your accusation of redundancy covers my bringing up acuity variations across the eye, the difference between color and luma acuity, the differences between horizontal and vertical acuity, scanning the image as opposed to trying to catch it all in one gestalt along the general theme that distance isn't the entire issue... exactly how?
Oh. You didn't get all that. I'm sorry. I thought you might have been paying attention. My bad.
The problem is, we're not simply adding insulation to a closed and otherwise well understood system like a house. We're adding a gas with a relatively minor effect to a system that has numerous major compensating and competing mechanisms, such as many diverse water vapor cycles and cloud circulation patterns, deep ocean currents, solar inputs, and so on. It isn't a given that adding Co2 will increase heat overall; other effects may compensate (or over-compensate, for that matter.) We have no historical record of CO2 doing this (CO2 in the historical record lags warming spells, it doesn't lead them.)
It isn't cut and dry, and certainly from the standpoint of the models, it isn't even close - we have no climate model that will produce accurate results worldwide. They err greatly, especially towards the poles. Making decisions based upon such broadly flawed models isn't exactly the most obvious choice. Not that the lack of facts will stop our legislators, who have jumped into this bandwagon as the latest way to avoid their responsibilities in the public sector - you know, like getting people fed, medicated, educated, covered for retirement, keeping our laws within the bounds of the constituting documents - those little niggling details.
According to the linked text, the "average" person can see 2 pixels at about 2 minutes of arc, and has a field of view of 100 degrees. There are 30 sets of 2 minutes of arc in one degree, and one hundred of those in the field of view, so we get: 2 * 30 * 100, or about 6000 pixel acuity overall.
1080p is 1920 horizontally and 1080 vertically at most. So horizontally, where the 100 degree figure is accurate, there is no question that 1080p is about 2/3 less than your ability to see detail, and the answer to the question in the summary is, yes, it is worth it.
Vertically, let's assume (though it isn't true) that only having one eye-width available cuts your vision's arc in half (it doesn't, but roll with me here.) That would mean that instead of 6000 pixel acuity, you're down to 3000. 1080p is 1080 pixels vertically. In this case, you'd again be at 1/3 of your visual acuity, and again, the answer is yes, it is worth it. Coming back to reality, where you vertical field of view is actually greater than 50 degrees, your acuity is higher and it is even more worth it.
Aside from these general numbers that TFA throws around (without making any conclusions), the human eye doesn't have uniform acuity across the field of view. You see more near the center of your cone of vision, and you perceive more there as well. Things out towards the edges are less well perceived. Doubt me? Put a hand up (or have a friend do it) at the edge of your vision - stare straight ahead, with the hand at the extreme edge of what you can see at the side. Try and count the number of fingers for a few tries. You'll likely find you can't (it can be done, but it takes some practice - in martial arts, my school trains with these same exercises for years so that we develop and maintain a bit more ability to figure out what is going on at the edges of our vision.) But the point is, at the edges, you certainly aren't seeing with the same acuity or perception that you are at the center focus of your vision.
So the resolution across the screen isn't really benefiting your perception - the closer to the edge you go, the more degraded your perception is, though the pixel spacing remains constant. However - and I think this is the key - you can look anywhere, that is, place the center of your vision, anywhere on the display, and be rewarded with an image that is well within the ability of your eyes and mind to resolve well.
There are some color-based caveats to this. Your eye sees better in brightness than it does in color. It sees better in some colors better than others (green is considerably better resolved than blue, for instance.) These differences in perception make TGA's blanket statement that your acuity is 2 pixels per two minutes of arc is more than a little bit of hand-waving. Still, the finest detail in the HD signal (and normal video, for that matter) is carried in the brightness information, and that is indeed where your highest acuity is, so technically, we're still kind of talking about the same general ballpark — the color information is less dense, and that corresponds to your lesser acuity in color.
