As a user of online rpgs, I can attest that I screw up ctrl+ or shift+ commands a hell of a lot more than I accidentally press the wrong key on a mouse. In most windows apps, the right mouse button opens a menu, which is much more convenient in that I am looking at the screen already, and already have my hand on the selection control, whereas I do not already have my hand on the ctrl button.
The point of any user interface is to allow users to access things quickly and without having to divert their attention from what they are doing. One button plus keyboard loses on both counts, as far as my experience goes anyhow.
It's not the box that takes up most of the space anyhow. I use a laptop which is maybe 288 in^3. Then there's the stuff:
keyboard (180 in^3)
mouse (trackball) (30 in^3)
crappy free inkjet printer (300 in^3)
external drive (100 in^3)
cd storage book (150 in^3)
hardware firewall (100 in^3)
surge protector (150 in^3)
radio/speaker assembly (2500 in^3)
Sure, I could switch to a mac mini, but even ignoring the fact that I'd have to buy a monitor, it would make no significant difference to the obtrusiveness of my system. Nor would switching to a dell tower monstrosity. Now, when they actually manage to fit an entire system into that space, I'll be impressed. Still won't buy it, though: I like my equipment large enough that I can tell when part of it is catching on fire or needs to be plugged in.
Uh... If you think American policy is actually christian fundamentalist to any significant degree, I suggest you never, ever even visit another country, as we are quite definitely the most godless heathens on the face of the planet:)
I'm amazed that you didn't even successfully knock down your own straw men.
The thing about environmentalists, you see, is that I learned to instinctively put quotes around "scientist" when referring to them well before I first heard the global warming stuff for the first time. It's always been more of a political agenda than a field of science.
There's a major called 'environmental engineering' nowadays. At least I can trust those guys not to make claims that are well beyond their predictive power.
eh, just ignore the political message and Chrighton's books are awesome. I mean, Jurrasic park was something about dangers of cloning blah blah kill science yarr, yet I still enjoyed it because it was a book about dinosaur clones running around eating people. What's not to love?
It'll move from conjecture to fact when a model is developed that is demonstrated to correctly predict climate change, and accounts fully for all past climate... and we don't even have anything near a complete record of past climate, though we're getting closer.
Basically, we can't account for climate change on geologic or historical timescales, and we can't predict the weather an hour from now without resorting to probabilities small enough to be almost useless. What exactly makes us think that we know where the climate is going on, as it were, a macroscopic time scale? I'm chalking it up to hubris.
Uh, your point is valid, but your analogy was flawed. The dog we shot in Iraq had alredy eaten mommy and daddy and had been raping little suzy for a couple decades when we pulled the trigger, if I recall correctly. And we felt responsible for having bought them the dog in the first place (because a capitalist wolf is better than a commie rottweiler).
Not really. Climate changes don't kill people. Humans are good enough at dealing with climate that only the quick, unpredictable disasters are going to kill anyone. That's why San francisco is attempting to earthquake-proof its buildings instead of screaming for the government to do something to prevent the state from sliding into the Pacific ocean, as a few scientists theorize it will eventually (a potential loss of billions of dollars and millions of lives, if everyone moves as slowly as your hypothetical americans).
It's also still rather unclear wether humans (a) are the cause of global warming in the first place, and (b) can do anything about it if we are. Oh, right, and (c) should do anything about it; forgot the moral thingy. After all, people apparrently are freaked out by engineered chimeric animals and abortion, imagine how much they'll object to scientists usurping god's traditional role as controller of the weather. Oh, wait, forgot that people are hypocritical and inconistent. Never mind.
I think the problem is something like, if we insert human-specific code into an animal, and an animal hosts a virus mutation, we could end up with a virus which targets the human material. Or something like that.
Eh, maybe I'm splitting hairs too finely, but human brain cells != human-style consciousness. Hell, being completely human doesn't even guarantee human consciousness. What makes you think even fully human brain cells, developing in a different environment both chemically and spatially than they would in a human, would develop a fully human brain (which, coincedentally, outweighs a fully grown mouse by a few pounds)? It just seems rather silly.
