I have to disagree. The iPhone is very unlimited. You just have to take one road to get there. I don't have one but I have an iPod Touch. What I like about it is that it can do tons of things.
In my view, if Obama is elected president and the Democrats have a larger majority in Congress, our economy is going to suffer. It may not suffer now - it might be 6-10 years down the road (since that is usually how long it takes for many economic effects to kick in). This is sure to happen unless many of the democrats turn into fiscal conservatives. We don't fix economic problems by throwing more money at the problem. I'm not attacking Obama or Democrats, I just don't think it would be a good idea for them to have control of the White House, the Capitol, and to be able to nominate and confirm new Supreme Court justices.
Additionally, it was mainly Democrats in the late 90s who pushed for banks to give more risky loans, which is one of the major causes of the economic turmoil today (it's certainly not the only cause).
Now, I don't think that many of the Republicans are any better but more of them than Democrats are true fiscal conservatives. We especially need fiscal conservatism in times of economic turmoil.
I was running a Core 2 Duo (1.87 Ghz), with 2 GB of RAM, a X1350 Pro graphic card (it's a slim case), etc. Yes, there were some old programs I tried to run but I had a lot of less than 3 year old programs (games mainly) that did not run well. What broke the proverbial camel's back for me was when Word 2007 stopped working. Excel, PPT, Outlook all worked fine but Word just stopped working. I uninstalled Office and reinstalled it. I tried "repairing" it; I tried a few other things. Nothing worked so I installed XP and now it works.
As I said, there actually are a lot of things I'll miss about Vista but it was just too frustrating for me; granted, I'm not a typical user and I run some fairly specialized programs but overall it just became too much of a pain. The 5+ minute startup times (even with minimal startup programs/processes) also were a pain.
I know you were just trolling but Vista has a poor image for a reason. It's a decent operating system but compared to what it could have been or should have been, it's pretty poor.
That's true for the most part. However, after running Vista for over a year and a half I finally went back to XP because I was sick of incompatibilities and some of the other stupid things Vista did. I will miss a number of things about Vista but it got to the point where it was even frustrating my non-tech savvy wife. I think 1.5 years is a pretty good trial of Vista. In the end, it just wasn't worth it for me. I was a Vista advocate for many months but now I would not recommend it to anyone
If this research is replicated and is true this is actually a HUGE finding. Previous research showed that our brains started slowing down after age 25 or so. 39 is a big difference. They also said that myelination increases until age 39. That's the really important finding (before we said that we were done at age 25 at the latest). Trust me, this sort of research is very similar to what I do (white matter and brain volumetrics in aging populations). This, if true, is a very important finding.
Exactly. That is what usually happens when a new version of OS X is released. I've read many reports from many people that their machines seem to run faster when a new version of OS X is installed. Whether those improvements are real or just perceived, I don't know, but that's pretty impressive for Apple to be able to add features without significantly slowing (and many times speeding up) the computer.
Ok, I'll feed the troll, even though it's unrelated to the topic at hand.
There is a difference between the science of global "warming" ("climate change") and the religion of global warming. The first is good science. The second is not science or is based on poor science. Right now the religion of global warming (think, Al Gore or paying to offset carbon credits) is much larger than the science of it. You can believe the science of global warming without believing the religion of it.
True but I can restart and log back in to OS X on my computer within 1 minute at most. Restarting my Vista (or XP when I had XP) computer literally takes a minimum of 5 minutes (even with most start-up programs disabled). A restart in OS X is far less obnoxious than one in Windows (at least for me).
With Deep Brain Stimulation, the patient is often awake for as much of the surgery as possible. The surgeries usually can be done in a morning or an afternoon.
