And, in fact, in more than your private home. In business, in government, in universities and organizations. You can use it for any sort of terrible crime you can dream up and you won't violate any software licenses. This is a big freedom -- no matter what you're doing you never have to worry about the license until you distribute.
(Of course, a recent story has Apple claiming that copying the OS to RAM is a copy for the purposes of copyright law... under that logic I guess your RAM would have the right to request a copy of the source code from you)
Women's rights do matter; it's a lot more than abortion. I feel like I'm feeding a troll, but here goes. Women that are more free to leave their husbands and to pursue careers are likely to have fewer children. That doesn't mean that they all will, that all housewives with many children are oppressed, or anything like that. And it has to do with more than laws, it's about social attitudes and family pressures. If women feel free to pursue careers many do, which reduces, on average, the number of children they have. If women are given no control over their lives they're likely to wind up with more children.
There are definitely other factors. Instability in the food supply and high infant/child mortality rates, if I recall correctly, tend to increase the drive to reproduce.
Hardware companies do the same thing. For most types of processors the design is what's really valuable. I used to work for Nvidia; they had no fabs (they probably still don't). The GPUs themselves are fabricated by independent companies, mostly in Taiwan, IIRC. Yes, fabricating an IC takes a lot more effort than copying bits around, but Nvidia still takes home most of the profit because it controls the design -- and that's really pretty fair, as it was indeed Nvidia that put up the R&D money to design it. If any of these companies took Nvidia's design and ran you can bet they'd be in some trouble. And probably wouldn't get any business from significant semiconductor designers again.
There have actually been cases of foreign companies making duplicate Intel chips. This is not the sort of thing Intel approves of.
Only a lunatic fringe holds the right to quote in doubt. Most of them are heirs of great creators that are apparently incapable of doing anything productive themselves. The right to quote and cite is generally assumed, and without it academic writing would be nearly impossible. If everyone started acting like those jerks it wouldn't take long for laws to be passed clarifying the situation, in favor of quoting.
I think the target is something like the iMac and Mac Mini markets. As for keyboard-integrated computers, what about laptops, which are practically the only computers sold today? And, while we're on the subject, I've lately been wondering why so many good laptop technologies have never made it onto desktop machines. I, for one, would love to have a small battery in my desktop box for when the power went out (I've lived some places that had really crummy power connections) and something like a laptop battery would be smaller, cheaper, and better-integrated with a standard desktop OS than a UPS. And most of the components don't really need a full-sized case. Full-sized hard drives and power supplies, by my understanding, are legitimately better than mini hard drives and external power bricks... and video cards, for people that care about graphics. I really don't, which saves me some space... so why can't I buy, right off the shelf, a small-form-factor desktop PC with quality desktop components where they matter and tiny ones where they don't? With a laptop-style battery, great ACPI support out of the box, and practically noiseless (unless I'm running a compile job)?
I don't completely agree with this. Authors don't have the right to prevent people from lending books to their friends, and they don't have the right to stop people from quoting them (many try, but just recently the estate of James Joyce was slapped down in court for just this -- but even if the law happened to come down on the side of the Joyce estate it would still be against our cultural tradition). After the copyright term is over (something no actual creator has to worry about in the US) they have no rights at all (except, perhaps, against outright plagiarism).
I disagree. Say that trialware offsets the cost of Windows. It may not do this completely or it may, in fact, be worth more than the Windows license. If you get a refund for Windows, the computer company should get its money back from Microsoft indirectly by using your Windows license on a different box (that's probably not how it works in practice -- few enough people want a Windows refund that it would be cheaper for them to just throw it out). But in the case where you declined completely to use Windows the trialware companies would be entitled to a refund also.
If the economics works out so that you're getting Windows in exchange for being advertised to, your refund is the same that can be had for declining to watch OTA TV: you aren't advertised to (it's a little different in the UK because of the BBC, but this is generally the case). You don't get a check from NBC and Fox. If you're a savvy guy you can skip the ads on your TV and root out the trialware -- you're getting something for nothing. But if you ultimately didn't pay money for Windows there's no reason you're entitled to a refund.
Yeah, everyone that makes a simple USB-connecting device should write their own crappy syncing software instead of working with the one included in the music player you're already using.
In principle I disagree with using another company's USB vendor ID. The USB people can, and probably should take action against Palm. Apple itself may have a case against Palm or it may not -- I don't know if lying to a computer is considered fraud or anything else. Maybe there's a DMCA angle. These are technical and legal issues.