There is a simple and relatively easy to access test that you can do yourself. Go find an LCD computer monitor in the 17 inch or larger range that has a native resolution of 1280x1024. That's pretty standard for a few years back, should be easy to do. Verify that the computer attached to it is running in the same resolution. This is about 1/2 HD across, and 1 HD vertically. Look at it. Any trouble seeing the finest details? Of course not. Now go find a computer monitor that is closer to HD, or exactly HD. You might have to go to a dealer, but you can find them. Again, make sure that the computer is set to use this resolution. Now we're talking about HD. Can you see the finest details? I can - and easily. I suspect you can too, because my visual acuity is nothing special. But do the test, if you doubt that HD offers detail that is useful to your perceptions.
Network foolishness between you and the site, most likely - the site was up all day, and the logs show no particular drop in traffic. With regard to the bookstore, no, at the time, there was no such option. I could do it now, I suppose; I still have everything archived. However, I moved the site to a google-ad based site for my school, including a manual that describes the patterns for the style, and that does surprisingly well. The name is sort of a root name for all Korean martial arts, I've had it for many years, so a lot of people end up there. I used to own blackbelt.com too.:-) anyway... I'd have to do some finagling to set up the reviews as you suggest, but it's an idea I may go after on a rainy day. Thanks for pointing it out - much appreciated.
Ok, now we're up to 2 flame-baits, 1 underrated, and one insightful. It's a mod-fight!
FWIW, it wasn't flame-bait; it was an observation of fact. Let's see... Timothy 6:10 "For the love of money is the root of all evil" This clearly is repressive, money being the root of nothing in particular but prevention of starvation and enabling any number of other choices, ranging from charity to warfare. It is the choices we make that root us in evil, or elsewhere. James 4:6-10 "Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble." Here again we find the not too finely veiled admonition to know one's station, and the implication that reward will come in the afterlife. This theme re-appears again and again, and in this guise serves as factual basis for my statement above that religion literally teaches the low-stationed to like their lot. Peter's got something to say about it, too: Peter 1 2:18 "Slaves, be subject to your masters with all reverence, not only to those who are good and equitable but also to those who are perverse." That one's a bit of a kicker. Not only are you supposed to be a good little slave, but you are to remain so even in the face of perverse handling. I wonder if George W. Bush is descended from Peter. Well, no matter. You can't actually discuss these things. Flame-bait, you know.
Did you mean guilded as in unions and master/apprentice conventions, or "gilded" as in plated on the outside while pot metal in the center? The latter is a common construction in this kind of porch-step cultural analysis, but "guilded" has interesting connotations as well.;-) Guilds certainly have an effect in this domain.
Sounds to me like you've got a problem with relationships. How people dress in no way qualifies them as "useless bitches"; how people dress is a statement of how they see themselves, how they see their relationship to the opposite sex and to their peers, and how they wish to be perceived in terms of income, independence, sexuality and individuality. Without the ability to see through people's dressing habits to who they are, you're forever crippled, all the more so by today's sexual identity confusion. Clothing is plumage, beyond the fact that it is coverage. If exotic plumage puts you off, you're emotionally crippled.
As for your allusions to primitive behaviors and subsequent attempt to ascribe them to today's social milieux, no. That sounds like the pontificating of a 1st year psych student; no one is looking to take your kids away for the sake of hurting you. Those things happen when poorly built and maintained relationships crash - and that is very likely the fault of all parties.
Ever since WW2 they've had an unexplainable fertility boom.
Oh, it's explainable. Fashionable French women still wear stockings instead of pantyhose. They still wear dresses instead of pants. They still wear lace bikinis instead of "boy panties." They still wear perfume. Finally, they spend a lot less time being repressed, sexually speaking, than many other countries. What is more attractive? Some awesomely sexy woman, dressed to knock you off your feet, or some woman in her jogging sneakers, jeans and "hoodie"?
There was a social error made by the ladies in the 60's...70's where they decided that in order to be "equal", they had to look and act like men. Unfortunately, all that did was make them unattractive and lose the social training that taught them how to deal with attracted males. They could have been equal all along without giving up the sexually charged plumage they had; there is no question that "equality" is about performance, not plumage.
