Thanks, that's really useful!

It's actually only slightly worse than my uncorrected vision where clarity is concerned (the cars in the original image look almost as blobby without my glasses as they do in the taxel image with my glasses on!), but seeing in full color makes a big difference in depth perception and pattern recognition. If I didn't have the reference image I would have difficulty telling what that greyscaled set of blobs really was. I can't imagine that being too useful in situations where there is a lot of visual info to process. Maybe in a very clean, very bright room it works well... it's a start!

The accessibility issue is why I'm volunteering here (in Pittsburgh) with a nonprofit agency that includes an urban ag initiative. I work at the "farm" (a reclaimed baseball field) every week, and there's a farmer's market that's paired with the local food bank for greater selection than we can produce (trucked in from local farmers), and the ability to take food stamps and WIC. The project is still in its infancy and doesn't get many customers, but we're in an area where the nearest "grocery store" that isn't a corner booze and cig place is at least 5 miles away down the highway; not a good walk by any means, so we're hoping word spreads that there are veggies to be had closer to home.

We're in a "food desert", and the people here show it. Surprisingly, there are no gardens except the ones started by the ag project (I suspect people here are so worn down they think a garden would be too much effort). When we moved into our home here the yard was full of snack wrappers (twinkies, chocolate chip "granola" bars) that I assume were tossed by the prior resident's kids, but there wasn't a single orange peel or apple core on the lot. In one of our cupboards we found a crumpled McDonald's bag. The kitchen was coated with grease (literally - I had to soak the cupboard doors and shelves in industrial de-greaser!), and I had to clean the phone number for Pizza Hut off the wall in the living room.

If any of this surprises you, you don't realize how poorly most Americans eat, especially when they are living in an area that is both low-income and far from any walkable grocery stores. Pizza hut costs more than I'd ever pay for regular meals, but if they deliver and the other choices are walking five miles to the nearest store (and doing so while trying to find free childcare and/or taking your kids with you!) or paying for a bus and then trying to budget and squeeze your shopping bags into a bus seat, getting home and spending another half hour in the kitchen cooking... sure, that's the healthy option, but how many people have the opportunity and motivation to choose it?

I doubt Australia faces the exact same issues as the urban US, but I'm sure their problems are similar enough, when it comes to the reasons behind child obesity.

Then again, if the desks are really too small is it fair to call the kids fat? I suspect these desks are still being made to fit the 1940's "average", when people were still building basements for 5'4" tall adults (I hate old house basements!). Maybe the measurements need to be adjusted for today's average healthy build and if the "fat" kids -still- don't fit, then we can start blaming their size.

When do you have the right to complain? Am I allowed to email you? Can I use your /. username as a Google search term, find someone under that name on another site, and follow them? Can I check for your profile on LinkedIn? Can I look you up in the phone book and call your home to discuss the comment you made?

Do I have to make contact for it to be stalking and harassment, or is there some critical mass of your posts on /. that I have to store before it starts getting creepy? Is it creepier if it's an individual rather than a company doing it?

When I post something online, whether it's to my blog or to /., I have expectations for that post's use. I expect that if it's copied it will be linked back to the original, I expect that it won't be used to market items to me (except where I have opted into the marketing), and I expect that no one's mining it for complaints related to their products. If I want to write a post bitching about my HP printer's waste of ink, I don't expect an HP rep to call me the next day and ask how they can improve the printer.

In some cases it would be useful to provide feedback via that kind of medium, but for most people most of the time, we aren't providing company feedback when we say HP printers suck because they use too much ink, and we don't expect HP to find that comment, track it, and offer assistance (not that they would, anyway - I suspect most complaints that people make outside the hearing range of the company they're complaining about are such things as would not be fixed even if the company knew about them, and there's a good chance the company already does).

Ok, but a tactile input system or a forehead system is always going to be conspicuous, will always require an adjustment period while the brain re-learns how to deal with the input, and just isn't as freaking awesome as retinal implants.

Yes, sensory substitution -works- but it clearly doesn't work very well because I don't see any blind people using it right now. What does it cost? Is it covered by insurance? If I went blind I'd rather stay blind than pay several thousand dollars to strap something to my forehead every day, just to see dull shapes and colors. I know what it's like to be nearsighted and not be able to pick out fine details without getting -really- close, and if I had to choose between blindness and poorly rendered, poorly colored tactile vision rendered by a forehead strip that made me look like a star in a bad 80's technothriller, I think I'd stay blind and hold out for an improvement in the tech.