Exactly. My iPod Touch, while I do have a lot of music on it, is my PDA. I can quickly check both campus and personal email (much faster than I usually can on a computer); I have access to my calendar at all times and can add new appointments. I have documents stored on it as a wireless drive. It stores hundreds of photos for me to browse through (many are powerpoint presentations I've converted to jpegs to be able to quickly review). I jot down notes in it all the time. The Touch is way more useful than just as a music player (and it's a fine one at that). I also have a number of games on it to play when I have a minute or two or when I need a break.
I agree completely. We should be doing as much as we can to reduce the debt. As bad as the debt is, it would be worse to have the U.S. default on loans; that is, there's nothing that would ruin confidence in the U.S.'s fiscal system (even with the problems the dollar has been going through, it's still very highly regarded worldwide) like defaulting on loans. This is especially true if the loans were to U.S. citizens (e.g., bonds) rather than other governmental agencies (which would still be bad.
Someone mod this up "Insightful". AC was not downplaying the seriousness of the debt, he/she merely pointed out that in relative terms the debt is not as bad as it looks. It should be much smaller and we certainly should not be running with a budget deficit as much as we do, but perspective is needed on this issue as AC pointed out nicely.
I agree with you completely (although many scientists in actual practice do not understand the philosophy of statistics and therefore do not use statistics in the correct way).
I used the scientific research example to refute the claim that lies were being told about what was occurring in Iraq. If any group is to blame it is the intelligence community (world wide), which is not necessarily trained in the methods of scientific research. Again, we can't really blame the administration because they did not lie to the public; they just had what turned out to be faulty intelligence.
The implications of intelligence gathering are huge, as you pointed out, and any actions based on intelligence should be thoughtful and well-planned. The problem is that sometimes you need to act quickly to prevent attacks or disasters. It's important that our intelligence is correct but operatives and governments don't always have the time that scientists have to gather their information and test hypotheses. In any case, operatives are doing "social" research which is far from perfect; social sciences are notoriously difficult to study because there are so many unknown variables.
Let's look at it this way. Think of this like scientific research. 15 years ago everyone believed that you were born with all the brain cells you'd ever have. Now we know that that is not true. Those earlier researchers were not lying, they were going on the best knowledge they had at the time. It just tuned out to not be true.
It's not a lie if all the best intelligence from around the world said it was true. A lie means intentional deception. If Pres. Bush was lying then so were the leaders of Britain, France, the U.N., and many other countries. That also means that almost all of Congress were lying as well. It even means Pres. Clinton was lying back in the 90s. The question never was whether or not Hussein had WMDs, it was what should we do about it. That's where other countries (and some within the U.S.) and entities differed with Pres. Bush.
Besides, just because WMDs were never found does not mean Iraq did not have any (I'm not saying they did, I'm just saying that having a lack of evidence does not mean you can categorically say there were no WMDs).
The Bush administration never lied about WMD or an al Qaeda connection in Iraq (please read my whole post and the two articles I link to before dismissing my comment. As a note: I don't think we ever should have invaded Iraq but we did and there's no changing that). I think it's pretty convenient for so many people to forget that all major intelligence agencies around the world (and all major, interested nations) said repeatedly that there were WMD in Iraq. No one seriously doubted this - not even the UN weapons inspectors. Here are a couple articles about the whole topic (one is from the Wall Street Journal, the other the LA Times):
As far as al qaeda connection goes, the WSJ article also mentions that:
"What of the related charge that it was still another 'lie' to suggest, as Mr. Bush and his people did, that a connection could be traced between Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda terrorists who had attacked us on 9/11? This charge was also rejected by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Contrary to how its findings were summarized in the mainstream media, the committee's report explicitly concluded that al Qaeda did in fact have a cooperative, if informal, relationship with Iraqi agents working under Saddam. The report of the bipartisan 9/11 commission came to the same conclusion, as did a comparably independent British investigation conducted by Lord Butler, which pointed to 'meetings . . . between senior Iraqi representatives and senior al-Qaeda operatives.'"