As far as the ethics go, Palm is letting you do more with your devices and software. In that sense they're clearly on the right side of the issue. Why have two USB syncing programs when one already works? If a cat-and-mouse game between Palm and Apple eventually leads to Apple opening up iTunes sync capabilities to non-Apple devices in a way that's legally and technically clean, that would be pretty great.
As far as DRM goes, it sounds like the sync only allows you to play non-DRM files. I don't know whether iTunes distinguishes between DRM and non-DRM files -- if iTunes thought your Palm was an iPod that was allowed to receive those files (typically you can only sync DRM'd files onto one iPod, right? I don't know whether it's possible to trick iTunes into thinking your Palm is that iPod) then it might send files that the Palm was incapable of playing. Which is obviously crummy from a UI perspective.
This sounds like a fine idea in theory, but you don't get to be CEO without being pretty wily. They always set it up so they can deny, deny, deny in accounting scandals and get someone in the finance department to take all the blame. Despite that there's not really much of an incentive to cook the books absent pressure from above.
I think fines are a good way to punish corporations as long as they're big enough to act as a deterrent. Many fines are small enough that companies write them off as a cost of doing business. But if the fines are large enough that they get corporate boards interested. Boards don't have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that some particular executive was guilty, they can just look at the corporate structure and know which person was responsible. An executive that so much as tolerates corrupt behavior won't find a job elsewhere.
Think about the Sony Rootkit thing. I bet you'd have to go pretty far down the command chain to find someone that had close enough knowledge of what was going on to know that it was illegal. And, even then, do you take everyone underneath that guy to trial? Instead, fine the company a lot of money and let the board and the managers sort it out. If fines large enough to deter bad behavior are the norm corporations will police themselves effectively or perish.
I don't think it's necessarily just a matter of tools and training. I can have one conversation at a time, that's about it (it can include multiple people, of course). If I'm being IMed and someone walks in the room I say, "BRB," to the IMer because I know I can't carry on both conversations at once. One of my best friends growing up could have a few IM chats, a webcam thing, and a real-life conversation with me all at the same time. We are the same age (25), were introduced to computers and the Internet around the same time, etc. I know people in my dad's generation that can multitask a lot better than I can, and younger people that need quiet to focus and get things done. It may be that multitasking skills become more important, and that people with those skills are in higher demand. But, as it stands, if it's impossible to be productive at all without those skills there will be a lot of smart and talented people digging ditches for no particularly good reason. I don't think that will happen. Yes, the brain is adaptable. But we build our world around our capabilities also.
I think it would be great if DUI convictions (and for other offenses where you're impairing your ability to drive) had real teeth. Unfortunately courts would take these things down because such a large number of people in America are essentially under house arrest if they can't drive.
Radio control buttons on the wheel are a good thing. People will want to change their tunes while they drive, having well-designed controls on the wheel means they don't have to look away to do it.
I don't think the biggest problem is that people aren't good at controlling their vehicles. Our road system is designed with quite a bit of tolerance for unskilled drivers (with some exceptions in dense cities, and where governments shorten yellow-light times to try to increase light-camera revenue). The problem is that so many people don't take driving seriously. And it doesn't take very many people that don't care to really screw up the roadways.
It's not that hard to drive completely left-handed with a little practice. Driving a manual-transmission car would be more of a challenge (you'd have to hold the phone between your head and shoulder while shifting, which is hard to do with most cell phones). The big problem is that the people you're talking to are often inconsiderate of the fact that you're driving, and they can't know when you're coming up on a merge or a turn. Police officers have lots of gadgets in their cars, and bus drivers and truckers have CBs, but they're listening for specific things that have to do with their task at-hand. Bus drivers often miss a message addressed to them the first time but notice their call number and ask the dispatcher to repeat. There are often gaps in the conversation while difficult maneuvers are made. And this is taken as a normal order of business. Typical phone conversations with friends and bosses are more demanding.
I might be younger than you, but I've never been taught that passing on the right was illegal -- just a bad idea. Apparently on the Autobahn it is illegal and taken very seriously (along with blocking up the left lane). I've heard arguments that such a system winds up being a lot safer than the American system of enforcing speed limits and not much else, but there are enough differences between (and even within) the two systems that I'm not sure about drawing big, general conclusions.
