I'm just wondering-- this isn't a topic I'm all that familiar with-- but do journals really serve a very good purpose these days? I'm assuming that whatever the purpose is, it's not simply the distribution of the articles, since that can easily be done online for free.
As far as the "publish or perish" nature of academia, that in itself seems like a problem to me. I've had some exposure to that quality of academia, and it always feels like it's the wrong focus. I've wondered if there shouldn't just be more of a split between research institutions and educational institutions-- or something...? I'm not sure it really works that well to have such a results-driven approach to education and academic study. Or am I completely misunderstanding the situation?
It seems to me like you could have research institutions that handled peer review and offered some degree of endorsement to studies which are deemed to have been carried out in reasonable ways, but without it being connected to the publishing/copyright concerns involved. On the public funding issue, it seems to me like anything that is funded by the government shouldn't be granted any patents or copyrights, but should just be entered into the public domain. But I'm sure someone will tell me why that's crazy-talk.
The post that that person was responding to didn't even mention typing.
And then in the quoted paragraph above:
I use it mainly to write in a personal journal which I choose not to type out.
Hmmm.... Seems like he did mention typing. Seems like he mentioned it specifically in the context of writing cursive being an optional alternative to typing.
Regardless, you're simply missing the point. Let me try to break it down for you so you can understand: cursive writing is not competing with writing by hand in print. It's competing with typing. So when you ask the question, "which is more legible?" you're comparing people's handwritten cursive with Times New Roman, and yes, Times New Roman is easier to read. If the bulk of our text is typewritten, then there's little point in teaching people to write the characters in a way that gives them very different appearances from their typewritten form.
I know, I know, I'm going to get more blather like, "bla bla bla regression analysis. bla bla bla directional fallacy. People need to study these things. I'm very smart because I use technical terms when spouting nonsense about subjects I know nothing about. bla bla bla regression analysis." I understand you think you can cite terms from your high school statistics class and win any argument, but you need to know something about the topics you're arguing about.
These things aren't very much in need of further study because (I mean, yes, you can always study something further, but...) they've already been studied pretty extensively. You being ignorant on a subject doesn't mean that it needs more study. You really think that script is going to be generally easier to read than Times New Roman? There's a reason why we don't use script fonts in novels and computer interfaces, and it's not because they're hard for computers/printers to render.
But, whatever, go perpetuate your ignorance all you like. I'm not going to read any more of your responses.
Bad comparison as the machine itself adds a level of consistency which is probably difficult to measure and therefore control for.
No, it's a good comparison because the implication is that people are forgoing learning cursive because they're typing things.
But, oh, you just want to fight. Fine, let's fight. You're a belligerent moron who doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. You should pay attention to the context of a discussion rather than jumping in with pseudo-scientific nonsense to try to make yourself feel smart. Happy now?
As for looking for their own food, if you suddenly had that many people looking for a new way of making it (without currency), I'm sure it would still be amazingly brutal.
Not necessarily. People can be brutal, but they also tend to find ways of allaying the brutality. My point was that if you put everyone in a position of having no food (or wealth) but also having no job and no one particularly oppressing us-- well, that's sort of where we started out. We came up with governments and economies in the first place, and if we had to, we could again.
And really? Has the internet reduced us all to the point where we need to make attacks on each other in the first exchange between two individuals?
It's not really meant as an attack. I guess I could have been friendlier, so sorry if you were offended. It's just that if you start out by suggesting that the world is filled with stupid people and we should consider starving all of them, then I don't think you can be too offended if someone says, "You don't know what you're talking about."
Well I like the fact that they seem to have gotten rid of some of the excessive loops and crap on capital letters. Honestly, I just started doing that myself part way through high school-- writing capital letters more or less like you would printing them, but fast, not necessarily picking up my pen, and calling that cursive. Most of the lower-case cursive lettering makes sense. It's close to what you'd get if you just wrote words without picking up your pen.
