Heh, and this is where, as I say, I'm not a physicist, and can't easily check his work to see just how realistic it really is.

As far as that stuff's concerned, I'm content to just read it, and say, "Ooh, pretty explosions!" And not worry about just how much of it is actually realistic.

Dan Aris

Oh, yes, I'm fully aware! I was never much of a student of that period in history, though (nor did I ever read any of the actual Horatio Hornblower books), so I'm afraid only the most hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-brick bits really get through to me. (Mainly the French Revolution expies, since I do know a bit more about that.)

My understanding as to what caused him to not kill off Honor in the Battle of Manticore was that it was ultimately the partnership with (I think) Eric Flint on the Crown of Slaves spinoff sub-series, which then also led to the new Mesan Alignment plot in the main series.

Dan Aris

I'm no physicist myself, but from what I can tell, David Weber's Honor Harrington series of novels does a pretty good job of getting the physics right. Most battles are missile duels, energy weapons are powerful, but short-range, and when they develop a means of giving missiles multi-stage drives, it changes the game significantly, as they no longer have a single burst of maneuvering speed and then come in ballistic; they can accelerate at their target, burn out the first stage, coast in ballistic for many thousands of kilometers, and then activate the second stage for final maneuvering.

The writing is, in my opinion, readable, but not stellar, and he has much too much of a fascination with the French Revolution (to the point that one of the characters is named Rob S. Pierre) and that era in general, but I'm mildly enjoying reading through the ebook versions of the series (after having gotten them out of the library once, then purchased the most recent one, which had a CD with the ebooks of the rest on it, a year or so ago). I do find that I'm skimming large amounts of mostly irrelevant blather this time around, though ;-)

Dan Aris

For some, it's because Apple has the audacity to make tech easy for non-techies to use—that is, take away the exclusivity that some of the geeks here feel they should have on being able to use complex electronic devices.

For others, it's because Apple doesn't open up everything so that they can tinker with the innards and customize it to their exacting specifications (at least without jailbreaking).

In these cases, and some similar ones, there's a strong sense that Apple is not serving true geeks, but rather the masses, and therefore they're never going to do anything different that's not cosmetic—shiny, thin devices, pretty UI, that sort of thing. They must be incapable of real, complex, important stuff, because they don't "get" our favorite complex, important stuff.

For still others, though, it's not really about Apple, but rather a general sense that no large organization—company, government, or government agency—is going to act in the best interests of the people they are supposed to be serving (in one way or another), and that they will almost gleefully lie about their nefarious intentions in order to lull the sheeple into a false sense of security.

And sure, it's possible that Apple's lying. That up until now, they have been open about being willing to give your information to the Feds when they ask for it, but now they'll just do it under the table. But that really doesn't pass Occam's Razor. It doesn't even pass Hanlon's Razor—it requires Apple to be both malicious and stupid. But a lot of people believe Apple is exactly that, because Apple's not Their Team—it's Them, not Us, and therefore any and all negative traits are safe to attribute to it.

Dan Aris

Well, first off, they fall under the FCC's jurisdiction as telecommunications companies of one stripe or another. So there's a certain amount of power to regulate them there.

Second of all, as you so astutely note, giving them federal funds with strings attached means they are sort of required to abide by the terms of those strings, and from what I understand (though I haven't researched this in-depth), they have, in fact, taken government money to do certain things that they have signally failed to do, which means there ought to at least be some sort of penalty until they do. Money might work—say, 10% of their gross income the first year they fail to comply, increasing to 20% the second year, 30% the third, until they either do their damn jobs or simply bleed to death.

Thirdly, there is a strong argument to be made (whether you agree with it or not; I happen to) that internet service is, at this point, no longer a "non-essential luxury product," but a basic service along the lines of telephone and power. As such, it should be regulated much more strictly than it has been to date. Ideally, the company that owns the physical hardware (the lines going to your house, for instance) should either be government-owned, or should at least be forbidden from actually providing any more than the hardware—they should have to lease the lines at one price to all comers in the ISP market, and have no "value-add services" of their own. That would remove the incentive for them to do anything with their money but invest it in better infrastructure.