I do agree that people are trained very poorly on safe driving in the situations they're likely to encounter. Back in high school (I lived near Chicago then) we spent much more time in the driver's ed cars backing around corners and doing three-point turns than working on lane changes, merges, and other highway techniques. And it showed -- during the test everyone aced the parking-lot maneuvers and the instructor had to grab the wheel from one of my classmates on the highway. Even so, I'm not sure that's the biggest reason that police can seemingly handle a higher level of in-car activity than other drivers. I think there are two bigger differences. First, the police are at work, doing their jobs. They're not just trying to get somewhere, so they've already done their makeup, put on their uniforms, talked to their spouses and friends, etc. The dispatchers are trained in how to talk to drivers, and the radios are designed for drivers (that is, it's really easy to use them without looking at them) and are a lot simpler than cell phones. The driver will often have a partner in the car that is also focused on the task -- providing assistance and not distraction. Furthermore, if they're on patrol it's their job to pay attention to what's going on around them. I think the second difference is that police on the whole take their duty to public safety more seriously than most people -- that's why they went out for the job in the first place. They've seen lots of wrecks and don't want to cause more. Even given good training and a phone that's designed for use while driving (perhaps some of the voice-control systems in recent cars would qualify) most people just don't care very much.
If you're Apple, that's one thing. You need engineers to do inspired work and you're willing to pay for it. Most employers that hire programmers and other technical people don't need that and aren't willing to pay for it. And, frankly, people that have been to college don't inherently have a wider base of knowledge just because they snored through some lit classes.
And Jobs? He dropped out of college. So I'm not sure that Apple, of all companies, would consider a 4-year college degree proof of the ability to do inspired work.
Portrayals of single people are probably quite a bit more accurate that those of families (I'm assuming that Frasier's dad draws a pension and basically pulls his weight on expenses, leaving Frasier financially single). I think that any show about successful entertainers is, to a large degree, aspirational, because very few entertainers see prolonged financial success like that.
Family portrayals seem to reflect the aspirations of American families more than the reality. Working-class people living in well-to-do suburbs in big houses. I'm not a big TV watcher, but I can think of a couple: the Cosby show and Fresh Prince. I haven't seen much of either show, but I think the Fresh Prince guy would have to be in very rare company even among lawyers to live like that -- either that or living beyond his means. Even if those shows are realistic, they are aspirational in a way simply because so few people are that successful in their careers. Malcolm in the Middle refers to the family's financial troubles and shattered career aspirations but still gives them, on the whole, pretty nice material things and really glorifies the credit culture.
Again, I'm not a big TV-watcher, but I can think of a couple shows that really aren't/weren't aspirational portrayals of families. One is Everybody Hates Chris, and another is the short-lived show The PJs. There are probably more... but they're the exception. Almost all families on TV are shown in big suburban houses and wearing nice clothes, and that's not really how almost all families live.
Yes, we'd hate for poor people to have a chance at good jobs.
The same basic things could be proved by technical degrees, two-year degrees, and certifications, which can be obtained more cheaply. I have a four-year degree from a university, and I'm glad I took most of the classes I took for my own benefit. But I don't know why an employer should care about some of them.
The home page says there is both a Windows and Linux version. Just because the screenshots are Linux doesn't mean the author doesn't value Windows; they have to have been made on one platform or the other, whoever made them happens to have done them in Linux.
If the Windows version was broken for some reason it still might be possible to build the Linux version under Cygwin.
Name me a few places with low density and no focal downtown where public transit is effective. The San Jose/Silicon Valley area has a lot of buses and even a light-rail system but it's not very effective (the rail system, in particular, has very poor ridership and thus recovers only a tiny portion of its costs from the fare box).
The only places I know of where public transit for daily commuter use extends far into suburbs is when it carries people from those suburbs to a downtown area. Metra in Chicago goes out to the fringe of the suburbs. At those distances there aren't stops within walking distance of everyone's house, but many people drive to the station and take the train downtown. This only works because downtown is very dense. Tons of people are employed within walking distance of each downtown Metra station.
I don't think you need both high density and a focal downtown, but you do need one of those things. Without a focal downtown a grid of buses (or streetcars, perhaps, but I think buses have major advantages) could be a good general-purpose transit system, but to have a tight bus grid with frequently running buses you need lots of trips to fund it -- you need high density. There are some special-purpose mass transit systems in areas that don't fit those descriptions. There are Pace bus routes in the Chicago suburbs that specifically serve suburban UPS complexes and large industrial parks, perhaps picking up at a transit-accessible place like a local commuter rail station.