Strictly by definition, deciding what I should have for breakfast is an ethical question. Or at least according to the definition I got from the last philosophy class I took, back in the day. I don't see why this, however, is in any way an urgent ethical question. Same goes to genetic engineering. It's legally restricted enough already, I don't think i'll worry about it.
... if you're going to bash them. Christianity doesn't care if you're "free" or "open" with or in your life. It is concerned with following the person and (to a lesser extent, it seems) the teachings of the christ. Other religions threaten this because most of them are mutually exclusive in some manner with christianity, and thus damn the souls of their followers. Why Christianity particularly cares about souls, I have yet to determine. In any case, because following Christ is the only way to become closer to god after death, there is no hypocrisy whatsoever when a christian is concerned with persecution of christians and doesn't give a damn about the persecution of other religions. And their truth isn't supposed to relieve physical suffering, it's supposed to bring you closer to physical perfection. Note that the center of the religion was nailed to a tree and left to die.
You're probably right about the hatred thing, though. I'm pretty sure the manual pretty much forbids that nonsense.
Did I miss anything? Oh, right. Forgot to mention that nobody gave a damn wether or not Jesus showed up in 2001. Christians are nervous because they aren't the major moral force in american society anymore, and they haven't figured out what is yet.
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As a user of online rpgs, I can attest that I screw up ctrl+ or shift+ commands a hell of a lot more than I accidentally press the wrong key on a mouse. In most windows apps, the right mouse button opens a menu, which is much more convenient in that I am looking at the screen already, and already have my hand on the selection control, whereas I do not already have my hand on the ctrl button.
The point of any user interface is to allow users to access things quickly and without having to divert their attention from what they are doing. One button plus keyboard loses on both counts, as far as my experience goes anyhow.
and replacing the stupid apple mouse with multi-button mice from logitec et al.
It's not the box that takes up most of the space anyhow. I use a laptop which is maybe 288 in^3. Then there's the stuff:
keyboard (180 in^3)
mouse (trackball) (30 in^3)
crappy free inkjet printer (300 in^3)
external drive (100 in^3)
cd storage book (150 in^3)
hardware firewall (100 in^3)
surge protector (150 in^3)
radio/speaker assembly (2500 in^3)
Sure, I could switch to a mac mini, but even ignoring the fact that I'd have to buy a monitor, it would make no significant difference to the obtrusiveness of my system. Nor would switching to a dell tower monstrosity. Now, when they actually manage to fit an entire system into that space, I'll be impressed. Still won't buy it, though: I like my equipment large enough that I can tell when part of it is catching on fire or needs to be plugged in.
You really had me going there for a second. You should have tried harder on number 4, though, that one kind of gave it away.
Uh... If you think American policy is actually christian fundamentalist to any significant degree, I suggest you never, ever even visit another country, as we are quite definitely the most godless heathens on the face of the planet :)
I'm amazed that you didn't even successfully knock down your own straw men.
The thing about environmentalists, you see, is that I learned to instinctively put quotes around "scientist" when referring to them well before I first heard the global warming stuff for the first time. It's always been more of a political agenda than a field of science.
There's a major called 'environmental engineering' nowadays. At least I can trust those guys not to make claims that are well beyond their predictive power.
eh, just ignore the political message and Chrighton's books are awesome. I mean, Jurrasic park was something about dangers of cloning blah blah kill science yarr, yet I still enjoyed it because it was a book about dinosaur clones running around eating people. What's not to love?
Yeah, I can see killing off most of the sea life being disruptive. Guess I'll nix the "burn ice caps with giant laser" plan.
It'll move from conjecture to fact when a model is developed that is demonstrated to correctly predict climate change, and accounts fully for all past climate... and we don't even have anything near a complete record of past climate, though we're getting closer.
Basically, we can't account for climate change on geologic or historical timescales, and we can't predict the weather an hour from now without resorting to probabilities small enough to be almost useless. What exactly makes us think that we know where the climate is going on, as it were, a macroscopic time scale? I'm chalking it up to hubris.
