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Comment Re:Weather is unpredictable (Score 3, Insightful) 397

I would agree, but only if we can let all the people who get stuck in a predictable storm die of hypothermia on the roads. Except, of course, nobody will let that happen. We'll spend millions of dollars and possibly endanger rescuer's lives to save them.

"Charge them the cost," I hear you cry? Yeah, that's not really going to go over well, and the lawyer's fees will dwarf anything we might recoup - not to mention pretty much guaranteeing whomever is in charge will never be elected to office again.

No - you (and I mean both you, personally, AC, as well as most of humanity) is too fucking stupid to stay safe, so the government is doing it for you. If you weren't so stupid in every. single. disaster. it might not be necessary. But utterly braindead humans show up every time. So stop blaming the evil gubmint - blame yourself and the dumb bitch next door. You're the reason these bans are put into place.

Comment Re:We Really Don't (Score 2) 153

Do we really need to establish a cult of science in which the gods are displeased if we don't use enough syllables in our word for "guess"? The words can be used interchangably. A "scientific hypothesis" does often catch more suggestion of testable, derived predictions, but it's also frequently used in a more general sense, just as "guess" can be used in a more noble sense.

I am all about respecting the scientists who invest a lot of work, but the fact they've done a lot of work doesn't make them more likely to be correct in a discussion of novel facts. There's no way to assign a probability to it and say "There is a 25% chance this explanation is correct because of this much work we put into it." In any case, the work is in testing and verifying the hypothesis, which is the science part, not in coming up with it (although work put into testing does of course put the researcher in a position to make further hypotheses).

Please don't paint these as the same thing, it's just doing the anti-science folk a service, and the rest of us a disservice.

Anti-science folk should be ignored. We don't need to scheme and manipulate to make sure our presentation of science leaves them on the poorest footing to rebut us, because, unless they are using science, their rebuttal is irrelevant. IMHO science teaches us to be humble about we have to say. Acknowledging the fact there may be flaws and we can and should be proved wrong is the whole difference between science and wild speculation. I don't think we should be provoked into saying otherwise just to try to entice the crackpots to our side.

Comment Re:the problem with Twitter (Score 1) 114

One of the beauties about 140 characters is you have to think about what you want to say and how you say it. Editing for brevity often makes it punchier and better phrased. Many are the occasion when I have written a joke or insight for facebook, modified it for twitter, and then posted the twitter version in both cases because the twitter version was just better.

300 characters is not almost as quick to read it is quite clearly twice as long to read. For me, that would mean that instead of having time to follow 100 people on twitter I would only be able to follow 50. (Another of the other main features of twitter is allowing followers to interact with popular figures with their fans which I imagine also benefits greatly from a terser format.)

Personally, I think twitter has the potential to be one of the social media that survives in the long term. Yes it has obvious limitations but I get much more bang for my buck reading those condensed updates than I do using any other media platform. Sometimes when life gets busy I will quit other sites but twitter remains perfectly manageable and useful. It's great for news, politics, humor, and interacting with relatively large numbers of people. If you have an essay you need to share, you can link to it.

Some examples of how much you can pack into “It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.” -- Albert Camus

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." -- Søren Kierkegaard

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep." -- William Shakespeare

Comment Re:Time to riot (Score 2) 570

You're quoting the mouth diarrhea of Pete Pachal, a Mashable "reporter" who can't discern between facts presented and his own, flawed interpretation of a slide show line.

Here's the actual quote from MS "Once a device is upgraded to Windows 10, we'll be keeping it current for the supported lifetime of the device," said Terry Myerson, executive vice president of the Operating Systems Group

Comment Re:Pete Pachal is an idiot (Score 2) 570

Well, if the lifetime of the supported device ends after a year, then you would have to buy a license/subscription for an unsupported device.