Of course, I'm not blind. While I'm pretty nearsighted and can't read what I'm currently typing from more than a foot away without my glasses, I can get around just fine without them if I'm not required to drive. I once worked for a week at a girl scout camp without them (they broke) - performing all my regular duties, and even learning to recognize my co-workers across a field full of people without needing to see their faces. But that ability also means I've never had to navigate completely without sight except by choice (like walking to the bathroom for a drink at 3am). I assume many blind people would enjoy the chance to see, but I can only assume no one's that excited by huge sight-replacing devices with 512 "taxel" resolution*, except as a step toward better things.

*I've tried to imagine this and even asked Google to come up with an image that showed what this might 'look' like and come up with nothing, so I can't even compare it to my own nearsightedness as far as clarity of the image and how useful it would be - anyone have an example?

Better risk analysis wouldn't have helped with the attitude of many people that "The market isn't going to crash", "Subprime lending is going to work out just fine", and "If it gets too bad we'll just pass the debt on to someone else!".

Knowledge is great, but without insight it becomes meaningless.

To be a little more on-topic: I can appreciate the value of something that was handcrafted or otherwise had a lot of time and attention (and possibly skill) put into making it vs. something that gets cranked off an assembly line three times a second. There -is- value in older, more time-consuming manufacturing styles, all efficiency or lack thereof aside. And that's probably part of the appeal in flawed diamonds vs. the flawless lab ones. Sure, the lab can make me a diamond the size of my fist without a single flaw, but no human alive can wish one that big and flawless from the earth, so every time they manage to cut a diamond the size of my fist from a mine, it's unique and unpredictable. No one knows when they'll do it again (or if).

Still, there's not a large enough market by far to support every lace manufacturer going back to an older standard, and the market that keeps the last few going would probably go along with a change to new equipment if the brand remained at about the same quality. The lack of workers is also a bit of a stumbling block, although I'll bet anything they could get plenty of immigrants working there... some of us are a bit too spoiled for "dirty" factory work, but it doesn't mean that it's not still a legitimate way to make a living!

No, the "diamond thing" is nothing more than a fantasy spread by De Beers and friends to turn a tidy profit from exploiting diamond mines in Africa. Where did you pull this "social test" BS? 100 years ago nobody gave a shit about diamond rings. Search "De Beers Diamond Ad campaign". There are plenty of sources for this.

Women want "real" diamonds because that's what the media tells them they should love. Something "real", not "fake" (yes, I know they're real diamonds. Don't get me started on the masses' lack of chemistry skill) - A Diamond is Forever!(tm) but a "lab diamond" seems to represent an artificial love (as if the real thing doesn't!). The sacrifice of buying a diamond says only that the man handing it to you is thoughtful enough to buy into the best marketing scheme ever conceived.

Mine bought me a small sapphire which I helped to pick out and love dearly because it represents a lot more than his determination to provide me with what is probably the most expensive status symbol I'll ever have, right at the beginning of the relationship (once you've blown 3k on a single ring, it sets quite the precedent for other gifts!)... it tells me he cares more about our long-term financial stability than about a colorless chunk of rock.

Since the living wage in many parts of this country is more than twice the minimum wage. Since economic efficiency may be good for the machine but is not necessarily just or fair. Since working full time and still failing to feed your family has become so common that food banks can't keep up. Since the rich can afford to give up more for the common good. Since the Church asks that all people give according to their means. Since common sense dictates that all of us need to invest in our communities in order to maintain a healthy society, and also dictates that those who have little by necessity can not invest as much as those whose coffers overflow. Since paying taxes which support public services will result in higher economic output, fewer lost man hours, better education, greater health and a better attitude from the recipients of said public services, which benefits everybody. Since you benefit every day from social services and for the system to continue to work, what comes out must be paid back in. Need I continue?

Fair does not mean equal, nor should it, and I'm getting awfully sick of people who think that nobody else has a right to their money because they "worked" for it. You live, work, and play under the auspices of a government that can take everything away from you whenever it feels like it, as all governments can in various ways and under various masks of Security and The General Good. Your money and your property are not your own. You earned them with the help of public schooling and public roads and subsidies for certain products which allow us to have cheap food and cheap goods so that we can all (supposedly) save money to invest elsewhere. You benefit every day from the social programs in this country and yet you refuse to pay back some of what you gained? Remember this: You pay taxes to the government which allow you to keep most of your money and all of your property, but those taxes are little more than a lease on that land and that money. Stop paying the federal accountants your rent every year and watch your property deed disappear! Realize this, and get over the "It's MINE" attitude. You're not four years old and the world is not fair and you do have to share. This country is broken and its promises in ruins, and it isn't going to get any better if idiots like you keep clinging to your misplaced puritanical ideals and insisting that you owe society nothing because you think you earned everything by yourself.