There is, of course, a silver lining to all of this. Those females who understand what has happened can completely trounce those who don't in any situation where performance is relatively equal - because hiring, or simply hanging with, a lovely, sexy woman who can handle the task at hand is a lot more desirable than hanging with an equally capable woman who dresses like a guy on his way to a pickup game.
The consequences for reproductive rates are obvious.
Politically correct? No. True? You bet - every word.
Because one is an upswing in values, and the other is a downswing. These situations don't exist in a vacuum; they proceed from the previous state and they have inertia. Such inertia leads to the next state until the system collapses entirely.
Probably not. The skull and subsequent membranes that surround the brain serve as excellent EM shielding. It is very difficult to induce a voltage of any magnitude inside a container made of conducting materials. EMP, despite its reputation as a killer of "everything electronic", will not generally kill devices stored in sealed, conductive containers.
Ok, sorry. You have to admit you left your leg hanging out there with that example - it had to be pulled. Anyway, without OSX... to me, your lash-up isn't comparable, truly. You have 8 cores and the basic machine, but the software selection isn't satisfactory because I really do want OSX. And by the way, calling a mansion a "prison" really is an act of mental gymnastics. I doubt any Apple user feels "imprisoned." My Apple laptop runs OSX, redhat, and XP, all legally, all concurrently, on a dual core. I just have a really tough time feeling constrained at all. An 8-core box would do the same thing, only faster and with more breathing room.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't put it in every sentence, but I was very specific within that post that I was comparing women of equal capabilities; I said "Those females who understand what has happened can completely trounce those who don't in any situation where performance is relatively equal" and "because hiring, or simply hanging with, a lovely, sexy woman who can handle the task at hand is a lot more desirable than hanging with an equally capable woman who dresses like a guy on his way to a pickup game."
You made my point for me right there. If you like guys, if you're as "even-handed" as you seem to want to portray, then any guy should be as attractive to you as any other. But by your own account, you prefer an effeminate man; why is that any more inherently respectable than my preference for a feminine woman? You should really think that through!
Again, I didn't imply any such thing. Women (everyone, for that matter) can do anything they like. But choices have consequences, and as men are by and large more directly interested in women who are attractive, have particular body shapes, and certain facial features (science backs this up in spades, by the way), those ladies that demonstrate those characteristics have visually selected themselves into the first ranks for consideration. If there is nothing there mentally, or no competence for the job at hand, then they lose their place, of course (unless the guy is foolish.) But as my original postulate goes, all other things being equal, the lady with the better plumage is naturally positioned to win any such contest.
The thing is, we do know what the general population likes. You can see it any number of ways. For instance, when we go for magazines that use sexuality to motivate, you don't generally see women in pictorials with sneakers, no makeup and ghetto clothing. No. Instead, we see them in lace, stockings and garters, decent makeup, posed so as to appear inviting to the guy in the fantasy, IOW the reader / viewer. This is true for nudes, like playboy and its ilk, and it is true for non-nudes, like Maxim and its ilk. I'm not saying that there aren't people out there with likes of every kind, of course there are, but the mainstream has spoken and it hasn't changed its tastes since the 1920's. We like, and are preferential towards, feminine women - it is just that simple.
I don't do that at all. I simply point out that when women interpret feminism as requiring that kind of loss of sexual plumage, they have missed the point, because feminism isn't about sexuality, and it never was. It was about parity in the workplace, in compensation, in opportunity. Which is what I said in the first place: "They could have been equal all along without giving up the sexually charged plumage they had; there is no question that "equality" is about performance, not plumage."
What is the point? Seriously? Well, do your hormones turn off at work? If so, how do you accomplish this? If not, well then, you should understand the point. People indulge in sexuality all the time at work. They stare at each other, they think sexual things, they date each other, they cop feels, they occasionally retire to the stockroom or home or a motel and relieve each other's tensions. They meet, they date, they swap around, they marry. All perfectly OK. And so on. Porn is just one vector of sexual interest, and like most other vectors, it is in no way a "bad" thing unless you get maniacal about it to the detriment of your other goals and responsibilities in life. The attempt to sterilize the office / work environment of sexuality is a social sickness, one we can lay the responsibility for directly at the feet of the mentally unsavory.