I never understood why you were supposed to make little loops on everything anyway.
I have absolutely no problem reading neat cursive riding.
So you have no problem reading *neat* writing, but lots of cursive writing isn't particularly neat. I'm sure you'd admit that you can read typewritten text easier and faster than a random person's handwritten notes, right?
I'm over 26, and of course I learned to write in cursive, but I'm so out of practice that I basically can't. My handwriting is illegible, and it doesn't take a lot of writing to tire my hand out, I guess because I'm not used to using those muscles.
Computers certainly shoulder some of the blame. I've been typing since I was a kid, and I can type much more quickly than I can write, and it's easier on my hands. What's crazier is that I have a harder time composing my thoughts in writing if I have to do it by hand. I'm used to typing things up quickly as I think, and then going back over it a few times, editing, rearranging things, fleshing out ideas to make them more clear that what I thought to write out the first time around.
I still write letters by hand now and then, mostly to make them more personal than a type-written note. Still, it's much easier for me if I compose what I'm going to say ahead of time on a computer, edit it, spell-check it, and then copy it down by hand. Is it a bad thing that I'm so reliant on computers? Maybe. I don't know.
"irrationality" may be a part of "intelligence", but it isn't intelligent. For example, drinking Clorox to relieve thirst is not intelligent nor is it evolutionarily helpful except to eliminate the unintelligent.
I'm confused by this. What point do you think you're arguing with? Did you interpret my post to be advocating the consumption of bleach?
I would probably make the same decision as yourself unless it could be proven that having a human in the loop was much more dangerous than having a machine in the loop.
If that were the case, then I might advocate requiring keeping both a man and a machine in the loop for really important decisions. Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to automation. It's just that, even if we ever do create true AI with its own interests and motivations, then those motivations can run contrary to our own. In that case, when dealing with very important issues, we make sure human motivations are represented in the process.
I assume you're trying to be funny, but I have a couple objections here:
First, what makes you so sure that service reps, construction workers, and traffic cops are all stupid? It's true that some of these people might not have very intellectually taxing jobs, but that might not be the extent of their ability. Einstein was just a patent clerk, after all. But also, some of these jobs do take some intelligence. For example, a "construction worker" might not be using his head too much if he's sweeping up trash, but at a certain level, you need a certain understanding of physics and engineering to do good carpentry.
And what do you do that's so smart? I've known people in IT, both on the support and coding side, who were relative morons. What if AI someday handles those jobs too? Are you sure that you won't be counted among the "stupid people"?
My second problem is this idea of letting people starve or "giving them welfare". If we ever really get to the point where robots/AI can do most of the work for us, and no other new work shows up as being necessary, then won't that completely reshape the economic landscape? I'm not sure "giving people welfare" will make a lot of sense in that context, given that we should all be living lives of leisure at a minimal cost.
I anticipate someone saying, "well, no, because resources will still be limited, and there won't be enough robots to go around." Ah, so then robots still won't be able to do everything for us, and we'll need people to do the remaining work. Looks like we have jobs again.
And there's the problem with your notion of "Let them (the stupid people) starve". What makes you think the stupid people won't all revolt at that point? Or assuming they don't revolt, why wouldn't those stupid people get to work providing for themselves? I mean, if they have no food because they have no jobs, then won't they also have all day free to find ways of getting food? Again, you have work.
To the extent that your post is serious, it shows a serious lack of understanding.
Well there are philosophers who would argue that "irrationality" is part of "intelligence", and you can't create a true AI without it having something like motivations, emotions, and the ability to jump to conclusions and make "gut feeling" decisions.
Whatever the situation, I'm generally in favor of keeping a man in the loop. It might not be quite so important for some things, but somewhere between, "scheduling appointments for me" and "launching nuclear missiles", there's a line. Everything on the "nuclear missiles" side of the line should have a man in the loop.
Well, yes, and Apple doesn't always follow their own design guidelines 100%.
