Not to mention that a sentence like "Is Pluto more different from Mars than Mars is from Jupiter?" just proves you don't have a damn clue what you're arguing about, and you just don't want to change what you already 'know'.
You seem to be saying that I'm not willing to change my mind about things. Maybe you didn't actually read my post very closely--I'm in favor of changing Pluto's status because of what we now know. We agree.
Ah yes - the attitude of a company's marketing clearly impacts how useful their products. Clearly if you hate an ad you should avoid that company's products entirely, even if you were otherwise interesting. No, that's not letting advertising unduly influence you or anything.
The funny thing is I hear stuff like this from people all the time about these ads. In fact the only conversations I've ever had about them are with pissed off PC users. I've come to the conclusion that the people who like these ads the most are actually PC fan boys, not Mac fan boys. They're certainly the ones most likely to talk about them or let them affect their behavior.
You might have learned that Pluto was a planet but guess what, officially it was never a planet because there was no official astronomic definition of the word. They finally got around to creating one now because of the 2 NEW Pluto-like "planets" discovered recently. So no matter how this vote went your precious childhood memories were going to get broken. Either:
- Pluto is not a planet so now there are 8 instead of 9
OR
- Pluto is a planet, but therefore so are the other 2 so now there are 11 instead of 9. And keep in mind that most astronomers think it's likely that we will discover more Pluto-sized objects, raising the "planet" count even more.
The IAU did exactly the right thing. Pluto is clearly very different from Mars, Earth, Jupiter, etc on one hand, but on the other it's not exactly a comet either. Now we know that it's a dwarf planet, the first of probably many we'll find in our system.
Since unbundling was stuck down by the courts (forcing the FCC to change the rules--they did not want to), both DSL and cable modem prices have RISEN when you look at the actual cost to consumers. Don't look at the offers, look at the actual bills.
Take my bill for example. I have DSL service through Cavalier Telephone, a CLEC who still leases line access from Verizon. They offered DSL + phone service for $50/month, which I signed on for, and ended up paying about $60/month after fees. Now my bill is up to about $80/month, due entirely to the huge cost increase Verizon imposed on their line leases.
You will say: CavTel should build their own infrastructure. THEY DID, they have their own backbone fiber network up and down the east coast. But it's just too expensive to build out the last mile, and the government already subsidized it once. That's why unbundling was so right and so important.
Take a good look at ILEC or cable service and you will see that neither data rates nor costs have changed appreciably in the last 3 years for most customers. And why should they? There is almost no competition in broadband anywhere. The entire basis of market solutions is competition and it is almost entirely GONE in consumer broadband, leaving monopolies or duopolies.
The phone and cable companies have successfully convinced enough people that the basis for service improvement is the ease of investment. WRONG. Without competition there is no impetus for change, and therefore no impetus or need for investment. There is a glut of private capital on the world market right now. It would be comically easy for an established company like Verizon to raise huge capital to improve their service. But without competition why would they want to??? It's easier to sit still and collect the profits they are guaranteed through lack of competition.
Competition serves the consumer, not the company. Want to see what an efficient market really looks like? Look at the airline industry. Not THAT is a competitive market, and the advantages are obvious to consumers in the low prices that are available. But imagine if the government gave city-exclusives, so that only United and American were allowed to service Miami, for example. Think the prices would stay low? Not a chance. Yet it supposedly will work great for broadband.
And don't even get me started on Net neutrality, which would not even be an issue if there were greater competition.
the intellectual arrogance here is overwhelming sometimes.
Science is the process of winnowing the not-true from the true. If we give greater credence to the resulting conclusions, does that make us arrogant? I suppose it does because we won't consider all points of view equally. Tough shit though, it's justified arrogance. If you don't believe in the results of the scientific method I invite you to think hard the next time you go to the doctor.
An immuno-deficiency can be caused by lots of things.
Yes but the question is not any immune deficiency, but one particular disease.
Transplant patients take drugs to cause an Aquired Immuno-deficiency Syndrome.