Proper corporate policy: "Sex on your monitor is perfectly OK. Unless you fall off."
I, on the other hand, have no sympathy for people who view porn as some kind of unnatural interest, somehow lower than, for instance, an interest in needlepoint or mythology.
It is highly unfortunate that the socially retarded contingent that fears and attempts to regulate sexuality has managed to get their attitudes enshrined into law in many venues. Just one more despicable aspect of mommy-style government.
Playboy.... has articles?
Neither one.
Let me tell you why. Water vapor: First, we know it has a lot more effect on temperature than CO2 does. 2nd, we know that the hotter the atmosphere gets, the faster the transport mechanism from surface to cloud cycles. 3rd, we know that the transport mechanism is a natural means to carry heat from the surface, where it is always warmer, to high in the atmosphere, where it is colder, where the heat radiates away into space. The rain that falls is then cold rain, essentially transporting more cold to the surface, where the only way that water can warm up again is by absorbing more heat from the environment around it. It is key to keep in mind that the warmer the environment gets, the faster this cycle will tend to run. The only place it won't run is where there is no water to support the cycle. So then we must consider how much of the earth is covered with water - and the answer is about 71%. These areas will directly support an accelerated cycle. But wait - as rainfall accelerates, more water resides on the surface in temporary form - that is, as runoff and moist topsoil conditions, all of which is subject to evaporation, the more so if it is any amount warmer. But, as noted, the evaporation cycle is uniformly a cooling cycle. Coming back to the fact that water in the atmosphere has a lot more effect on heat retention and heat transport than does CO2, I strongly suspect that you'll find that CO2 can vary all over the place and not make much difference. And that, in fact, is what current observations (not models) show: The current amount of CO2 in the air is very high compared to what we think is "normal", yet temperature rise has shown no particular spikes that are out of the ordinary.
Here in the USA, our government is hugely out of control. They don't spend enough time on the problems that are in our face right now. We don't need them spending time on speculative material like global warming. Scientists, sure, there is no upper bound to useful information, or at least attempts to get useful information - politicians, no. With our constitution reduced to "just a goddamned piece of paper" in the view of the executive, and courts mangling basic ideas like the constitutional clause to justify interfering with state's internal operations and a whole lot more, our legislators would have their work cut out for them if they were simply paying any attention. I object to putting issues like global warming in front of them on the basis that it distracts a very incompetent set of workers from a job they really need to do in favor of a matter that doesn't need their attention.
Well, but so are laptops, palmtops, and etc; so are server accounts where you leave the mail on the server and can download it into multiple clients, so that you can get your mail at work, but that still leaves it retrievable at home, both on real (that is, non-web) clients.
I'm not comfortable, frankly, with Google or whomever handling my mail. I know my backup strategies, I know my mail (since about 1985, including all my old Compuserve mail) is all intact, and I like being able to search it, prod it, use it as reference material. I can get at my mail, in my laptop, during those times I cannot get on the net - that's worth something too.
I don't think web mail (or any web application, for that matter) is a very good solution for users who make more than cursory use of email or any other data. I understand the urge to create web based applications, but that doesn't mean its actually a good thing. :-)
Re chill, uh, his, obviously. Charles. In the message and in the header. Yeah. Slashdot. No one reads the comments. What a dip I am. :-)
At the risk of driving chill right out of his or her mind, no problem. I did post, upon being prodded, elsewhere how you can get to the specifics of arranging your TV viewing situation so you can take advantage of the resolution it has. Math warning, though. :-)
When the question is if HD resolution is generally useful, why would you try to analyze it with a specific TV size to try and resolve an answer useful across all display sizes? Of course, you wouldn't, and I didn't. It isn't that simple. Which is what I said in the first place. You have to look at more factors, and you have to deconstruct the problem so that any TV size and viewing distance can be looked over, plus you have to work within the human capacity for vision. I didn't address any *specific* size, because almost no matter what I pick, it'll be wrong for someone.
