For what it's worth (and I'm not saying it's much) here's what I think will happen:
Apple will eventually come out with an iPod that integrates a cell phone chip set. I don't mean a cell phone that also functions as an iPod, I mean the vice versa. Gone will be the speaker and mouthpiece, an archaic throwback to the cell phone's ancestral roots as a telephone. In its place will be in-ear buds (like the ones they sell now which also have an integrated mic (this is old technology). The form factor will be the same, it will just happen to make and take calls. There will be no number keys. (For the odd time when you actually dial something not already in the phone, you'll just have to scroll around to get the numbers using the scroll wheel.) Maybe they'll add a camera, if they can manage it without destroying the form.
I'd love to be listening to music on my walk to school, and then hear the music dim and the iPod's synthesized voice announce the caller's name. If I answer it by hitting the center button, the music is paused until the conversation is done. Otherwise the music keeps playing, maybe only to be briefly interupted for me to be told of a voicemail. The iPod is an audio device, and it wouldn't be a stretch to make it a two-way audio device without mucking with the nice design of it.
I know this sounds far fetched, but I'd buy such a device in a heartbeat. I'm sick of carrying around a bunch of devices, and between my cell phone and iPod, I wish the former would go away, not the latter.
You're too negative on language, dude. Here, let me try:
Why Cage's 4'33" of Silence isn't music: If silence (nothing) can be a type of music, then it can also be a type of painting. Painting is not music, therefore silence is not music. QED
Why a teapot is not a color: a color is an adjective, at least. A teapot is a noun. QED.
Well the joke's on you, because that would be the most flattering thing that has ever happened to me. Don't you know ANYTHING about stalking? You have to choose somebody COOL to stalk. You can't stalk a dork for the same reason a woman can't rape a man.
Great. I was too young to vote when the income tax laws were passed. Do I get out of them?
If you want to look at it another way, just blame your parents. They had you in a country where they knew copyright was rampant. They signed the contract for you. (What kind of sick people would bring a child into a world where you have to pay for somebody's intellectual output?)
I wonder if they'll be able to use the original sets NASA used in the 60s to fool the Russians into believing we could launch rockets? They were great. Very believable. Man, we could really pull a prank back then, as a country.
We have natural disasters of some sort every year. We've had one major terrorist attack, ever. But where do the dollars go? All to homeland security.
I have to admit, that's a damn good point. I think some of that is because we're playing catchup with homeland security and already have programs for disaster relief. But I think you're right that we're already way out of proportion.
Ok, maybe we should just quit using the loaded term 'theft'. Let's just say violating copyright, or something. Calling it theft assumes the answer to the question in debate. It also leads people to argue that it's not theft, and they get so involved in their explanation they lose sight of the fact that it's still clearly illegal, whatever it is. We, as a society, agreed to the copyright laws. If you can just say "fuck it, i don't like 'em" than why can't we all just say "income tax law: fuck it, i don't like it". Some laws aren't moral in nature, but they are still important to the functioning of an advanced society.
Finally, while there may be arguments to be made that information should not be legally restricted don't act as if downloading is not hurting the music industry. Any honest person has to acknowledge that it is, as the fact pretty well documented. Just look at the decline of CD sales. It's an inverse of the P2P traffic.
You sure you wanna go there? The big dig is pretty much a Democrat project, with cost overruns provided by unions and regulation (and I'm guessing some nice corruption from the local old-school democrats running Boston).
Anyway, I really hate the argument: 'Well, we do stupid thing A, so quit complaining about B.' That's a sorry argument, and it only leads to stupid thing C.
Yeah, I hate the war^H^H^Hbig dig, too. But if you're not going to address what I said, don't waste your time writing.
P.S. Yeah, it's a lot of money, but it's SO COOL. You should come on over and check out the road you helped buy. It's a whole highway that goes under a city. How neato is that? Anyway, it's there for the whole country to use enroute through New England. (You know, building an interstate is a *bit* different from rebuilding a person's private property.) But, yeah, it's way overpriced. Oddly enough, if Boston were wiped off the map by a hurricane, in the long run it would actually *save* the country a lot of money. Plus, nobody would be all that upset to see Harvard under water.;-)
If you think Boston is as prone to disaster as Gulfport, you either have no memory or never read the news. In my 30 years on the planet, I've never seen any East Coast city evacuated. The South East coastal cities get evacuated more often than an elementary school during drill week.