If the bus service near where you live is a waste of time that might be because you live in a place that can't be well-served by public transit. Public transit is efficient when it consolidates common trips, and can become convenient when trips are common enough for frequent service. With common trips into dense areas parking becomes a hassle, so driving is inconvenient and expensive also. Those things don't happen in areas without a focal downtown, or places that are quite dense. When I lived in Silicon Valley I almost never used public transit (exceptions being Caltrain to San Francisco, and taking the shuttle bus to San Jose airport because I'd rather walk the two miles to the bus stop than mess with airport traffic and parking). When I lived in Chicago I almost never drove (only when I needed to carry lots of stuff or go to the suburbs).
As far as changing the nature of public transit, there's always PRT... If you think Google, with no public works experience, will figure out PRT, you're high (although I wouldn't be surprised if they tried). Tons of money has been blown on studies, and it's resulted in one system that partially implements a very simplistic version of the concept: Morgantown, WV. Morgantown's half-PRT works more like a tram during busy periods anyway, because it couldn't handle the volume otherwise.
Politicians can't solve anything. They mostly pander and rarely lead. As for religious leaders, I don't know of any religion that says anything about overpopulation. The religion of leaders on non-religious issues can be useful for all kinds of reasons (see US civil rights movement) but that doesn't make the issues religious. The people that can do studies on population, food and resource supplies, and evaluate possible solutions and actions are scientists (these could be geologists, biologists, sociologists, etc.). The people that work out the ethics are philosophers (there's an implication in your post that future suffering caused by overpopulation doesn't count -- that's at least worthy of argument). Sometimes they're the same people. Politicians only come in when it's time to sell the idea to people. Religious thinking, putting faith in an idea, is useless unless there is an idea and it's good.
If the whole issue is left to politicians and religious leaders we'll never know whether there's a problem, let alone what some solutions might be.
If contraception were available cheaply to people in poor countries they'd likely still have higher birth rates than in rich countries. Economists and sociologists study these sorts of things scientifically; I think it's worth their time to do so.
And I'm not suggesting that inventing more efficient crops is a bad idea or that people should just flat-out starve. Or that it was Dr. Borlaug's job personally to solve every problem known to man. I'm pretty satisfied that he did good work and improved the stability of many people's food supplies. All I'm saying is that if we're going to solve any problems, overpopulation included, we'd better have scientists involved.
Almost nothing works these days if your screen resolution isn't just right. Many blog layouts fix the width of the text. I have a blog on blogger and I specifically edited the layout to fix this problem, but most blogs either stick you with a narrow column of text (this I can understand -- it's easier to read that way, it's only a hassle if you try to post charts or graphics) or a wide one (this sucks in every way, forces your browser to almost full-screen and is hard to read).
It should be noted that while the information on the page you linked is well-cited and probably accurate, the site overall has a large bias. Although it isn't apparent from the front page, it is operated by evangelical Christians (this found a couple pages away) and all the articles I read on the site contain the bias you'd expect given that, despite that the front page gives the impression of impartiality. Articles on churches that disagree with evangelicals only present the evangelical side of the debate, and in some cases directly implore followers to oppose the other group.
OK. So Vim isn't the ideal editor today -- it was designed around limitations of earlier computers and when you remove those limitations you can get rid of stuff like modality that's not really necessary when you have a mouse. So lots of people get attached to modality and hjkl navigation because they spent time learning them, just like people get attached to the emacs OS, even though neither are, today, what anyone designing a new editor would make. They are historically notable -- both were more powerful and easy to use than what came before. I don't think either is very Unixy -- they're each platforms unto themselves at this point. Whatever the first Notepad-like editor was, that introduced the basic elements we consider to be standard text-editing controls today, is definitely historically notable also, and a great achievement -- it flattened the learning curve and (mostly) shattered modality.
Vim and Emacs don't have a lot to do with this browser project, despite the red herring of vi-like keybindings. This project is an experiment about building a browser that's really part of Unix, so as far as an analogous editor goes, perhaps Plan 9's acme, which also relied on external scripts for much functionality. The point isn't to be the greatest or most impressive anything, because... really, who cares? The point is to be a useful tool within the Unix system. If a more self-contained browser is easier to use in many cases that doesn't make it useless.
