Your analogy doesn't work here. It's not like the seismologists actually caused the earthquake. They merely examined the evidence and concluded that there should not have been any danger. Occasionally they get it wrong (besides, the circumstances may well have changed after they said there was no danger).
In other news, yesterday a severe thunderstorm hit nearby, and the criminals at the National Weather Service didn't even issue a severe thunderstorm watch! I could have gotten struck by lightning! Why don't we prosecute the NWS for putting everyone's lives in grave danger?
I'm overwhelmingly anti-censorship, but this group should have remained deleted. I say this not because of their views (which I do strongly disagree with), but rather that they abused Facebook to shut down a perfectly legitimate pro-porn page by lodging false complaints, and then had the nerve to boast about it on their page. That screams "TOS violation" and should be grounds for an immediate and permanent ban, irrespective of their views.
Also, the fact that global warming was not demonstrated to a statistical significance of p 0.05 does NOT prove the hypothesis that there is no global warming. It is far more likely than not that global warming is happening, which can be easily seen if you actually understand what is being said and don't get fooled by the BBC's carefully worded question.
Good scientists are very careful to do their significance tests. He said the trend is very close to the 95% significance level (understandable, since there are only 14 years of data for this test). So, essentially, what he's saying is this: "We're 94% sure global warming is happening." (maybe not 94%, but he said "quite close", so over 90% at least). It may not be quite the 95% significance level, but it's likely enough that we should be taking steps to correct the problem.
The discussion should not still be about whether global warming is happening, but rather about finding good solutions to deal with the problem.
A research satellite is, obviously, for research. It doesn't have an agenda. That $1B isn't being spent for a particular side, but rather for the truth. The truth is inherently more expensive than baseless conjecture because it actually requires gathering evidence. If more people actually had at least half a brain, all we would need would be the facts. Unfortunately, a legitimate area of science has degenerated into a propaganda war between the two sides, despite the vast majority of the scientific evidence favoring the reality of global warming.
Now you're conflating playing MMOs with buying virtual objects. The MMO subscription fee is not to buy virtual objects, but to access the service and play the game. Granted, some MMOs do allow the purchase of virtual objects, but those games constitute a minority of users (they often have no subscription fee, and there's a ton of them, but most of them are played by almost nobody).
For many years I've been thinking that Microsoft should pull an Apple and rewrite the operating system from the ground up, eliminating all the legacy crap. Include XP virtualization (like Win7 Pro does) for the first couple of versions to support old code, and then drop it entirely a couple of versions later. People would certainly complain loudly, but it would be for the better.
In Chrome OS, there is no desktop and there are no icons. The OS starts and ends at the web browser (though you can use the 'crosh' shell if you want, which is basically only good for letting you use ssh).
While that is true, the vast majority of the media players out there are really bad. Songbird was (IMO) the best, but they dropped the Linux version last year. Before that, Amarok 1.4 was my favorite (despite its numerous bugs), but Amarok 2 screwed everything up to an even greater degree. I'm still using my old version of Songbird because I have yet to find something I like better.
There is no figuring out how to make power management work, because there is no way to make power management work.
Of course. Because Windows clearly performs magic that nobody outside of Microsoft is capable of ever replicating.
Yes, Windows often does a better job of power management (not always, though), but to say that there's no way to make it work on those systems where Windows does it better is patently absurd. It's certainly possible that nobody has yet done it in a way that works on your machine; however, "not implemented" does not mean "not possible".
I have to agree wholeheartedly. I have used every version of Ubuntu since 6.06--I've seen them grow and make huge improvements in usability and compatibility (unlike you, I haven't had any real driver issues). Lately, though, it seems as though the Ubuntu train has started to derail. The last version of Ubuntu inexplicably moved the window close/maximize/minimize buttons to the left side--granted, there's nothing wrong with that, but it was a completely unnecessary change that seemed to mainly just be good at breaking some themes and confusing existing users (and yes, I know it can be changed back with a configuration file, but the average user that Canonical is going after is not going to know that). Unity is another step in the wrong direction, doubly so since it seems that all they're trying to do is copy GNOME 3. I don't like GNOME 3, and we certainly don't need two GNOME 3's. Again, the experienced user can get plain old GNOME 2 back (for now), but I can't help but think that Unity will leave a sour taste in a new user's mouth and turn them away from Linux, probably never to come back.
We're talking about variance, not downtime. It's more analogous to having some sort of rigged 20-sided die that rolls 10 almost every time, except in the occasional extreme case where it might roll, say, an 11.