Anyway, I really hate the argument: 'Well, we do stupid thing A, so quit complaining about B.' That's a sorry argument, and it only leads to stupid thing C.
Yeah, I hate the war, too. But if you're not going to address what I said, don't waste your time writing.
You did. Quote from the end of your first post:: "Just a crazy right wing idea.
I know. I said right wing idea. I'm not an idea, I'm a person. I've got plenty of ideas that are left of Jerry Brown, and a few that are right of Reagan. And one or two in between. So I really like what you said about there being too much polarization.
There's two sides to me on this...
I feel the same way and have the same conflict. On one hand, I hate to see people suffer. On the other hand, I'm not sure government is the most fair and efficient way to alleviate suffering. I'm also uncomfortable with the way government largess comes at the expense of liberty. But if I could know for certain it were the only way, I'd probably be a passionate socialist.
I have one of those "we're all in this together" viewpoints which is far from universal.
Ok, you got me there. I was trying to bait you, assuming you were for the rich paying for everything (which seems to be prevalent among the left, except for me and you). In truth, I agree that even the poor should pay taxes, at least in proportion to what they can afford. It's not good for only the rich to have a stake in the government, and I'm not sure why Democrats don't understand that.
Seems just as risky to minimize the risk as to set aside a bit of funding for it.
I wish I could prove that it wasn't, but to be honest it's only my best guess. I just think society tends to work best when people look out for themselves and are at least somewhat accountable for their actions. But that's not always best, and shouldn't be taken too far or people fall through the cracks, so I don't know if I'm going too far in this instance. Anyway, thanks for a great discussion.
The feds? Who are these feds, and where do they get their money from? Pentagon bake sales?
Replace the word feds with "people of Chicago" and you'll see that your argument looks a little less impressive. Replace it with "working class of St. Paul" and it looks even worse. There are no feds, just people.
Anyway, don't put words into my mouth, Fidel. I never said we don't help people when they need it. I was suggesting we do something to make sure they don't need it. That is, either rebuild the cities elsewhere, or have localities in dangerous areas pay for their own risk. My thinking is that it would motivate them to be better prepared, and would be more fair to taxpayers in the rest of the country.
But I never said we don't help people once a trajedy occurs. Reread my post and you'll see your arguing somebody elses argument.
First off, federal disaster aid gets spread around. It does not all go to hurricanes. That should be enough of a counter, but for the sake of argument I'm going to pretend what you base your point on is true.
What it gets spent on is irrelevent. That it doesn't really get spread around is the issue. It's basically a money transfer from good places to live to bad places to live.
Assuming that what you want happens, and federal aid for disaster relief becomes a thing of the past, what are the effects? You seem to assert that people will simply not wish to live with the risk, so they'll move. That might apply to a relatively small number of people with the means to move, but what about everyone else, the people lacking not only the means/education/whatever to pick up and move, but also most in need of aid after a disaster?
I think I didn't explain myself very well. I didn't mean to suggest individuals pay the risk alone. That's impossible, and not how things work. I was trying to suggest that the people in the area pool their risk. In other words, on the state and county level. I don't think it's a radical idea to suggest that the people of Florida should pay for Florida's risk.
Anyway, these are just some crazy left wing ideas. You know, that big things might have effects.
You know the world's coming to an end when a liberal is pointing out the notion of unintended consequences!:-) (But I guess you know the world's still in it's place when it's with regard to the unintented consequences of killing a huge government transfer program.)
Anyway, who said I was right wing? I just knew people around here would think my idea was. Remember when being left wing was about being fair to the working class and not wasting money that could be spent on UNavoidable problems? Do you forget in all of your vicarious generosity that the tax money for these huge federal transfer programs comes from the middle class? Do you realize that to a certain extent there are poor people in Virginia paying taxes to rebuild the property of rich business owners in New Orleans?
I know the mental image you have is of a rich guy paying for the clean up, but there just aren't enough of them around to pay for EVERYTHING. Most of our tax money still comes from average joes like me, and quite few below average joes who really can't afford it. A tax that you don't benefit from is ALWAYS a regressive tax since a poor person can less afford to lose a dollar than a rich person can afford to lose a thousand. So if saving the working class some tax money by having a more intelligent location of our population isn't really left wing, I don't know if there are any good wings left to be had.