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And, in fact, in more than your private home. In business, in government, in universities and organizations. You can use it for any sort of terrible crime you can dream up and you won't violate any software licenses. This is a big freedom -- no matter what you're doing you never have to worry about the license until you distribute.
(Of course, a recent story has Apple claiming that copying the OS to RAM is a copy for the purposes of copyright law... under that logic I guess your RAM would have the right to request a copy of the source code from you)
Women's rights do matter; it's a lot more than abortion. I feel like I'm feeding a troll, but here goes. Women that are more free to leave their husbands and to pursue careers are likely to have fewer children. That doesn't mean that they all will, that all housewives with many children are oppressed, or anything like that. And it has to do with more than laws, it's about social attitudes and family pressures. If women feel free to pursue careers many do, which reduces, on average, the number of children they have. If women are given no control over their lives they're likely to wind up with more children.
There are definitely other factors. Instability in the food supply and high infant/child mortality rates, if I recall correctly, tend to increase the drive to reproduce.
Hardware companies do the same thing. For most types of processors the design is what's really valuable. I used to work for Nvidia; they had no fabs (they probably still don't). The GPUs themselves are fabricated by independent companies, mostly in Taiwan, IIRC. Yes, fabricating an IC takes a lot more effort than copying bits around, but Nvidia still takes home most of the profit because it controls the design -- and that's really pretty fair, as it was indeed Nvidia that put up the R&D money to design it. If any of these companies took Nvidia's design and ran you can bet they'd be in some trouble. And probably wouldn't get any business from significant semiconductor designers again.
There have actually been cases of foreign companies making duplicate Intel chips. This is not the sort of thing Intel approves of.
Only a lunatic fringe holds the right to quote in doubt. Most of them are heirs of great creators that are apparently incapable of doing anything productive themselves. The right to quote and cite is generally assumed, and without it academic writing would be nearly impossible. If everyone started acting like those jerks it wouldn't take long for laws to be passed clarifying the situation, in favor of quoting.
I think the target is something like the iMac and Mac Mini markets. As for keyboard-integrated computers, what about laptops, which are practically the only computers sold today? And, while we're on the subject, I've lately been wondering why so many good laptop technologies have never made it onto desktop machines. I, for one, would love to have a small battery in my desktop box for when the power went out (I've lived some places that had really crummy power connections) and something like a laptop battery would be smaller, cheaper, and better-integrated with a standard desktop OS than a UPS. And most of the components don't really need a full-sized case. Full-sized hard drives and power supplies, by my understanding, are legitimately better than mini hard drives and external power bricks... and video cards, for people that care about graphics. I really don't, which saves me some space... so why can't I buy, right off the shelf, a small-form-factor desktop PC with quality desktop components where they matter and tiny ones where they don't? With a laptop-style battery, great ACPI support out of the box, and practically noiseless (unless I'm running a compile job)?
I don't completely agree with this. Authors don't have the right to prevent people from lending books to their friends, and they don't have the right to stop people from quoting them (many try, but just recently the estate of James Joyce was slapped down in court for just this -- but even if the law happened to come down on the side of the Joyce estate it would still be against our cultural tradition). After the copyright term is over (something no actual creator has to worry about in the US) they have no rights at all (except, perhaps, against outright plagiarism).
I disagree. Say that trialware offsets the cost of Windows. It may not do this completely or it may, in fact, be worth more than the Windows license. If you get a refund for Windows, the computer company should get its money back from Microsoft indirectly by using your Windows license on a different box (that's probably not how it works in practice -- few enough people want a Windows refund that it would be cheaper for them to just throw it out). But in the case where you declined completely to use Windows the trialware companies would be entitled to a refund also.
If the economics works out so that you're getting Windows in exchange for being advertised to, your refund is the same that can be had for declining to watch OTA TV: you aren't advertised to (it's a little different in the UK because of the BBC, but this is generally the case). You don't get a check from NBC and Fox. If you're a savvy guy you can skip the ads on your TV and root out the trialware -- you're getting something for nothing. But if you ultimately didn't pay money for Windows there's no reason you're entitled to a refund.
Yeah, everyone that makes a simple USB-connecting device should write their own crappy syncing software instead of working with the one included in the music player you're already using.
In principle I disagree with using another company's USB vendor ID. The USB people can, and probably should take action against Palm. Apple itself may have a case against Palm or it may not -- I don't know if lying to a computer is considered fraud or anything else. Maybe there's a DMCA angle. These are technical and legal issues.