Honestly, I would argue that OSX works just fine without the second button, but it could really benefit from the third and fourth. I'm sure that sounds like a strange thing to say, but when I have a multi-button mouse, I find myself using "button 3" (to open links in new tabs in my browser) and "button 4 (which activates expose) more than I use "button 2" (context menus).
The only thing that I commonly use context menus for is spell-checking. If you're writing something and it underlines a word in red because it's spelled wrong, you can right-click to get a list of suggestions. And I guess I use it to empty the trash. There may be other uses that I'm not really thinking of, but I certainly use context menus less often in OSX than in Windows.
And for new users (i.e. anyone who hadn't grown up with using mice), 1 button was less confusing than two.
Well there's still another outstanding complaint against two-button mice in that they encourages developers to over-rely on context menus. That's what the second button usually does after all-- opens the context menu.
"So what's wrong with context menus?" you might ask. The problem, some have argued, is that the functionality is essentially hidden. What pops up in a context menu depends on what you click on, and therefore you don't necessarily know what will be in that menu when you click in a particular place until you click there.
I mean, yes, if you've used a particular piece of software long enough, you know from experience what's in the context menus and where you have to right-click to get which options. But some have argued that context menus should only ever be used as shortcuts, and they should never contain functionality that isn't otherwise available in more intuitive places. They argue that relying on context menus as the main method of exposing functionality is a sign of lazy UI design.
Now, you may disagree with that line of reasoning, but supposedly that has been part of Apple's rationale for continuing to ship single-button mice.
I notice he doesn't necessarily address the complaints, though:
Myth #1: Americans pay more for wireless service.
Fact: Americans pay ten cents per minutes less than Europeans.
Among the 26 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Americans use the most wireless minutes per month, about four times more minutes than the average European consumer. Americans get the lowest cost per minuteâ¦an average of 10 cents lower per minute than Europeans pay.
So Pogue complains that customers are getting double-billed for calls (which doesn't happen in Europe), and Verizon responds by saying Americans use more minutes and pay less per-minute than Europeans. Those ideas aren't in conflict. I would guess that Verizon is saying Americans use more billable minutes, which makes even more sense if they're being double-billed. Whether this is a better deal depends on how the math works out. If Americans are only paying half of what Europeans are paying per-minute, but are essentially being charged twice for every minute, then it's a wash.
Now maybe it's true that Americans aren't getting such a bad deal. I'm just saying Verizon's vague responses don't really give enough information to evaluate them, and they don't address the complaints.
I think this is known to be literally the case. I recall something where some Congressman stood on the floor of whichever house he was in and complained that he wanted an iPhone and wanted to use Verizon.
But hey, at least they're recognizing some kind of problem, and looking into doing something about it. I don't think it's necessarily that they only care about things that affect them personally, but they only understand the problem once it affects them directly. People aren't always that good at sympathy/empathy, and until they've felt the impact of a problem in their own life, complaints about that problem just seem like whining.
How about also requiring that they make all specs and protocols available to any manufacturer? Like the iPhone has visual voicemail-- if I were to manufacture a GSM phone, could I easily plug into whatever kind of API AT&T is using to provide that visual voicemail so I can do something similar on my phone?
Otherwise, you're going to end up with defacto exclusivity through locking features, if not service itself, to particular phones.
Well I'm pretty sure lots of companies used to offer retirement packages that kicked in at something like 35 years. But 60 years definitely seems high. Figure everyone starts working at 20 and works until 80. Now, for everyone who retires (or dies) at 70, there has to be someone who works until they're 90. For everyone who retires at 65, someone has to work until 95.
I mean, I know it doesn't work out so simply. It could be that for everyone who retires at 60, 1 person works until 100. Or it could be that for every person who retires at 60, 2 retire at 90. But however you add up those numbers, 60 years of work seems high to me.
