For the love of God, HOW? This still plagues me today, and I could use some advice (at least better than "Just do it," which is effectively saying, "Quit pretending it's a real problem.")
Meditation worked for me. But don't overdo it like the Buddhists.
Finally, somebody with perspective. It is amazing how debates about IQ on Slashdot revolve around personal anecdotes. Many on Slashdot commenters seem to be completely unaware about the state of the research and seem to be completely dismissive about the validity of IQ tests themselves. (Everybody please consult Wikipedia on the subject)
I disagree that high IQ people are inherently unable to communicate with or understand the average Joe. It is rather lack of experience in my opinion. Slashdot nerds tend to hang out with other Slashdot nerds with similar IQs. That's not how you develop the social skills to communicate with construction workers, nurses or bartenders. I used to be as socially awkward a geek as they come, but I took the plunge and tried to hang out with regular folks and was able to adapt and feel at ease pretty quickly. It is not that difficult. Don't endlessly pontificate about your field of expertise. Listen. Take your vis-à-vis seriously. Show some interest in their concerns, wishes, hobbies, work or life situation. It's not rocket science.
Other high IQ professionals, like doctors or lawyers have to deal with individuals from all over the IQ spectrum and of different personality types. That is how they develop their social skills.
Lack of experience with low IQ people is possibly one of the main reasons for IQ denialism among Slashdot readers.
Far more analgous is the old maxim, 'I may not like whFar more analgous is the old maxim, 'I may not like what you say, but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it.' I may never be a billionaireat you say, but I'll fight to the death for your right to say it.' I may never be a billionaire
There are all kinds of regulations that affect the little guy. Large numbers of Americans live, as I understand, in communities with strict regulations about what they have to do with their lawn or that prevent them from renting out rooms or even leave their garage door open. I would find that outrageous, if I were American. These regulations make a mockery of basic property rights. Peasants in feudal societies had more freedoms in that regard. Most of the output of libertarian punditry however is concerned with defending Walmart.
Or take global warming denial as an example. I am aware of on prominent German socialist who denies global warming as well as some conservatives. It is a fringe position that goes against the contemporary scientific consensus. How come that this fringe position happens to have so much currency in professional libertarianism?
It is not as if professional libertarians would defend a corporation or a billionaire here or there among hundreds of other issues, which would be perfectly consistent and understandable.
It is pretty obvious that Ayn Rand had a thing for wealthy industrialists and so do most libertarian pundits, it seems. Milton Friedman in contrast talked about the draft, school vouchers and licencing in the medical profession. I can't even come up with a specific corporation Milton Friedman defended. Now he was a true libertarian, not some kind of male money honey.
Liberarians tend to focus on "my freedom" more than on "your freedom".
Actually, a lot of them focus on the freedoms of their imaginary future selves and on the vast fortunes they are surely going to amass. See Joe the Plumber. So they end up defending big corporations and rich people, even if those pollute and exploit. The free market rhetoric is just a facade to sound somewhat reasonable.
Libertarianism itself has valuable insights and should be taken seriously. It is spoiled by those who read Ayn Rand as teenagers and took up a professional career in corporate sponsored think tank libertarianism.
the simple fact is that things WERE better built 50 years ago
That is not a simple fact, but a grandiose fact claim on your part.
Some products may have been more durable in the past, some not so much. You would have to look at a case by case analysis, do some testing, empirical work to figure out what is true.
Metal and steel rusts and bends. Lots of mechanical and moving parts can cause all sorts of problems, line shafts wear out, cloth cables, springs, reed relais, etc.
Wooden joints that where glued or screwed together tend to get loose, etc.
No material is perfect. And cost saving can leed to simplicity, which can benefit durability greatly.
I believe that especially eletronics and computing is getting much better. Complicated VHS tape drives broke down all of the time. Reel to Reel tape drives had lots of problems. Optical is better and solid state even moreso.
It is called survivorship bias. Almost all of the things produced in the past have long since broken down. We only see what stood the test of time and therefore tend to assume that things were built to last back in the day.
Every invention is obvious after someone thinks of it.
I thought of this before years ago and a million others probably too.
Teenagers are still faster with two thumbs and T9 on a dial pad anyway. Typing on smaller devices is only an issue for older folk who didn't grow up with texting.
Toyota, BMW, Volkswagen, Porsche, Audi etc. are all heavily unionized in their home countries and all of the companies you named got american tax-payer subsidies to set up shop in the US.