Dan Aris

At this point, the various big ISPs have taken so much taxpayer money, and provided so little in return, that I'd say we should stop providing them with any subsidies, and still require the same level of buildout. They can take the balance out of their execs' bonuses from next quarter—which should be enough to cover a fair amount of infrastructure.

Dan Aris

There is a correlation, it's just not a perfect one.

Dan Aris

Ummm...what?

That's generally brought up in the context of surveillance. Do you view reviews, by customers, of the products and/or services they've received from companies serving the public as being in the same category as overly broad and privacy-invading surveillance?

'Cause to me, that sounds like the kind of transparency a free market is built upon.

Dan Aris

I'm sure that happens too! ^_~

Dan Aris

There is one sure way to reduce negative reviews: Make sure your product and/or service is good quality.

Nothing can entirely eliminate negative reviews, because sometimes people just get a lemon product, or the person giving them service was having a bad day, or they're just ornery people who can't be satisfied. But if you do your job right, monitor your employees to make sure they're not slacking off or mistreating your customers—and, of course, the best way to do this is to make sure they're satisfied with their jobs in the first place—and don't skimp monetarily on the quality of your product, service, or employees, then you're likely to get more good reviews than bad.

Dan Aris

Except that that's not always true.

If they're in a monopoly position, sure; they can theoretically raise prices whenever and however much they want. If they're not, however, then they might just have to reduce the execs' bonuses this quarter, instead. (After all, if they could have raised prices before, why didn't they?) If you look at the statistics on where the profits of corporations have been going more and more over the past 40 years or so, you'll see that there's plenty of room for compensation at the top to be reduced to pay for all this sort of thing.

Dan Aris

Yes, seriously.

For a great many people, "switching ISPs" basically means moving. Because if you're lucky, you've got an option of DSL or cable, with DSL being effectively useless for anything but simple web browsing and email.

This is why we need true net neutrality—which means separating the medium from the message. Force the people who own the lines to at least lease them to anyone who asks, basically at cost...or, even better, break up the companies that own the lines so that that's all they do, and all the other services are part of a separate company.

Dan Aris

You're (apparently willfully obtusely) mixing up objective truth with what one believes to be true. It's always easier to remember facts that one has already learned (particularly from one's own past) than lies one has made up on the spot.

Dan Aris

I'm aware of this. However, I've seen some articles which explain that even this small difference is enough to cause problems—either that, or that it's something to do with how the fructose and glucose are connected. Or something; I'm afraid this type of chemistry isn't my strong suit.

Now you're just oversimplifying beyond the point of reason. That's like saying because they're all made up of the same elements, we might as well just drink gasoline.

Our bodies treat sugars (simple carbohydrates) and starches (complex carbohydrates) quite differently. Pretending otherwise because they're both examples of carbohydrates will get you laughed out of any biology class anywhere.

Or...maybe there's actually something different about a low-fat, high-carb diet and a low-carb, high-fat diet that convinces our bodies to store less energy as fat, and your attempts to rationalize away something that challenges your worldview are just that.

Dan Aris

You are also being overly simplistic about it.

Yes, obviously, one calorie of energy gained from an apple is equivalent to one calorie of energy gained from a chocolate bar.

But the point is, we don't eat food purely for the energy they give us, and health in general and weight gain in particular are governed by much more than the pure thermodynamics of the intake vs usage.

For one thing, maybe I can extract more calories from that apple than you can. And it's also known that eating certain types of food makes the body more likely to store energy as fat if they're eaten around the same time, regardless of how much energy is being expended. (More or less.)

So if you and I took identical meals, and ate them, and then performed identical exercise, there's a good chance that one of us would end up putting on more weight (or losing more weight) than the other. Because our body makeups and chemistries are different, our metabolisms are different, and our gut flora are different.

So yeah, if you want to be as stupidly pedantic as possible, one calorie is identical to every other calorie. But if you want to actually talk about something meaningful like health, different foods can be very different in the effects they will have on us, even if they have the exact same calorie count.

Dan Aris