But you're absolutely right: I have no idea if this can be done without unpredictable consequences. But can't that be said about any change? I guess I'm just more progressive than you.
Can't argue with much you said. I don't really care if they put the semantics on top of the FS or integrate it, as long as it works and is sufficiently fast.
About the issue of physical metaphors: I agree that part of the reason is simply familiarity. But I think that's unneccesary. The only reason they are familiar is historical proximity. And they will become less familiar as time goes on and you see things like file cabinets go away. So we should ask ourselves: what should be familiar to the next generation? Will it be a compromising metaphor based on yesterday's machines, or will it be something of our choosing? Note that the people who invented folders and files (the real ones) were perhaps abandoning the familiar paradigms of their time in doing so. We shouldn't give them any more benefit of the doubt than their predecessors (stacks of scrolls?) were given.
Denver, however nice it is, can't contribute as much to the economy as a coastal city.
Denver contributes more to the national economy than any of the affected cities, I believe.
So, if you don't build in areas exposed to large scale disasters, you don't have much of an economy anymore.
Well: Boston, NY, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, Denver, Houston, and LA (maybe) are in relatively safe areas to build. Those are pretty much our biggest economic cities. We have plenty of ports that aren't in flood zones. Please, the location of our cities is about history, not intelligent locating. We know better now, and we should act like it.
Now, pretty much the entire eastern seaboard and gulf coast are exposed to hurricanes (except maybe Masschusetts and Maine).
Yes, but WE'RE ABOVE SEALEVEL and set back from exposed ocean enough to weather it. You don't see NY get flooded every decade, do you?
New Orleans sinking below sea level certainly doesn't help them survive something like this.
It's always been below sea level. And they've always known that. They should've had a trust fund or something for this. They have no excuse for billing the nation to bail out their cesspool of a city (yes, I've been there). We should and we will, but we should all get free drinks there for the next few years.
Now, you aren't going to build a city that can survive if mother nature really gets pissed off, but you can make one that will take the normal stuff in stride and take less damage from the big ones. In the latter case, federal help for those who still got the brunt of it seems alright to me.
A cat 4/5 hurricane IS normal for that part of the country! Federal money should go to unpredictable/unavoidable disasters. Not the hurricane of the month. These folks need to either move or pay for their own insurance. Now, they have a perfect opportunity to take their insurance money and leave. But will they? No. Because they know we'll bail them out in a decade when this happens again.
The author (whose name bears an odd resemblence to his university) is only talking about statistical studies. Something all of us knew, which is probably why we all avoided the social sciences to begin with. So you can all go back to your homes. Nothing to see here. Quantum mechanics still works.
And to answer the question of the guy who asked why we should still listen to scientists: because science WORKS. In true science, theories are testable, and nature is the ultimate BS detector. We know quantum mechanics is correct to within certain energy bounds not because of the peer review process, but because it correctly predicts the results of countless experiments. This is fundamentally different from epidemiology, which is the subject of the original article, because the theories of epidemilogy (like don't eat butter--no, wait eat butter) aren't testable.
We all knew this to begin with. This isn't really news. After the fourth time the medical profession reversed itself on whether or not it was good to drink wine, I pretty much quit listening to the cheese warning correlation monkeys.
Well, I think you're sort of right. The Feds waste a lot of money, and this is HUGE waste of money in the sense that it didn't have to happen. But given that it did, I totally agree that we need to help them. But the originally poster wasn't suggesting we don't help them, he was pointing out the obvious: the nation shouldn't pay, repeatedly, the bail out people who live in uninhabitable parts of the country. If these people actually had to pay for their own insurance, I bet a lot of them wouldn't live there.
Do you really think people in Denver are as likely to suffer a natural disaster as people in San Fran or along the banks of the Mississippi? Only a few areas in the country recieve federal disaster funds, and it's always the same places. Maybe people, in the future, should pay for their own risks, the same way the rest of us do. Just a crazy right wing idea.
I think you're wrong in your objections, for the following simple reason: the functionality of a metadata FS is a superset of a traditional hierarchical FS. EVERYTHING you're claiming is missing in a metadata FS can be accomplished in metadata. One set of tags, for example, can mimic the unique file/folder structure you're used to, if that's what you want. I really don't see what the problem is. If you insist on the old disk/folder/file thing, you can have that. Just have a , tag on each file. Have a ball!
