You're admitting that there are not studies showing significant negative consequences to epidurals or forceps, yet you also state that no such studies are needed because these things are clearly bad. Again: you certainly have every right to manage your childbirth as you see fit. However when you make such arguments universally, it comes across as argument from emotion not scientific study. I would argue that this impulse is exactly what the article is referring to.
It's important to make a distinction here. Don't make the the mistake of thinking I am "arguing for" formula, epidurals, or forceps. I'm not taking sides against you. The thing I really care about is the rejection of scientific knowledge in favor of emotional response. What is assumed vs. what is proven. That to me seems like a growing mental epidemic, particularly in the United States. And not just with respect to childbirth or vaccines.
In the last paragraph I was indeed saying that if we suppress common deadly diseases, there are greater opportunities for more subtle or long-term ailments to appear in the populace, simply because a greater percentage of people are living longer, who would have otherwise died. In addition when it comes to deadly disease like cancer, the percentage rates of occurrence MUST increase as other deadly diseases are eliminated. It is a zero-sum game because human mortality is always 100%.
The other point I raise (that is more applicable to autism) is the question of our changing medical knowledge. You allude to this with respect to recommending formula--we now know that mother's milk passes important antibodies to baby. Autism is subject to this effect to a great degree because it is a behavioral disorder that is behaviorily diagnosed. Behavioral disorders in general are only relatively recently recognized, and their diagnosis changes over time. This makes it problematical to compare rates of occurence between generations, because the tool of measurement itself has changed over time. So are we comparing actual objective rates of occurence? Or just differing levels of knowledge and norms of diagnosis? That is not an easy nut to crack.
Everything you wrote is (basically) true. The Earth and the natural biosphere will certainly adapt to warmer conditions. The problem is that we have a lot of hard-to-move infrastructure (like cities for instance) that are above the current sea level but might be below the new sea level of the warmer Earth. So, it might be really, really, really expensive to deal with the new climate.
I've never seen the original version with the narration--the first time I saw Bladerunner it was the Director's Cut at the Uptown Theatre in Washington, DC. The Uptown has a HUGE curved screen and killer sound. It was an amazing movie experience, being able to just sink into the movie and the world it depicted.
So in short, horse poop on you. The version I saw had no narration and I did not have any problem following it or enjoying it. But then again I happen to love movies with strange, immersive experiences. My favorite of all time is 2001.
What I meant was that you are exaggerating the negative consequences of formula, epidurals, and forceps, not the extent to which they were used. It's certainly your perogative to avoid those during your child's birth, but in the context of a discussion of vaccines, their impact pales next to diseases like measles or polio.
In terms of rare diseases on the rise--when common diseases are suppressed, less common diseases are expressed. Another factor may be varying diagnoses. Reporting bias can present as a mysterious and widespread new variable.
Before we talk about radical reforms we need to identify the specific defects with the existing system. I do not see much evidence that the USPS is a drag of any significance on the national economy.
Oh, I don't doubt that rural deliveries would be more expensive -- but that's the responsibility you accept when you decide to move further away from urban areas. In the United States, at least, most people who live in small towns or rural communities do so because that is where they were born and grew up, not because they chose to leave a city.
Shit, 30 years ago women were still being told baby formula was better than breast milk, and that giving birth was a medical procedure that had to involve heavily drugging the mother (and baby) and pulling the infant out with forceps. You are dramatically exaggerating the issues with childbirth 30 years ago. I was born 30 years ago and so were millions of other people. My generation enjoys much better health and lower incidences of debilitating or deadly diseases than the generation born 30 years previous to ours. In 1947, tens of thousands of children suffered the effects of polio, and thousands died. My generation in the U.S. never experienced those horrors, because wild polio was wiped out by the time we were born, by universal vaccination.