Emphasis is mine. You are incorrectly applying the name of a defined disease to a sympton. The "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome" is a specific disease that has as a symptom an immune deficiency. You are correct that other factors can cause the same symptom, but when referring to this specific disease, the presence of HIV is as much an indicator as the suppressed immune response--because a disease is whatever we define it to be.
By capitalizing at the end of that sentence, what you're doing is like saying "many things can cause a strep throat." Only one thing causes strep throat, but many can cause a sore throat.
Suggesting that AIDS (the symptoms, not the defective definition) can be caused by non-HIV is perfectly reasonable. Clearly HIV is a big cause. Chemotherapy would be another cause.
No, you are confusing diseases and symptoms, which are semantically distinct concepts in medicine even when they use the same words. Symptoms are directly observable but "diseases" are abstract concepts and so only exist as defined.
An immune deficiency (a symptom) can be acquired many ways, but the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (the disease) is by definition linked to HIV. That might be confusing to you but frankly that is your problem.
In fact some lesbian couples do choose to artificially get pregnant and bear a child. Your doctor has absolutely no way of knowing whether you will make that same decision in the future, and he is covering his ass. Many people (gay and straight) who choose to have children do not know they will at some point beforehand. I bet that if you had a tubal ligation he would not raise so many objections.
Sexual orientation has nothing to do with love and raising a family, which I believe is one of the points many of the advocacy groups are trying to get across to middle America.
Patents and original research articles are two of the most essential areas of research when you are looking to innnovate in a technology space. As a tech consultant for 3 years I often spent time finding relevant patents, then going to university libraries to find and photocopy the research articles cited in the patents. These were bound together in reports with some analysis and review, and sold to our clients. It helped them define an envelope of legal and possible solutions to a given tech problem.
Similar issues in whitewater kayaking right now
on
The Expert Mind
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· Score: 1
Currently there are huge arguments that erupt over the "proper" way to teach the roll (aka the Eskimo roll--the stroke that gets you back upright when you flip over). In my own humble opinion these closely resemble the issues in your post. It seems to be a fight between dogma and actual modern study of how the experts roll their boats upright.
Multiply that sentiment times 300 million and the relative priorities of the U.S. government make a lot more sense. The government sets and enforces manufacturing standards, road infrastructure standards, and driving laws to reduce the chance I'll be killed driving. The goverment forces companies to tell me what chemicals are in their products, and funds research into the effects of those chemicals, and funds disease research, all to reduce the chance I'll die of cancer. The government encourages economic growth, and failing that provides welfare, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to reduce the chance I'll die of poverty.
Likewise they rightly regulate and police the air travel system to reduce the chance I'll die on an airplane.
What we really care about is ourselves. "Could I have been killed?" is what we think. That's why we react a lot more to deaths on random airplane flights than we do to deaths in the Sudan. We don't live in the Sudan and we don't have malaria or dengue fever here in the States. So while it's a tragedy and we give a lot aid to try to prevent it, it's not really a top priority for us.
Oh and you can please stop posting and reposting the Northwoods link, Jesus Christ WE ALL KNOW ABOUT IT BY NOW. Yes, some crazy guys came up with some crazy ideas. The ideas were rejected and the guys were all shifted out of positions of responsibility pretty darn quickly. This sordid little piece of history is a great argument AGAINST today's conspiracy theories. After all here is a perfect example of a classic conspiracy plan, and it and its authors were rejected out of hand, and it is now public record. In other words it is concrete proof that our government does not conduct conspiracies of this sort against its own citizens, even when given a perfect opportunity to do so.
I covered tech conferences for 3 years as the editor of a small newsletter and never paid an entrance fee. There's no way the Apple beat writer for Wired paid to get into the WWDC. He was comped as a member of the press and there was probably even a press-only lounge with WiFi, computers, printers, coffee, drinks and food. Smart conference organizers pamper the press because there's no better advertisement than good PR.
