If the bass goes THUD you need a better sound system!
The bass should resonate: BOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM buh chicka BOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM buh buh chicka BOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM
THUD is an elephant fainting. Who wants to hear that? What you want is a low, clear tone as loud as you can get it. If it's not keeping your girlfriend's seat humming you need some better gear!:-)
IME people--especially technically trained--sometimes tend to scoff at that level of definition. But I think there is something to it--intelligence is a concept defined by intelligent beings (us), so why must we introduce the abstraction of a codified definition? You just run into the limits of language, which is itself a manifestation of what you're trying to define. I think it's better to just cut straight to the chase and ask one intelligence to identify another through direct observation and interaction.
That's the genius of the Turing Test, which I would not call a toy problem. I'm not an expert in the field, but I am interested, and have taken the time to interact with some of the more well-known chatbots like ALICE or George Jabberwocky. I feel like it's very easy to determine that I'm not talking to another human. For one thing the continual use of demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these, etc) seems to show pretty quickly whether the other party is capable of carrying a "thread" of conversation, or just responding to each entry. For another, conversations about emotional content tend to lead to either reflexive questioning (other party restates each question a la therapy), changing the subject, or nonsense responses. Puns or double entendres are also good tests.
Right now there is infrastructure-based competition--in urban areas. In my neighborhood I have my choice of cable modem, DSL, or mobile broadband. They're delivered on totally separate infrastructures. In addition, due to the competition from cable, Verizon will soon be installing and offering the FiOS fiber to the home service--in other words building out another separate last-mile infrastructure. I don't see how a public utility could improve on that any more. I certainly would not say my electricity, water, sewer, gas, or road experience is any better. Every winter roads don't get plowed fast enough, every spring sewers back up, and every summer we brown out occassionally on hot nights.
...the natural solution to this problem: making the capital-intensive infrastructure a public utility and allowing providers to do the much less capital-intensive job of competing on the public infrastructure, which would still provide the benefits of competition to consumers. One thing that capitalism is really good at is aggregating and directing capital. Financial markets are way better at that sort of thing than governments. To me it's pretty clear that lack of available capital has not been the one thing holding back better broadband deployment in the United States. In the last 10 years we have had two periods where there was way more capital available than people knew what to do with--and the second one might not be over yet.
I think the problem has been lack of applications. You could build out a spectacular infrastructure but what's the point if you don't know to make money with it? That is why cable has enjoyed such a strong lead over DSL in the U.S.--they had a better application (digital video), and so were able to recoup a better ROI, which meant they could raise more capital to build a better network. Now history is repeating itself, because the primary driver for Verizon to build FiOS is not the Web, but digital video to compete with cable.
Right now TV is the leading application for digital broadband. Is that all there is though, to drive innovation? Web use is not doing it--you can't tell me we need 100MB/sec to every home so people can use eBay and Google and read Slashdot and look at LOLcats. The missing piece for the infrastructure is paying services. That's why the big ISPs are so focused on holding content hostage--they need to find a new revenue stream. But IMO they're barking up the wrong tree; no business has ever grown larger by suppressing a major supplier. They'd be better off looking for ways to partner with application experts to invent an integrated service that they can resell.
What should have happened, instead, is that AT&T should been forced to become a nonprofit corporation or pseudo-governmental agency, similar to the Postal Service. Have you been to a Post Office lately? Have you shipped with them lately? The Post Office should hardly be the model for the ecosystem we want for our information technology. With the exception of specific, very low levels of service (book rate, single letters, etc), the Post Office has been largely superceded by private companies who do the same thing--shipping--better and often cheaper. In fact UPS and FedEx provide quite a bit of the postal service's backhaul through contract service.
Our postal network and roads and highways are generally recognized as common shared infrastructure; we don't allow the construction companies that build and maintain them to OWN the sections upon which they work, do we? Again, I'm not sure I'd choose those particular examples. I don't know if you've heard, but we're having some pretty public problems with our road infrastructure these days.
He fails to distinguish science from communications.
He does it throughout the essay. He is absolutely right that we need heretics in science. But the fact is that he is not in science. In this essay he is a heretic outside of science, which means that he can serve little good other than increasing public confusion. I recognize and appreciate his contribution to science in the past, and I'm sure he thinks he is doing good by being a gadfly. But he makes a grievous error in trying to expound his oversimplified pet theory as an example of good heresy. It's not, because it is not rigorous.
