Prove the "better" and "healthier" comments, and this whole issue dissapears in a puff of logic. And no, "a press release by a GM company said so" isn't proof.
*All* crops cross pollinate. Why should GM growers be held to a higher standard?
Because they're covered by patents.
If you really want crops without any cross contamination, you can grow them in a sealed hydroponic facility.
Exactly. Which is what Monsanto should be requiring of their customers, instead of waiting until cross-pollination occurs then suing for patent infringement.
You know, I agree with both you and the GP. The problem is, the GP is stating what should happen, while you're stating what would likely happen were his ideals be put into practical use.
The fact that we only get an insanely biased perspective on World War II and are practically forced to go and read Mein Kampf if we want to understand the other side of the conflict is one of my biggest problems with today's education. It shouldn't be so, but I know that if I ever tried to change it I'd be labeled a neo-nazi and lynched to death.
I doubt there's any free game with no ads on the Apple Store, simply because the devs have to recoup the costs of the Apple developer license one way or another.
And then there's the whole Apple approval thing, though as long as your business model isn't "pay per baby shake" I don't see how it'd be a burden economically. Still bothersome, though, and a problem that IIRC the Zune lacks.
Except that in books, nothing ever changes. In a well written RPG, the outcome and the way things play out over the course of the game is affected by your choices.
No more than in a Choose Your Own Adventure book, unless it's a roleplaying session with other humans (hence, 'social aspect').
Older, but only sightly. Too old, and you may realize we already have a way to get a good plot, and they're called "books". No, all it matters to me is gameplay and yes, the "social aspect" you deride so much. Give me a fun game, and an easy way to find others who play it, and I'm all set.
That's why my favorite RPG is Guild Wars, the plot may be an endless stream of cliches and the graphics may not be anywhere near as good as those of Mass Effect or the latest Final Fantasy, but the battle system is fun as hell and, being halfway between a "regular" RPG and a MMO, the social aspect is second to none.
If a couple has *no* chance of having offspring and, as such, would indicate the termination of both partners' genetic legacy, does society not have a motivation to prevent such tragedy from happening?
Let's face it, there's "strong scientific evidence" to prevent anything other than monogamous, heterosexual relationships between consenting adults, and the only reason we don't is because we, as society, have deemed our freedom to be more important than the "responsability" to prevent "tragedies" from happening. And it's about damn time we follow through on that philosophy in all aspects of law besides homosexuality.
Can't wait to build a new computer in 2 years when prices go down and my computer becomes obsolete.
Such is the life of graphics whores.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are happy to play with our HD4350s and GF 6200s, and upgrading only once every five years or so, to the next bargain-bin card, whose R&D was paid by all of you:)
What are you honestly going to use the extra "power" for? Wouldn't you rather just have something that does its thing really well? And has a gazillion apps available?
If I wanted a device that does one thing really well, why the FUCK would I be interested in the gazillion apps available for it?
Apple's detractors consider the company to be a bunch of control freaks, which is true, but that's exactly why their user interfaces are so consistent and usability is so high. Their mania for controlling every aspect of the user's experience has an upside and a downside.
And the downside lies clearly in usefulness. The problem of Apple's website is that, in maintaining cleanliness and consistency, they sacrificed the actual *information* on their webpages, besides their self-serving marketing.
No, Microsoft's isn't any better, as it somehow manages to be both cluttered *and* useless at the same time. But a website that's both consistent, usable, and most importantly *useful* is that of IBM, in particular DeveloperWorks. Of course, that's probably a result of both having competent developers *and* regularly running surveys to rate the usability of the website, something I've never seen at either Apple or Microsoft.
From the third paragraph in the blog post(!) you linked:
"We can talk on a cell phone while driving to work, and we can compose complex sentences while typing."
So, apparently, we can still be productive while typing, as long as we don't switch keyboard layouts every other week.
That's the kind of relativist bs that really annoys me. You don't explain to me what I got wrong in particular. Instead, you just sweepingly declare that the things I have said are invalid. Well, two can play that game. Your claim that I have made too many unfounded assumptions is pure bullshit. I've given my sources. If you disagree with what I have said, make specific claims instead of just declaring that I'm wrong. What are you, a politician?