The burden on proof is on the legitimacy of whatever you are trying to sell me and put in my child. Not on my skepticism of it. Ok? And that burden of proof is both high and onerous, because we were born with most of what we need to survive, and augementations to that I want evaluated very heavily before just assuming we've figured out something better than a few million years of evolution. There is dramatically ample proof that the vaccines currently given to children have legitimate positive effects. If you question that you might as well question penicillin, hygiene, double-blind studies and the rest of the bases of western medicine.
I get your point, which is that it is up to scientists to prove that the things we inject into our bodies are as safe as possible. And scientists and doctors take that responsibility very very seriously. There may indeed be as-yet-unknown negative side effects to vaccination, and scientists acknowledge that possibility and try their best to study and look for it. But so far, they have not found a connection to things like autism or asthma.
Maybe they will find problems in the future. But at worst that will create a tough question of trade off, because there is simply no question that the vaccines are very effective at fighting their respective diseases. If your child has a 0.0001% chance of developing a debilitating disease FROM a vaccine, or a 1% chance of dying from a different disease WITHOUT the vaccine, that is not such a clear-cut decision.
Consider this tradeoff:
a) We know for a fact that vaccines are extremely effective at preventing many nasty, often deadly diseases in children. Numerous studies have demonstrated clear evidence, as has our common experience with the dramatic decline of deaths due to diseases like polio, smallpox, measles, hepatitis, tetanus, etc.
vs.
b) Some people think some vaccines might be factors in the development of certain diseases, but numerous studies have failed to find a linkage--either it does not exist, or is such a weak connection that it is easily missed in the data.
"Going to Mars" is a project--it has a defined start and finish, and will have a definite price tag. The war in Iraq is another.
Social Security and Medicare are onging programs (processes) with no defined end points. "Problems" and "solutions" are simply matters of where the lines cross in various projections, which means that slight changes in the structure--or adjustments of assumptions--can have large aggregate effects.
If you try to wait to "solve" processes before taking on projects, you'll never get to the projects. The nature of processes/programs is that they require regular adjustment, because the future is unknowable and variable. The intersections in Social Security and Medicare can easily be put much farther into the future with only slight adjustments. This sort of thing is politically palatable and has been done before. If we think a project is important we should not wait for that.
On my NOLS course, one of the instructors laid out the four quadrants of expertise, in the order that most people progress through them.
"Unconscious Incompetent" -- you're bad at something but don't understand that you're bad at it "Conscious Incompetent" -- you're bad at something but understand that you're bad at it "Conscious Competent" -- you're good at something and understand why you're good "Unconscious Competent" -- you're good at something and can't really explain how you do it
Most people only reach the third level for a given activity. The last level would be people who are "naturals" and can't really explain why they are so much better than others. The most dangerous place to be, in terms of risk activities like climbing, is the first level. At least at the second level you understand your limitations and can stay within your bounds. The first level people are the ones who take stupid, uncalculated risks and get killed. Getting through this level is one of the main purposes of taking classes or doing an apprenticeship with someone more experienced.
The other aspect is to focus on what you DO and ACCOMPLISH rather than what you ARE. Thus a smart child is defined as someone who accomplishes smart things--not just someone who tests well or comes across as smart. I think this is at the heart of teaching kids how to succeed. It's not enough to feel smart or special. If you're not getting A's in your classes, you're not ACTING smart. Yes, it requires hard work to do so--part of being "smart" is working hard. It's dumb to fail at something just from lack of effort.
A kid can learn to face failure at anything they are trying to learn to do. Skateboarding, rock climbing, skiing, bicycling, karate, etc are all noncompetitive sports, but they are still difficult to learn and get good at.
Or did you mean like playing soccer without keeping score? I think that's fine for very little kids, where the main thing is to instill a love of physical activity and see which activities they like better. But when kids get to 8, 10, and especially teenagers, yeah, I agree that there should be winners and losers at the end of a game.
My sister is 16 years younger than me, and when she was about 8 I started taking her whitewater kayaking (a sport that I love). She got incredibly frustrated when she couldn't get the boat to go where she wanted it to (a common problem when learning to whitewater kayak). This mirrored other experiences where she would get extremely frustrated when accomplishment didn't come easily.