Consider his example of Tommy Gold. Gold published a paper in which he explained a theory of how the ear works. Dyson focuses on how the theory was eventually proven right, but the important aspect of it is that Gold published an academic paper with a provable (or disprovable) hypothesis. Dyson's essay here does not come close to satisfying the same level of utility.
He says: "When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories." Yet he utterly fails to see that these problems that so impress him could just as easily be ascribed to the public nature of the communications, as to the science they attempt to describe. You cannot criticize science through the filter of public communications; it is impossible to separate the science from the communications. Only through rigorous work in the field can you provide substantive criticism of scientific theory. There is a reason academic journals insist on peer review.
He says: "The science is inextricably mixed up with politics." Yet he fails to see his own role in increasing this problem, by providing untested, unproven fodder for the politics, without benefit of the scientific process to determine its utility. Over the long term, science cannot be politicized--even Lysenkoism was eventually dethroned, despite the full political support of one of the globe's great superpowers. But over the short term it can be obfuscated and politicized. As someone who understands science, Dyson could better serve the gadfly's role by finding good scientific research that challenges the conventional wisdom, rather than trying to invent it. He would be better off finding the next Tommy Gold, rather than half-heartedly trying to be the next Tommy Gold.
I think the surface station project has the potential to be a good idea--a scientist can never be too careful about data collection. But right now the project has almost no scientific value because it is not rigorous. Its product so far consists entirely of blog posts and photos with lines drawn on them. These are the tools of communication campaigns (see: 9/11 hoaxers), not scientific research.
See this other comment of mine for details on that. Also, take the time to view the responses for more on how other scientists have looked into the validity of surface temperature data.
The planet has also been a lot hotter, and the seas a lot higher, than they are now. That's good for plants and fish, but it might not be so good for many cities and towns and the people who live there.
The point isn't that the climate we're seeing now is "TEH WORST" that there has ever been. Your entire post addresses a straw man.
The point is that the climate is changing quickly, because we are affecting it. The question is what do we do about it.
There's a lot about your post that indicates to me that you simply haven't done enough homework on this issue. Water vapor, for instance, serves mostly to reinforce warming trends caused by other forcings. It's not a long term forcing itself because it cycles out of the atmosphere so quickly. So to call it "the most important" greenhouse gas is misleading.
TFA notes that Anthony Watts has posted about it on his site. You might know Watts as the head of the surfacestations.org project, which contends that the surface warming trend recorded in the U.S. is the result of various data collection problems like the urban heat island effect. But now it looks like that warming trend was overstated--weakening the very purpose of the surfacestations project. Somehow I bet Anthony doesn't see it that way though.
He was not as informative as he seemed at the time. If you go back and review his posts, he was wrong fairly often--for example in this post where he lays out all the reasons (psychological and technical) Apple would not do a video iPod. But of course, they did do a video iPod, released not long after this post.
He wrote well and confidently, and mimicked the Apple point of view very well. But I'd guess that he had as much connection to Apple as FSJ does.
I wonder how many/. readers are going to look at the FSJ posts about "freetards" in a different light now that they know it was Dan Lyons behind the keyboard? This is not a guy who has been well-received on Slashdot in the past.
People willingly sit through ads before a movie that they paid for.
Yes, and look how well the movie theater industry is doing!
People pay a large sum of money to their cable/satellite company every month to watch ads.
But seriously, look how well PVRs and TV series DVDs are doing. To me it's pretty clear that whenever the same content can be consumed without the ads, the market goes there.
The U.S. is still the "land of opportunity," and as you point out, people prove it all the time by starting poor and ending up financially stable or successful.
But there is a set of the nation's resident population who never break the cycle--where the parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc are poor and unsuccessful--and the kids are headed that way too. The question is what does it take to break that cycle?
Immigrant practices and stories are not particularly helpful IMO, because that's a different population solving a different set of problems. The will is often there (that's how they got here to the U.S., after all), and what they face are the logistical obstacles that come from not having a lot of capital. No place is better than the U.S. for overcoming such obstacles, so you often hear success stories there.
But with the native population the issue comes down to culture. How do you instill the will in the kids, that is lacking in the parents? It's not as simple as providing logistical or monetary assistance. The problem is psychological and hinges on instilling confidence, hope, trust, responsibility, etc in kids--feelings that their entire families might never have had, or rejected long ago.