I don't understand your problem with the fact that files could theoretically get 'lost' if you erase enough tags. Isn't that kind of like objecting to the fact that one can unlink files (i.e. delete them) from volume maps? Yeah, you can destroy stuff. How is that different from anything else? If anything, you're more likely to lose files with a standard FS, because one you misplace a file, it's harder to find by content.
In fact, everything you objected to seems to be BETTER done in a metadata FS. For example, if you want to do partial backups, you can have sets defined in metadata. These can be much more flexible than partial backups based on physical location or file.
Seriously, it's about time we throw away the ludicrous folder/file paradigm. A computer is a conceptual clean slate. I have no idea why we so often insist upon porting concepts from the real world (folders, desktop, pages) when there's no reason to believe what works in physical space is the best for virtual space. There's no reason for computers (and their file systems) to be conceptually backwards compatible with the physical world.
I've never looked at a lit cable, no. But I know that 1550 nm is way outside the visible (almost twice the wavelength of the reddest light you can see) so if you're seeing anything, it's some nonlinearly upconverted light from either the amplifier pump light (possible) or from the signal itself (unlikely). This seems unlikely, or long haul transmission wouldn't work so well.
If you were looking at a multimode cable, you weren't looking at a long haul telecom cable. Those are all singlemode. If it was multimode, it could've been a short link (like for digital audio) that used LEDs on the long end of the visible spectrum.
Yeah, that was my point. Learn to follow a thread before you insult somebody's reading skills. The grandparent was suggesting (humorously, I believe) that the part of the ice that remains above the waterline would contribute to the water level rising. As you pointed out, that's completely wrong. And yet a ton of people around here don't seem to grasp that, and apparently some of these people have mod points. Hence, I suggested people mod down the grandparent.
(2) We're talking about environmental scientists, not qualified scientists. Environmental scientists are basically activists with degrees in general science.
Great. A post that violates freshman physics and it gets modded up as insightful. I trust it is the moderators who are the fools, as I assume the parent was just making a joke.
So, moderators who voted this 'insightful' instead of 'funny': if you add cargo to a boat, are you suggesting it won't sink deeper into the water (thereby displacing more water) if you make sure to place the cargo above the water line?
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For what it's worth (and I'm not saying it's much) here's what I think will happen:
Apple will eventually come out with an iPod that integrates a cell phone chip set. I don't mean a cell phone that also functions as an iPod, I mean the vice versa. Gone will be the speaker and mouthpiece, an archaic throwback to the cell phone's ancestral roots as a telephone. In its place will be in-ear buds (like the ones they sell now which also have an integrated mic (this is old technology). The form factor will be the same, it will just happen to make and take calls. There will be no number keys. (For the odd time when you actually dial something not already in the phone, you'll just have to scroll around to get the numbers using the scroll wheel.) Maybe they'll add a camera, if they can manage it without destroying the form.
I'd love to be listening to music on my walk to school, and then hear the music dim and the iPod's synthesized voice announce the caller's name. If I answer it by hitting the center button, the music is paused until the conversation is done. Otherwise the music keeps playing, maybe only to be briefly interupted for me to be told of a voicemail. The iPod is an audio device, and it wouldn't be a stretch to make it a two-way audio device without mucking with the nice design of it.
I know this sounds far fetched, but I'd buy such a device in a heartbeat. I'm sick of carrying around a bunch of devices, and between my cell phone and iPod, I wish the former would go away, not the latter.
You're too negative on language, dude. Here, let me try:
Why Cage's 4'33" of Silence isn't music: If silence (nothing) can be a type of music, then it can also be a type of painting. Painting is not music, therefore silence is not music. QED
Why a teapot is not a color: a color is an adjective, at least. A teapot is a noun. QED.
Says the guy with plenty of food and water...
They might actually start watching the fucking pool. What, was this girl invisible or something? Was the water opaque?
Well the joke's on you, because that would be the most flattering thing that has ever happened to me. Don't you know ANYTHING about stalking? You have to choose somebody COOL to stalk. You can't stalk a dork for the same reason a woman can't rape a man.
Great. I was too young to vote when the income tax laws were passed. Do I get out of them?
If you want to look at it another way, just blame your parents. They had you in a country where they knew copyright was rampant. They signed the contract for you. (What kind of sick people would bring a child into a world where you have to pay for somebody's intellectual output?)