The biggest problem is that Canonical has said that the option to switch back to GNOME will be completely removed in 11.10, leaving Unity as the one and only option. Sure, being Linux, it's possible to install GNOME on your own and use it, but I have better things to do. Thus the search begins for a suitable replacement that isn't going to force its user interface decisions on me. If Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu) sticks with GNOME, that may well be the best choice--all the compatibility of Ubuntu with none of the Unity.
There are many ways to do speech recognition, but one thing they all rely on is training. My guess is that you have a reasonably "average" sounding voice, and therefore the training that was done on other people's voices (specifically, the other users of the app you mention) works well enough for you. For someone with a substantially different sounding voice, it would probably work far worse than Google Voice.
I should also point out that checkbox or no, the app you're using certainly is training. It may not be telling you that it is, but with every utterance you make, it most likely is. If it's not, then it trained on someone else's speech and you just got lucky that it works. That's how speech recognition works, and if you don't believe me, I can direct you to a number of papers on the topic.
That is absolutely correct. Speech recognition is incredibly sensitive to sound quality and background noise. When you're talking into your phone, the ASR software has a very good quality sample to work with. On the phone line, however, you're dealing with a very noisy signal, which causes huge degradations in the quality of recognition.
You're an idiot if you think the political parties are as evil as third world dictators. If you agree they're not, then they're not totally evil. No difference at all between them? Well, for one, the Republicans favor pretty much unrestricted gun ownership and the Democrats don't. Another example is that Democrats generally favor gay marriage (or civil unions), whereas the Republicans generally don't. It's easy to prove you wrong when you speak in extremes such as "totally evil" and "no difference".
It's no surprise that somebody as stupid as you would fail to have the basic ability of reading comprehension. I certainly do accept that both parties do stupid and corrupt things; what I do not accept is that mere examples of stupidity and corruption prove absolute evil. To argue that it does indicates that that you probably belong in the loony bin.
As for third party candidates, I'd vote for one if one ever had a chance of winning. A third party vote, however, is a wasted vote. Sure, I could vote for one and then somehow celebrate the 0.3% of the vote he got, but it makes more sense to use the vote in a way that actually makes some difference. Since the third parties generally don't have a chance, I'm going to vote for the one that falls closer to my ideology. Yes, both do stupid and corrupt things, but there clearly are differences in ideology, and to ignore that is tantamount to putting on a blindfold, sticking your fingers in your ears, and screaming "lalalalalala" (which is what you seem to be doing here). And until one party starts murdering the people that disagree with them, neither party is "totally evil".
It's really easy to ignore all the issues at hand and dismiss both parties as the same. I can understand the temptation; after all, one day of watching cable news will lead anyone to just go "screw them all" and try to shield themselves from politics. Behind the pervasive corruption and stupidity, however, there are differences.
At this point, I can't believe that you're actually being serious in your argument, as your assertions are patently nuts. Therefore, I will cease discussion here so that you can find another thread to troll. (And if you really are serious, I know a good psychiatrist who can help you.)
First off, nowhere in my post did I say that one party was corrupt and the other wasn't. Both certainly are. I didn't say that only one of the parties does crazy things. Both do.
Corruption and craziness are not the only components of evil, however. Of course you can come up with examples of evil from either party, but what you said is that "both parties are totally evil and corrupt". For a party to be "totally evil", there must be absolutely no redeeming qualities (i.e. not one thing that is not evil). For both parties to be totally evil, neither must have any non-evil component. Since there are some things that the parties believe in that are not evil, they are not totally evil. Also, pointing out one instance of crazy (or evil) does not prove craziness or evil. For instance, my mother is a generally nice person, but it's really easy to point out a crazy thing she's said and/or done. Very easy. That doesn't make her crazy or evil.
Since we seem to be calling people stupid now, I will contend that to say that both parties are "totally evil" is stupid on your part. Either you're willfully ignoring the things that are not evil, or you're letting loose with the superlatives a little too easily. I will also contend that you have absolutely no concept of "totally evil". Neither party in this country is anywhere near totally evil. Maybe Kim Jong Il is totally evil, maybe Hosni Mubarak is totally evil. If you mean to insinuate that the Republicans and Democrats are as evil as Kim and Mubarak, then I'm afraid you're too far gone to attempt to have any kind of reasonable discussion with you. If that's not what you meant, it's time for you to recalibrate your evil meter.
Both parties are similarly corrupt, and that's a fact.