IMO the best vehicles for this are schools and their associated programs--and the most successful programs at those schools right now are athletics. Nothing else does as good a job at instilling the necessary core values in kids who come from poor circumstances.
But we need to find a way to either leverage or extend that success into academics, because there's way more opportunity available to people through education than sports. Only one out of a few thousand kids can become a pro athlete, but most of them could get a good education and a solid job.
Dave you're making points that are legally sound, logically consistent, but, unfortunately, irrelevant. The important point is not whether the theater has good justification for their aggressive action. The important point is whether this action passes the laugh test. If it doesn't (and I don't think it does, personally), it becomes yet another totem in the communications war over how we consume our entertainment.
You've probably heard of the $54 million pants lawsuit here in Washington, DC. The plaintiff in that case is an administrative law judge, and believe it or not, there is legislative justification for the sum of $54 million. Does that make it a smart decision by the plaintiff to sue, and now to appeal? Regardless of how his case turns out, it has become an unbelievable PR asset for legal reform.
The 30,000 foot view is that legal correctness is not important to a business, revenues are. Standing on principle is fine for theory, but in practice if your potential customers hate you, you will hurt your business. Walking the line requires judgment and grace, not hardline rules and rationalizations.
See the recent article in Fortune about Microsoft in China to see a big company coming to this realization.
First, I'm not going to call you a homosexual (not that there's anything wrong with that!).
I'll just point out that from a scientific perspective, we are animals, and from a genetic point of view, reproduction is the pinnacle of our existence. From an evolutionary standpoint, there's not much purpose to our lives if we don't pass on our genes. I know that not every smart person is scientifically inclined, but I think it's safe to say that scientific understanding takes intelligence. It is not unintelligent to recognize the importance of sex in human lives.
From a non-scientific standpoint, I think there is an important debate, common to us all, about what provides the greatest satisfaction and enjoyment (and meaning) in life. Is it achievement, or is it connection? I think it's safe to say that you'll find many smart, successful people who nevertheless believe that their love and family is the most satisfying and important part of their lives. The idea that sex/achievement is a binary choice is false. Einstein and Hemingway and Picasso (and etc) all had lovers.
From a strictly physical standpoint, sex can create feelings that are unachievable any other way. But the same is true from an emotional standpoint as well--there's no closer emotional connection that can be made to another person. Physical intimacy is the distinguishing characteristic of love, of partner from friend. I don't find anything sad about that.
It's pretty easy for a company like Apple to respond to a poorly constructed suit like this one. Typically they can simply ask for proof of damages or even move straight to summary judgment. The sad fact is that suits like this are filed all the time against large, well-known companies like Apple; at any given time they are probably handling numerous minor suits. That's why they have legal departments on staff and firms on retainer.
Typically by the time the press reports on a suit, it's already passed all the basic legal muster and moved on to real negotiations or a trial. The only reason we're hearing about this one so early is that it contains the magical media word "iPhone" in it. I doubt very, very much anything will come of this, for the plaintiff or anyone else.
The language of the rule (posted above in this thread) does not specify a "crew" of 5. It simply specifies any "interaction among five or more people" that involves a tripod and takes longer than 10 minutes total. I have four siblings and two parents, so according to the language I can't take longer than 10 minutes to take a family portrait in Central Park. According to the language I couldn't even bring my tripod to a family picnic.
I agree with you that the intended effect of this rule is entirely reasonable. The crucial point you are missing is that the actual language of the rule is so poorly worded that it would also allow all sorts of terrible, unintended side effects. The protest is simply that the law is terribly written--dangerously so. Think of it as a request for a technical correction if that helps.
ICBMs can be spotted on radar, shot down with interceptor weapons, and traced back to their nation of origin, which is then bombed back to the stone age. In other words, they respond very well to the tried-and-true diplomatic tactics of deterrence. What we really DON'T want are nations building bombs in backpacks, suitcases, shipping containers, sailboats, etc. We don't have great systems to stop those kinds of delivery vehicles, and we don't have great diplomatic experience managing those sorts of asymmetric threats.
Furthermore we are talking about technology that is 40 years old now. Pretending that we can put that genie back in the bottle is exactly the sort of fantastic thinking that leads to terrible security.