I wonder if they'll be able to use the original sets NASA used in the 60s to fool the Russians into believing we could launch rockets? They were great. Very believable. Man, we could really pull a prank back then, as a country.
I have to admit, that's a damn good point. I think some of that is because we're playing catchup with homeland security and already have programs for disaster relief. But I think you're right that we're already way out of proportion.
Ok, maybe we should just quit using the loaded term 'theft'. Let's just say violating copyright, or something. Calling it theft assumes the answer to the question in debate. It also leads people to argue that it's not theft, and they get so involved in their explanation they lose sight of the fact that it's still clearly illegal, whatever it is. We, as a society, agreed to the copyright laws. If you can just say "fuck it, i don't like 'em" than why can't we all just say "income tax law: fuck it, i don't like it". Some laws aren't moral in nature, but they are still important to the functioning of an advanced society.
Finally, while there may be arguments to be made that information should not be legally restricted don't act as if downloading is not hurting the music industry. Any honest person has to acknowledge that it is, as the fact pretty well documented. Just look at the decline of CD sales. It's an inverse of the P2P traffic.
You sure you wanna go there? The big dig is pretty much a Democrat project, with cost overruns provided by unions and regulation (and I'm guessing some nice corruption from the local old-school democrats running Boston).
;-)
Anyway, I really hate the argument: 'Well, we do stupid thing A, so quit complaining about B.' That's a sorry argument, and it only leads to stupid thing C.
Yeah, I hate the war^H^H^Hbig dig, too. But if you're not going to address what I said, don't waste your time writing.
P.S. Yeah, it's a lot of money, but it's SO COOL. You should come on over and check out the road you helped buy. It's a whole highway that goes under a city. How neato is that? Anyway, it's there for the whole country to use enroute through New England. (You know, building an interstate is a *bit* different from rebuilding a person's private property.) But, yeah, it's way overpriced. Oddly enough, if Boston were wiped off the map by a hurricane, in the long run it would actually *save* the country a lot of money. Plus, nobody would be all that upset to see Harvard under water.
If you think Boston is as prone to disaster as Gulfport, you either have no memory or never read the news. In my 30 years on the planet, I've never seen any East Coast city evacuated. The South East coastal cities get evacuated more often than an elementary school during drill week.
Anyway, I really hate the argument: 'Well, we do stupid thing A, so quit complaining about B.' That's a sorry argument, and it only leads to stupid thing C.
Yeah, I hate the war, too. But if you're not going to address what I said, don't waste your time writing.
I know. I said right wing idea. I'm not an idea, I'm a person. I've got plenty of ideas that are left of Jerry Brown, and a few that are right of Reagan. And one or two in between. So I really like what you said about there being too much polarization.
There's two sides to me on this...
I feel the same way and have the same conflict. On one hand, I hate to see people suffer. On the other hand, I'm not sure government is the most fair and efficient way to alleviate suffering. I'm also uncomfortable with the way government largess comes at the expense of liberty. But if I could know for certain it were the only way, I'd probably be a passionate socialist.
I have one of those "we're all in this together" viewpoints which is far from universal.
Ok, you got me there. I was trying to bait you, assuming you were for the rich paying for everything (which seems to be prevalent among the left, except for me and you). In truth, I agree that even the poor should pay taxes, at least in proportion to what they can afford. It's not good for only the rich to have a stake in the government, and I'm not sure why Democrats don't understand that.
Seems just as risky to minimize the risk as to set aside a bit of funding for it.
I wish I could prove that it wasn't, but to be honest it's only my best guess. I just think society tends to work best when people look out for themselves and are at least somewhat accountable for their actions. But that's not always best, and shouldn't be taken too far or people fall through the cracks, so I don't know if I'm going too far in this instance. Anyway, thanks for a great discussion.
The feds? Who are these feds, and where do they get their money from? Pentagon bake sales?
Replace the word feds with "people of Chicago" and you'll see that your argument looks a little less impressive. Replace it with "working class of St. Paul" and it looks even worse. There are no feds, just people.
Anyway, don't put words into my mouth, Fidel. I never said we don't help people when they need it. I was suggesting we do something to make sure they don't need it. That is, either rebuild the cities elsewhere, or have localities in dangerous areas pay for their own risk. My thinking is that it would motivate them to be better prepared, and would be more fair to taxpayers in the rest of the country.