As far as the ethics go, Palm is letting you do more with your devices and software. In that sense they're clearly on the right side of the issue. Why have two USB syncing programs when one already works? If a cat-and-mouse game between Palm and Apple eventually leads to Apple opening up iTunes sync capabilities to non-Apple devices in a way that's legally and technically clean, that would be pretty great.
As far as DRM goes, it sounds like the sync only allows you to play non-DRM files. I don't know whether iTunes distinguishes between DRM and non-DRM files -- if iTunes thought your Palm was an iPod that was allowed to receive those files (typically you can only sync DRM'd files onto one iPod, right? I don't know whether it's possible to trick iTunes into thinking your Palm is that iPod) then it might send files that the Palm was incapable of playing. Which is obviously crummy from a UI perspective.
This sounds like a fine idea in theory, but you don't get to be CEO without being pretty wily. They always set it up so they can deny, deny, deny in accounting scandals and get someone in the finance department to take all the blame. Despite that there's not really much of an incentive to cook the books absent pressure from above.
I think fines are a good way to punish corporations as long as they're big enough to act as a deterrent. Many fines are small enough that companies write them off as a cost of doing business. But if the fines are large enough that they get corporate boards interested. Boards don't have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that some particular executive was guilty, they can just look at the corporate structure and know which person was responsible. An executive that so much as tolerates corrupt behavior won't find a job elsewhere.
Think about the Sony Rootkit thing. I bet you'd have to go pretty far down the command chain to find someone that had close enough knowledge of what was going on to know that it was illegal. And, even then, do you take everyone underneath that guy to trial? Instead, fine the company a lot of money and let the board and the managers sort it out. If fines large enough to deter bad behavior are the norm corporations will police themselves effectively or perish.
I don't think it's necessarily just a matter of tools and training. I can have one conversation at a time, that's about it (it can include multiple people, of course). If I'm being IMed and someone walks in the room I say, "BRB," to the IMer because I know I can't carry on both conversations at once. One of my best friends growing up could have a few IM chats, a webcam thing, and a real-life conversation with me all at the same time. We are the same age (25), were introduced to computers and the Internet around the same time, etc. I know people in my dad's generation that can multitask a lot better than I can, and younger people that need quiet to focus and get things done. It may be that multitasking skills become more important, and that people with those skills are in higher demand. But, as it stands, if it's impossible to be productive at all without those skills there will be a lot of smart and talented people digging ditches for no particularly good reason. I don't think that will happen. Yes, the brain is adaptable. But we build our world around our capabilities also.
I think it would be great if DUI convictions (and for other offenses where you're impairing your ability to drive) had real teeth. Unfortunately courts would take these things down because such a large number of people in America are essentially under house arrest if they can't drive.
Radio control buttons on the wheel are a good thing. People will want to change their tunes while they drive, having well-designed controls on the wheel means they don't have to look away to do it.
I don't think the biggest problem is that people aren't good at controlling their vehicles. Our road system is designed with quite a bit of tolerance for unskilled drivers (with some exceptions in dense cities, and where governments shorten yellow-light times to try to increase light-camera revenue). The problem is that so many people don't take driving seriously. And it doesn't take very many people that don't care to really screw up the roadways.
It's not that hard to drive completely left-handed with a little practice. Driving a manual-transmission car would be more of a challenge (you'd have to hold the phone between your head and shoulder while shifting, which is hard to do with most cell phones). The big problem is that the people you're talking to are often inconsiderate of the fact that you're driving, and they can't know when you're coming up on a merge or a turn. Police officers have lots of gadgets in their cars, and bus drivers and truckers have CBs, but they're listening for specific things that have to do with their task at-hand. Bus drivers often miss a message addressed to them the first time but notice their call number and ask the dispatcher to repeat. There are often gaps in the conversation while difficult maneuvers are made. And this is taken as a normal order of business. Typical phone conversations with friends and bosses are more demanding.
I might be younger than you, but I've never been taught that passing on the right was illegal -- just a bad idea. Apparently on the Autobahn it is illegal and taken very seriously (along with blocking up the left lane). I've heard arguments that such a system winds up being a lot safer than the American system of enforcing speed limits and not much else, but there are enough differences between (and even within) the two systems that I'm not sure about drawing big, general conclusions.