Even if you can not make it impossible for your enemies to obtain a secret, you can still make it harder -- every step of the way. True, but we're not talking about secrets, we're talking about information that has been freely available for decades. Even referring to it as a "secret" is dishonest, wishful thinking.
What can Wikipedia do about those who would use it for their own purposes?" Exactly what this guy did--investigate and find the truth. I don't like the implication that this should somehow be prevented from happening. I doubt that's possible, so it's better to keep things open and to think that it's always happening--and be on the lookout for evidence. Web servers provide data, but they also collect data.
I've tried out a couple friend's iPhones and was very impressed at how fast the typing was. I've been thinking about why, and here's what I came up with:
- No pressing required - Because I didn't need to press the buttons down--just touch them--it felt easier and faster to type. It's more of a smooth easy motion from button to button.
- Predictive targetting - In the middle of common words, I was able to trigger the correct next letter even if I didn't nail the button image exactly. I even experimented with it a bit, going successively faster and sloppier (aw yeah), and it was surprising how imprecise I could be and still get the word right or mostly right.
- Easy correction - With the touch screen and "magnifying glass" cursor control, it was easy to go back and correct mistakes after typing. So I found that it was best to just plow through typing the entire thing, and then go back and make corrections if needed.
It's definitely a different style. For me, typing on phones usually works best if I get it exactly right as I type. The iPhone is more like touch-typing on a regular keyboard--just blast through and correct after the fact if needed.
And like touch-typing, there is definitely a muscle-memory aspect to the iPhone. The keys don't have a feel to them, but they are always in the same place. I was faster after about 15 minutes because my fingers were "calibrated" to where the keys are. Those with good hand-eye coordination (gamers for instance) will have an easier time with this IMO.
I live in the Washington DC area. We are currently replacing the Wilson Bridge, which is the crossing of the Potomac River by 95, the primary north/south interstate of the east coast (which at this bridge is also part of the Washington Beltway). It was two spans of 3 lanes each; the new bridge(s) will be two spans of 6 lanes each. In addition, the project includes the complete reconstruction of four high-volume interchanges: highway 295, Route 1, the George Washington Parkway, and Maryland state highway 210.
Here are some points of comparison with the Ketchikan Bridge:
- The population of the Washington DC metro area is about 5 million people - Ketchikan has a population of 7,500
- The entire Wilson Bridge project, including interchanges, costs $2.5 billion, of which the feds are paying $1.5 billion. That's about $300 per local resident. In comparison the Ketchikan Bridge would cost $350 million, which comes out to over $46,000 per local resident!
Now do you see what people objected to spending this much money on this particular project? In addition:
- The Wilson Bridge crosses from one state to another - the Ketchikan bridge would not
- The Wilson Bridge supports a federal interstate highway - the Ketchikan bridge would not
There really was no reason for the federal government to pay for this bridge.
I think you will find that many, many "red state people" are more avid supporters of protections for the environment than many "blue state people" who generally reside in cities. Not when it comes to electing candidates. Red staters might live closer to nature than city folks, but they are generally way worse at connecting that aspect of their lives to the ballot box. They tend to vote for people who fight against environmental protection.
Slashdot Mirror
If the bass goes THUD you need a better sound system!
:-)
The bass should resonate: BOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM buh chicka BOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM buh buh chicka BOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM
THUD is an elephant fainting. Who wants to hear that? What you want is a low, clear tone as loud as you can get it. If it's not keeping your girlfriend's seat humming you need some better gear!
IME people--especially technically trained--sometimes tend to scoff at that level of definition. But I think there is something to it--intelligence is a concept defined by intelligent beings (us), so why must we introduce the abstraction of a codified definition? You just run into the limits of language, which is itself a manifestation of what you're trying to define. I think it's better to just cut straight to the chase and ask one intelligence to identify another through direct observation and interaction.
That's the genius of the Turing Test, which I would not call a toy problem. I'm not an expert in the field, but I am interested, and have taken the time to interact with some of the more well-known chatbots like ALICE or George Jabberwocky. I feel like it's very easy to determine that I'm not talking to another human. For one thing the continual use of demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these, etc) seems to show pretty quickly whether the other party is capable of carrying a "thread" of conversation, or just responding to each entry. For another, conversations about emotional content tend to lead to either reflexive questioning (other party restates each question a la therapy), changing the subject, or nonsense responses. Puns or double entendres are also good tests.