I disagree with the GP post though. Because we have exposure to more music now than we did in the 80s and 90s through the internet, you can find all the really good bands/artists. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and love music from those eras but my favorite music (other than The Beatles, of course) is all current - Guster, Muse, Brandi Carlile, Yellowcard, etc. If you limit yourself to what's on the radio then modern music isn't terribly exciting (although I'd argue that it's just as good as it used to be as long as you don't get so stuck on particular artists or styles that you can't change). The thing is, as I already said, that we have access to a lot more artists and can find the really good ones.
Artists are writing very complex and well-written music today; more so than in the 90s. Any style goes today; you frequently find infusions of bluegrass or classical, for example, in modern pop-rock music. I think artists can have a lot more creativity because they are not as locked into the traditional music distribution system as they used to be.
What it comes down to is conservatives don't think that the government should be mandating charity; people should do it on their own because they want to and because it is the socially-responsible thing to do (wealthy people {well, all people, regardless of income} should be giving much of their money or whatever they can away because money is mainly for the benefit of others, or at least should be). Conservatives don't necessarily believe "you're on your own", although we do think people should be largely responsible for their well-being. We believe that governments shouldn't have to legislate charity.
Fear is actually the wrong word; it's basic physiological arousal, which does indirectly relate to fear but is quite distinct. This is what you said, I'm just adding the actual terms for it.:)
Wow! Someone who actually understands the creation of NCLB (and the fact that Pres. Bush really isn't that conservative overall; he is conservative but really no more conservative than Clinton was liberal while in office). That's pretty rare on the internet.
Slashdot Mirror
Those are all opinions no matter how much you believe them. Democrats were the ones trying to steal the 2000 election. We were not lied to about Iraq http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kirchick16-2008jun16,0,4808346.story and http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007540, etc.
I thought he was doing humankind a service. :)
I have to disagree. The iPhone is very unlimited. You just have to take one road to get there. I don't have one but I have an iPod Touch. What I like about it is that it can do tons of things.
In my view, if Obama is elected president and the Democrats have a larger majority in Congress, our economy is going to suffer. It may not suffer now - it might be 6-10 years down the road (since that is usually how long it takes for many economic effects to kick in). This is sure to happen unless many of the democrats turn into fiscal conservatives. We don't fix economic problems by throwing more money at the problem. I'm not attacking Obama or Democrats, I just don't think it would be a good idea for them to have control of the White House, the Capitol, and to be able to nominate and confirm new Supreme Court justices.
Additionally, it was mainly Democrats in the late 90s who pushed for banks to give more risky loans, which is one of the major causes of the economic turmoil today (it's certainly not the only cause).
Now, I don't think that many of the Republicans are any better but more of them than Democrats are true fiscal conservatives. We especially need fiscal conservatism in times of economic turmoil.
I was running a Core 2 Duo (1.87 Ghz), with 2 GB of RAM, a X1350 Pro graphic card (it's a slim case), etc. Yes, there were some old programs I tried to run but I had a lot of less than 3 year old programs (games mainly) that did not run well. What broke the proverbial camel's back for me was when Word 2007 stopped working. Excel, PPT, Outlook all worked fine but Word just stopped working. I uninstalled Office and reinstalled it. I tried "repairing" it; I tried a few other things. Nothing worked so I installed XP and now it works.
As I said, there actually are a lot of things I'll miss about Vista but it was just too frustrating for me; granted, I'm not a typical user and I run some fairly specialized programs but overall it just became too much of a pain. The 5+ minute startup times (even with minimal startup programs/processes) also were a pain.
I know you were just trolling but Vista has a poor image for a reason. It's a decent operating system but compared to what it could have been or should have been, it's pretty poor.