It would be great if people learned the difference between fact and opinion. There is certainly evidence of corruption in both parties, but without hard data to back up your assertion, it's no more than a guess. I don't know whether it's right, but I'm certainly not going to state any comparison on that metric as fact without proof (and before you try, showing n examples of corruption on each side is not proof).
I stand by my contention that it's not useful to ignore the difference between the parties. Yes, both are corrupt, but unless a third party can manage to get a foothold in American politics, you're going to have to choose between the two. It's extremely likely that one party matches your views more than the other party does. I can prove it, too.
Let's say there are n issues that the parties disagree on. We will make an independence assumption (in reality, many of the issues depend on others, which should tilt the scales even more in favor of one party or the other). With this independence assumption, we will let X be a random variable representing n random samples drawn from the binomial distribution, representing a person with random opinions on each topic. If n is odd, one party will always be favored over another. If n is even, there is a possibility that a sample will fall exactly at the midpoint, where the number of issues agreeing with each party is equal. As n increases, this converges to the Gaussian distribution, where while the maximum likelihood estimate is indeed the "center point", the probability of landing exactly there approaches 0. For finite n, it is trivial to show that with n>=3 (in other words, just 3 issues to consider), it is more likely to fall closer to one party's views than to land on the midpoint. At n=2, you would be equally likely to be in the middle as you would to agree more with one party or the other. At no point, however, for positive n, does the midpoint have a probability mass greater than 0.5.
I know you want to be the "I hate all politicians" guy, but it's not useful to ignore the substantial differences between the parties. There are substantial similarities, too, of course, but you don't have to look far to see all the issues on which the parties disagree. Considering the two major parties to be equal is similar to how certain people in this country want to consider evolution and creationism to be equally valid, arguing that they should be treated the same since they both are explanations of where species come from. It may seem like the diplomatic thing to do, but it doesn't make a damn bit of sense.
(Before you go attacking my analogy, let me say that I fully understand that the analogy is nowhere near perfect--after all, evolution is science and creationism is pseudo-scientific supernatural nutjobbery--rather, the point I'm making is that it doesn't make sense to draw a false equivalency to avoid choosing one over the other.)
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Also, a bridge is a man-made structure where deficiencies in the structure can be readily identified. Earthquakes don't work that way.
Your analogy doesn't work here. It's not like the seismologists actually caused the earthquake. They merely examined the evidence and concluded that there should not have been any danger. Occasionally they get it wrong (besides, the circumstances may well have changed after they said there was no danger).
In other news, yesterday a severe thunderstorm hit nearby, and the criminals at the National Weather Service didn't even issue a severe thunderstorm watch! I could have gotten struck by lightning! Why don't we prosecute the NWS for putting everyone's lives in grave danger?
I'm overwhelmingly anti-censorship, but this group should have remained deleted. I say this not because of their views (which I do strongly disagree with), but rather that they abused Facebook to shut down a perfectly legitimate pro-porn page by lodging false complaints, and then had the nerve to boast about it on their page. That screams "TOS violation" and should be grounds for an immediate and permanent ban, irrespective of their views.
That should say p < 0.05.
Also, the fact that global warming was not demonstrated to a statistical significance of p 0.05 does NOT prove the hypothesis that there is no global warming. It is far more likely than not that global warming is happening, which can be easily seen if you actually understand what is being said and don't get fooled by the BBC's carefully worded question.
Good scientists are very careful to do their significance tests. He said the trend is very close to the 95% significance level (understandable, since there are only 14 years of data for this test). So, essentially, what he's saying is this: "We're 94% sure global warming is happening." (maybe not 94%, but he said "quite close", so over 90% at least). It may not be quite the 95% significance level, but it's likely enough that we should be taking steps to correct the problem.
The discussion should not still be about whether global warming is happening, but rather about finding good solutions to deal with the problem.
A research satellite is, obviously, for research. It doesn't have an agenda. That $1B isn't being spent for a particular side, but rather for the truth. The truth is inherently more expensive than baseless conjecture because it actually requires gathering evidence. If more people actually had at least half a brain, all we would need would be the facts. Unfortunately, a legitimate area of science has degenerated into a propaganda war between the two sides, despite the vast majority of the scientific evidence favoring the reality of global warming.
Wow, I didn't see the /s. Don't I feel like an idiot...
Eh? That's not a typo.
Now you're conflating playing MMOs with buying virtual objects. The MMO subscription fee is not to buy virtual objects, but to access the service and play the game. Granted, some MMOs do allow the purchase of virtual objects, but those games constitute a minority of users (they often have no subscription fee, and there's a ton of them, but most of them are played by almost nobody).