The best way to counteract the media's encouragement is to remove yourself from the media's reach. For instance, I don't watch TV, don't listen to mainstream radio, don't buy the newspaper and use adblock for web browsing. The amount of ads I see goes from ~2000/day (I can't get a firm number, but many place it at over 3k ads per day for an "average" american from all ad sources) to ~100/day, and that's if I'm out and about. Some days I see 3 ads, and they're what Facebook serves me when I log in to check my news feed.

Another idea: Have friends who don't wholeheartedly embrace the consumer lifestyle. The effects of social networks on personal choices have been studied in regards to food (if you have fat friends, you are more likely to change eating habits to match theirs, and gain weight) and viral advertising, among other things. Hanging out with friends who are appalled when you didn't see the latest episode of House makes avoiding media (and therefore avoiding the temptations of consumerism) much more difficult than having friends who are interested in how you're doing with your latest novel, or how your garden's going.

Try doing this in Mexico. There was a mall across from a theater where our group of exchange students would go some evenings. Between the two plazas was a 6-lane road (3 in each direction) with a small median 'island' and a crosswalk painted on it. There was no traffic signal. The rule, as we picked it up from the natives, was "RUN!"

When you got a relative break in traffic, you'd sprint to the median, where if you were lucky you'd get another break and sprint to the other side. On occasion you'd see the bolder kids strut slowly across, but everyone knew that most drivers didn't brake for pedestrians.

After that, crossing roads here is easy. People in America tend to slow down for pedestrians, even on busy roads.

It took that long to fold the laundry, too. I think the problem lies in the inability of the robot to process 'visual' input (ie, the door handle, the beer bottles) and respond at the pace of a human brain. It has to be programmed to recognize these things, and the programming has limitations. With a little more work, I expect they'll get it down to a much faster response time. At this point, the fact that it does it at all is kickass!

It's not sterile, but it doesn't produce "true". F1 (first generation) hybrids bred together will not produce seeds that have the same high yield or in some cases even the same taste and look as their parent crop. Soybeans are like this. You buy high-yield seed from Monsanto. If you choose to use the seed produced by your crop, it won't grow the same high-yield plants that it came from. I'm pretty sure the reason for this is that the plants won't self-pollinate. They cross-pollinate, and the hybrids that Monsanto sells don't produce good seed after the initial cross.

You can test genetics with some store-bought produce. Hybrids are all over in the produce department and their seeds often grow a plant entirely different than the parent. I've seen it happen with apples and pears, melons, and squash... I'm sure it happens with many other plants. Monsanto can control quite a few crops by providing plants that won't produce true, and the farmers can't do much about it, short of spending a lot of time and money on trying to breed new high-producers for themselves. Self-pollinating crops might be harder to control, but I'm sure they'll figure out a way to do it...

I don't trust lab-modified foods. We've been genetically engineering our food supply for higher yield, taste, color, and insect resistance ever since the first seed was planted. Artificial selection of traits is part of why human agriculture was so successful. However, we have only recently started tampering with the genetic code directly. We don't usually eat poisonous caterpillars or pesticide-resistant weeds; why should we blindly accept that the things that we have inserted into our crops are "only poisonous to pests"? I'm not going to accept "The FDA says it's edible", because I don't trust the FDA either.

I don't think that a game necessarily needs to avoid Phoenix down or rocket launchers in order to maintain better internal consistency. The items can be very useful, and if done right they don't remove from "immersion" but add complexity to the world and the characters' interactions. As above posters have said, there are ways around these items, if only the designers would bother with an explanation. Maybe using Phoenix down is too easy. If we couldn't use it during battles but rather had to carry a 'dead' character to a temple or nearby wandering healer, or deal with a ghost instead of just dropping phoenix feathers on the body, we could then agree that if the character's body was unrecoverable and/or their ghost was unavailable the character couldn't be resurrected. Or maybe it takes time to use; the recovery isn't immediate and when a character in a cutscene dies we are led to believe that we simply didn't have enough time for the spell/item to take effect. It might add to the internal consistency of the game this way; instead of guessing at the circumstances in which certain items can be used, you get answers which make sense within the game-world and yet limit the powers of the items.

(As to -why- people take things seriously? I have no clue. If I knew, I'd probably be making a lot of money off the knowledge!)

Then clearly you're the only smart person on the internet, although I think I'd disagree with you that the 'net is made charming by idiot posturing over salaries. (I make $200k/year sitting on my ass in my undies! HAH!)

You're right that tiptoeing around strong words just because we're worried they'll offend someone is not the way to go; I use strong statements in Facebook notes and in other communication, but I usually try to do so in a way that doesn't attack others - for instance, I wrote a note the other day bashing a certain Christian woman for getting on my nerves regarding birth control ("if you loved him you'd have his babies!"). My Christian friends were not offended by it because despite my strong feelings toward that particular subject it was clear that my attack wasn't directed at them. It's not that hard to make statements that acknowledge someone else's views (you did it in the post above!).