And how long do you think these factories will remain in the US, once your domestic industry is gone and with it the bargaining power it gives the US governement in setting import tariffs or threatening to increase them, like Reagan did?
The european and east asian auto industries are heavily unionized. German workers have a right to half the seats on the supervisory board and play an active role in the steering of the company.
You don't need a survey about potential SUV buyers in the EU. SUVs are everywhere, albeit not many of these ugly american trucks which masquerade as passenger cars.
They couldn't care less if gaijin (foreigners) get fingerprinted and photographed when they enter Japan. (The only Japanese who ever get fingerprinted are criminals)
Oh, you mean like the way the visitors to the USA are treated?
Remember Eazel? The company Andy Hertzfeld started in 1999 to bring Linux to the desktop. They burned through millions and only produced a friggin bloated and buggy file manager.
Then wouldn't the answer be to go into 'ex cathedra' mode, and then declare whether there's alien life?
It is not that simple, you fool.
The pope would first have to get his special truth cape. And that is somewhere way back in the storage room, behind the holy grail vitrine and a couple of genuine crosses of Jesus.
Wasn't the first episode about MacGuyver entering some high tech lab by redirecting lasers and fighting against automated guard bots?
MacGuyver dealt with a lot of then advanced and futuristic technology. The problem is that most of this stuff is not as exciting and new anymore. Computers were kind of a mystery back in the 80ies. This allowed for a lot of imaginative story lines. I don't believe that the feeling of MacGuyver, Tron, Knight Rider or War Games could be replicated, now that computers, the internet and electronics are about as exciting as a washing mashine.
Cell phones ruin a lot of potential plot lines, as some other poster noted. The kind of encyclopedic knowledge about technical subjects that MacGuyver had, is pretty worthless in our days of Google and Wikipedia as well.
So what is left? Maybe social engineering, as well as the usual escape plot.
And as long as there is no mixup in any of their databases making you a suspect for something you never did. I'm more in fear of incompetence at the government level than I am about malice.
You were probably only considering conspiracy theory type malice. But what you really have to be afraid of, is your neighbour Frank, the cop, who is jealous of your wife and would like to have you out of the way. Lots of governement employees will have access rights to such a huge database. Human nature tells us that some of them will abuse the system.
On the other hand we've all seen how successfull the big three have been when it comes to leaving big oil. I really think that its going to take some companies thinking outside the traditional car culture to have success with electrics and why wouldn't Silicon Valley be a good place for that? Not to mention that the state of California would be interested in supporting that. Now about that GM electric, would that be the one that they haven't been able to get right in 20 years?
Dozens of electric car startup companies have tried during those same 20 years. There have been many hyped up Teslas in the past and their effort amounted to almost nothing. Only a couple of enthusiasts really bought these cars at the end of the day.
I think that it is highly unlikely that any small startup company will ever join the ranks of Toyota, Volkswagen or GM. Competitive cars are just too complicated to design and build nowadays. Think about Airbags, ESP, the highly complicated and efficient manufacturing process. The only new big car companies will be started by governements of emerging powers like China, India, etc. It is much easier for the big guyes to make the comparatively simple change from ICEs to electric engines than it is for some boffin in a garage to build a good and modern car around an electric engine.
The established car companies have many designs in their drawers for all kinds of cars, including energy efficient cars. The consumer kept demanding something different.
I agree to what you said. But I would like to add that there is no moral or ethical reason for intelligent people to deserve wealth either. It just so happens that intelligence, among other traits, can lead to material wealth. But ethical considerations should be based on choices and behaviours. A hard working moron would be awarded with much more than a lazy colledge professor in an ideal world.
Geeks tend to like systematic explanations with logical axioms This is one of the deep flaws of libertarianism. It is easy to defend it in a debate, because there are only a few axioms you need to understand from which an answer for everything can easily be derived.
The problem is that economics is a messy real-world phenomenen. Questions of economics cannot be answered without empirical data, an understanding of sociology and psychology and much more. "It sounds logical, so it must be true" just isn't enough. True economics should be based on claims such as "... the data suggests that...". Libertarianism provides a simple explanation for everything, just like "God did it" is more compelling and fullfilling to many than actually informing yourself about evolutionary biology and accepting that many questions just haven't been answered yet.
I wonder if that has to do with illegality of prostitution, gambling, the war on drugs.... These items frequently show up on the libertarians lists of justifications for their ideology. Without these, a big chunk of motivation would probably be gone. And guess what, most of these are legal in most european countries. The war on drugs exists, but small amounts of reasonable drugs that geeks would use, like marihuana, usually won't get you in jail. Plus it is usually the leftist parties that actually do want to end the war on drugs.