Rather than refer to intelligence or smarts or ability, my tack was always to emphasize that it is difficult to learn things. I tried to manage her expectations by reminding her that the process of learning always involves failure, so if she wanted to learn anything she better get used to failing and getting frustrated as she learned. "If you could do things right away it wouldn't be called 'learning'."
She did become an ok kayaker, although she's more into karate and volleyball now. But as she's grown up we've seen less pouting and tantrums, and more and more confidence.
I guess that implicit in my message is the assumption that she could learn anything if she tried hard enough. But I didn't couch it in that language.
Scientists observe existing systems and try to describe them. The concept of an scientific experiment only makes sense when there is a pre-existing system to run the experiment on or within. Such a concept is at odds with an all-powerful, omniscient Creator.
Perhaps it would be better to say engineer--someone who applies tools to design machines, or solve problems. Or perhaps even better, an artist--someone who brings something new into existence through their own creativity.
You say you are not Christian, so perhaps you believe that God does exist within a pre-built framework, and thus can run experiments. But that raises the question of what created the system and what created God. Such a belief is indistinguishable from atheism...all it does is introduce a middleman and displace the really fundamental question by one level of abstraction.
I pick this nit because "science", "scientist", "experiment", "theory", etc. are all words that have very specific definitions, and a lot of the confusion/hype/bullshit today results from mis- or vague understandings of these definitions. Too often people just slap scientific or scientific-sounding words on their chosen subject matter as a way of conferring legitimacy. IMO it is not so different from a Pacific cargo cult building runways to call back the planes of WWII. They go through what they think are the right motions, but don't understand the concepts.
I haven't read every post but I have yet to see any of the high-modded posts mention a crucial aspect to any weight-loss or health-improvement plan:
Get enough sleep!
This is a pretty common failing, especially among geeks. But getting plenty of sleep is essential to both physical and mental health.
This is especially true if you're stepping up your excercise level. Your body will not be used to the extra work and will need more time to recover at night. Also, being well-rested means you'll be more alert and happy during the day, and therefore less likely to snack compulsively, and more likely to make your gym appointment.
Yes, I see the irony of posting this at 1:30am.:-)
The iMac shipped with three replacements for a floppy drive. The first was the Ethernet port...remember that the "i" in the name stood for "Internet." The other was the USB port--flashdrives were well on their way to becoming common when the iMac hit the market. Either one was a superior way of moving data compared to the old 1.44 MB floppy. On top of that it had a modem.
The whole idea was that data would move across the pipe more and more, so the floppy was not necessary. The success of the iMac, and the way we work now, shows that was an accurate prediction.
Hundreds of thousands of German civilians died in other carpet-bombing attacks. Overall if you add up the deaths due to "strategic bombing" during the two theatres of WWII, the estimate ranges come out fairly similar--in the range of 300,000 to 600,000 deaths per theatre. That includes the two atomic bombs in Japan. Yet, the firebombing of Germany does not draw nearly the focus of attention that the nuclear bombs due. I believe that is a form of hindsight bias--nuclear weapons went on to define fear for the next 60 years, while firebombs did not.
In comparison, the Holocaust alone resulted in the deaths of 5 million non-combatant citizens, an order of magnitude greater than the deaths due to strategic bombing. In the Pacific theatre the deaths of Chinese citizens alone numbered into the millions, although I don't have the estimates off hand.
The number that always stuck with me was that Russia is estimated to have sustained about 25 million (!) deaths during WWII.
The nuclear attacks were horrible and I hope such a thing never happens again. As an American I will do my part to ensure that is true. But they are only one of many aspects of mass killing during WWII, that we should all hope to prevent in the future.
Why would anyone want to move the plot forward, or the characters to develop further? People are already super-invested in things the way they "know" them to be. These time plots are the perfect device for Star Trek--the characters and situations are already well-known and familiar to the hardcore fans. It's like that kids show Blues Clues, which shows the same episode every day for a week because little kids crave the familiar.
