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Comment Re:Right... (Score 1) 478

From the summary:

"Emanuel says that Americans seem to be obsessed with exercising, doing mental puzzles, consuming various juice and protein concoctions, sticking to strict diets, and popping vitamins and supplements, all in a valiant effort to cheat death and prolong life as long as possible."

Omitting the fad stuff, exercise and eating well improve the length of time you will remain healthy. The quote makes it sound like taking care of yourself will just let you hang on by your fingernails for a little bit longer. The opposite is actually true. Exercise, diet and mental engagement in particular improve health and mental function in old age, not necessarily overall longevity.

If you want to be a healthy octogenarian, take care of yourself now. If you want to be frail and going in for your third bypass operation, don't.

Exactly. If you want to discourage anything it's the heavy health care and heroic end of life measures used to slightly prolong low quality life. But he seems to be specifically talking about low cost measures designed to prolong high quality life. If you want a point to stop choose the point when quality of life drops off drastically. And if you want a simple cut-off (like his 75 number) choose something like being unable to live independently, or being unable to engage in topical conversation (notwithstanding disabled people).

I think a lot of people do pretty well until the last year or two when things go downhill rapidly, no point moving that last year forward but you may want to shorten its duration.

Comment Where's the red button? (Score 1, Offtopic) 133

Educated stupid scientists never understand 4 sided universal timecube.

I was just asking Tess about her act, and all she would tell me was that the show was big -- bigger on the inside than the outside. So I guess there was a lot of seating. A bunch of folderol, if you ask me. But at least we had box seats.

Comment Re:TFS BS detector alert (Score 1) 795

Science works without even the existance of ultimate causes and absolute truth.

Yes, it does, but that doesn't in any way disqualify it in reaching for fundamental answers, or in working with those ideas so that we have handles on them that are consensually experiential, testable, and repeatable. Superstition provides no tools whatsoever for resolving such questions. Or questions of far lesser import, for that matter.

My long-term general confidence in discovering more and more, deeper and deeper about reality, which is very high, lies entirely with science -- and with technology, science's prolific assistant / toolbox.

Comment Re:In lost the will to live ... (Score 1) 795

A rule of thumb:

If they can't communicate their idea in a simple readable summary, they're probably not worth listening to anyway.

Btw, who else loves the irony of someone complaining about "impenetrable jargon" while writing things like "Aristotelian 'science'", "Baconian science", "policy options we as a polity", and making a bunch of incoherent sentences.

Comment TFS BS detector alert (Score 2) 795

religion concerns the ultimate causes of things and, again, by definition, science cannot tell you about them.

Religion concerns mythology -- things people make up out of whole cloth. Faith, belief, credulous acceptance without backing facts, consensually demonstrable evidence, or testability -- not knowledge.

Science does indeed concern itself with the ultimate cause(s) of things; what TFS fails to understand is that just because there is no answer *yet*, that doesn't mean that there won't be, or that there can't be. We've really only been seriously at this with more than stone knives and bearskins for a hundred years or so. Directly because of science, we already know a great deal more than religion ever managed to determine in thousands of years over thousands of varieties of made-up ideas and almost unimaginable depths and expressions of faith.

The penultimate cause of things is indeed 100% in science's domain and, if indeed there is an answer that can be expressed in the physics humans can understand, the odds are at least decent that we'll figure it out. Using science. Not religion.

There's very little point, or sense, in giving religion credit it has not earned, nor in ceding to it whole chunks of reality it has shown absolutely no ability to pull back the curtains from.

Comment How much? (Score 1) 77

For a flight that doesn't reach orbit and stay there with the environment in 0G for at least a few orbits, I wouldn't pay anything. Heck, I won't pay a commercial airline to fly because the ratio of inconvenience to convenience+enjoyment is too high between the (id|patr)iot act's enforced paranoia and the seating designed by one-legged, one-armed engineers. Now an oceangoing cruise liner, that's something else again. I loves me a nice cruise. It's even worth going first class, which it definitely isn't in a commercial airliner.

However, for a flight that *does* go to orbit and stays a few turns, and doesn't require a spacesuit, and for which I could have a very private cubby with a view for two for the orbital duration, I might part with as much as five thousand for two seats, just for those few hours. They'd have to let me take my camera, though.