I do agree that people are trained very poorly on safe driving in the situations they're likely to encounter. Back in high school (I lived near Chicago then) we spent much more time in the driver's ed cars backing around corners and doing three-point turns than working on lane changes, merges, and other highway techniques. And it showed -- during the test everyone aced the parking-lot maneuvers and the instructor had to grab the wheel from one of my classmates on the highway. Even so, I'm not sure that's the biggest reason that police can seemingly handle a higher level of in-car activity than other drivers. I think there are two bigger differences. First, the police are at work, doing their jobs. They're not just trying to get somewhere, so they've already done their makeup, put on their uniforms, talked to their spouses and friends, etc. The dispatchers are trained in how to talk to drivers, and the radios are designed for drivers (that is, it's really easy to use them without looking at them) and are a lot simpler than cell phones. The driver will often have a partner in the car that is also focused on the task -- providing assistance and not distraction. Furthermore, if they're on patrol it's their job to pay attention to what's going on around them. I think the second difference is that police on the whole take their duty to public safety more seriously than most people -- that's why they went out for the job in the first place. They've seen lots of wrecks and don't want to cause more. Even given good training and a phone that's designed for use while driving (perhaps some of the voice-control systems in recent cars would qualify) most people just don't care very much.
If you're Apple, that's one thing. You need engineers to do inspired work and you're willing to pay for it. Most employers that hire programmers and other technical people don't need that and aren't willing to pay for it. And, frankly, people that have been to college don't inherently have a wider base of knowledge just because they snored through some lit classes.
And Jobs? He dropped out of college. So I'm not sure that Apple, of all companies, would consider a 4-year college degree proof of the ability to do inspired work.
Portrayals of single people are probably quite a bit more accurate that those of families (I'm assuming that Frasier's dad draws a pension and basically pulls his weight on expenses, leaving Frasier financially single). I think that any show about successful entertainers is, to a large degree, aspirational, because very few entertainers see prolonged financial success like that.
Family portrayals seem to reflect the aspirations of American families more than the reality. Working-class people living in well-to-do suburbs in big houses. I'm not a big TV watcher, but I can think of a couple: the Cosby show and Fresh Prince. I haven't seen much of either show, but I think the Fresh Prince guy would have to be in very rare company even among lawyers to live like that -- either that or living beyond his means. Even if those shows are realistic, they are aspirational in a way simply because so few people are that successful in their careers. Malcolm in the Middle refers to the family's financial troubles and shattered career aspirations but still gives them, on the whole, pretty nice material things and really glorifies the credit culture.
Again, I'm not a big TV-watcher, but I can think of a couple shows that really aren't/weren't aspirational portrayals of families. One is Everybody Hates Chris, and another is the short-lived show The PJs. There are probably more... but they're the exception. Almost all families on TV are shown in big suburban houses and wearing nice clothes, and that's not really how almost all families live.
Yes, we'd hate for poor people to have a chance at good jobs.
The same basic things could be proved by technical degrees, two-year degrees, and certifications, which can be obtained more cheaply. I have a four-year degree from a university, and I'm glad I took most of the classes I took for my own benefit. But I don't know why an employer should care about some of them.
The home page says there is both a Windows and Linux version. Just because the screenshots are Linux doesn't mean the author doesn't value Windows; they have to have been made on one platform or the other, whoever made them happens to have done them in Linux.
If the Windows version was broken for some reason it still might be possible to build the Linux version under Cygwin.
Name me a few places with low density and no focal downtown where public transit is effective. The San Jose/Silicon Valley area has a lot of buses and even a light-rail system but it's not very effective (the rail system, in particular, has very poor ridership and thus recovers only a tiny portion of its costs from the fare box).
The only places I know of where public transit for daily commuter use extends far into suburbs is when it carries people from those suburbs to a downtown area. Metra in Chicago goes out to the fringe of the suburbs. At those distances there aren't stops within walking distance of everyone's house, but many people drive to the station and take the train downtown. This only works because downtown is very dense. Tons of people are employed within walking distance of each downtown Metra station.
I don't think you need both high density and a focal downtown, but you do need one of those things. Without a focal downtown a grid of buses (or streetcars, perhaps, but I think buses have major advantages) could be a good general-purpose transit system, but to have a tight bus grid with frequently running buses you need lots of trips to fund it -- you need high density. There are some special-purpose mass transit systems in areas that don't fit those descriptions. There are Pace bus routes in the Chicago suburbs that specifically serve suburban UPS complexes and large industrial parks, perhaps picking up at a transit-accessible place like a local commuter rail station.