When a business wants to hide the wrong-doing of an executive, they buy them out and everyone keeps their mouth shut. One publicly terminates an executive when one wants to send a public message. Often the message is that the business is responsive to a situation. So if the executive is harassing someone, or committing a crime, the business can try to limit its liability by showing that it took all possible steps to remedy the situation.
Also, at the executive level, ticky-tack reasons for firing someone aren't really applicable. If the CEO doesn't like the CIO, he just cans him and brings in his own guy. This can be a kind of message too...fire a rival and consolidate power. And if that turns in an employment lawsuit, a little gift violation is not going to stand up in court.
All LCD panels are built out of glass anyway, so there's no physical reason a touchscreen with a glass cover couldn't be just as big as any other screen. The problem in the past is that to do touch, you needed a pressure-sensing layer (which flexes with pressure) in front of the LCD. The protective layer over that could not be glass since it had to flex, so it was plastic--easily scratched and dulled the image somewhat. A major advantage of the new MultiTouch technology is that it uses capacitance sensing, so it does not have to flex at all. It can be placed behind a rigid glass cover, which is clearer and more resistant to scratching.
There may be issues scaling up the MultiTouch sensor, but I doubt the glass cover is one of them.
Steve had not been forewarned about the tablet question, but it became obvious he had given the topic serious consideration. He listed a number of reasons why Apple was not interested. And they provide some of the best insights into why Apple does or does not do a product.
The tablet situation
First, he said, tablet computers were not a big enough market for Apple to spend its limited resources chasing. And even if the market grew, it would not reach a size to be of interest. The form factor was all wrong. Apple was more interested in defining markets than trying to catch other companies that were busy trying to create a market for questionable products. Still, some of the NIH scientists pressed the issue. Steve's follow-up answer was the most impressive I had heard him give.
First, he said, the wireless bandwidth for huge images, plus the security needed to successfully do what NIH wanted, was just not on the horizon. (Apple staff had been notably fuzzy earlier in the briefing about wireless standards after 802.11b.) Plus, tablets' screen resolution was nowhere near that required for NIH's high-quality medical images. Finally, any product designed to work in the medical field would attract significant liability. The hint was that Apple wasn't interested in anything with that kind of potential liability. That pretty well shut down the issue.
So, no tablet. But NIH at the time had more than 2,000 BlackBerry users. The NIH CIO wanted Apple to push RIM for better compatibility. Tough: Steve basically said it was another niche product, and that while there would be convergence of computing and phones, the BlackBerry was not that product. He did not see that compatibility as an area where Apple should spend any effort. So what will the converged product - what is being called the "iPhone" (even though that's a Cisco trademark) - look like? He said the really converged, ubiquitous devices would have to fit in your shirt pocket, and be better than either a phone or a computer by itself. From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jan/04/newmedia.media
Since this article ran, Apple has demonstrated two technologies that might change that answer a bit. 802.11n networking approaches the speed needed to work with high-resolution images wirelessly. And Apple is now sourcing LCD screens with very high resolution--the iPod nano screen has about 200 pixels per inch, which is quite close to the resolution of printed photos.
However I'll believe it when I see it. The big question with tablets has always been data entry, and thus they are closely linked with handwriting recognition in the marketplace. Handwriting recognition has been an almost total market failure, so tablets have been an almost total failure. Perhaps Apple will try a full-size onscreen keyboard. Or perhaps they will leverage the new super-thin iMac keyboard technology and do a pull-out or flip-down physical keyboard. Or perhaps most likely is a slight modification of the MacBook product to include MultiTouch...either a touchscreen display or (as hinted in patents) a second, MultiTouch screen replacing the touchpad.
The big question is software. They just released a new OS that will need support. They are already committed to providing and supporting an SDK for the iPhone. And they are undoubtedly working quickly to update applications like the new iMovie, and produce new ones for the iPhone. Apple typically does not release new categories of product without new software to support/drive sales. I have no doubt people at Apple are experimenting with tablets. But I do not believe we will see one released anytime soon.