For what it's worth, if you don't know this already, you can calculate your field of view as arc cos of the result of screen width (horizontally, not diagonally, unless you sit with a cocked head) over your eye's distance from the screen. You probably want 1080p to land in 33 degrees or more because 33 degrees works out to about 2000 pixels acuity at your eye's focal point. If it is much under 33 degrees, you'll begin to lose the ability to resolve single pixels. Unless you like having sub-pixel accuracy that you usually can't perceive. For a TV that is 1280x720 or so (a common LCD "HD" TV), you can go down to about 16 degrees without losing the ability to see single pixels. You have to do the math, or at least, someone does - there's no single TV size / resolution that answers the pertinent questions for everyone. That is why the 3 foot TV at 8 feet is a poor way to think about this.
There is no question that all systems are different; my theater uses a 17' diagonal 1080p projection arrangement, where the seating (that is, the seating that we intend to be theater seating) is all in a line at about 18'. So the display does cover very well in terms of average visual acuity and what 1080p offers. The distances were partially dictated by the building's interior floor plan (pre-existing; it was a church) and partially by the available screen real estate / wall space, which we used 100% of. But I knew this going in; I actually bought the building based on the potential for the theater, plus the ability to retrofit the remainder of the interior into anything we liked - it was basically an empty box when we purchased it.
Some systems will cover all 100 degrees; some systems will be way too far away and too small to allow pixels to be resolved by any viewer in the room's normal seating. Some will cover more than 100 degrees and require scanning, or perhaps could be characterized as being "all-enveloping" - overscan for your mind. "Sweet VR goggles", indeed.
The issue at hand, as postulated by the summary was: "Is this performance improvement [as represented by 1080p] manifest under real world viewing conditions?" The answer is certainly yes if you set your system up so as to make sure all the factors work together, but there are caveats (color, luma, center of vision, viewing preferences) that are not inconsequential and that is what I was bringing up so as to try, in my own feeble way, to address the performance improvement question a little more broadly.
If you don't set your system up so that you can actually see the resolution of the set you choose, you have made some choices that have visual quality reducing consequences in your viewing situation. But turning that around, they have no consequences at all upon people who set their systems up so as to take best advantage of the resolution available. So I think it is still useful to go over how this all works generally, which is what I tried to do.
Yes... see my last paragraph? I think I said nearly the same thing. Was there something there you disagree with?
And your accusation of redundancy covers my bringing up acuity variations across the eye, the difference between color and luma acuity, the differences between horizontal and vertical acuity, scanning the image as opposed to trying to catch it all in one gestalt along the general theme that distance isn't the entire issue... exactly how?
Oh. You didn't get all that. I'm sorry. I thought you might have been paying attention. My bad.
The problem is, we're not simply adding insulation to a closed and otherwise well understood system like a house. We're adding a gas with a relatively minor effect to a system that has numerous major compensating and competing mechanisms, such as many diverse water vapor cycles and cloud circulation patterns, deep ocean currents, solar inputs, and so on. It isn't a given that adding Co2 will increase heat overall; other effects may compensate (or over-compensate, for that matter.) We have no historical record of CO2 doing this (CO2 in the historical record lags warming spells, it doesn't lead them.)
It isn't cut and dry, and certainly from the standpoint of the models, it isn't even close - we have no climate model that will produce accurate results worldwide. They err greatly, especially towards the poles. Making decisions based upon such broadly flawed models isn't exactly the most obvious choice. Not that the lack of facts will stop our legislators, who have jumped into this bandwagon as the latest way to avoid their responsibilities in the public sector - you know, like getting people fed, medicated, educated, covered for retirement, keeping our laws within the bounds of the constituting documents - those little niggling details.
According to the linked text, the "average" person can see 2 pixels at about 2 minutes of arc, and has a field of view of 100 degrees. There are 30 sets of 2 minutes of arc in one degree, and one hundred of those in the field of view, so we get: 2 * 30 * 100, or about 6000 pixel acuity overall.