Relativist? I don't think that word means what you think it means. Furthermore, only *now* you've given your sources (which as I explained above, support *my* assertion rather than yours), your original post is completely devoid of them.
But if you want a more comprehensive list of problems, here they are: first, as I already said, your conclusions require productivity to be nil while typing, secondly you assume that every second spent not-typing is spent productively. Also, you not only assume that a third of our days is spent typing based solely on your own, anecdotal experience, you even fail to consider the huge uncertainty of it (namely, going from 25-50% to 33%).
"Life or death" is irrelevant with respect to a situation being objectively "right" or "wrong".
What matters is how scientific it is, even if your boss and your boss' boss believe otherwise, bogosort is *still* an horribly inefficient sorting algorithm. Even if the whole freakin' world believed otherwise, it'd still be so, not because I say so but because there are mathematical proofs of it.
But you're right that in the real world, "right" and "wrong" are often subjective. In most businesses, in most professions, what matters isn't doing your job well but rather making *others* believe you're doing well. Your company may be bleeding millions per month, but as long as shareholders believe "it would've been worse with anyone else at the head", you're still getting a big, fat raise (at the expense of everyone who works underneath you).
It's sad, pitiful, incredibly stupid, but it's reality. But that doesn't mean we can't call it stupid, either.
Re:The Improbability of Improbability
on
The Magicians
·
· Score: 1
I'll concede Lewis, but what was the "point" that you perceive Tolkien set out to make? That invented languages are fun?
Y'know, I always thought that was precisely the point. That Tolkien had created this inmense, incredibly developed language, set out to write some 'cultural elements' in it (tales, legends, poems, songs, etc), then wrote LotR to have an use for all that stuff.
Not that I don't *like* it, mind you, Tolkien's "world building" is second to none and the fact that not all those tales and songs (in fact, practically none of them) have much bearing to the plot in question really helps with the suspension of disbelief, but 'putting his invented languages out there for some use' did seem to be the prime motivation behind the books.
Because the iPhone isn't intended to be an all-purpose pocket computer - its a phone and music player.
One would guess, then, that they wouldn't have built their phone and music player out of computer parts, software included.
Somehow, it seems as if Apple's dream is to create and sell non-Turing complete Turing machines, which is only sightly less stupid than the RIAA's dream of having DRM that allows the consumer to access the data without letting him do so.
So, considering all this data: We probably spend about a third of our work time typing, and touch typing is on average roughly 1.6 times as fast as two-finger typing. For an 8-hour work day, that results in 2.7 hours of typing, of which roughly one hour is "wasted" for two-finger typers.
Assuming that people can't do anything productive (such as thinking) while typing.
Lies, damn lies, and all that. Too many unfounded assumptions to support your conclusion.
Pure calculus hasn't, but how we use it has. In this age of 3 Ghz computer pretty much nobody uses logarithmic tables to multiply large numbers, so why the fuck are they still teaching that broken, oversimplified model of logarithms and exponential functions in high school? Same for trigonometry, the teaching of it could be greatly simplified if teachers started from the assumption that all students will have a machine doing the calculations for them.
Logic, constructing basic proofs, *those* are much more useful in today's age yet they're being relegated to college first years in favor of teaching high school students methods for kinda sorta doing the same thing their cellphone can do a hundred times more precisely and a thousand times faster.
Slashdot Mirror
The next step is outlawing thoughts and feelings.
The day the technology exists to detect it, that's precisely what's going to happen.
And not just in Germany.
Prove the "better" and "healthier" comments, and this whole issue dissapears in a puff of logic. And no, "a press release by a GM company said so" isn't proof.
*All* crops cross pollinate. Why should GM growers be held to a higher standard?
Because they're covered by patents.
If you really want crops without any cross contamination, you can grow them in a sealed hydroponic facility.
Exactly. Which is what Monsanto should be requiring of their customers, instead of waiting until cross-pollination occurs then suing for patent infringement.