Polio vaccine, smallpox vaccine, and penicillin. Those three medicines together have saved millions of lives and virtually eliminated death and suffering from smallpox, polio, and various bacterial infections.
It's not like there's a lack of death and disease in the world, that the medical industry has to create artificial scarcity. I believe that's more up the electronic and IT companies' alley, actually (see: DRM).
Slashdot Mirror
You're admitting that there are not studies showing significant negative consequences to epidurals or forceps, yet you also state that no such studies are needed because these things are clearly bad. Again: you certainly have every right to manage your childbirth as you see fit. However when you make such arguments universally, it comes across as argument from emotion not scientific study. I would argue that this impulse is exactly what the article is referring to.
It's important to make a distinction here. Don't make the the mistake of thinking I am "arguing for" formula, epidurals, or forceps. I'm not taking sides against you. The thing I really care about is the rejection of scientific knowledge in favor of emotional response. What is assumed vs. what is proven. That to me seems like a growing mental epidemic, particularly in the United States. And not just with respect to childbirth or vaccines.
In the last paragraph I was indeed saying that if we suppress common deadly diseases, there are greater opportunities for more subtle or long-term ailments to appear in the populace, simply because a greater percentage of people are living longer, who would have otherwise died. In addition when it comes to deadly disease like cancer, the percentage rates of occurrence MUST increase as other deadly diseases are eliminated. It is a zero-sum game because human mortality is always 100%.
The other point I raise (that is more applicable to autism) is the question of our changing medical knowledge. You allude to this with respect to recommending formula--we now know that mother's milk passes important antibodies to baby. Autism is subject to this effect to a great degree because it is a behavioral disorder that is behaviorily diagnosed. Behavioral disorders in general are only relatively recently recognized, and their diagnosis changes over time. This makes it problematical to compare rates of occurence between generations, because the tool of measurement itself has changed over time. So are we comparing actual objective rates of occurence? Or just differing levels of knowledge and norms of diagnosis? That is not an easy nut to crack.
Everything you wrote is (basically) true. The Earth and the natural biosphere will certainly adapt to warmer conditions. The problem is that we have a lot of hard-to-move infrastructure (like cities for instance) that are above the current sea level but might be below the new sea level of the warmer Earth. So, it might be really, really, really expensive to deal with the new climate.
I've never seen the original version with the narration--the first time I saw Bladerunner it was the Director's Cut at the Uptown Theatre in Washington, DC. The Uptown has a HUGE curved screen and killer sound. It was an amazing movie experience, being able to just sink into the movie and the world it depicted.
So in short, horse poop on you. The version I saw had no narration and I did not have any problem following it or enjoying it. But then again I happen to love movies with strange, immersive experiences. My favorite of all time is 2001.
What I meant was that you are exaggerating the negative consequences of formula, epidurals, and forceps, not the extent to which they were used. It's certainly your perogative to avoid those during your child's birth, but in the context of a discussion of vaccines, their impact pales next to diseases like measles or polio.
In terms of rare diseases on the rise--when common diseases are suppressed, less common diseases are expressed. Another factor may be varying diagnoses. Reporting bias can present as a mysterious and widespread new variable.
A: All the successful ones.
Before we talk about radical reforms we need to identify the specific defects with the existing system. I do not see much evidence that the USPS is a drag of any significance on the national economy.
This is just one concrete example of where poor understanding leads to incorrect and dangerous conclusions.
I get your point, which is that it is up to scientists to prove that the things we inject into our bodies are as safe as possible. And scientists and doctors take that responsibility very very seriously. There may indeed be as-yet-unknown negative side effects to vaccination, and scientists acknowledge that possibility and try their best to study and look for it. But so far, they have not found a connection to things like autism or asthma.