That's true for the most part. However, after running Vista for over a year and a half I finally went back to XP because I was sick of incompatibilities and some of the other stupid things Vista did. I will miss a number of things about Vista but it got to the point where it was even frustrating my non-tech savvy wife. I think 1.5 years is a pretty good trial of Vista. In the end, it just wasn't worth it for me. I was a Vista advocate for many months but now I would not recommend it to anyone
If this research is replicated and is true this is actually a HUGE finding. Previous research showed that our brains started slowing down after age 25 or so. 39 is a big difference. They also said that myelination increases until age 39. That's the really important finding (before we said that we were done at age 25 at the latest). Trust me, this sort of research is very similar to what I do (white matter and brain volumetrics in aging populations). This, if true, is a very important finding.
Exactly. That is what usually happens when a new version of OS X is released. I've read many reports from many people that their machines seem to run faster when a new version of OS X is installed. Whether those improvements are real or just perceived, I don't know, but that's pretty impressive for Apple to be able to add features without significantly slowing (and many times speeding up) the computer.
Ok, I'll feed the troll, even though it's unrelated to the topic at hand.
There is a difference between the science of global "warming" ("climate change") and the religion of global warming. The first is good science. The second is not science or is based on poor science. Right now the religion of global warming (think, Al Gore or paying to offset carbon credits) is much larger than the science of it. You can believe the science of global warming without believing the religion of it.
True but I can restart and log back in to OS X on my computer within 1 minute at most. Restarting my Vista (or XP when I had XP) computer literally takes a minimum of 5 minutes (even with most start-up programs disabled). A restart in OS X is far less obnoxious than one in Windows (at least for me).
If anyone is wondering about the type of surgery being performed, here is a link describing it: http://mdc.mbi.ufl.edu/candidate/candidate-whatisdbs.htm
With Deep Brain Stimulation, the patient is often awake for as much of the surgery as possible. The surgeries usually can be done in a morning or an afternoon.
Here is a video of a DBS surgery: http://www.or-live.com/vanderbilt/2319/
Exactly. My iPod Touch, while I do have a lot of music on it, is my PDA. I can quickly check both campus and personal email (much faster than I usually can on a computer); I have access to my calendar at all times and can add new appointments. I have documents stored on it as a wireless drive. It stores hundreds of photos for me to browse through (many are powerpoint presentations I've converted to jpegs to be able to quickly review). I jot down notes in it all the time. The Touch is way more useful than just as a music player (and it's a fine one at that). I also have a number of games on it to play when I have a minute or two or when I need a break.
I agree completely. We should be doing as much as we can to reduce the debt. As bad as the debt is, it would be worse to have the U.S. default on loans; that is, there's nothing that would ruin confidence in the U.S.'s fiscal system (even with the problems the dollar has been going through, it's still very highly regarded worldwide) like defaulting on loans. This is especially true if the loans were to U.S. citizens (e.g., bonds) rather than other governmental agencies (which would still be bad.
Someone mod this up "Insightful". AC was not downplaying the seriousness of the debt, he/she merely pointed out that in relative terms the debt is not as bad as it looks. It should be much smaller and we certainly should not be running with a budget deficit as much as we do, but perspective is needed on this issue as AC pointed out nicely.
I agree with you completely (although many scientists in actual practice do not understand the philosophy of statistics and therefore do not use statistics in the correct way).
I used the scientific research example to refute the claim that lies were being told about what was occurring in Iraq. If any group is to blame it is the intelligence community (world wide), which is not necessarily trained in the methods of scientific research. Again, we can't really blame the administration because they did not lie to the public; they just had what turned out to be faulty intelligence.
The implications of intelligence gathering are huge, as you pointed out, and any actions based on intelligence should be thoughtful and well-planned. The problem is that sometimes you need to act quickly to prevent attacks or disasters. It's important that our intelligence is correct but operatives and governments don't always have the time that scientists have to gather their information and test hypotheses. In any case, operatives are doing "social" research which is far from perfect; social sciences are notoriously difficult to study because there are so many unknown variables.
Let's look at it this way. Think of this like scientific research. 15 years ago everyone believed that you were born with all the brain cells you'd ever have. Now we know that that is not true. Those earlier researchers were not lying, they were going on the best knowledge they had at the time. It just tuned out to not be true.