And I have less money because you aren't giving me yours.
You shouldn't let your greed cloud your judgement: licensing taxes *are* stupid, and if Microsoft found a way to get off them, good for them.
You know, I agree with both you and the GP. The problem is, the GP is stating what should happen, while you're stating what would likely happen were his ideals be put into practical use.
The fact that we only get an insanely biased perspective on World War II and are practically forced to go and read Mein Kampf if we want to understand the other side of the conflict is one of my biggest problems with today's education. It shouldn't be so, but I know that if I ever tried to change it I'd be labeled a neo-nazi and lynched to death.
Guess Apple should change the name to iPhone-ready too, since you can't use it as a phone without a plan costing more than the phone itself.
Or perhaps you're just nitpicking to make the Zune look worse than it is.
I doubt there's any free game with no ads on the Apple Store, simply because the devs have to recoup the costs of the Apple developer license one way or another.
And then there's the whole Apple approval thing, though as long as your business model isn't "pay per baby shake" I don't see how it'd be a burden economically. Still bothersome, though, and a problem that IIRC the Zune lacks.
The US' awful cellphone market isn't either standard in the western world, nor a result of being too 'free' (the opposite, actually).
Except that in books, nothing ever changes. In a well written RPG, the outcome and the way things play out over the course of the game is affected by your choices.
No more than in a Choose Your Own Adventure book, unless it's a roleplaying session with other humans (hence, 'social aspect').
Older, but only sightly. Too old, and you may realize we already have a way to get a good plot, and they're called "books". No, all it matters to me is gameplay and yes, the "social aspect" you deride so much. Give me a fun game, and an easy way to find others who play it, and I'm all set.
That's why my favorite RPG is Guild Wars, the plot may be an endless stream of cliches and the graphics may not be anywhere near as good as those of Mass Effect or the latest Final Fantasy, but the battle system is fun as hell and, being halfway between a "regular" RPG and a MMO, the social aspect is second to none.
If a couple has *no* chance of having offspring and, as such, would indicate the termination of both partners' genetic legacy, does society not have a motivation to prevent such tragedy from happening?
Let's face it, there's "strong scientific evidence" to prevent anything other than monogamous, heterosexual relationships between consenting adults, and the only reason we don't is because we, as society, have deemed our freedom to be more important than the "responsability" to prevent "tragedies" from happening. And it's about damn time we follow through on that philosophy in all aspects of law besides homosexuality.
Can't wait to build a new computer in 2 years when prices go down and my computer becomes obsolete.
Such is the life of graphics whores.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are happy to play with our HD4350s and GF 6200s, and upgrading only once every five years or so, to the next bargain-bin card, whose R&D was paid by all of you :)
Apple's website is often considered one of the most consitant and well constructed sites on the internet.
[Citation Needed]. I wanna know who do I need to hit with the Clue Stick(tm) today.
Not that I'm defending Microsoft here, I've seen spam websites with better usability than Microsoft.com but Apple's is no shining star either.
What are you honestly going to use the extra "power" for? Wouldn't you rather just have something that does its thing really well? And has a gazillion apps available?
If I wanted a device that does one thing really well, why the FUCK would I be interested in the gazillion apps available for it?
Either I care about flexibility or I don't.
Apple's detractors consider the company to be a bunch of control freaks, which is true, but that's exactly why their user interfaces are so consistent and usability is so high. Their mania for controlling every aspect of the user's experience has an upside and a downside.
And the downside lies clearly in usefulness. The problem of Apple's website is that, in maintaining cleanliness and consistency, they sacrificed the actual *information* on their webpages, besides their self-serving marketing.
No, Microsoft's isn't any better, as it somehow manages to be both cluttered *and* useless at the same time. But a website that's both consistent, usable, and most importantly *useful* is that of IBM, in particular DeveloperWorks. Of course, that's probably a result of both having competent developers *and* regularly running surveys to rate the usability of the website, something I've never seen at either Apple or Microsoft.
Copyright was only created in 1710, while the printing press was first made in 1440.
They can't.