1080p is 1920 horizontally and 1080 vertically at most. So horizontally, where the 100 degree figure is accurate, there is no question that 1080p is about 2/3 less than your ability to see detail, and the answer to the question in the summary is, yes, it is worth it.
Vertically, let's assume (though it isn't true) that only having one eye-width available cuts your vision's arc in half (it doesn't, but roll with me here.) That would mean that instead of 6000 pixel acuity, you're down to 3000. 1080p is 1080 pixels vertically. In this case, you'd again be at 1/3 of your visual acuity, and again, the answer is yes, it is worth it. Coming back to reality, where you vertical field of view is actually greater than 50 degrees, your acuity is higher and it is even more worth it.
Aside from these general numbers that TFA throws around (without making any conclusions), the human eye doesn't have uniform acuity across the field of view. You see more near the center of your cone of vision, and you perceive more there as well. Things out towards the edges are less well perceived. Doubt me? Put a hand up (or have a friend do it) at the edge of your vision - stare straight ahead, with the hand at the extreme edge of what you can see at the side. Try and count the number of fingers for a few tries. You'll likely find you can't (it can be done, but it takes some practice - in martial arts, my school trains with these same exercises for years so that we develop and maintain a bit more ability to figure out what is going on at the edges of our vision.) But the point is, at the edges, you certainly aren't seeing with the same acuity or perception that you are at the center focus of your vision.
So the resolution across the screen isn't really benefiting your perception - the closer to the edge you go, the more degraded your perception is, though the pixel spacing remains constant. However - and I think this is the key - you can look anywhere, that is, place the center of your vision, anywhere on the display, and be rewarded with an image that is well within the ability of your eyes and mind to resolve well.
There are some color-based caveats to this. Your eye sees better in brightness than it does in color. It sees better in some colors better than others (green is considerably better resolved than blue, for instance.) These differences in perception make TGA's blanket statement that your acuity is 2 pixels per two minutes of arc is more than a little bit of hand-waving. Still, the finest detail in the HD signal (and normal video, for that matter) is carried in the brightness information, and that is indeed where your highest acuity is, so technically, we're still kind of talking about the same general ballpark — the color information is less dense, and that corresponds to your lesser acuity in color.
There is a simple and relatively easy to access test that you can do yourself. Go find an LCD computer monitor in the 17 inch or larger range that has a native resolution of 1280x1024. That's pretty standard for a few years back, should be easy to do. Verify that the computer attached to it is running in the same resolution. This is about 1/2 HD across, and 1 HD vertically. Look at it. Any trouble seeing the finest details? Of course not. Now go find a computer monitor that is closer to HD, or exactly HD. You might have to go to a dealer, but you can find them. Again, make sure that the computer is set to use this resolution. Now we're talking about HD. Can you see the finest details? I can - and easily. I suspect you can too, because my visual acuity is nothing special. But do the test, if you doubt that HD offers detail that is useful to your perceptions.
Finally, n
Network foolishness between you and the site, most likely - the site was up all day, and the logs show no particular drop in traffic. With regard to the bookstore, no, at the time, there was no such option. I could do it now, I suppose; I still have everything archived. However, I moved the site to a google-ad based site for my school, including a manual that describes the patterns for the style, and that does surprisingly well. The name is sort of a root name for all Korean martial arts, I've had it for many years, so a lot of people end up there. I used to own blackbelt.com too. :-) anyway... I'd have to do some finagling to set up the reviews as you suggest, but it's an idea I may go after on a rainy day. Thanks for pointing it out - much appreciated.
Ok, now we're up to 2 flame-baits, 1 underrated, and one insightful. It's a mod-fight!