As I speculated, it's probably like Apple. My Gen 1 iPad, bought in early 2011, is no longer supported by Apple. None of the OS updates since 5.1.1 have been available on the device, despite it being less than 4 years old. My daughter's iPod Touch (4th gen) was bought in December of 2011, and won't run anything past iOS6.1.6, and it's barely 3 years old.

Will MS EOL devices so quickly? Hard to tell. Possibly for tablets and handsets. They have less control over hardware so there could be processor cut-offs or minimum installed requirements checks (proc type/speed, installed memory) instead of model number limits.

Comment Re:Still will cost around $100 for an OEM license (Score 1) 570

As is true with every piece of hardware out there. OEMs don't get to install 10 for free, they pay a per-box fee. Even Apple has a value for the OS they install with each Mac, and when you buy a new Mac you get to pay that engineering fee all over again.

If you own a W7 or W8 license (i.e. you bought their software) and you build a new machine in within a year of the new W10 release, you get to upgrade for free, too.

Comment Pete Pachal is an idiot (Score 5, Informative) 570

The linked article has Pete Pachal's unfounded speculation that Windows 10 will be an annual subscription, touting it as fact.

The actual quote from a MS executive is, "Once a device is upgraded to Windows 10, we'll be keeping it current for the supported lifetime of the device," said Terry Myerson, executive vice president of the Operating Systems Group.

So, no, you won't be losing your upgrade after a year. Like Apple, once your device has reached it's supported lifetime MS isn't guaranteeing that you'll be able to upgrade anymore and you'll be stuck with an OS that has basically been EOL'd as far as support is concerned. This is really a way to (1) get you on the hardware upgrade train (2) reduce version fragmentation in the Windows sphere and (3) reduce legacy OS support for the vast majority of MS users.

Comment This is a shame, really (Score 1) 63

A shame that we fully expect this data to be used to track us personally (because, let's face it, it probably will). This kind of data would be a huge value to civil engineers and planners who design the roads and target maintenance, improvements, and new routes. It would cost in the tens of millions of dollars to collect just a fraction of this using traditional methods, and yet the data could be had for less than a 1/10 of that and be far, far more complete.

Comment Re:No one 3D printed a house (Score 3, Informative) 98

You've never seen manufactured housing (aka mobile homes)? That do that all the time, and delivery it right to your site ready to be hooked into the power grid and water/sewer.

Don't like mobile homes? Try a modular home. Built in a factory with all the bits complete but in shipable-size pieces, assembled on site.

Still too much? there are a dozen different panelization technologies that will send you prefabricated parts you just screw or connect together.

Comment You're just not rich enough (Score 1) 141

Lots of people pay outrageous prices for stuff. People with lots of disposable income. If you were pulling in solid 7 figures (or higher), the cost of Google glass would be insignificant, less than the cost of a lunch out to someone with an average salary. Buying a private jet vs flying international first class seems like not that much of an upgrade, considering you get to the same place either way, and you get a comfortable ride regardless, but jet ownership and usage is increasing, even through you'll probably never buy one.

Comment Re:Anyone else concerned? (Score 1) 164

That's just it. Nearly 200,000 people die every. single. day. Doctors have patients die all the time because some things can't be fixed, or can't be fixed within the constraints of "regular" medicine. One of those constraints is money. I didn't see where he took her to a clinic and offered the best surgeon in the world $10,000,000 to attempt the surgery. (And, remember, all medical procedures are just probabilities of repair not guarantees.) Because he probably would have gotten a different answer.

And, yes, it's intensely frustrating. In fact, I'm often glad that I'm not a doctor. I've run into cases where someone's home will cost more to fix than the home is worth. Often, for those people, it costs more than their life savings. It's the death sentence for the structure, and a pretty dire condition for the owner. Imaging that your only shelter is falling apart around you, and may collapse, but not only don't you have the money to fix it but if you found the money and did fix it, it would still be worth less than the money you spent.

As for the misdiagnosis, doctors are still humans and they still make mistakes.

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