From the third paragraph in the blog post(!) you linked:
"We can talk on a cell phone while driving to work, and we can compose complex sentences while typing."
So, apparently, we can still be productive while typing, as long as we don't switch keyboard layouts every other week.
That's the kind of relativist bs that really annoys me. You don't explain to me what I got wrong in particular. Instead, you just sweepingly declare that the things I have said are invalid. Well, two can play that game. Your claim that I have made too many unfounded assumptions is pure bullshit. I've given my sources. If you disagree with what I have said, make specific claims instead of just declaring that I'm wrong. What are you, a politician?
Relativist? I don't think that word means what you think it means. Furthermore, only *now* you've given your sources (which as I explained above, support *my* assertion rather than yours), your original post is completely devoid of them.
But if you want a more comprehensive list of problems, here they are: first, as I already said, your conclusions require productivity to be nil while typing, secondly you assume that every second spent not-typing is spent productively. Also, you not only assume that a third of our days is spent typing based solely on your own, anecdotal experience, you even fail to consider the huge uncertainty of it (namely, going from 25-50% to 33%).
"Life or death" is irrelevant with respect to a situation being objectively "right" or "wrong".
What matters is how scientific it is, even if your boss and your boss' boss believe otherwise, bogosort is *still* an horribly inefficient sorting algorithm. Even if the whole freakin' world believed otherwise, it'd still be so, not because I say so but because there are mathematical proofs of it.
But you're right that in the real world, "right" and "wrong" are often subjective. In most businesses, in most professions, what matters isn't doing your job well but rather making *others* believe you're doing well. Your company may be bleeding millions per month, but as long as shareholders believe "it would've been worse with anyone else at the head", you're still getting a big, fat raise (at the expense of everyone who works underneath you).
It's sad, pitiful, incredibly stupid, but it's reality. But that doesn't mean we can't call it stupid, either.
That's what they want you to *think*.
I'll concede Lewis, but what was the "point" that you perceive Tolkien set out to make? That invented languages are fun?
Y'know, I always thought that was precisely the point. That Tolkien had created this inmense, incredibly developed language, set out to write some 'cultural elements' in it (tales, legends, poems, songs, etc), then wrote LotR to have an use for all that stuff.
Not that I don't *like* it, mind you, Tolkien's "world building" is second to none and the fact that not all those tales and songs (in fact, practically none of them) have much bearing to the plot in question really helps with the suspension of disbelief, but 'putting his invented languages out there for some use' did seem to be the prime motivation behind the books.
"Lanie, I'm going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for everyone. That's worth going to jail for. That's worth anything."
From Cory Doctorow's Overclocked, "Printcrime".
Much like nobody wrote books or music before copyright existed?
Because the iPhone isn't intended to be an all-purpose pocket computer - its a phone and music player.
One would guess, then, that they wouldn't have built their phone and music player out of computer parts, software included.
Somehow, it seems as if Apple's dream is to create and sell non-Turing complete Turing machines, which is only sightly less stupid than the RIAA's dream of having DRM that allows the consumer to access the data without letting him do so.
So, considering all this data: We probably spend about a third of our work time typing, and touch typing is on average roughly 1.6 times as fast as two-finger typing. For an 8-hour work day, that results in 2.7 hours of typing, of which roughly one hour is "wasted" for two-finger typers.
Assuming that people can't do anything productive (such as thinking) while typing.
Lies, damn lies, and all that. Too many unfounded assumptions to support your conclusion.
Has calculus changed in the last 150 years?
Pure calculus hasn't, but how we use it has. In this age of 3 Ghz computer pretty much nobody uses logarithmic tables to multiply large numbers, so why the fuck are they still teaching that broken, oversimplified model of logarithms and exponential functions in high school? Same for trigonometry, the teaching of it could be greatly simplified if teachers started from the assumption that all students will have a machine doing the calculations for them.
Logic, constructing basic proofs, *those* are much more useful in today's age yet they're being relegated to college first years in favor of teaching high school students methods for kinda sorta doing the same thing their cellphone can do a hundred times more precisely and a thousand times faster.