If the bus service near where you live is a waste of time that might be because you live in a place that can't be well-served by public transit. Public transit is efficient when it consolidates common trips, and can become convenient when trips are common enough for frequent service. With common trips into dense areas parking becomes a hassle, so driving is inconvenient and expensive also. Those things don't happen in areas without a focal downtown, or places that are quite dense. When I lived in Silicon Valley I almost never used public transit (exceptions being Caltrain to San Francisco, and taking the shuttle bus to San Jose airport because I'd rather walk the two miles to the bus stop than mess with airport traffic and parking). When I lived in Chicago I almost never drove (only when I needed to carry lots of stuff or go to the suburbs).
As far as changing the nature of public transit, there's always PRT... If you think Google, with no public works experience, will figure out PRT, you're high (although I wouldn't be surprised if they tried). Tons of money has been blown on studies, and it's resulted in one system that partially implements a very simplistic version of the concept: Morgantown, WV. Morgantown's half-PRT works more like a tram during busy periods anyway, because it couldn't handle the volume otherwise.
I was speaking of Apologetics Index, the site you linked in the post I replied to.
Politicians can't solve anything. They mostly pander and rarely lead. As for religious leaders, I don't know of any religion that says anything about overpopulation. The religion of leaders on non-religious issues can be useful for all kinds of reasons (see US civil rights movement) but that doesn't make the issues religious. The people that can do studies on population, food and resource supplies, and evaluate possible solutions and actions are scientists (these could be geologists, biologists, sociologists, etc.). The people that work out the ethics are philosophers (there's an implication in your post that future suffering caused by overpopulation doesn't count -- that's at least worthy of argument). Sometimes they're the same people. Politicians only come in when it's time to sell the idea to people. Religious thinking, putting faith in an idea, is useless unless there is an idea and it's good.
If the whole issue is left to politicians and religious leaders we'll never know whether there's a problem, let alone what some solutions might be.
If contraception were available cheaply to people in poor countries they'd likely still have higher birth rates than in rich countries. Economists and sociologists study these sorts of things scientifically; I think it's worth their time to do so.
And I'm not suggesting that inventing more efficient crops is a bad idea or that people should just flat-out starve. Or that it was Dr. Borlaug's job personally to solve every problem known to man. I'm pretty satisfied that he did good work and improved the stability of many people's food supplies. All I'm saying is that if we're going to solve any problems, overpopulation included, we'd better have scientists involved.
Almost nothing works these days if your screen resolution isn't just right. Many blog layouts fix the width of the text. I have a blog on blogger and I specifically edited the layout to fix this problem, but most blogs either stick you with a narrow column of text (this I can understand -- it's easier to read that way, it's only a hassle if you try to post charts or graphics) or a wide one (this sucks in every way, forces your browser to almost full-screen and is hard to read).
I'm not sure I agree with that. What's the use in typing if you have nothing of value to type?
It should be noted that while the information on the page you linked is well-cited and probably accurate, the site overall has a large bias. Although it isn't apparent from the front page, it is operated by evangelical Christians (this found a couple pages away) and all the articles I read on the site contain the bias you'd expect given that, despite that the front page gives the impression of impartiality. Articles on churches that disagree with evangelicals only present the evangelical side of the debate, and in some cases directly implore followers to oppose the other group.
OK. So Vim isn't the ideal editor today -- it was designed around limitations of earlier computers and when you remove those limitations you can get rid of stuff like modality that's not really necessary when you have a mouse. So lots of people get attached to modality and hjkl navigation because they spent time learning them, just like people get attached to the emacs OS, even though neither are, today, what anyone designing a new editor would make. They are historically notable -- both were more powerful and easy to use than what came before. I don't think either is very Unixy -- they're each platforms unto themselves at this point. Whatever the first Notepad-like editor was, that introduced the basic elements we consider to be standard text-editing controls today, is definitely historically notable also, and a great achievement -- it flattened the learning curve and (mostly) shattered modality.
Vim and Emacs don't have a lot to do with this browser project, despite the red herring of vi-like keybindings. This project is an experiment about building a browser that's really part of Unix, so as far as an analogous editor goes, perhaps Plan 9's acme, which also relied on external scripts for much functionality. The point isn't to be the greatest or most impressive anything, because... really, who cares? The point is to be a useful tool within the Unix system. If a more self-contained browser is easier to use in many cases that doesn't make it useless.