If you're trying to argue that the hardware market is somehow more profitable than the software one I think you're sadly mistaken.
Apple does not sell hardware; they sell computers. Computers are products that are made up of both hardware and software, which work together. The question is not one of raw profits, but of vision and strategy in the computing market.
Yes, I know Microsoft makes a lot of money with operating systems. But first of all they don't cost $350-$1000 (where did you get this number in a discussion of OS??). Also they are literally the only company succeeding with an OS-only (no hardware) strategy. And I think you'll find that the margins on that piece of their business are falling fast, as are the boxed-product sales volumes. The OS is a commodity in consumer products, whether you're talking about a cell phone, microwave, or home computer. It just comes on the hardware and it's built into the price.
An integrated product is what makes the money in consumer markets. It's how Sony and Apple have made the majority of their money, and both companies have been around longer than Microsoft. A good computing experience requires a good OS, which is why Apple works so hard on it. They sell computers (not OS) to consumers (not system builders) and their most relevant competition is Sony, Dell, Gateway or HP (not Microsoft). It's a fundamentally different approach to the computer business that a lot of people just can't seem to wrap their heads around. Changing that mid-stream, in the midst of dramatic success and growth, would be phenomenally stupid.
Repeat after me: just because something worked for Microsoft last century, doesn't mean it will work for anyone else today.
No company in the computing business will ever duplicate the MS success, just like no company in the phone business will ever duplicate AT&T's success, just like no company in the steel business will duplicate U.S. Steel's success. Times change.
Even big heavy modern cars have crumple zones engineered in. A 6000 lb car with a crumple zone will always be safer than a 6000 lb car without a crumple zone.
I just threw the language together, so don't build a house on it. But I think it does allow for that--it would only require that each ballot be physically capable of being counted by hand, not that they must always be counted by hand.
The government being of, for, and by the people, each ballot cast in a public election for federal office shall produce a physical ballot able to be read and counted by a human unaided by electronic computer.
The drug companies don't get any bennefit from producing drugs that kill people. They don't do this on purpose.
Totally understood, but they should pay to support these test subjects. You can look at it either way.
1) Think of it as a tort. When they do hurt or kill test subjects, on purpose or not, they should make them whole again financially.
2) Think of the value added to the company. The test subjects have given their lives to provide a huge value to the company--a strong negative result is just as useful as a strong positive. (Just imagine if this drug had made it to market and resulted in a nationwide class action suit on behalf of a million people...goodbye company.) So the test subjects should be compensated in proportion to the value they provided the company.
At the point of singularity, all of human and biological progress, will be a few microseconds worth to us. At least without human modification.
Only from your perspective today. To a person living it as it happens it will seem much slower and manageable.
You touched on this yourself, probably without even realizing it:
The 15th century monk has about the same technological differential with respect to an early 20th century man as does one generation in todays society.
Correct, the rate of technological change has increased. But so has the rate of our adaptation. People deal with change about as well as they dealt with it in the 15th century, despite its vastly increased rate. Why? Because humans are changing too. The fallacy comes in trying to analyze a dynamic system from a static perspective.
That's really not what's under discussion here -- I'm not more intelligent than a 15th-century monk. Putting that monk in the modern world would cause severe culture shock because of the disconnect between the world and his existing frames of reference. He'd have to run like mad to try to catch up, because he didn't have his whole life to become used to it, but a bright person could probably manage it.
Now you're just reversing the process, evaluating the past from the context of today. Who's to say how much smarter you are than a 15th century monk? Define "smart" or "intelligence" for a start.
This sort of intellectual hand-waving is not particularly convincing.
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Not to mention that a sentence like "Is Pluto more different from Mars than Mars is from Jupiter?" just proves you don't have a damn clue what you're arguing about, and you just don't want to change what you already 'know'.
You seem to be saying that I'm not willing to change my mind about things. Maybe you didn't actually read my post very closely--I'm in favor of changing Pluto's status because of what we now know. We agree.