But I never said we don't help people once a trajedy occurs. Reread my post and you'll see your arguing somebody elses argument.
What it gets spent on is irrelevent. That it doesn't really get spread around is the issue. It's basically a money transfer from good places to live to bad places to live.
Assuming that what you want happens, and federal aid for disaster relief becomes a thing of the past, what are the effects? You seem to assert that people will simply not wish to live with the risk, so they'll move. That might apply to a relatively small number of people with the means to move, but what about everyone else, the people lacking not only the means/education/whatever to pick up and move, but also most in need of aid after a disaster?
I think I didn't explain myself very well. I didn't mean to suggest individuals pay the risk alone. That's impossible, and not how things work. I was trying to suggest that the people in the area pool their risk. In other words, on the state and county level. I don't think it's a radical idea to suggest that the people of Florida should pay for Florida's risk.
Anyway, these are just some crazy left wing ideas. You know, that big things might have effects.
You know the world's coming to an end when a liberal is pointing out the notion of unintended consequences! :-) (But I guess you know the world's still in it's place when it's with regard to the unintented consequences of killing a huge government transfer program.)
Anyway, who said I was right wing? I just knew people around here would think my idea was. Remember when being left wing was about being fair to the working class and not wasting money that could be spent on UNavoidable problems? Do you forget in all of your vicarious generosity that the tax money for these huge federal transfer programs comes from the middle class? Do you realize that to a certain extent there are poor people in Virginia paying taxes to rebuild the property of rich business owners in New Orleans?
I know the mental image you have is of a rich guy paying for the clean up, but there just aren't enough of them around to pay for EVERYTHING. Most of our tax money still comes from average joes like me, and quite few below average joes who really can't afford it. A tax that you don't benefit from is ALWAYS a regressive tax since a poor person can less afford to lose a dollar than a rich person can afford to lose a thousand. So if saving the working class some tax money by having a more intelligent location of our population isn't really left wing, I don't know if there are any good wings left to be had.
But you're absolutely right: I have no idea if this can be done without unpredictable consequences. But can't that be said about any change? I guess I'm just more progressive than you.
Can't argue with much you said. I don't really care if they put the semantics on top of the FS or integrate it, as long as it works and is sufficiently fast.
About the issue of physical metaphors: I agree that part of the reason is simply familiarity. But I think that's unneccesary. The only reason they are familiar is historical proximity. And they will become less familiar as time goes on and you see things like file cabinets go away. So we should ask ourselves: what should be familiar to the next generation? Will it be a compromising metaphor based on yesterday's machines, or will it be something of our choosing? Note that the people who invented folders and files (the real ones) were perhaps abandoning the familiar paradigms of their time in doing so. We shouldn't give them any more benefit of the doubt than their predecessors (stacks of scrolls?) were given.
Actually, I can't argue with anything you said. The wings just aren't what they used to be!
Denver contributes more to the national economy than any of the affected cities, I believe.
So, if you don't build in areas exposed to large scale disasters, you don't have much of an economy anymore.
Well: Boston, NY, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, Denver, Houston, and LA (maybe) are in relatively safe areas to build. Those are pretty much our biggest economic cities. We have plenty of ports that aren't in flood zones. Please, the location of our cities is about history, not intelligent locating. We know better now, and we should act like it.
Now, pretty much the entire eastern seaboard and gulf coast are exposed to hurricanes (except maybe Masschusetts and Maine).
Yes, but WE'RE ABOVE SEALEVEL and set back from exposed ocean enough to weather it. You don't see NY get flooded every decade, do you?
New Orleans sinking below sea level certainly doesn't help them survive something like this.
It's always been below sea level. And they've always known that. They should've had a trust fund or something for this. They have no excuse for billing the nation to bail out their cesspool of a city (yes, I've been there). We should and we will, but we should all get free drinks there for the next few years.
Now, you aren't going to build a city that can survive if mother nature really gets pissed off, but you can make one that will take the normal stuff in stride and take less damage from the big ones. In the latter case, federal help for those who still got the brunt of it seems alright to me.
A cat 4/5 hurricane IS normal for that part of the country! Federal money should go to unpredictable/unavoidable disasters. Not the hurricane of the month. These folks need to either move or pay for their own insurance. Now, they have a perfect opportunity to take their insurance money and leave. But will they? No. Because they know we'll bail them out in a decade when this happens again.