The interesting thing about you noticing that libertarians are often antisocial is that they actually shouldn't. The whole premise of libertarianism utopia of a better future is based on individuals responsibilities and abilites. So only somebody, who genuinely loves human beings and believes humans by and large to be capable and responible, should be a libertarian.
Many here on Slashdot predicted that Vista would'nt sell, just like many did for Windows XP. Empirical evidence that Vista will indeed replace XP settles the question.
Honestly your best bet is probably to purchase a used GSM phone from eBay. There are quite a few of them out there, so you'll have choices. One that was very popular and manufactured for a while (or that uses a battery that's still in production) would definitely be the best.
Then just take it and get a basic plan at T-Mobile or Cingular (AT&T). Pop in the SIM and go.
Isn't this also possible with the regular american CDMA phones? I'm curious, since as a european, I tend to think of the USA as the place where nobody stops you from driving around in a rusty car with malfunctioning brakes that you bought for 500$ from some shady used car salesman.
First of all, what is it with the weird style this "interview" is written in? Joshua Davis should go off and write private investigator novels, instead of doing journalism on criminal cases. It was difficult to discern, where the claims of Reiser, Sturgeon or the DA end and where Davis' own storytelling starts.
Hans Reiser has to be at least paranoid, which he apparently inherited from his father:
"Reiser calls his dad and explains that unmarked cars and maybe an airplane are tracking him. In Ramon's opinion, it's an operation beyond the scope of local police. It sounds like the Russian mafia, Ramon says, or maybe the Russian spy agency, the FSB."
Why would the FSB be interested in him? Don't they know that ReiserFS is open source?
Another nugget is his insistence on playing violent video games with his six year old son. He defended this practise in a "32-page filing" on the "culture of manhood" during his divorce trial. That alone has nutjob written all over it.
He believes mental health professionals scorn people who "teach the culture of manhood to little boys, with all of its inherent opposition to wallowing in wimpiness."
Well, I don't see much of manhood in Hans Reiser's behaviour. He comes of as whiny and paranoid, accusing everybody but himself for his mistakes. And he appears even to be proud of conceiving a child in the first night with his mail order bride. That's both pathetic and idiotic!
And don't even get me started on this Sturgeon guy. It seems like lunatics come in packs. I for one wouldn't take Hans Reisers advice on anything but file systems serious.
Microsoft gives you at least a (costly) option. Apple (correct me, if I'm wrong) doesn't.
And no, I am not a MS fanboy. I've been using Linux for more then ten years almost exclusively. Lack of hassle with licensing issues being one of the reasons for my choice of OS.
Barry Schwartz argues in his book "The Paradox of Choice" that one of the reasons that people are sometimes less happy with choice rather than without choice, is that they can blame somebody else if something goes wrong. This could also apply to software. There seems to be an almost universal agreement about Windows being crap. So if something breaks, Windows and Microsoft can be blamed, even if the user himself did something stupid. Most of the malware out there is certainly not Microsoft's fault.
So maybe Linux should be advertised as free but crapy. Openoffice is in fact free but crapy, so there you go.
This is great news! It should be included in HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux. Linux usage will soar at last! Now we need a Linux beer to cover the male non-geek audience and world domination will be assured!
Slashdot Mirror
Meditation worked for me. But don't overdo it like the Buddhists.
Finally, somebody with perspective. It is amazing how debates about IQ on Slashdot revolve around personal anecdotes. Many on Slashdot commenters seem to be completely unaware about the state of the research and seem to be completely dismissive about the validity of IQ tests themselves. (Everybody please consult Wikipedia on the subject)
I disagree that high IQ people are inherently unable to communicate with or understand the average Joe. It is rather lack of experience in my opinion. Slashdot nerds tend to hang out with other Slashdot nerds with similar IQs. That's not how you develop the social skills to communicate with construction workers, nurses or bartenders. I used to be as socially awkward a geek as they come, but I took the plunge and tried to hang out with regular folks and was able to adapt and feel at ease pretty quickly.
It is not that difficult. Don't endlessly pontificate about your field of expertise. Listen. Take your vis-à-vis seriously. Show some interest in their concerns, wishes, hobbies, work or life situation. It's not rocket science.
Other high IQ professionals, like doctors or lawyers have to deal with individuals from all over the IQ spectrum and of different personality types. That is how they develop their social skills.
Lack of experience with low IQ people is possibly one of the main reasons for IQ denialism among Slashdot readers.
