Posts by BenWilson
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Up to a point, but I'm actually one of those cranks who doesn't get terribly bent out of shape about delayed gratification and rather likes physically visiting bookstores and browsing.
My extremely techy business partner, a guy with a gadget for everything, still prefers to read the newspaper itself. He claims to actually like the tactile experience. Which is fine for him, his choice of configuration. No one is taking papers and books away.
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Don't want. Already have e-book reader, have since 2002. PDA - iPAQ. It had its place for a while, but ultimately a handheld screen and tiny keyboard is not something you want to do any serious work or research on. OK for games, OK for reading/watching downloads, OK for limited web surfing (was good for the news when abroad). In answer to Gio's earlier question, yes it is extremely easy to fall asleep reading one, particularly as you don't have to turn pages, and if you turn the light off when you read it. Then your partner can sleep too.
Kind of nice to have for those rare moments when I know I'm going to be stuck somewhere and really bored, like at the hospital or during air travel.
A device like what I use is currently about $80. Something up to date more like $500. But I don't need computational power in a book reader, so I'm pretty happy with it.
But it's used even less now because of the netbook. That little bit of extra screen space makes a huge difference for web browsing and writing. But the killer is a proper keyboard and massive battery life. I went for solid state everything so the battery lasts forever, and it's extremely robust. About $500 for that.
If I want to work, seriously, I'm always going to use a workstation. I find I need the Hz, the 3 screens, the fact I'm next to the router, my servers, beside the phone, on a desk, with all my notes, in a quiet office, using an ergonomic keyboard and a quality mouse, and a robust wired network, printer, decent speakers, a really good headset all quite hard to beat with any kind of portable device. The laptop I formerly had has become my wife's PC.
It's interesting to think of the trends of these devices and how they might drive or be driven by consumers, but I've noticed that basically there are machines of every type now. So much choice is available that it's impossible to pick what the 'next big thing' will be. Some people like having a really powerful phone that can do untold things. I don't much, because I just want the phone to be a phone, preferably small, simple, and reliable. Text messages is about the only extra I wouldn't want to be without, and some games are handy if I forgot the PDA. I prefer to have multiple devices, possibly because I carry a man-bag around. I don't need an all-in-one, and find that such things limit me by their size. That size is not something that can be improved by technology - ultimately a capable device needs a big screen and keyboard to be productive and that just won't fit in a pocket (on the occasions when I don't carry the bag).
And yet, other people have very different work to me, and can and do find use in devices that combine features. So the market is not so much segmented as 'segmented in every dimension'. Not only are there devices that do everything, at every size, but there are also devices that do a large selection of the subsets of everything. Which means so much choice in picking your configuration.
Which is part of the reason Apple products tend to bemuse me. Or rather, the fans of them do. It's like they want to be limited to the small range that is Apple products, so that those choices can be configured for them. Is this some kind of uniform? Is there a secret handshake and inside privileges I'm missing out on by not getting paying the Apple-tax? If an Apple device fitted my needs well, and there wasn't a comparable device at half the price, then perhaps I'd get one, but this simply hasn't happened to me. Ever.
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And no educated Medieval denied the world's roundness
No one who ever saw a lunar eclipse would, that's for sure. What shape casts a round shadow from every angle?
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It does fascinate me that nearly as many homicides this season has produced no panic. And, indeed, that pretty much the same trends in crime just don't produce the same narrative as they did under the last government.
Apart from the double standard, most of that seems good to me. This one isn't an outrage, it's a pre-outrage, to be saved up for when Labour are back in. Right now, I'm not outraged that nobody is outraged about something that isn't outrageous.
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He had thoughts about people with high walls around their houses too. "once I'm over that wall I have all the time in the world to break into that house" he used to say with a wicked smile.
Heh...I find that the drunken gaggle of teenagers who seem to be permanently camped out on my street has kept the cars safe from theft and the fences from vandalism for years.
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Not necessarily. Ben
Of course. Not even probably. But, as Lucy points out, 100% of causation involves correlation. It's how we notice things, and why we examine them. When information is highly incomplete and decisions have to be made, it's what we have to go on. That's really what I'm talking about. Logic is all very well in mathematics, but very little else, other than to show how illogical it all is. We make countless decisions every single day based on observing correlation, and are not irrational beings for doing so. Even if we find out that the correlation is bunk, at least we found that out. If we didn't bother investigating because it couldn't be proven, we wouldn't learn anything.
But yes, overgeneralizing is a very dangerous trait, particularly if you don't look deeper. That's why experiment is the big thing in science, not observation. Observation merely guides the way to some of the experiments.
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Also, I've seen no reason to change my view that CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION should be prominently tattooed on the faces of all journalists, politicians, lobbyists and spin doctors.
Yes, although I tend to think that correlation does imply causation, it's just unclear in which direction, or to what extent, what other causes there are. A better one might be "DON'T CONFUSE CAUSE AND EFFECT". Although in this case, it's pretty clear that crime doesn't cause summer or full moons. So a correlation (if there is one) does actually suggest something noteworthy is going on.
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I was a little disappointed yesterday, when a forensics expert I train with showed up, and I asked for the goss on the summer of killings.
"I was on holiday". Eh? Bones never takes a holiday.
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Oh and those guys who all wear the same shirt and wear their drums, and march along - they're good for a while, but yeah I can dig that hours of it would grate. Is that AKSamba?
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Is it technically a drum solo if more than one drummer is playing? I don't much like solos either, but I've been hearing drumming groups since primary school, it being just about the only instrument native to the Pacific Islands. I that kind of thing quite a lot, particularly stuff that is designed around a dance.
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