Yeah, I was originally hoping to find lists of gasoline truck accidents and gas station fires, but all I could find were individual news stories. I was concerned that citing individual stories would seem like I was just finding extremely rare isolated incidents.
And how much carnage does oil produce? It's not as though trucks carrying gasoline never crash, and oil tankers never spill. Gas stations sometimes blow up, oil wells sometimes catch fire. All that stuff causes damage and costs money.
But now what's causing these problems? Truck drivers not paying attention to whether they have enough clearance? Infrastructure being unlabeled or mislabeled as to how much clearance is there is? Figure it what's causing the problem and try to fix it. This isn't really a problem with wind power. It sounds like you'll have the same problems transporting any large machinery.
No, no, there have been a couple accidents, so we should ditch wind power. Time to go back to good ol' oil, which has never had any kind of problem whatsoever.
Even your name and home address doesn't necessarily uniquely identify you. It's possible to have two people with the same name living at the same address (Jr./Sr. for example).
It's perfectly fair to point out that, if you're using the stable version of Debian (which is what you should be using for any production purposes), you won't be using the most up-to-date version of most of the software you're using. Debian is, relative to other distros, very slow to incorporate updates into their stable version.
Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of debate, but the only thing that I think is unfair is using the word "obsolete".
Actually that's not a great example. There are rated R movies that out-earn PG movies all the time. What's more, even if that weren't the case, you could explain it via market segmentation. If everyone only released PG movies, then there would be a huge market for more adult entertainment that would be going untapped.
Now you may be right that media companies aren't exploiting children's entertainment in the most profitable way-- I don't know. I'm not really a businessman or a parent, but kids stuff seems way over-exposed to me. There doesn't seem to be a lack of children's entertainment, but rather it just seems like a lot of it is bad.
But I'm not sure it matters anyway. Even if you want to sit your kids in front of a TV all day, my experience is that most children will happily watch the same things over and over again. They'll go through periods where a single 2 hour movie can provide 20 hours of entertainment in a given week. (not much of an exaggeration)
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I'm just wondering-- this isn't a topic I'm all that familiar with-- but do journals really serve a very good purpose these days? I'm assuming that whatever the purpose is, it's not simply the distribution of the articles, since that can easily be done online for free.
As far as the "publish or perish" nature of academia, that in itself seems like a problem to me. I've had some exposure to that quality of academia, and it always feels like it's the wrong focus. I've wondered if there shouldn't just be more of a split between research institutions and educational institutions-- or something...? I'm not sure it really works that well to have such a results-driven approach to education and academic study. Or am I completely misunderstanding the situation?
It seems to me like you could have research institutions that handled peer review and offered some degree of endorsement to studies which are deemed to have been carried out in reasonable ways, but without it being connected to the publishing/copyright concerns involved. On the public funding issue, it seems to me like anything that is funded by the government shouldn't be granted any patents or copyrights, but should just be entered into the public domain. But I'm sure someone will tell me why that's crazy-talk.
The post that that person was responding to didn't even mention typing.
And then in the quoted paragraph above:
I use it mainly to write in a personal journal which I choose not to type out.
Hmmm.... Seems like he did mention typing. Seems like he mentioned it specifically in the context of writing cursive being an optional alternative to typing.
Regardless, you're simply missing the point. Let me try to break it down for you so you can understand: cursive writing is not competing with writing by hand in print. It's competing with typing. So when you ask the question, "which is more legible?" you're comparing people's handwritten cursive with Times New Roman, and yes, Times New Roman is easier to read. If the bulk of our text is typewritten, then there's little point in teaching people to write the characters in a way that gives them very different appearances from their typewritten form.
I know, I know, I'm going to get more blather like, "bla bla bla regression analysis. bla bla bla directional fallacy. People need to study these things. I'm very smart because I use technical terms when spouting nonsense about subjects I know nothing about. bla bla bla regression analysis." I understand you think you can cite terms from your high school statistics class and win any argument, but you need to know something about the topics you're arguing about.