There are all kinds of regulations that affect the little guy. Large numbers of Americans live, as I understand, in communities with strict regulations about what they have to do with their lawn or that prevent them from renting out rooms or even leave their garage door open. I would find that outrageous, if I were American. These regulations make a mockery of basic property rights. Peasants in feudal societies had more freedoms in that regard. Most of the output of libertarian punditry however is concerned with defending Walmart.
Or take global warming denial as an example. I am aware of on prominent German socialist who denies global warming as well as some conservatives. It is a fringe position that goes against the contemporary scientific consensus. How come that this fringe position happens to have so much currency in professional libertarianism?
It is not as if professional libertarians would defend a corporation or a billionaire here or there among hundreds of other issues, which would be perfectly consistent and understandable.
It is pretty obvious that Ayn Rand had a thing for wealthy industrialists and so do most libertarian pundits, it seems. Milton Friedman in contrast talked about the draft, school vouchers and licencing in the medical profession. I can't even come up with a specific corporation Milton Friedman defended. Now he was a true libertarian, not some kind of male money honey.
Actually, a lot of them focus on the freedoms of their imaginary future selves and on the vast fortunes they are surely going to amass. See Joe the Plumber. So they end up defending big corporations and rich people, even if those pollute and exploit. The free market rhetoric is just a facade to sound somewhat reasonable.
Libertarianism itself has valuable insights and should be taken seriously. It is spoiled by those who read Ayn Rand as teenagers and took up a professional career in corporate sponsored think tank libertarianism.
That is not a simple fact, but a grandiose fact claim on your part.
Some products may have been more durable in the past, some not so much. You would have to look at a case by case analysis, do some testing, empirical work to figure out what is true.
Metal and steel rusts and bends. Lots of mechanical and moving parts can cause all sorts of problems, line shafts wear out, cloth cables, springs, reed relais, etc.
Wooden joints that where glued or screwed together tend to get loose, etc.
No material is perfect. And cost saving can leed to simplicity, which can benefit durability greatly.
I believe that especially eletronics and computing is getting much better. Complicated VHS tape drives broke down all of the time. Reel to Reel tape drives had lots of problems. Optical is better and solid state even moreso.
It is called survivorship bias. Almost all of the things produced in the past have long since broken down. We only see what stood the test of time and therefore tend to assume that things were built to last back in the day.
I thought of this before years ago and a million others probably too.
Teenagers are still faster with two thumbs and T9 on a dial pad anyway. Typing on smaller devices is only an issue for older folk who didn't grow up with texting.
Toyota, BMW, Volkswagen, Porsche, Audi etc. are all heavily unionized in their home countries and all of the companies you named got american tax-payer subsidies to set up shop in the US.
And how long do you think these factories will remain in the US, once your domestic industry is gone and with it the bargaining power it gives the US governement in setting import tariffs or threatening to increase them, like Reagan did?
The european and east asian auto industries are heavily unionized. German workers have a right to half the seats on the supervisory board and play an active role in the steering of the company.
You don't need a survey about potential SUV buyers in the EU. SUVs are everywhere, albeit not many of these ugly american trucks which masquerade as passenger cars.
Oh, you mean like the way the visitors to the USA are treated?
Remember Eazel? The company Andy Hertzfeld started in 1999 to bring Linux to the desktop. They burned through millions and only produced a friggin bloated and buggy file manager.
This also reminds me of Lokigames.
It is not that simple, you fool.
The pope would first have to get his special truth cape. And that is somewhere way back in the storage room, behind the holy grail vitrine and a couple of genuine crosses of Jesus.
Wasn't the first episode about MacGuyver entering some high tech lab by redirecting lasers and fighting against automated guard bots?
MacGuyver dealt with a lot of then advanced and futuristic technology. The problem is that most of this stuff is not as exciting and new anymore. Computers were kind of a mystery back in the 80ies. This allowed for a lot of imaginative story lines. I don't believe that the feeling of MacGuyver, Tron, Knight Rider or War Games could be replicated, now that computers, the internet and electronics are about as exciting as a washing mashine.
Cell phones ruin a lot of potential plot lines, as some other poster noted. The kind of encyclopedic knowledge about technical subjects that MacGuyver had, is pretty worthless in our days of Google and Wikipedia as well.
So what is left? Maybe social engineering, as well as the usual escape plot.
You were probably only considering conspiracy theory type malice. But what you really have to be afraid of, is your neighbour Frank, the cop, who is jealous of your wife and would like to have you out of the way.