The author (whose name bears an odd resemblence to his university) is only talking about statistical studies. Something all of us knew, which is probably why we all avoided the social sciences to begin with. So you can all go back to your homes. Nothing to see here. Quantum mechanics still works.
And to answer the question of the guy who asked why we should still listen to scientists: because science WORKS. In true science, theories are testable, and nature is the ultimate BS detector. We know quantum mechanics is correct to within certain energy bounds not because of the peer review process, but because it correctly predicts the results of countless experiments. This is fundamentally different from epidemiology, which is the subject of the original article, because the theories of epidemilogy (like don't eat butter--no, wait eat butter) aren't testable.
We all knew this to begin with. This isn't really news. After the fourth time the medical profession reversed itself on whether or not it was good to drink wine, I pretty much quit listening to the cheese warning correlation monkeys.
Well, I think you're sort of right. The Feds waste a lot of money, and this is HUGE waste of money in the sense that it didn't have to happen. But given that it did, I totally agree that we need to help them. But the originally poster wasn't suggesting we don't help them, he was pointing out the obvious: the nation shouldn't pay, repeatedly, the bail out people who live in uninhabitable parts of the country. If these people actually had to pay for their own insurance, I bet a lot of them wouldn't live there.
Do you really think people in Denver are as likely to suffer a natural disaster as people in San Fran or along the banks of the Mississippi? Only a few areas in the country recieve federal disaster funds, and it's always the same places. Maybe people, in the future, should pay for their own risks, the same way the rest of us do. Just a crazy right wing idea.
I think you're wrong in your objections, for the following simple reason: the functionality of a metadata FS is a superset of a traditional hierarchical FS. EVERYTHING you're claiming is missing in a metadata FS can be accomplished in metadata. One set of tags, for example, can mimic the unique file/folder structure you're used to, if that's what you want. I really don't see what the problem is. If you insist on the old disk/folder/file thing, you can have that. Just have a , tag on each file. Have a ball!
I don't understand your problem with the fact that files could theoretically get 'lost' if you erase enough tags. Isn't that kind of like objecting to the fact that one can unlink files (i.e. delete them) from volume maps? Yeah, you can destroy stuff. How is that different from anything else? If anything, you're more likely to lose files with a standard FS, because one you misplace a file, it's harder to find by content.
In fact, everything you objected to seems to be BETTER done in a metadata FS. For example, if you want to do partial backups, you can have sets defined in metadata. These can be much more flexible than partial backups based on physical location or file.
Seriously, it's about time we throw away the ludicrous folder/file paradigm. A computer is a conceptual clean slate. I have no idea why we so often insist upon porting concepts from the real world (folders, desktop, pages) when there's no reason to believe what works in physical space is the best for virtual space. There's no reason for computers (and their file systems) to be conceptually backwards compatible with the physical world.
Interesting. What wavelength do they use for multimode? I assumed it was something like 880 nm, which I figured you wouldn't be able to see.
I've never looked at a lit cable, no. But I know that 1550 nm is way outside the visible (almost twice the wavelength of the reddest light you can see) so if you're seeing anything, it's some nonlinearly upconverted light from either the amplifier pump light (possible) or from the signal itself (unlikely). This seems unlikely, or long haul transmission wouldn't work so well.
If you were looking at a multimode cable, you weren't looking at a long haul telecom cable. Those are all singlemode. If it was multimode, it could've been a short link (like for digital audio) that used LEDs on the long end of the visible spectrum.
Yeah, that was my point. Learn to follow a thread before you insult somebody's reading skills. The grandparent was suggesting (humorously, I believe) that the part of the ice that remains above the waterline would contribute to the water level rising. As you pointed out, that's completely wrong. And yet a ton of people around here don't seem to grasp that, and apparently some of these people have mod points. Hence, I suggested people mod down the grandparent.
Ok, do you have the picture now?
(1) You must be new here.
(2) We're talking about environmental scientists, not qualified scientists. Environmental scientists are basically activists with degrees in general science.
Great. A post that violates freshman physics and it gets modded up as insightful. I trust it is the moderators who are the fools, as I assume the parent was just making a joke.
So, moderators who voted this 'insightful' instead of 'funny': if you add cargo to a boat, are you suggesting it won't sink deeper into the water (thereby displacing more water) if you make sure to place the cargo above the water line?