These things aren't very much in need of further study because (I mean, yes, you can always study something further, but...) they've already been studied pretty extensively. You being ignorant on a subject doesn't mean that it needs more study. You really think that script is going to be generally easier to read than Times New Roman? There's a reason why we don't use script fonts in novels and computer interfaces, and it's not because they're hard for computers/printers to render.
But, whatever, go perpetuate your ignorance all you like. I'm not going to read any more of your responses.
Bad comparison as the machine itself adds a level of consistency which is probably difficult to measure and therefore control for.
No, it's a good comparison because the implication is that people are forgoing learning cursive because they're typing things.
But, oh, you just want to fight. Fine, let's fight. You're a belligerent moron who doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. You should pay attention to the context of a discussion rather than jumping in with pseudo-scientific nonsense to try to make yourself feel smart. Happy now?
As for looking for their own food, if you suddenly had that many people looking for a new way of making it (without currency), I'm sure it would still be amazingly brutal.
Not necessarily. People can be brutal, but they also tend to find ways of allaying the brutality. My point was that if you put everyone in a position of having no food (or wealth) but also having no job and no one particularly oppressing us-- well, that's sort of where we started out. We came up with governments and economies in the first place, and if we had to, we could again.
And really? Has the internet reduced us all to the point where we need to make attacks on each other in the first exchange between two individuals?
It's not really meant as an attack. I guess I could have been friendlier, so sorry if you were offended. It's just that if you start out by suggesting that the world is filled with stupid people and we should consider starving all of them, then I don't think you can be too offended if someone says, "You don't know what you're talking about."
Well I like the fact that they seem to have gotten rid of some of the excessive loops and crap on capital letters. Honestly, I just started doing that myself part way through high school-- writing capital letters more or less like you would printing them, but fast, not necessarily picking up my pen, and calling that cursive. Most of the lower-case cursive lettering makes sense. It's close to what you'd get if you just wrote words without picking up your pen.
I never understood why you were supposed to make little loops on everything anyway.
I have absolutely no problem reading neat cursive riding.
So you have no problem reading *neat* writing, but lots of cursive writing isn't particularly neat. I'm sure you'd admit that you can read typewritten text easier and faster than a random person's handwritten notes, right?
I'm over 26, and of course I learned to write in cursive, but I'm so out of practice that I basically can't. My handwriting is illegible, and it doesn't take a lot of writing to tire my hand out, I guess because I'm not used to using those muscles.
Computers certainly shoulder some of the blame. I've been typing since I was a kid, and I can type much more quickly than I can write, and it's easier on my hands. What's crazier is that I have a harder time composing my thoughts in writing if I have to do it by hand. I'm used to typing things up quickly as I think, and then going back over it a few times, editing, rearranging things, fleshing out ideas to make them more clear that what I thought to write out the first time around.
I still write letters by hand now and then, mostly to make them more personal than a type-written note. Still, it's much easier for me if I compose what I'm going to say ahead of time on a computer, edit it, spell-check it, and then copy it down by hand. Is it a bad thing that I'm so reliant on computers? Maybe. I don't know.
"irrationality" may be a part of "intelligence", but it isn't intelligent. For example, drinking Clorox to relieve thirst is not intelligent nor is it evolutionarily helpful except to eliminate the unintelligent.
I'm confused by this. What point do you think you're arguing with? Did you interpret my post to be advocating the consumption of bleach?
I would probably make the same decision as yourself unless it could be proven that having a human in the loop was much more dangerous than having a machine in the loop.
If that were the case, then I might advocate requiring keeping both a man and a machine in the loop for really important decisions. Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to automation. It's just that, even if we ever do create true AI with its own interests and motivations, then those motivations can run contrary to our own. In that case, when dealing with very important issues, we make sure human motivations are represented in the process.