Which means I'm not going to get to go. :) Unless they build a space elevator or several in my lifetime. And apparently the materials science there is either too difficult, or nearly so. Oh well. There's always Firefly reruns.

Comment Re:Why I wired Ethernet in most rooms (and no WiFi (Score 1) 287

2- Safety concerns: with baby and/or young children I felt I would rather not add RF generator inside my home. I know we are immersed in RF from everywhere, making some a few meters away is another level. I didn't want to add that. Just in case.

Ham radio operators -- of which I am one -- spend their lives immersed in more RF at various frequencies from kHz to GHz than you can possibly compare to unless you work at a broadcast radio or television station. And hams are one of the oldest demographics in the USA. So many 80 and 90 year olds, it's really kind of amusing. RF is not your enemy at wifi router and cellphone levels. Not even close.

I've been pretty much bathed in RF for the last forty years. I'm very healthy other than a few allergies I've had since I was a kid. Of course, I'm active, too -- but if RF at these levels was a problem, I'd *have* a problem by now.

Comment Re:Not answered in review (Score 1) 216

Ah. You're talking about an unsupported, undocumented trick that appears to be an exploit of a bug. Have you thought about the potential consequences when/if Apple writes this functionality out of the system?

So, no, this won't do.

Comment Re:Not answered in review (Score 1) 216

Under IOS, apps aren't kept in an ordered system collection the way they are in Android. If they're on the device at all, they're somewhere on a page or within a folder, either where you put them, or where the system put them (always on a page) if you have not interfered. And finding them, if you don't know where they are, is a matter of typing the name into the search.

But -- just like Android -- you can have a lot of pages, a lot of folders, and you may or may not remember where a particular app or shortcut is located in your own personal folder/page setup. But then there is IOS search, which can find anything.

Under either OS, if you can't remember where they are, and you can't remember the name, it's down to looking around until you find them.

One of the arguments for folder organization is that if you even know the type of app it is -- for instance, if it is a photography app -- then if you're consistent at install time, you can look just in there, and it will be there, leaving you a lot fewer apps to check through until you find it.

But IOS has low limits on how many apps can be in a folder, and it doesn't allow subfolders, which seriously impacts how well you can really use them for that kind of organization. In my case, IOS's folder paradigm is insufficient to my needs. Android isn't significantly better, either.

Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 126

Since you're in the security team, could you comment on why Android requires you to set up some sort of lock security just in order to have a VPN configured (even if it's not in use)?

You know what makes even less sense than forcing people to use lock screens even if not saving VPN access credentials?

Having infrastructure with keychain and all of that in place and then not using it in browser and Android email client to secure stored credentials.

Even worse email client cannot be configured to prompt for passwords when checking/sending mail... you *have* to store your password.

Comment Re:Don't Miss The Point (Score 2) 105

Services like that exist online, and they're excellent, albeit rather slow. I personally use iMaterialize because they have such a wide range of material options (everything from rubber to titanium) and finishes (for example, 4 different options for silver), but there's lots of others out there, and some are cheaper.

If you've ever played around with 3d modelling, I definitely recommend giving 3d printing a try, even if just a little test piece. :) Note that plastics are a lot cheaper than metals, although metals look the coolest.

Comment Re:Encryption (Score 1) 126

But, please, what makes you think that Apple, or even Samsung, aren't doing exactly the same?

I assume they are.

Apple can install stuff on your device when it feels like it. In fact, you have even less control over an Apple devices and its whims.

What does apple have to do with TFA? For the record Apple's actions ignoring factual inaccuracies in your comments are also inexcusable as are Microsofts...etc. It doesn't matter who's doing it.

So, your concern is really about modern devices, not anything to do with the meat of the story - encryption

Pointing out encryption is meaningless when you don't have control over your own devices is relevant.

P.S. With Android, you can see the source, and build from clean source, without any Google services whatsoever if you want. People have done it for you. Almost every big-selling Android phone is supported. You can get root access and check everything you like. And then encryption really means something.

Great for the technically inclined, not so great for everyone else.

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