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Comment Re:Asimov system? (Score 2) 269

Overrated?? Asimov wrote over 500 books, both fiction and nonfiction. His stories were between the covers of all the science fiction magazines every month. And the trilogy you rate so poorly won a Hugo award (the most respected science fiction award there is, with the possible exception of the Nebula). He, Heinlein, and Clarke are are often considered to be the "Big Three" of science fiction authors.

Sheesh, judge the author of over 500 books on three. That's pathetic.

Oh, and in case you didn't figure it out, I've been a huge Asimov fan for fifty years (as well as Heinlein and Niven and most of the rest). I didn't care for Clarke, but I'd not call him unimpressive, I just didn't care for his style. If I cared for that style I'd probably love his work, but I don't.

Comment Re:Which users? (Score 1) 269

Couldn't agree more. Not restoring the (useful) start menu for W8, even as an option, goes to show how much they really care about it's customers.

You're not their customer unless you're buying boxed sets of their OS and apps to install on your home brew machine. Acer, Dell, etc. are their customers. You didn't buy that OS from Microsoft, the OEM did. You bought it from him, and he's the one you should complain to.

Comment Re:Start menu usage dropped in lieu of what? (Score 1) 269

From the time I got Windows 7, and I could just press "start" type the first few characters of the program name and launch it

And then open the file you want to work on. Meanwhile, using the Start Menu, two clicks and your document is open inside the app.

Your method is extremely problematic with something like GIMP that has little or no keyboard use.

Don't like Start? Don't use it. But just because I don't have a use for something doesn't mean it should be abolished.

Comment Re:Start menu usage dropped in lieu of what? (Score 1) 269

On my small notebook I have the file manager, Thunderbird and Firefox pinned, but I mostly use Open Office Write. Most recently opened documents are two clicks away, while if Oo was pinned a click would open a blank document, and it's a couple more clicks from Oo's interface.

Comment Re:They've reinvented CB radio! (Score 1) 153

Citizens' band is NOT ham radio. CB is limited by law to low power transmitters and anyone can use it. Ham radio can reach anywhere in the world. Also, you need to take a test to be granted a ham license. Never heard of Ohm's Law? No license for you! Back when I was a teenager you had to know Morse code to get a license, the one thing that kept one out of my hands (I never could memorize).

Comment Re:Gonna miss Snidely Whiplash (Score 1) 31

Goddammit, if I weren't already ideologically minded, I would despise conservatives for their crimes against the english language.

When the best you can manage is passive-aggressive solipsism and intentionally petrified bawdy humour, PUT THE KEYBOARD DOWN.

Another fucking coder thinks the right side of his brain is worth a damn...
User Journal

Journal Journal: Surprising Statistics 1

Bored, since I can't do anything to the book but wait for the USPS, I decided to log into my web host's site and check out statistics for my site. Most of them were completely unexpected.

Comment Close, but I think it's simpler and more normal (Score 3, Insightful) 460

than that.

It's not that the public doesn't trust the abilities of scientists.

It's that they don't trust their motives. We have a long literary tradition that meditates on scientists that "only cared about whether they could, not whether they should," and the politicization of sciences makes people wonder not whether scientists are incompetent, but whether they have "an agenda," i.e. whether scientists are basically lying through their teeth and/or pursuing their own political agendas in the interest of their own gain, rather than the public's.

At that point, it's not that the public thinks "If I argue loudly enough, I can change nature," but rather "I don't understand what this scientist does, and I'm sure he/she is smart, but I don't believe they're telling me about nature; rather, they're using their smarts to pull the wool over my eyes about nature and profit/benefit somehow."

So the public isn't trying to bend the laws of nature through discourse, but rather simply doesn't believe the people that are telling them about the laws of nature, because they suspect those people as not acting in good faith.

That's where a kinder, warmer scientific community comes in. R1 academics with million-dollar grants may sneer at someone like Alan Alda on Scientific American Frontiers, but that sneering is counterproductive; the public won't understand (and doesn't want to) the rigorous, nuanced state of the research on most topics. It will have to be given to them in simplified form; Alan Alda and others in that space did so, and the scientific community needs to support (more of) that, rather than sneer at it.

The sneering just reinforces the public notion that "this guy may be smarter than me, but he also thinks he's better and more deserving than me, so I can't trust that what he's telling me is really what he thinks/knows, rather than what he needs to tell me in order to get my stuff and/or come out on top in society, deserving or not."

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