I assume you're trying to be funny, but I have a couple objections here:
First, what makes you so sure that service reps, construction workers, and traffic cops are all stupid? It's true that some of these people might not have very intellectually taxing jobs, but that might not be the extent of their ability. Einstein was just a patent clerk, after all. But also, some of these jobs do take some intelligence. For example, a "construction worker" might not be using his head too much if he's sweeping up trash, but at a certain level, you need a certain understanding of physics and engineering to do good carpentry.
And what do you do that's so smart? I've known people in IT, both on the support and coding side, who were relative morons. What if AI someday handles those jobs too? Are you sure that you won't be counted among the "stupid people"?
My second problem is this idea of letting people starve or "giving them welfare". If we ever really get to the point where robots/AI can do most of the work for us, and no other new work shows up as being necessary, then won't that completely reshape the economic landscape? I'm not sure "giving people welfare" will make a lot of sense in that context, given that we should all be living lives of leisure at a minimal cost.
I anticipate someone saying, "well, no, because resources will still be limited, and there won't be enough robots to go around." Ah, so then robots still won't be able to do everything for us, and we'll need people to do the remaining work. Looks like we have jobs again.
And there's the problem with your notion of "Let them (the stupid people) starve". What makes you think the stupid people won't all revolt at that point? Or assuming they don't revolt, why wouldn't those stupid people get to work providing for themselves? I mean, if they have no food because they have no jobs, then won't they also have all day free to find ways of getting food? Again, you have work.
To the extent that your post is serious, it shows a serious lack of understanding.
Well there are philosophers who would argue that "irrationality" is part of "intelligence", and you can't create a true AI without it having something like motivations, emotions, and the ability to jump to conclusions and make "gut feeling" decisions.
Whatever the situation, I'm generally in favor of keeping a man in the loop. It might not be quite so important for some things, but somewhere between, "scheduling appointments for me" and "launching nuclear missiles", there's a line. Everything on the "nuclear missiles" side of the line should have a man in the loop.
Well, yes, and Apple doesn't always follow their own design guidelines 100%.
Honestly, I would argue that OSX works just fine without the second button, but it could really benefit from the third and fourth. I'm sure that sounds like a strange thing to say, but when I have a multi-button mouse, I find myself using "button 3" (to open links in new tabs in my browser) and "button 4 (which activates expose) more than I use "button 2" (context menus).
The only thing that I commonly use context menus for is spell-checking. If you're writing something and it underlines a word in red because it's spelled wrong, you can right-click to get a list of suggestions. And I guess I use it to empty the trash. There may be other uses that I'm not really thinking of, but I certainly use context menus less often in OSX than in Windows.
And for new users (i.e. anyone who hadn't grown up with using mice), 1 button was less confusing than two.
Well there's still another outstanding complaint against two-button mice in that they encourages developers to over-rely on context menus. That's what the second button usually does after all-- opens the context menu.
"So what's wrong with context menus?" you might ask. The problem, some have argued, is that the functionality is essentially hidden. What pops up in a context menu depends on what you click on, and therefore you don't necessarily know what will be in that menu when you click in a particular place until you click there.
I mean, yes, if you've used a particular piece of software long enough, you know from experience what's in the context menus and where you have to right-click to get which options. But some have argued that context menus should only ever be used as shortcuts, and they should never contain functionality that isn't otherwise available in more intuitive places. They argue that relying on context menus as the main method of exposing functionality is a sign of lazy UI design.
Now, you may disagree with that line of reasoning, but supposedly that has been part of Apple's rationale for continuing to ship single-button mice.
I notice he doesn't necessarily address the complaints, though:
Myth #1: Americans pay more for wireless service. Fact: Americans pay ten cents per minutes less than Europeans.
Among the 26 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Americans use the most wireless minutes per month, about four times more minutes than the average European consumer. Americans get the lowest cost per minuteâ¦an average of 10 cents lower per minute than Europeans pay.