Technically, to stop terrorism we just have to shoot all the people. (/straight face)
Nah, we fought the Germans when they were on the verge of defeat. And mostly in Africa. We fought the Japanese while they were in full military swing.
We also supported the allies with supplies. I'm sure Britain appreciated it, at least.
Uh, your point is valid, but your analogy was flawed. The dog we shot in Iraq had alredy eaten mommy and daddy and had been raping little suzy for a couple decades when we pulled the trigger, if I recall correctly. And we felt responsible for having bought them the dog in the first place (because a capitalist wolf is better than a commie rottweiler).
Ok, I'm done taking the metaphor too far now.
Not really. Climate changes don't kill people. Humans are good enough at dealing with climate that only the quick, unpredictable disasters are going to kill anyone. That's why San francisco is attempting to earthquake-proof its buildings instead of screaming for the government to do something to prevent the state from sliding into the Pacific ocean, as a few scientists theorize it will eventually (a potential loss of billions of dollars and millions of lives, if everyone moves as slowly as your hypothetical americans).
It's also still rather unclear wether humans (a) are the cause of global warming in the first place, and (b) can do anything about it if we are. Oh, right, and (c) should do anything about it; forgot the moral thingy. After all, people apparrently are freaked out by engineered chimeric animals and abortion, imagine how much they'll object to scientists usurping god's traditional role as controller of the weather. Oh, wait, forgot that people are hypocritical and inconistent. Never mind.
I think the problem is something like, if we insert human-specific code into an animal, and an animal hosts a virus mutation, we could end up with a virus which targets the human material. Or something like that.
Eh, maybe I'm splitting hairs too finely, but human brain cells != human-style consciousness. Hell, being completely human doesn't even guarantee human consciousness. What makes you think even fully human brain cells, developing in a different environment both chemically and spatially than they would in a human, would develop a fully human brain (which, coincedentally, outweighs a fully grown mouse by a few pounds)? It just seems rather silly.
Any organism created by artificially combining genetic information from different species is a chimera.
Yes, yes, I can.
I have no problem with this. Why should I?
Strictly by definition, deciding what I should have for breakfast is an ethical question. Or at least according to the definition I got from the last philosophy class I took, back in the day. I don't see why this, however, is in any way an urgent ethical question. Same goes to genetic engineering. It's legally restricted enough already, I don't think i'll worry about it.
#No Google ad may harm a human, or, through inaction, allow a human to come to harm.
#A google ad must obey the instructions given to it by a human, so long as this does not violate the first law.
#A google ad must strive to maintain its own existence, so long as this does not violate the first two laws.
An election with more than a party parrot running? Must have been local.
If I wasn't so damned addicted to the internet I might have finished all my projects by now.
If people are opposing it using *free* speech, then why are you opposed to them?
Mandatory lobotomy for all political lobbyists.
No more christian coalition, no more annoying gay-rights activists, no more NAACP.... no more overfunded political campaigns. It's the perfect plan!
Replace "physical perfection" with "spiritual perfection". My bad.
... if you're going to bash them. Christianity doesn't care if you're "free" or "open" with or in your life. It is concerned with following the person and (to a lesser extent, it seems) the teachings of the christ. Other religions threaten this because most of them are mutually exclusive in some manner with christianity, and thus damn the souls of their followers. Why Christianity particularly cares about souls, I have yet to determine. In any case, because following Christ is the only way to become closer to god after death, there is no hypocrisy whatsoever when a christian is concerned with persecution of christians and doesn't give a damn about the persecution of other religions. And their truth isn't supposed to relieve physical suffering, it's supposed to bring you closer to physical perfection. Note that the center of the religion was nailed to a tree and left to die.
You're probably right about the hatred thing, though. I'm pretty sure the manual pretty much forbids that nonsense.
Did I miss anything? Oh, right. Forgot to mention that nobody gave a damn wether or not Jesus showed up in 2001. Christians are nervous because they aren't the major moral force in american society anymore, and they haven't figured out what is yet.
They're conservative, as they're protecting a pre-existing system (law based on the US constiution) from a force attempting to change it.