Maybe they will find problems in the future. But at worst that will create a tough question of trade off, because there is simply no question that the vaccines are very effective at fighting their respective diseases. If your child has a 0.0001% chance of developing a debilitating disease FROM a vaccine, or a 1% chance of dying from a different disease WITHOUT the vaccine, that is not such a clear-cut decision.
Consider this tradeoff:
a) We know for a fact that vaccines are extremely effective at preventing many nasty, often deadly diseases in children. Numerous studies have demonstrated clear evidence, as has our common experience with the dramatic decline of deaths due to diseases like polio, smallpox, measles, hepatitis, tetanus, etc.
vs.
b) Some people think some vaccines might be factors in the development of certain diseases, but numerous studies have failed to find a linkage--either it does not exist, or is such a weak connection that it is easily missed in the data.
Please vaccinate your children.
(Wait, does that even make sense?)
"Going to Mars" is a project--it has a defined start and finish, and will have a definite price tag. The war in Iraq is another.
Social Security and Medicare are onging programs (processes) with no defined end points. "Problems" and "solutions" are simply matters of where the lines cross in various projections, which means that slight changes in the structure--or adjustments of assumptions--can have large aggregate effects.
If you try to wait to "solve" processes before taking on projects, you'll never get to the projects. The nature of processes/programs is that they require regular adjustment, because the future is unknowable and variable. The intersections in Social Security and Medicare can easily be put much farther into the future with only slight adjustments. This sort of thing is politically palatable and has been done before. If we think a project is important we should not wait for that.
nt :-)
On my NOLS course, one of the instructors laid out the four quadrants of expertise, in the order that most people progress through them.
"Unconscious Incompetent" -- you're bad at something but don't understand that you're bad at it
"Conscious Incompetent" -- you're bad at something but understand that you're bad at it
"Conscious Competent" -- you're good at something and understand why you're good
"Unconscious Competent" -- you're good at something and can't really explain how you do it
Most people only reach the third level for a given activity. The last level would be people who are "naturals" and can't really explain why they are so much better than others. The most dangerous place to be, in terms of risk activities like climbing, is the first level. At least at the second level you understand your limitations and can stay within your bounds. The first level people are the ones who take stupid, uncalculated risks and get killed. Getting through this level is one of the main purposes of taking classes or doing an apprenticeship with someone more experienced.
The other aspect is to focus on what you DO and ACCOMPLISH rather than what you ARE. Thus a smart child is defined as someone who accomplishes smart things--not just someone who tests well or comes across as smart. I think this is at the heart of teaching kids how to succeed. It's not enough to feel smart or special. If you're not getting A's in your classes, you're not ACTING smart. Yes, it requires hard work to do so--part of being "smart" is working hard. It's dumb to fail at something just from lack of effort.
A kid can learn to face failure at anything they are trying to learn to do. Skateboarding, rock climbing, skiing, bicycling, karate, etc are all noncompetitive sports, but they are still difficult to learn and get good at.
Or did you mean like playing soccer without keeping score? I think that's fine for very little kids, where the main thing is to instill a love of physical activity and see which activities they like better. But when kids get to 8, 10, and especially teenagers, yeah, I agree that there should be winners and losers at the end of a game.
My sister is 16 years younger than me, and when she was about 8 I started taking her whitewater kayaking (a sport that I love). She got incredibly frustrated when she couldn't get the boat to go where she wanted it to (a common problem when learning to whitewater kayak). This mirrored other experiences where she would get extremely frustrated when accomplishment didn't come easily.
Rather than refer to intelligence or smarts or ability, my tack was always to emphasize that it is difficult to learn things. I tried to manage her expectations by reminding her that the process of learning always involves failure, so if she wanted to learn anything she better get used to failing and getting frustrated as she learned. "If you could do things right away it wouldn't be called 'learning'."
She did become an ok kayaker, although she's more into karate and volleyball now. But as she's grown up we've seen less pouting and tantrums, and more and more confidence.
I guess that implicit in my message is the assumption that she could learn anything if she tried hard enough. But I didn't couch it in that language.