For many years I've been thinking that Microsoft should pull an Apple and rewrite the operating system from the ground up, eliminating all the legacy crap. Include XP virtualization (like Win7 Pro does) for the first couple of versions to support old code, and then drop it entirely a couple of versions later. People would certainly complain loudly, but it would be for the better.
In Chrome OS, there is no desktop and there are no icons. The OS starts and ends at the web browser (though you can use the 'crosh' shell if you want, which is basically only good for letting you use ssh).
While that is true, the vast majority of the media players out there are really bad. Songbird was (IMO) the best, but they dropped the Linux version last year. Before that, Amarok 1.4 was my favorite (despite its numerous bugs), but Amarok 2 screwed everything up to an even greater degree. I'm still using my old version of Songbird because I have yet to find something I like better.
There is no figuring out how to make power management work, because there is no way to make power management work.
Of course. Because Windows clearly performs magic that nobody outside of Microsoft is capable of ever replicating.
Yes, Windows often does a better job of power management (not always, though), but to say that there's no way to make it work on those systems where Windows does it better is patently absurd. It's certainly possible that nobody has yet done it in a way that works on your machine; however, "not implemented" does not mean "not possible".
I have to agree wholeheartedly. I have used every version of Ubuntu since 6.06--I've seen them grow and make huge improvements in usability and compatibility (unlike you, I haven't had any real driver issues). Lately, though, it seems as though the Ubuntu train has started to derail. The last version of Ubuntu inexplicably moved the window close/maximize/minimize buttons to the left side--granted, there's nothing wrong with that, but it was a completely unnecessary change that seemed to mainly just be good at breaking some themes and confusing existing users (and yes, I know it can be changed back with a configuration file, but the average user that Canonical is going after is not going to know that). Unity is another step in the wrong direction, doubly so since it seems that all they're trying to do is copy GNOME 3. I don't like GNOME 3, and we certainly don't need two GNOME 3's. Again, the experienced user can get plain old GNOME 2 back (for now), but I can't help but think that Unity will leave a sour taste in a new user's mouth and turn them away from Linux, probably never to come back.
We're talking about variance, not downtime. It's more analogous to having some sort of rigged 20-sided die that rolls 10 almost every time, except in the occasional extreme case where it might roll, say, an 11.
Not that Unity, I assume, but rather the new Unity user interface in Ubuntu.
Correction: Apparently, GNOME 3 will be an option in 11.10. I don't like GNOME 3, but at least it's better than Unity.
The biggest problem is that Canonical has said that the option to switch back to GNOME will be completely removed in 11.10, leaving Unity as the one and only option. Sure, being Linux, it's possible to install GNOME on your own and use it, but I have better things to do. Thus the search begins for a suitable replacement that isn't going to force its user interface decisions on me. If Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu) sticks with GNOME, that may well be the best choice--all the compatibility of Ubuntu with none of the Unity.
There are many ways to do speech recognition, but one thing they all rely on is training. My guess is that you have a reasonably "average" sounding voice, and therefore the training that was done on other people's voices (specifically, the other users of the app you mention) works well enough for you. For someone with a substantially different sounding voice, it would probably work far worse than Google Voice.
I should also point out that checkbox or no, the app you're using certainly is training. It may not be telling you that it is, but with every utterance you make, it most likely is. If it's not, then it trained on someone else's speech and you just got lucky that it works. That's how speech recognition works, and if you don't believe me, I can direct you to a number of papers on the topic.
"Deutschsprechende" is probably what you're looking for.
That is absolutely correct. Speech recognition is incredibly sensitive to sound quality and background noise. When you're talking into your phone, the ASR software has a very good quality sample to work with. On the phone line, however, you're dealing with a very noisy signal, which causes huge degradations in the quality of recognition.
You're an idiot if you think the political parties are as evil as third world dictators. If you agree they're not, then they're not totally evil. No difference at all between them? Well, for one, the Republicans favor pretty much unrestricted gun ownership and the Democrats don't. Another example is that Democrats generally favor gay marriage (or civil unions), whereas the Republicans generally don't. It's easy to prove you wrong when you speak in extremes such as "totally evil" and "no difference".
It's no surprise that somebody as stupid as you would fail to have the basic ability of reading comprehension. I certainly do accept that both parties do stupid and corrupt things; what I do not accept is that mere examples of stupidity and corruption prove absolute evil. To argue that it does indicates that that you probably belong in the loony bin.
