I think you might be disregarding the part where he said the lack of a qualifier implies an invite to disagree.
It's actually a striking thought that hadn't occurred to me. Your prototypical geek enjoys discourse to refine a point. Inclusion of qualifiers such as "I think..." are antithetical _not because the implication of uncertainty invites argument, but because it dissuades discussion_. In short, if I say that I think something, I imply that I already know someone disagrees and yet I think it anyway. Further dialogue on that topic is dissuaded, because the first author implies that they're possibly already aware of your opinion.
Reviewing the discussion here, I think his important point is being missed: Due to the supply chain Apple has built through iPod then iPhone/iPod Touch, the iPad is an extremely cost competitive multitouch interface. In fact it's so cost competitive that you might want to use it mounted. Forget carrying and maybe even rotating. It's a (relatively) cheap multitouch interface with great usability and a health programming community breeding future professionals.
Your heart might be crying out that this is not cool or sexy, and therefore incompatible with Apple, but it's a very interesting proposal. I can foresee a potential future where 50% of iPad hardware sold gets nailed down and screwed in.
I am by no means against working out, but forcing this dichotomy may dissuade people from taking a simple an useful step that could even be aggregated: Stretch out your previously brief ice cream consumption while doing your normal schedule AND go for that walk. BAM! You're an even bigger winner.
I fully agree with the value implicit in having that library book deadline to push you to finish something that you wouldn't have finished otherwise (100 Years of Solitude was that book for me). At the same time, you can avail yourself of the cost-free access to try something that you can't find in bookstores in case you won't like it. I got to surprise myself with enjoying Asterios Polyp and hating Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan.
If you try and like it, please donate to your local public library! Just think of how much you're not spending on books and how much you'd spend for Netflix discs
As a side tip, I've usually got notions towards more books than I actually want to check out at a time, so creating an Amazon wish list is a really easy way to track interests.
So the trick is to give people what they need, which is not necessarily what they ask for. That doesn't necessarily defy the article's thesis, since it might be possible to phrase questions artfully enough to diagnose needs vs wants, but that might be tricky and take great effort.
And of course, there really was no reason to disparage the auteur behind Waterworld aside from being linkbait. ;)
This sort of thread would be remiss to not include the quote popularized by Twain about there being three types of falsehoods: "Lies, damn lies, and statistics"
Of course, in this case Twain is guilty of statistics. The group of people most likely to die (old, infirm, sick) are more likely to be in a bed than on a train. And the people in New York beds spend a significant fraction of the year there, while the people on the train are only there for only a few hours or days. If Twain made an honest comparison of deaths per hour across similar demographic groups, the bed would look a lot better than the train.
FYI: Google does have a limited 'command line' tool for time zone differences. If you search for "London time", it will return the current time in London UK in bold, along with London, Ontario and London, Arkansas.
This obviously is only for the current time, and you'll find that it doesn't work for everywhere. Also I've encountered occasional 'outages' where the time results for reliable locations aren't posted in your search results. I guess the applet gets disengaged occasionally due to back-end business.
Great info, but I thought that I'd supplement that, noting that they also have the Chumby One, which is a hard shell version without included battery. Mine is placed mainly to stare at as I dumbly eat cereal first thing in the morning
http://www.chumby.com/pages/compare
I think the grandparent post's application of quotation marks around "BS" subtly speaks volumes, i.e. perception of the bullshit value of a job is potentially invalid. Marco's essay reads as if he's got a pretty unilateral opinion about the worth of things. A person is allowed to deem something BS, but they've got to be open to potential compromise.
Apparently someone once thought over-designing the O-rings on the shuttle was BS work.
I assumed the article's definition of BS is stuff that is universally BS.
Frankly if something isn't BS, the reason can be properly explained. And if the subject can't understand the reason why, then he/she is not ready to do the work.
So whoever over-designed the O-rings must have had a good reason to do so. If he/she had a good reason, it is by definition no longer BS (it may still be boring grunt work). If not, then they were just lucky that it worked out.
It's actually a striking thought that hadn't occurred to me. Your prototypical geek enjoys discourse to refine a point. Inclusion of qualifiers such as "I think..." are antithetical _not because the implication of uncertainty invites argument, but because it dissuades discussion_. In short, if I say that I think something, I imply that I already know someone disagrees and yet I think it anyway. Further dialogue on that topic is dissuaded, because the first author implies that they're possibly already aware of your opinion.