...the natural solution to this problem: making the capital-intensive infrastructure a public utility and allowing providers to do the much less capital-intensive job of competing on the public infrastructure, which would still provide the benefits of competition to consumers. One thing that capitalism is really good at is aggregating and directing capital. Financial markets are way better at that sort of thing than governments. To me it's pretty clear that lack of available capital has not been the one thing holding back better broadband deployment in the United States. In the last 10 years we have had two periods where there was way more capital available than people knew what to do with--and the second one might not be over yet.I think the problem has been lack of applications. You could build out a spectacular infrastructure but what's the point if you don't know to make money with it? That is why cable has enjoyed such a strong lead over DSL in the U.S.--they had a better application (digital video), and so were able to recoup a better ROI, which meant they could raise more capital to build a better network. Now history is repeating itself, because the primary driver for Verizon to build FiOS is not the Web, but digital video to compete with cable.
Right now TV is the leading application for digital broadband. Is that all there is though, to drive innovation? Web use is not doing it--you can't tell me we need 100MB/sec to every home so people can use eBay and Google and read Slashdot and look at LOLcats. The missing piece for the infrastructure is paying services. That's why the big ISPs are so focused on holding content hostage--they need to find a new revenue stream. But IMO they're barking up the wrong tree; no business has ever grown larger by suppressing a major supplier. They'd be better off looking for ways to partner with application experts to invent an integrated service that they can resell.
He fails to distinguish science from communications.
He does it throughout the essay. He is absolutely right that we need heretics in science. But the fact is that he is not in science. In this essay he is a heretic outside of science, which means that he can serve little good other than increasing public confusion. I recognize and appreciate his contribution to science in the past, and I'm sure he thinks he is doing good by being a gadfly. But he makes a grievous error in trying to expound his oversimplified pet theory as an example of good heresy. It's not, because it is not rigorous.
Consider his example of Tommy Gold. Gold published a paper in which he explained a theory of how the ear works. Dyson focuses on how the theory was eventually proven right, but the important aspect of it is that Gold published an academic paper with a provable (or disprovable) hypothesis. Dyson's essay here does not come close to satisfying the same level of utility.
He says: "When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories." Yet he utterly fails to see that these problems that so impress him could just as easily be ascribed to the public nature of the communications, as to the science they attempt to describe. You cannot criticize science through the filter of public communications; it is impossible to separate the science from the communications. Only through rigorous work in the field can you provide substantive criticism of scientific theory. There is a reason academic journals insist on peer review.
He says: "The science is inextricably mixed up with politics." Yet he fails to see his own role in increasing this problem, by providing untested, unproven fodder for the politics, without benefit of the scientific process to determine its utility. Over the long term, science cannot be politicized--even Lysenkoism was eventually dethroned, despite the full political support of one of the globe's great superpowers. But over the short term it can be obfuscated and politicized. As someone who understands science, Dyson could better serve the gadfly's role by finding good scientific research that challenges the conventional wisdom, rather than trying to invent it. He would be better off finding the next Tommy Gold, rather than half-heartedly trying to be the next Tommy Gold.
I think the surface station project has the potential to be a good idea--a scientist can never be too careful about data collection. But right now the project has almost no scientific value because it is not rigorous. Its product so far consists entirely of blog posts and photos with lines drawn on them. These are the tools of communication campaigns (see: 9/11 hoaxers), not scientific research.
See this other comment of mine for details on that. Also, take the time to view the responses for more on how other scientists have looked into the validity of surface temperature data.
The planet has also been a lot hotter, and the seas a lot higher, than they are now. That's good for plants and fish, but it might not be so good for many cities and towns and the people who live there.
The point isn't that the climate we're seeing now is "TEH WORST" that there has ever been. Your entire post addresses a straw man.
The point is that the climate is changing quickly, because we are affecting it. The question is what do we do about it.
There's a lot about your post that indicates to me that you simply haven't done enough homework on this issue. Water vapor, for instance, serves mostly to reinforce warming trends caused by other forcings. It's not a long term forcing itself because it cycles out of the atmosphere so quickly. So to call it "the most important" greenhouse gas is misleading.
That should read "Smell the iron".
No, wait--"Smell the irony". That's it, I'm sure of it this time.