Ah yes - the attitude of a company's marketing clearly impacts how useful their products. Clearly if you hate an ad you should avoid that company's products entirely, even if you were otherwise interesting. No, that's not letting advertising unduly influence you or anything.
The funny thing is I hear stuff like this from people all the time about these ads. In fact the only conversations I've ever had about them are with pissed off PC users. I've come to the conclusion that the people who like these ads the most are actually PC fan boys, not Mac fan boys. They're certainly the ones most likely to talk about them or let them affect their behavior.
You might have learned that Pluto was a planet but guess what, officially it was never a planet because there was no official astronomic definition of the word. They finally got around to creating one now because of the 2 NEW Pluto-like "planets" discovered recently. So no matter how this vote went your precious childhood memories were going to get broken. Either:
- Pluto is not a planet so now there are 8 instead of 9
OR
- Pluto is a planet, but therefore so are the other 2 so now there are 11 instead of 9. And keep in mind that most astronomers think it's likely that we will discover more Pluto-sized objects, raising the "planet" count even more.
The IAU did exactly the right thing. Pluto is clearly very different from Mars, Earth, Jupiter, etc on one hand, but on the other it's not exactly a comet either. Now we know that it's a dwarf planet, the first of probably many we'll find in our system.
Since unbundling was stuck down by the courts (forcing the FCC to change the rules--they did not want to), both DSL and cable modem prices have RISEN when you look at the actual cost to consumers. Don't look at the offers, look at the actual bills.
Take my bill for example. I have DSL service through Cavalier Telephone, a CLEC who still leases line access from Verizon. They offered DSL + phone service for $50/month, which I signed on for, and ended up paying about $60/month after fees. Now my bill is up to about $80/month, due entirely to the huge cost increase Verizon imposed on their line leases.
You will say: CavTel should build their own infrastructure. THEY DID, they have their own backbone fiber network up and down the east coast. But it's just too expensive to build out the last mile, and the government already subsidized it once. That's why unbundling was so right and so important.
Take a good look at ILEC or cable service and you will see that neither data rates nor costs have changed appreciably in the last 3 years for most customers. And why should they? There is almost no competition in broadband anywhere. The entire basis of market solutions is competition and it is almost entirely GONE in consumer broadband, leaving monopolies or duopolies.
The phone and cable companies have successfully convinced enough people that the basis for service improvement is the ease of investment. WRONG. Without competition there is no impetus for change, and therefore no impetus or need for investment. There is a glut of private capital on the world market right now. It would be comically easy for an established company like Verizon to raise huge capital to improve their service. But without competition why would they want to??? It's easier to sit still and collect the profits they are guaranteed through lack of competition.
Competition serves the consumer, not the company. Want to see what an efficient market really looks like? Look at the airline industry. Not THAT is a competitive market, and the advantages are obvious to consumers in the low prices that are available. But imagine if the government gave city-exclusives, so that only United and American were allowed to service Miami, for example. Think the prices would stay low? Not a chance. Yet it supposedly will work great for broadband.
And don't even get me started on Net neutrality, which would not even be an issue if there were greater competition.
I've been laughed at on the Internet for years and I haven't earned a goddamned red cent, you insensitive clods!
the intellectual arrogance here is overwhelming sometimes.
Science is the process of winnowing the not-true from the true. If we give greater credence to the resulting conclusions, does that make us arrogant? I suppose it does because we won't consider all points of view equally. Tough shit though, it's justified arrogance. If you don't believe in the results of the scientific method I invite you to think hard the next time you go to the doctor.
Learn more about how we know HIV causes AIDS
An immuno-deficiency can be caused by lots of things.
Yes but the question is not any immune deficiency, but one particular disease.
Transplant patients take drugs to cause an Aquired Immuno-deficiency Syndrome.
Emphasis is mine. You are incorrectly applying the name of a defined disease to a sympton. The "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome" is a specific disease that has as a symptom an immune deficiency. You are correct that other factors can cause the same symptom, but when referring to this specific disease, the presence of HIV is as much an indicator as the suppressed immune response--because a disease is whatever we define it to be.
