Comment Re:No reproduction (Score 5, Insightful) 327
Outgassing from the plastic and electronics, I'll bet.
Nice new routers, I'll bet. Loaded with stuff that's volatile.
Did they try a Faraday Cage to rule out the radio waves?
Outgassing from the plastic and electronics, I'll bet.
Nice new routers, I'll bet. Loaded with stuff that's volatile.
Did they try a Faraday Cage to rule out the radio waves?
You've confused the total with the excess. The total amount in the atmosphere, oceans, and biogeochemical cycles doesn't vary much, or very fast -- except for the last century during which there's been an extremely rapid rate of increase from fossil fuel burning. See http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm
As he says there:
"If you want basic facts about climate change, or detailed current technical information, you might do better using the links page. But if you want to use history to really understand it all..." -- read http://www.aip.org/history/climate/
Among other things you learn why logic and common sense didn't solve the puzzles in the detail needed; computers made it possible.
Gasoline.
Is that an "autocorrect what you typed" feature, or an "autocomplete before you type anything more" feature?
If the computer's good enough to get the right letter out of a vague approximation of position on a mini keyboard, it ought to be able to read my handwriting.
Want to do input on a tiny little area or just by waving your hands in the air?
Penmanship. Just make the computer able to read handwriting.
This is guaranteed to screw up people's ability to accurately place their fingers.
Same reason I turn off AutoCorrect -- because when the user can just wave and poke at the approximate area of the keyboard -- and get the right letter supplied -- the brain fuzzes over its map of the keyboard and the finger placement becomes imprecise. Or rather exactly precise enough to get the desired result -- which is pretty damn sloppy when the computer's taking care of the final accuracy.
'oogle brain mapping dystonia -- lots of academic work on this, it's a serious problem.
Sorry, CMU, this is going to cripple people if you implement it.
Not right away, it'll take some time before the damage is apparent.
Relax.
Once personal digital storage is outlawed, all your cameras and other recording devices will save directly to the Cloud of Unknowing.
Cool dispassionate editors will improve what you captured and return to you exactly what you need to know, no less and no more.
"... the reason for everything must publicly appear. Every man is a proprietor in government, and considers it a necessary part of his business to understand. It concerns his interest, because it affects his property. He examines the cost, and compares it with the advantages; and above all, he does not adopt the slavish custom of following what in other governments are called LEADERS.
It can only be by blinding the understanding of man, and making him believe that government is some wonderful mysterious thing, that excessive revenues are obtained...."
"... A recent letter signed by 15 companies and trade groups -- including TechAmerica, which represents Google, Facebook, Microsoft and other technology companies -- demanded that the measure's author, Assemblywoman Bonnie Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, drop her bill. They complain it would open up businesses to an avalanche of requests from individuals as well as costly lawsuits.
One early consequence of the heavy lobbying: A hearing on the bill, AB1291, scheduled for last week, has been pushed to next month.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a co-sponsor of the Right to Know Act, accuses the business groups of overreacting to hide their true intentions: to keep out of the public's eye the lucrative practice of amassing personal information on people who use online services, computer apps, social networking sites and other portals that track people's locations, buying habits, favorite foods and movies, and even their sexual orientation....
Many Facebook apps tap into their users' and their friends' profiles, including sections on religious, political and sexual preferences; race; income; and health concerns. Third-party advertising and marketing companies buy, sell and trade personal information that they get from mobile phones, financial institutions and social media sites.
Some mobile applications share location information and phone numbers of users -- a concern to advocates of domestic violence victims.
Consumers who live in 27 countries that belong to the European Union already have the right to know what data companies have on them -- laws that are being complied by Facebook, Google and others that are opposing the California legislation.
Google did not reply to requests for an interview; a Facebook spokesman declined to talk about the bill. The California Chamber of Commerce referred all calls to TechAmerica, the trade group that represents major Internet companies...."
I don't misunderstand the business model.
It's to collect money from advertisers by pushing stuff at viewers.
"I'm feeling lucky" now tells me I'm feeling hungry and gives me a map of restaurants near where I am.
Dagnabbit, when I want food, I -know- how to search for food I want.
I'm a living organism. We do this instinctively.
Google's business could have been search: making sellers more competent at describing what they have to sell, where, when, and how, and on what terms, so they can be found by people who want something -- so someone can find something simply, straightforwardly, least effort for best result.
Google could have been a reference librarian for the marketplace, helping people by narrowing a search interactively, even querying the potential seller to improve their information if people keep asking for something Google figures out is probably what the seller wants to sell, as well as querying the potential buyer.
Go to a good library. Talk to a good reference librarian. Say you want something very specific that you don't know how to find.
Google could be that.
Instead the web becomes more and more layers of repeated stuff, and readers go through clicking page after page after page.
And the more pages are presented, the more the advertiser's stuff shows up, the more chances there are for clicks. $$PROFIT$$ eh?
Gubbish.
Google's business could have been search. I'd gladly buy from a seller that made the effort -- one that paid Google to help make their information clearer, more distinctive, and more easily discoverable (what searches do people do trying to find this sort of thing?). Save me time, save me trouble, save me from distraction, make search better.
Instead the model is to stuff the web with more stuff I have to work harder to ignore all the time, eating up the time I have to live.
Why, yes, I am old enough to remember when signs didn't glare, pages didn't shout, and I could go to Usenet and -ask- for something
and if I asked cleverly enough, showing I"d done my homework, people would answer - and then everyone else could find the answer later.
Like, as Borges says somewhere, going into a dark huge library and shouting my question -- and hearing answers coming back.
Google could have been that library.
Someone will, eventually.
Google has nothing except user data to sell.
They may not disclose individual data.
But they definitely sell it.
Google got their approach backward.
If they'd stayed with search, they could've charged companies by how successfully, quickly, easily, and uniquely people -found- the company's products when they wanted to solve a problem or fill a need and went searching for good answers.
Make what you sell good, and well and accurately and easily described, in a way that explains what need it satisfies -- and search will enable people to find it easily; Google should have gone the route of finding a way to charge for the success Google provided the company -- success at being found.
Companies that make crap, poorly described, misleading stuff that needs advertising -- not stuff you want to find -- is the model they chose instead.
My contribution: block all the ads I can, and resolve never to buy -anything- that gets pushed in my face when I don't want it.
If you want me to buy something from you, describe it clearly and fully and if I need it, I'll be able to find it.
Killfile web ads now, same as it was used for Usenet posts.
If it makes you angry or crazy or distracted and wastes your time --- Killfile it, AdBlock it, NoScript it.
Don't get caught by the crap, ignore the crap.
checked Google's 'feeling lucky' lately?
The result used to be all interesting stuff, even after
the randomized topic thing started to intervene.
But as of now about one in five times "lucky?" opens up to "feeling hungry" with a clickmap to local restaurants.
I'm feeling steered.
like, fatal.
Next up, a process that removes everything _but_ the lipids, which will probably reveal a fascinating complex of varying resistances and processes that go through changes passing through the fat, too.
Also like completely fatal.
Kids, do not do this at home.
Success is "successful at Google" -- I've been wondering how long it would take for something like "The Sources of the Nile" to happen.
(If you haven't read the Avram Davidson story, find it sometime in a library, thank the librarian, and muse on how it's done nowadays.)
> HR puts an arbitrary cap on what technical people can make and it is less than what managers make
I remember the old Farmer's Grange signs I used to see on the side of barns: "Every Hand a Field Hand."
Today it'd be "Every Employee a Competent Programmer" and you'd do that job most of the time.
Plus the organizational chores.
"I am, therefore I am." -- Akira