TFA notes that Anthony Watts has posted about it on his site. You might know Watts as the head of the surfacestations.org project, which contends that the surface warming trend recorded in the U.S. is the result of various data collection problems like the urban heat island effect. But now it looks like that warming trend was overstated--weakening the very purpose of the surfacestations project. Somehow I bet Anthony doesn't see it that way though.
Everyone knows that comments on news stories are either trolls, flamebait, or offtopic. Just look at the moderation on this for proof.
He was not as informative as he seemed at the time. If you go back and review his posts, he was wrong fairly often--for example in this post where he lays out all the reasons (psychological and technical) Apple would not do a video iPod. But of course, they did do a video iPod, released not long after this post.
He wrote well and confidently, and mimicked the Apple point of view very well. But I'd guess that he had as much connection to Apple as FSJ does.
I wonder how many /. readers are going to look at the FSJ posts about "freetards" in a different light now that they know it was Dan Lyons behind the keyboard? This is not a guy who has been well-received on Slashdot in the past.
People willingly sit through ads before a movie that they paid for.
Yes, and look how well the movie theater industry is doing!
People pay a large sum of money to their cable/satellite company every month to watch ads.
But seriously, look how well PVRs and TV series DVDs are doing. To me it's pretty clear that whenever the same content can be consumed without the ads, the market goes there.
The U.S. is still the "land of opportunity," and as you point out, people prove it all the time by starting poor and ending up financially stable or successful.
But there is a set of the nation's resident population who never break the cycle--where the parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc are poor and unsuccessful--and the kids are headed that way too. The question is what does it take to break that cycle?
Immigrant practices and stories are not particularly helpful IMO, because that's a different population solving a different set of problems. The will is often there (that's how they got here to the U.S., after all), and what they face are the logistical obstacles that come from not having a lot of capital. No place is better than the U.S. for overcoming such obstacles, so you often hear success stories there.
But with the native population the issue comes down to culture. How do you instill the will in the kids, that is lacking in the parents? It's not as simple as providing logistical or monetary assistance. The problem is psychological and hinges on instilling confidence, hope, trust, responsibility, etc in kids--feelings that their entire families might never have had, or rejected long ago.
IMO the best vehicles for this are schools and their associated programs--and the most successful programs at those schools right now are athletics. Nothing else does as good a job at instilling the necessary core values in kids who come from poor circumstances.
But we need to find a way to either leverage or extend that success into academics, because there's way more opportunity available to people through education than sports. Only one out of a few thousand kids can become a pro athlete, but most of them could get a good education and a solid job.
Dave you're making points that are legally sound, logically consistent, but, unfortunately, irrelevant. The important point is not whether the theater has good justification for their aggressive action. The important point is whether this action passes the laugh test. If it doesn't (and I don't think it does, personally), it becomes yet another totem in the communications war over how we consume our entertainment.
You've probably heard of the $54 million pants lawsuit here in Washington, DC. The plaintiff in that case is an administrative law judge, and believe it or not, there is legislative justification for the sum of $54 million. Does that make it a smart decision by the plaintiff to sue, and now to appeal? Regardless of how his case turns out, it has become an unbelievable PR asset for legal reform.
The 30,000 foot view is that legal correctness is not important to a business, revenues are. Standing on principle is fine for theory, but in practice if your potential customers hate you, you will hurt your business. Walking the line requires judgment and grace, not hardline rules and rationalizations.
See the recent article in Fortune about Microsoft in China to see a big company coming to this realization.
First, I'm not going to call you a homosexual (not that there's anything wrong with that!).
I'll just point out that from a scientific perspective, we are animals, and from a genetic point of view, reproduction is the pinnacle of our existence. From an evolutionary standpoint, there's not much purpose to our lives if we don't pass on our genes. I know that not every smart person is scientifically inclined, but I think it's safe to say that scientific understanding takes intelligence. It is not unintelligent to recognize the importance of sex in human lives.
From a non-scientific standpoint, I think there is an important debate, common to us all, about what provides the greatest satisfaction and enjoyment (and meaning) in life. Is it achievement, or is it connection? I think it's safe to say that you'll find many smart, successful people who nevertheless believe that their love and family is the most satisfying and important part of their lives. The idea that sex/achievement is a binary choice is false. Einstein and Hemingway and Picasso (and etc) all had lovers.