By capitalizing at the end of that sentence, what you're doing is like saying "many things can cause a strep throat." Only one thing causes strep throat, but many can cause a sore throat.
Suggesting that AIDS (the symptoms, not the defective definition) can be caused by non-HIV is perfectly reasonable. Clearly HIV is a big cause. Chemotherapy would be another cause.
No, you are confusing diseases and symptoms, which are semantically distinct concepts in medicine even when they use the same words. Symptoms are directly observable but "diseases" are abstract concepts and so only exist as defined.
An immune deficiency (a symptom) can be acquired many ways, but the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (the disease) is by definition linked to HIV. That might be confusing to you but frankly that is your problem.
In fact some lesbian couples do choose to artificially get pregnant and bear a child. Your doctor has absolutely no way of knowing whether you will make that same decision in the future, and he is covering his ass. Many people (gay and straight) who choose to have children do not know they will at some point beforehand. I bet that if you had a tubal ligation he would not raise so many objections.
Sexual orientation has nothing to do with love and raising a family, which I believe is one of the points many of the advocacy groups are trying to get across to middle America.
Patents and original research articles are two of the most essential areas of research when you are looking to innnovate in a technology space. As a tech consultant for 3 years I often spent time finding relevant patents, then going to university libraries to find and photocopy the research articles cited in the patents. These were bound together in reports with some analysis and review, and sold to our clients. It helped them define an envelope of legal and possible solutions to a given tech problem.
Currently there are huge arguments that erupt over the "proper" way to teach the roll (aka the Eskimo roll--the stroke that gets you back upright when you flip over). In my own humble opinion these closely resemble the issues in your post. It seems to be a fight between dogma and actual modern study of how the experts roll their boats upright.
I wouldn't want to live inside a giant robot. Why would the poor feel any differently?
Multiply that sentiment times 300 million and the relative priorities of the U.S. government make a lot more sense. The government sets and enforces manufacturing standards, road infrastructure standards, and driving laws to reduce the chance I'll be killed driving. The goverment forces companies to tell me what chemicals are in their products, and funds research into the effects of those chemicals, and funds disease research, all to reduce the chance I'll die of cancer. The government encourages economic growth, and failing that provides welfare, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to reduce the chance I'll die of poverty.
Likewise they rightly regulate and police the air travel system to reduce the chance I'll die on an airplane.
What we really care about is ourselves. "Could I have been killed?" is what we think. That's why we react a lot more to deaths on random airplane flights than we do to deaths in the Sudan. We don't live in the Sudan and we don't have malaria or dengue fever here in the States. So while it's a tragedy and we give a lot aid to try to prevent it, it's not really a top priority for us.
Oh and you can please stop posting and reposting the Northwoods link, Jesus Christ WE ALL KNOW ABOUT IT BY NOW. Yes, some crazy guys came up with some crazy ideas. The ideas were rejected and the guys were all shifted out of positions of responsibility pretty darn quickly. This sordid little piece of history is a great argument AGAINST today's conspiracy theories. After all here is a perfect example of a classic conspiracy plan, and it and its authors were rejected out of hand, and it is now public record. In other words it is concrete proof that our government does not conduct conspiracies of this sort against its own citizens, even when given a perfect opportunity to do so.
that the population of Hungarian bridges has tripled in the last 6 months.
I covered tech conferences for 3 years as the editor of a small newsletter and never paid an entrance fee. There's no way the Apple beat writer for Wired paid to get into the WWDC. He was comped as a member of the press and there was probably even a press-only lounge with WiFi, computers, printers, coffee, drinks and food. Smart conference organizers pamper the press because there's no better advertisement than good PR.
If you're trying to argue that the hardware market is somehow more profitable than the software one I think you're sadly mistaken.