So Pogue complains that customers are getting double-billed for calls (which doesn't happen in Europe), and Verizon responds by saying Americans use more minutes and pay less per-minute than Europeans. Those ideas aren't in conflict. I would guess that Verizon is saying Americans use more billable minutes, which makes even more sense if they're being double-billed. Whether this is a better deal depends on how the math works out. If Americans are only paying half of what Europeans are paying per-minute, but are essentially being charged twice for every minute, then it's a wash.
Now maybe it's true that Americans aren't getting such a bad deal. I'm just saying Verizon's vague responses don't really give enough information to evaluate them, and they don't address the complaints.
I think this is known to be literally the case. I recall something where some Congressman stood on the floor of whichever house he was in and complained that he wanted an iPhone and wanted to use Verizon.
But hey, at least they're recognizing some kind of problem, and looking into doing something about it. I don't think it's necessarily that they only care about things that affect them personally, but they only understand the problem once it affects them directly. People aren't always that good at sympathy/empathy, and until they've felt the impact of a problem in their own life, complaints about that problem just seem like whining.
On the plus side of the double-billing: I believe it's the reason why it's illegal for telemarketers to call your cell phone.
How about also requiring that they make all specs and protocols available to any manufacturer? Like the iPhone has visual voicemail-- if I were to manufacture a GSM phone, could I easily plug into whatever kind of API AT&T is using to provide that visual voicemail so I can do something similar on my phone?
Otherwise, you're going to end up with defacto exclusivity through locking features, if not service itself, to particular phones.
Maybe it just hasn't happened yet?
Well I'm pretty sure lots of companies used to offer retirement packages that kicked in at something like 35 years. But 60 years definitely seems high. Figure everyone starts working at 20 and works until 80. Now, for everyone who retires (or dies) at 70, there has to be someone who works until they're 90. For everyone who retires at 65, someone has to work until 95.
I mean, I know it doesn't work out so simply. It could be that for everyone who retires at 60, 1 person works until 100. Or it could be that for every person who retires at 60, 2 retire at 90. But however you add up those numbers, 60 years of work seems high to me.
Is that right? The average person works 60 years? I thought it wasn't uncommon for a person to work 30 years and retire.
Yeah, I was originally hoping to find lists of gasoline truck accidents and gas station fires, but all I could find were individual news stories. I was concerned that citing individual stories would seem like I was just finding extremely rare isolated incidents.
And how much carnage does oil produce? It's not as though trucks carrying gasoline never crash, and oil tankers never spill. Gas stations sometimes blow up, oil wells sometimes catch fire. All that stuff causes damage and costs money.
But now what's causing these problems? Truck drivers not paying attention to whether they have enough clearance? Infrastructure being unlabeled or mislabeled as to how much clearance is there is? Figure it what's causing the problem and try to fix it. This isn't really a problem with wind power. It sounds like you'll have the same problems transporting any large machinery.
No, no, there have been a couple accidents, so we should ditch wind power. Time to go back to good ol' oil, which has never had any kind of problem whatsoever.
Even your name and home address doesn't necessarily uniquely identify you. It's possible to have two people with the same name living at the same address (Jr./Sr. for example).
It's perfectly fair to point out that, if you're using the stable version of Debian (which is what you should be using for any production purposes), you won't be using the most up-to-date version of most of the software you're using. Debian is, relative to other distros, very slow to incorporate updates into their stable version.
Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of debate, but the only thing that I think is unfair is using the word "obsolete".
Now you may be right that media companies aren't exploiting children's entertainment in the most profitable way-- I don't know. I'm not really a businessman or a parent, but kids stuff seems way over-exposed to me. There doesn't seem to be a lack of children's entertainment, but rather it just seems like a lot of it is bad.
But I'm not sure it matters anyway. Even if you want to sit your kids in front of a TV all day, my experience is that most children will happily watch the same things over and over again. They'll go through periods where a single 2 hour movie can provide 20 hours of entertainment in a given week. (not much of an exaggeration)