Lots of governement employees will have access rights to such a huge database. Human nature tells us that some of them will abuse the system.
Dozens of electric car startup companies have tried during those same 20 years. There have been many hyped up Teslas in the past and their effort amounted to almost nothing. Only a couple of enthusiasts really bought these cars at the end of the day.
I think that it is highly unlikely that any small startup company will ever join the ranks of Toyota, Volkswagen or GM. Competitive cars are just too complicated to design and build nowadays. Think about Airbags, ESP, the highly complicated and efficient manufacturing process. The only new big car companies will be started by governements of emerging powers like China, India, etc. It is much easier for the big guyes to make the comparatively simple change from ICEs to electric engines than it is for some boffin in a garage to build a good and modern car around an electric engine.
The established car companies have many designs in their drawers for all kinds of cars, including energy efficient cars. The consumer kept demanding something different.
I agree to what you said. But I would like to add that there is no moral or ethical reason for intelligent people to deserve wealth either. It just so happens that intelligence, among other traits, can lead to material wealth. But ethical considerations should be based on choices and behaviours. A hard working moron would be awarded with much more than a lazy colledge professor in an ideal world.
Geeks tend to like systematic explanations with logical axioms
...". Libertarianism provides a simple explanation for everything, just like "God did it" is more compelling and fullfilling to many than actually informing yourself about evolutionary biology and accepting that many questions just haven't been answered yet.
This is one of the deep flaws of libertarianism. It is easy to defend it in a debate, because there are only a few axioms you need to understand from which an answer for everything can easily be derived.
The problem is that economics is a messy real-world phenomenen. Questions of economics cannot be answered without empirical data, an understanding of sociology and psychology and much more. "It sounds logical, so it must be true" just isn't enough. True economics should be based on claims such as "... the data suggests that
I wonder if that has to do with illegality of prostitution, gambling, the war on drugs.... These items frequently show up on the libertarians lists of justifications for their ideology. Without these, a big chunk of motivation would probably be gone. And guess what, most of these are legal in most european countries. The war on drugs exists, but small amounts of reasonable drugs that geeks would use, like marihuana, usually won't get you in jail. Plus it is usually the leftist parties that actually do want to end the war on drugs.
The interesting thing about you noticing that libertarians are often antisocial is that they actually shouldn't. The whole premise of libertarianism utopia of a better future is based on individuals responsibilities and abilites. So only somebody, who genuinely loves human beings and believes humans by and large to be capable and responible, should be a libertarian.
Many here on Slashdot predicted that Vista would'nt sell, just like many did for Windows XP. Empirical evidence that Vista will indeed replace XP settles the question.
Isn't this also possible with the regular american CDMA phones? I'm curious, since as a european, I tend to think of the USA as the place where nobody stops you from driving around in a rusty car with malfunctioning brakes that you bought for 500$ from some shady used car salesman.
Hans Reiser has to be at least paranoid, which he apparently inherited from his father:Why would the FSB be interested in him? Don't they know that ReiserFS is open source?
Another nugget is his insistence on playing violent video games with his six year old son. He defended this practise in a "32-page filing" on the "culture of manhood" during his divorce trial. That alone has nutjob written all over it.Well, I don't see much of manhood in Hans Reiser's behaviour. He comes of as whiny and paranoid, accusing everybody but himself for his mistakes. And he appears even to be proud of conceiving a child in the first night with his mail order bride. That's both pathetic and idiotic!
And don't even get me started on this Sturgeon guy. It seems like lunatics come in packs. I for one wouldn't take Hans Reisers advice on anything but file systems serious.
Microsoft gives you at least a (costly) option. Apple (correct me, if I'm wrong) doesn't.
And no, I am not a MS fanboy. I've been using Linux for more then ten years almost exclusively. Lack of hassle with licensing issues being one of the reasons for my choice of OS.
Barry Schwartz argues in his book "The Paradox of Choice" that one of the reasons that people are sometimes less happy with choice rather than without choice, is that they can blame somebody else if something goes wrong. This could also apply to software. There seems to be an almost universal agreement about Windows being crap. So if something breaks, Windows and Microsoft can be blamed, even if the user himself did something stupid. Most of the malware out there is certainly not Microsoft's fault.
So maybe Linux should be advertised as free but crapy. Openoffice is in fact free but crapy, so there you go.
Linux in the form of a laundry detergent?
This is great news! It should be included in HOWTO Encourage Women in Linux. Linux usage will soar at last! Now we need a Linux beer to cover the male non-geek audience and world domination will be assured!