Apple does not sell hardware; they sell computers. Computers are products that are made up of both hardware and software, which work together. The question is not one of raw profits, but of vision and strategy in the computing market.
Yes, I know Microsoft makes a lot of money with operating systems. But first of all they don't cost $350-$1000 (where did you get this number in a discussion of OS??). Also they are literally the only company succeeding with an OS-only (no hardware) strategy. And I think you'll find that the margins on that piece of their business are falling fast, as are the boxed-product sales volumes. The OS is a commodity in consumer products, whether you're talking about a cell phone, microwave, or home computer. It just comes on the hardware and it's built into the price.
An integrated product is what makes the money in consumer markets. It's how Sony and Apple have made the majority of their money, and both companies have been around longer than Microsoft. A good computing experience requires a good OS, which is why Apple works so hard on it. They sell computers (not OS) to consumers (not system builders) and their most relevant competition is Sony, Dell, Gateway or HP (not Microsoft). It's a fundamentally different approach to the computer business that a lot of people just can't seem to wrap their heads around. Changing that mid-stream, in the midst of dramatic success and growth, would be phenomenally stupid.
Repeat after me: just because something worked for Microsoft last century, doesn't mean it will work for anyone else today.
No company in the computing business will ever duplicate the MS success, just like no company in the phone business will ever duplicate AT&T's success, just like no company in the steel business will duplicate U.S. Steel's success. Times change.
So all I gotta do is carry a black hole in my pocket. That's gotta suck...
It wouldn't be long before black hole carries you!
Yeah but if you're injured on the job at the factory you can pursue both worker's comp and a civil suit for recompense. On top of your salary.
Even big heavy modern cars have crumple zones engineered in. A 6000 lb car with a crumple zone will always be safer than a 6000 lb car without a crumple zone.
I just threw the language together, so don't build a house on it. But I think it does allow for that--it would only require that each ballot be physically capable of being counted by hand, not that they must always be counted by hand.
The government being of, for, and by the people, each ballot cast in a public election for federal office shall produce a physical ballot able to be read and counted by a human unaided by electronic computer.
The drug companies don't get any bennefit from producing drugs that kill people. They don't do this on purpose.
Totally understood, but they should pay to support these test subjects. You can look at it either way.
1) Think of it as a tort. When they do hurt or kill test subjects, on purpose or not, they should make them whole again financially.
2) Think of the value added to the company. The test subjects have given their lives to provide a huge value to the company--a strong negative result is just as useful as a strong positive. (Just imagine if this drug had made it to market and resulted in a nationwide class action suit on behalf of a million people...goodbye company.) So the test subjects should be compensated in proportion to the value they provided the company.
For some of these cases you refer to.
I'm legitimately interested in them, not just looking for a chance to bash you.
Incorporate and run your affairs through a holding company. That's called "making the system work for you."
Anyone can incorporate a company in the U.S. with a few simple forms. You can buy a kit at any bookstore.
At the point of singularity, all of human and biological progress, will be a few microseconds worth to us. At least without human modification.
Only from your perspective today. To a person living it as it happens it will seem much slower and manageable.
You touched on this yourself, probably without even realizing it:
The 15th century monk has about the same technological differential with respect to an early 20th century man as does one generation in todays society.
Correct, the rate of technological change has increased. But so has the rate of our adaptation. People deal with change about as well as they dealt with it in the 15th century, despite its vastly increased rate. Why? Because humans are changing too. The fallacy comes in trying to analyze a dynamic system from a static perspective.
That's really not what's under discussion here -- I'm not more intelligent than a 15th-century monk. Putting that monk in the modern world would cause severe culture shock because of the disconnect between the world and his existing frames of reference. He'd have to run like mad to try to catch up, because he didn't have his whole life to become used to it, but a bright person could probably manage it.
Now you're just reversing the process, evaluating the past from the context of today. Who's to say how much smarter you are than a 15th century monk? Define "smart" or "intelligence" for a start.
This sort of intellectual hand-waving is not particularly convincing.