It's not a lie if all the best intelligence from around the world said it was true. A lie means intentional deception. If Pres. Bush was lying then so were the leaders of Britain, France, the U.N., and many other countries. That also means that almost all of Congress were lying as well. It even means Pres. Clinton was lying back in the 90s. The question never was whether or not Hussein had WMDs, it was what should we do about it. That's where other countries (and some within the U.S.) and entities differed with Pres. Bush.
Besides, just because WMDs were never found does not mean Iraq did not have any (I'm not saying they did, I'm just saying that having a lack of evidence does not mean you can categorically say there were no WMDs).
The Bush administration never lied about WMD or an al Qaeda connection in Iraq (please read my whole post and the two articles I link to before dismissing my comment. As a note: I don't think we ever should have invaded Iraq but we did and there's no changing that). I think it's pretty convenient for so many people to forget that all major intelligence agencies around the world (and all major, interested nations) said repeatedly that there were WMD in Iraq. No one seriously doubted this - not even the UN weapons inspectors. Here are a couple articles about the whole topic (one is from the Wall Street Journal, the other the LA Times):
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110007540
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kirchick16-2008jun16,0,4808346.story
As far as al qaeda connection goes, the WSJ article also mentions that:
"What of the related charge that it was still another 'lie' to suggest, as Mr. Bush and his people did, that a connection could be traced between Saddam Hussein and the al Qaeda terrorists who had attacked us on 9/11? This charge was also rejected by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Contrary to how its findings were summarized in the mainstream media, the committee's report explicitly concluded that al Qaeda did in fact have a cooperative, if informal, relationship with Iraqi agents working under Saddam. The report of the bipartisan 9/11 commission came to the same conclusion, as did a comparably independent British investigation conducted by Lord Butler, which pointed to 'meetings . . . between senior Iraqi representatives and senior al-Qaeda operatives.'"
The new crap is just as good as the old crap.
I disagree with the GP post though. Because we have exposure to more music now than we did in the 80s and 90s through the internet, you can find all the really good bands/artists. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and love music from those eras but my favorite music (other than The Beatles, of course) is all current - Guster, Muse, Brandi Carlile, Yellowcard, etc. If you limit yourself to what's on the radio then modern music isn't terribly exciting (although I'd argue that it's just as good as it used to be as long as you don't get so stuck on particular artists or styles that you can't change). The thing is, as I already said, that we have access to a lot more artists and can find the really good ones.
Artists are writing very complex and well-written music today; more so than in the 90s. Any style goes today; you frequently find infusions of bluegrass or classical, for example, in modern pop-rock music. I think artists can have a lot more creativity because they are not as locked into the traditional music distribution system as they used to be.
Isn't it better if you reverse that? Work for 10-15 minutes then take 45-50 minutes off? :)
He was on a conference call while also trading some stocks and reading /. Cut him some slack. ;)
What it comes down to is conservatives don't think that the government should be mandating charity; people should do it on their own because they want to and because it is the socially-responsible thing to do (wealthy people {well, all people, regardless of income} should be giving much of their money or whatever they can away because money is mainly for the benefit of others, or at least should be). Conservatives don't necessarily believe "you're on your own", although we do think people should be largely responsible for their well-being. We believe that governments shouldn't have to legislate charity.
Fear is actually the wrong word; it's basic physiological arousal, which does indirectly relate to fear but is quite distinct. This is what you said, I'm just adding the actual terms for it. :)
That begs the question that gay "marriage" is innocent. Just had to point out the fallacy in your argument, nothing personal.
Yay! Someone who understands that fact != Truth. Facts can be true but not all facts are true or Truth.
Wow! Someone who actually understands the creation of NCLB (and the fact that Pres. Bush really isn't that conservative overall; he is conservative but really no more conservative than Clinton was liberal while in office). That's pretty rare on the internet.