As for third party candidates, I'd vote for one if one ever had a chance of winning. A third party vote, however, is a wasted vote. Sure, I could vote for one and then somehow celebrate the 0.3% of the vote he got, but it makes more sense to use the vote in a way that actually makes some difference. Since the third parties generally don't have a chance, I'm going to vote for the one that falls closer to my ideology. Yes, both do stupid and corrupt things, but there clearly are differences in ideology, and to ignore that is tantamount to putting on a blindfold, sticking your fingers in your ears, and screaming "lalalalalala" (which is what you seem to be doing here). And until one party starts murdering the people that disagree with them, neither party is "totally evil".
It's really easy to ignore all the issues at hand and dismiss both parties as the same. I can understand the temptation; after all, one day of watching cable news will lead anyone to just go "screw them all" and try to shield themselves from politics. Behind the pervasive corruption and stupidity, however, there are differences.
At this point, I can't believe that you're actually being serious in your argument, as your assertions are patently nuts. Therefore, I will cease discussion here so that you can find another thread to troll. (And if you really are serious, I know a good psychiatrist who can help you.)
First off, nowhere in my post did I say that one party was corrupt and the other wasn't. Both certainly are. I didn't say that only one of the parties does crazy things. Both do.
Corruption and craziness are not the only components of evil, however. Of course you can come up with examples of evil from either party, but what you said is that "both parties are totally evil and corrupt". For a party to be "totally evil", there must be absolutely no redeeming qualities (i.e. not one thing that is not evil). For both parties to be totally evil, neither must have any non-evil component. Since there are some things that the parties believe in that are not evil, they are not totally evil. Also, pointing out one instance of crazy (or evil) does not prove craziness or evil. For instance, my mother is a generally nice person, but it's really easy to point out a crazy thing she's said and/or done. Very easy. That doesn't make her crazy or evil.
Since we seem to be calling people stupid now, I will contend that to say that both parties are "totally evil" is stupid on your part. Either you're willfully ignoring the things that are not evil, or you're letting loose with the superlatives a little too easily. I will also contend that you have absolutely no concept of "totally evil". Neither party in this country is anywhere near totally evil. Maybe Kim Jong Il is totally evil, maybe Hosni Mubarak is totally evil. If you mean to insinuate that the Republicans and Democrats are as evil as Kim and Mubarak, then I'm afraid you're too far gone to attempt to have any kind of reasonable discussion with you. If that's not what you meant, it's time for you to recalibrate your evil meter.
Both parties are similarly corrupt, and that's a fact.
It would be great if people learned the difference between fact and opinion. There is certainly evidence of corruption in both parties, but without hard data to back up your assertion, it's no more than a guess. I don't know whether it's right, but I'm certainly not going to state any comparison on that metric as fact without proof (and before you try, showing n examples of corruption on each side is not proof).
I stand by my contention that it's not useful to ignore the difference between the parties. Yes, both are corrupt, but unless a third party can manage to get a foothold in American politics, you're going to have to choose between the two. It's extremely likely that one party matches your views more than the other party does. I can prove it, too.
Let's say there are n issues that the parties disagree on. We will make an independence assumption (in reality, many of the issues depend on others, which should tilt the scales even more in favor of one party or the other). With this independence assumption, we will let X be a random variable representing n random samples drawn from the binomial distribution, representing a person with random opinions on each topic. If n is odd, one party will always be favored over another. If n is even, there is a possibility that a sample will fall exactly at the midpoint, where the number of issues agreeing with each party is equal. As n increases, this converges to the Gaussian distribution, where while the maximum likelihood estimate is indeed the "center point", the probability of landing exactly there approaches 0. For finite n, it is trivial to show that with n>=3 (in other words, just 3 issues to consider), it is more likely to fall closer to one party's views than to land on the midpoint. At n=2, you would be equally likely to be in the middle as you would to agree more with one party or the other. At no point, however, for positive n, does the midpoint have a probability mass greater than 0.5.
I know you want to be the "I hate all politicians" guy, but it's not useful to ignore the substantial differences between the parties. There are substantial similarities, too, of course, but you don't have to look far to see all the issues on which the parties disagree. Considering the two major parties to be equal is similar to how certain people in this country want to consider evolution and creationism to be equally valid, arguing that they should be treated the same since they both are explanations of where species come from. It may seem like the diplomatic thing to do, but it doesn't make a damn bit of sense.
(Before you go attacking my analogy, let me say that I fully understand that the analogy is nowhere near perfect--after all, evolution is science and creationism is pseudo-scientific supernatural nutjobbery--rather, the point I'm making is that it doesn't make sense to draw a false equivalency to avoid choosing one over the other.)