FWIW, it wasn't flame-bait; it was an observation of fact. Let's see... Timothy 6:10 "For the love of money is the root of all evil" This clearly is repressive, money being the root of nothing in particular but prevention of starvation and enabling any number of other choices, ranging from charity to warfare. It is the choices we make that root us in evil, or elsewhere. James 4:6-10 "Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble." Here again we find the not too finely veiled admonition to know one's station, and the implication that reward will come in the afterlife. This theme re-appears again and again, and in this guise serves as factual basis for my statement above that religion literally teaches the low-stationed to like their lot. Peter's got something to say about it, too: Peter 1 2:18 "Slaves, be subject to your masters with all reverence, not only to those who are good and equitable but also to those who are perverse." That one's a bit of a kicker. Not only are you supposed to be a good little slave, but you are to remain so even in the face of perverse handling. I wonder if George W. Bush is descended from Peter. Well, no matter. You can't actually discuss these things. Flame-bait, you know.
Did you mean guilded as in unions and master/apprentice conventions, or "gilded" as in plated on the outside while pot metal in the center? The latter is a common construction in this kind of porch-step cultural analysis, but "guilded" has interesting connotations as well. ;-) Guilds certainly have an effect in this domain.
"flamebait" :-) Yes, the truth can be incendiary. Censorship, however, doesn't change the facts.
Sounds to me like you've got a problem with relationships. How people dress in no way qualifies them as "useless bitches"; how people dress is a statement of how they see themselves, how they see their relationship to the opposite sex and to their peers, and how they wish to be perceived in terms of income, independence, sexuality and individuality. Without the ability to see through people's dressing habits to who they are, you're forever crippled, all the more so by today's sexual identity confusion. Clothing is plumage, beyond the fact that it is coverage. If exotic plumage puts you off, you're emotionally crippled.
As for your allusions to primitive behaviors and subsequent attempt to ascribe them to today's social milieux, no. That sounds like the pontificating of a 1st year psych student; no one is looking to take your kids away for the sake of hurting you. Those things happen when poorly built and maintained relationships crash - and that is very likely the fault of all parties.
Yes he did, and yes it is. The collection of short stories it is contained within is uniformly excellent as well. Go find it, and enjoy. :-)
Oh, it's explainable. Fashionable French women still wear stockings instead of pantyhose. They still wear dresses instead of pants. They still wear lace bikinis instead of "boy panties." They still wear perfume. Finally, they spend a lot less time being repressed, sexually speaking, than many other countries. What is more attractive? Some awesomely sexy woman, dressed to knock you off your feet, or some woman in her jogging sneakers, jeans and "hoodie"?
There was a social error made by the ladies in the 60's...70's where they decided that in order to be "equal", they had to look and act like men. Unfortunately, all that did was make them unattractive and lose the social training that taught them how to deal with attracted males. They could have been equal all along without giving up the sexually charged plumage they had; there is no question that "equality" is about performance, not plumage.
There is, of course, a silver lining to all of this. Those females who understand what has happened can completely trounce those who don't in any situation where performance is relatively equal - because hiring, or simply hanging with, a lovely, sexy woman who can handle the task at hand is a lot more desirable than hanging with an equally capable woman who dresses like a guy on his way to a pickup game.
The consequences for reproductive rates are obvious.
Politically correct? No. True? You bet - every word.
And religion is there to teach them to like it.
Because one is an upswing in values, and the other is a downswing. These situations don't exist in a vacuum; they proceed from the previous state and they have inertia. Such inertia leads to the next state until the system collapses entirely.
Probably not. The skull and subsequent membranes that surround the brain serve as excellent EM shielding. It is very difficult to induce a voltage of any magnitude inside a container made of conducting materials. EMP, despite its reputation as a killer of "everything electronic", will not generally kill devices stored in sealed, conductive containers.
Ok, sorry. You have to admit you left your leg hanging out there with that example - it had to be pulled. Anyway, without OSX... to me, your lash-up isn't comparable, truly. You have 8 cores and the basic machine, but the software selection isn't satisfactory because I really do want OSX. And by the way, calling a mansion a "prison" really is an act of mental gymnastics. I doubt any Apple user feels "imprisoned." My Apple laptop runs OSX, redhat, and XP, all legally, all concurrently, on a dual core. I just have a really tough time feeling constrained at all. An 8-core box would do the same thing, only faster and with more breathing room.