From a strictly physical standpoint, sex can create feelings that are unachievable any other way. But the same is true from an emotional standpoint as well--there's no closer emotional connection that can be made to another person. Physical intimacy is the distinguishing characteristic of love, of partner from friend. I don't find anything sad about that.
It's pretty easy for a company like Apple to respond to a poorly constructed suit like this one. Typically they can simply ask for proof of damages or even move straight to summary judgment. The sad fact is that suits like this are filed all the time against large, well-known companies like Apple; at any given time they are probably handling numerous minor suits. That's why they have legal departments on staff and firms on retainer.
Typically by the time the press reports on a suit, it's already passed all the basic legal muster and moved on to real negotiations or a trial. The only reason we're hearing about this one so early is that it contains the magical media word "iPhone" in it. I doubt very, very much anything will come of this, for the plaintiff or anyone else.
The language of the rule (posted above in this thread) does not specify a "crew" of 5. It simply specifies any "interaction among five or more people" that involves a tripod and takes longer than 10 minutes total. I have four siblings and two parents, so according to the language I can't take longer than 10 minutes to take a family portrait in Central Park. According to the language I couldn't even bring my tripod to a family picnic.
I agree with you that the intended effect of this rule is entirely reasonable. The crucial point you are missing is that the actual language of the rule is so poorly worded that it would also allow all sorts of terrible, unintended side effects. The protest is simply that the law is terribly written--dangerously so. Think of it as a request for a technical correction if that helps.
Furthermore we are talking about technology that is 40 years old now. Pretending that we can put that genie back in the bottle is exactly the sort of fantastic thinking that leads to terrible security. Even if you can not make it impossible for your enemies to obtain a secret, you can still make it harder -- every step of the way. True, but we're not talking about secrets, we're talking about information that has been freely available for decades. Even referring to it as a "secret" is dishonest, wishful thinking.
They need to learn to stay off lawns, too!
(Every generation bitches about the next one at some point. Sorry, you're now officially old.)
I've tried out a couple friend's iPhones and was very impressed at how fast the typing was. I've been thinking about why, and here's what I came up with:
- No pressing required - Because I didn't need to press the buttons down--just touch them--it felt easier and faster to type. It's more of a smooth easy motion from button to button.
- Predictive targetting - In the middle of common words, I was able to trigger the correct next letter even if I didn't nail the button image exactly. I even experimented with it a bit, going successively faster and sloppier (aw yeah), and it was surprising how imprecise I could be and still get the word right or mostly right.
- Easy correction - With the touch screen and "magnifying glass" cursor control, it was easy to go back and correct mistakes after typing. So I found that it was best to just plow through typing the entire thing, and then go back and make corrections if needed.
It's definitely a different style. For me, typing on phones usually works best if I get it exactly right as I type. The iPhone is more like touch-typing on a regular keyboard--just blast through and correct after the fact if needed.
And like touch-typing, there is definitely a muscle-memory aspect to the iPhone. The keys don't have a feel to them, but they are always in the same place. I was faster after about 15 minutes because my fingers were "calibrated" to where the keys are. Those with good hand-eye coordination (gamers for instance) will have an easier time with this IMO.
I live in the Washington DC area. We are currently replacing the Wilson Bridge, which is the crossing of the Potomac River by 95, the primary north/south interstate of the east coast (which at this bridge is also part of the Washington Beltway). It was two spans of 3 lanes each; the new bridge(s) will be two spans of 6 lanes each. In addition, the project includes the complete reconstruction of four high-volume interchanges: highway 295, Route 1, the George Washington Parkway, and Maryland state highway 210.
Here are some points of comparison with the Ketchikan Bridge:
- The population of the Washington DC metro area is about 5 million people - Ketchikan has a population of 7,500
- The entire Wilson Bridge project, including interchanges, costs $2.5 billion, of which the feds are paying $1.5 billion. That's about $300 per local resident. In comparison the Ketchikan Bridge would cost $350 million, which comes out to over $46,000 per local resident!
Now do you see what people objected to spending this much money on this particular project? In addition:
- The Wilson Bridge crosses from one state to another - the Ketchikan bridge would not
- The Wilson Bridge supports a federal interstate highway - the Ketchikan bridge would not
There really was no reason for the federal government to pay for this bridge.
Which CEOs are posting here on Slashdot? Is that you, Steve Ballmer?