Scientists observe existing systems and try to describe them. The concept of an scientific experiment only makes sense when there is a pre-existing system to run the experiment on or within. Such a concept is at odds with an all-powerful, omniscient Creator.
Perhaps it would be better to say engineer--someone who applies tools to design machines, or solve problems. Or perhaps even better, an artist--someone who brings something new into existence through their own creativity.
You say you are not Christian, so perhaps you believe that God does exist within a pre-built framework, and thus can run experiments. But that raises the question of what created the system and what created God. Such a belief is indistinguishable from atheism...all it does is introduce a middleman and displace the really fundamental question by one level of abstraction.
I pick this nit because "science", "scientist", "experiment", "theory", etc. are all words that have very specific definitions, and a lot of the confusion/hype/bullshit today results from mis- or vague understandings of these definitions. Too often people just slap scientific or scientific-sounding words on their chosen subject matter as a way of conferring legitimacy. IMO it is not so different from a Pacific cargo cult building runways to call back the planes of WWII. They go through what they think are the right motions, but don't understand the concepts.
I haven't read every post but I have yet to see any of the high-modded posts mention a crucial aspect to any weight-loss or health-improvement plan:
:-)
Get enough sleep!
This is a pretty common failing, especially among geeks. But getting plenty of sleep is essential to both physical and mental health.
This is especially true if you're stepping up your excercise level. Your body will not be used to the extra work and will need more time to recover at night. Also, being well-rested means you'll be more alert and happy during the day, and therefore less likely to snack compulsively, and more likely to make your gym appointment.
Yes, I see the irony of posting this at 1:30am.
Even worse: I went to a Web site and it warned me that my iPhone was broadcasting its IP address to EVERYONE!
The iMac shipped with three replacements for a floppy drive. The first was the Ethernet port...remember that the "i" in the name stood for "Internet." The other was the USB port--flashdrives were well on their way to becoming common when the iMac hit the market. Either one was a superior way of moving data compared to the old 1.44 MB floppy. On top of that it had a modem.
The whole idea was that data would move across the pipe more and more, so the floppy was not necessary. The success of the iMac, and the way we work now, shows that was an accurate prediction.
Hundreds of thousands of German civilians died in other carpet-bombing attacks. Overall if you add up the deaths due to "strategic bombing" during the two theatres of WWII, the estimate ranges come out fairly similar--in the range of 300,000 to 600,000 deaths per theatre. That includes the two atomic bombs in Japan. Yet, the firebombing of Germany does not draw nearly the focus of attention that the nuclear bombs due. I believe that is a form of hindsight bias--nuclear weapons went on to define fear for the next 60 years, while firebombs did not.
In comparison, the Holocaust alone resulted in the deaths of 5 million non-combatant citizens, an order of magnitude greater than the deaths due to strategic bombing. In the Pacific theatre the deaths of Chinese citizens alone numbered into the millions, although I don't have the estimates off hand.
The number that always stuck with me was that Russia is estimated to have sustained about 25 million (!) deaths during WWII.
The nuclear attacks were horrible and I hope such a thing never happens again. As an American I will do my part to ensure that is true. But they are only one of many aspects of mass killing during WWII, that we should all hope to prevent in the future.
Why would anyone want to move the plot forward, or the characters to develop further? People are already super-invested in things the way they "know" them to be. These time plots are the perfect device for Star Trek--the characters and situations are already well-known and familiar to the hardcore fans. It's like that kids show Blues Clues, which shows the same episode every day for a week because little kids crave the familiar.
When a business wants to hide the wrong-doing of an executive, they buy them out and everyone keeps their mouth shut. One publicly terminates an executive when one wants to send a public message. Often the message is that the business is responsive to a situation. So if the executive is harassing someone, or committing a crime, the business can try to limit its liability by showing that it took all possible steps to remedy the situation.
Also, at the executive level, ticky-tack reasons for firing someone aren't really applicable. If the CEO doesn't like the CIO, he just cans him and brings in his own guy. This can be a kind of message too...fire a rival and consolidate power. And if that turns in an employment lawsuit, a little gift violation is not going to stand up in court.
All LCD panels are built out of glass anyway, so there's no physical reason a touchscreen with a glass cover couldn't be just as big as any other screen. The problem in the past is that to do touch, you needed a pressure-sensing layer (which flexes with pressure) in front of the LCD. The protective layer over that could not be glass since it had to flex, so it was plastic--easily scratched and dulled the image somewhat. A major advantage of the new MultiTouch technology is that it uses capacitance sensing, so it does not have to flex at all. It can be placed behind a rigid glass cover, which is clearer and more resistant to scratching.
There may be issues scaling up the MultiTouch sensor, but I doubt the glass cover is one of them.
See my 2002 article about the history (and future) of that particular handwriting recognition technology:
http://www.wave-report.com/archives/2002/02220201.htm
I don't know the development history of the technology behind Apple's Ink.
The tablet situation
First, he said, tablet computers were not a big enough market for Apple to spend its limited resources chasing. And even if the market grew, it would not reach a size to be of interest. The form factor was all wrong. Apple was more interested in defining markets than trying to catch other companies that were busy trying to create a market for questionable products. Still, some of the NIH scientists pressed the issue. Steve's follow-up answer was the most impressive I had heard him give.
First, he said, the wireless bandwidth for huge images, plus the security needed to successfully do what NIH wanted, was just not on the horizon. (Apple staff had been notably fuzzy earlier in the briefing about wireless standards after 802.11b.) Plus, tablets' screen resolution was nowhere near that required for NIH's high-quality medical images. Finally, any product designed to work in the medical field would attract significant liability. The hint was that Apple wasn't interested in anything with that kind of potential liability. That pretty well shut down the issue.
So, no tablet. But NIH at the time had more than 2,000 BlackBerry users. The NIH CIO wanted Apple to push RIM for better compatibility. Tough: Steve basically said it was another niche product, and that while there would be convergence of computing and phones, the BlackBerry was not that product. He did not see that compatibility as an area where Apple should spend any effort. So what will the converged product - what is being called the "iPhone" (even though that's a Cisco trademark) - look like? He said the really converged, ubiquitous devices would have to fit in your shirt pocket, and be better than either a phone or a computer by itself. From:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/jan/04/newmedia.media
Since this article ran, Apple has demonstrated two technologies that might change that answer a bit. 802.11n networking approaches the speed needed to work with high-resolution images wirelessly. And Apple is now sourcing LCD screens with very high resolution--the iPod nano screen has about 200 pixels per inch, which is quite close to the resolution of printed photos.
However I'll believe it when I see it. The big question with tablets has always been data entry, and thus they are closely linked with handwriting recognition in the marketplace. Handwriting recognition has been an almost total market failure, so tablets have been an almost total failure. Perhaps Apple will try a full-size onscreen keyboard. Or perhaps they will leverage the new super-thin iMac keyboard technology and do a pull-out or flip-down physical keyboard. Or perhaps most likely is a slight modification of the MacBook product to include MultiTouch...either a touchscreen display or (as hinted in patents) a second, MultiTouch screen replacing the touchpad.
The big question is software. They just released a new OS that will need support. They are already committed to providing and supporting an SDK for the iPhone. And they are undoubtedly working quickly to update applications like the new iMovie, and produce new ones for the iPhone. Apple typically does not release new categories of product without new software to support/drive sales. I have no doubt people at Apple are experimenting with tablets. But I do not believe we will see one released anytime soon.
Polio vaccine, smallpox vaccine, and penicillin. Those three medicines together have saved millions of lives and virtually eliminated death and suffering from smallpox, polio, and various bacterial infections.
It's not like there's a lack of death and disease in the world, that the medical industry has to create artificial scarcity. I believe that's more up the electronic and IT companies' alley, actually (see: DRM).