jeffrey.eric.fisher

jeffrey.eric.fisher

  • Commented on Vacation
    Note: it most certainly was gone for a while. Google "ok maps" or "okay maps" and you will find a number of postings of how to do it during that, recently ended, dark age....
  • Commented on Vacation
    Note: after my post describing the "okay maps" easter egg, I got a map update and found the described link. So they quite recently re-exposed the feature....
  • Commented on Vacation
    Ahh, turns out it has recently changed to work as various posters describe. The "save offline map" link is there in the pane, and I haven't dug into it much yet but from the few seconds of looking it seemed...
  • Commented on Vacation
    Actually I dug it up, and map caching isn't entirely gone on my phone, just mostly gone. Don't have the ipad with me to check it. However what you need to do today on an android 4.4.3 nexus 4 phone...
  • Commented on Vacation
    Whats sad about google maps with regard to caching is that for several years ending one or two years ago you could specify cached areas the device would pull down and keep and which would work offline (the map would...
  • Commented on A footnote about the publishing industry
    Another big function of the publishers is/was financing retailers, the whole don't pay for the books for up to 90 days deal. Amazon very effectively parasitized that system through vastly superior inventory management (in large part possible because of the...
  • Commented on Amazon: malignant monopoly, or just plain evil?
    One thing I am getting from this thread is a list of large management failures by the publishers, just on the basic 'running a business' level. Destructive competition between divisions, the fact that an author can extract significantly more money...
  • Commented on Amazon: malignant monopoly, or just plain evil?
    Surely there are innumerable options between working as Mr Stross, and many other authors do today: through a traditional publisher, and 'self publishing' as a one man operation. They probably aren't well developed, however, if you want to maintain specialization...
  • Commented on The myth of heroism
    More than half of Iran's population is under 35. US Iranian history did not end in 1979. The US has had sanctions on Iran during their entire lives. The US backed Iraq's invasion of Iran and war from 1980-1988. Then...
  • Commented on The prospects of the Space and Freedom Party reconsidered in light of the crisis of 21st century capitalism
    Oh, also the 'chernobyl lesson for the month' isn't birds its the giant movable shed they are building to slide over the thing. It is designed to last 100 years. They think it might last 300. That's about 29700 years...
  • Commented on The prospects of the Space and Freedom Party reconsidered in light of the crisis of 21st century capitalism
    Under a pure renewables power regime there would have to be a lesser degree of 'power on demand'. Very high power consuming industries already live in that world. The flip side of their low rates is that the power company...
  • Commented on The prospects of the Space and Freedom Party reconsidered in light of the crisis of 21st century capitalism
    I don't think that evolution of radiation resistance is a very practical solution for humans. You know how it works, right? Those birds went through ten or twenty generations of infertility, monsters, illness, and death to select up some radiation...
  • Commented on The prospects of the Space and Freedom Party reconsidered in light of the crisis of 21st century capitalism
    I don't know about the UK, but in the US the taxes on airline tickets pay for most of the cost to the government for running the air travel system, while that is just wrapped into the train ticket price....
  • Commented on The prospects of the Space and Freedom Party reconsidered in light of the crisis of 21st century capitalism
    I'm pretty sure shipping by ship is the most efficient option by 20% or more, even without considering the higher infrastructure costs of rail. Rail only wins when the sea route is a lot longer, or for inland destinations. That...
  • Commented on The prospects of the Space and Freedom Party reconsidered in light of the crisis of 21st century capitalism
    There is, I think, a core flaw with this idea. Assumption 1: We can't just tax away the self-reinforcing fortunes of the ultra rich because they have too much political power. Assumption 2: We can offer them "tax breaks" to...
  • Commented on The prospects of the Space and Freedom Party reconsidered in light of the crisis of 21st century capitalism
    Bill Gates Jr (of Microsoft fame) was never middle class. His father was a named partner in the most powerful law firm in Seattle. He went to the most expensive private high school in the area (tuition 10 years ago...
  • Commented on Generation Z
    BTW the 1938 election, where the run by the democrats finally ended was, at least in part, a reaction to a round of austerity intended to reduce the deficit in 1936 which caused a recession in 1937. They made a...
  • Commented on Generation Z
    Major party candidates in the US are mostly selected in primary elections. The ideological spread in those elections, particularly the local level ones, is pretty wide. We can change who the options in the general election are in very significant...
  • Commented on Generation Z
    Anyhow key point: "we aren't a democracy we are a plutocracy" is a cop-out. We are a democracy. We are electing the plutocracy year after year. We can stop any time we want. A sizable percentage of us can get...
  • Commented on Generation Z
    The US actually had such a wave in 1930,32,34,36. The congress elected in 1928 was 270r 164d, cutting income taxes and rejoicing at the stock market boom. The 1930 election yielded 218r 216d, the 1932 election 117r 313d and a...
  • Commented on Generation Z
    The US, and the rest of the wealthy west is not yet so far gone that the population could not wake up and reign in the plutocracy in 2-3 election cycles. Seems unlikely to happen at the moment, but we...
  • Commented on Generation Z
    Politicians on ten year term limits are for their first four years noobs easily manipulated by the permanent staff and lobbying apparatus and for their last two years focused on figuring out their next job....
  • Commented on Generation Z
    Changing the variety of degree granted, or even failing a lot of students would have little impact on total spending. In the us today higher education spending is about 500 billion. A fairly large amount to be sure, however government...
  • Commented on Generation Z
    A lot of these problems fall pretty directly from the increasing inequality. My favorite way to describe the inequality: If the income distribution in the US was the same as it was in 1970 median family income would be $90,000...
  • Commented on The Singularity Is Further Than It Appears
    BTW the definition of intelligence here would be something unusual and recursive like "ability to do expand the ability to do this and general computation for a certain resource input"....
  • Commented on The Singularity Is Further Than It Appears
    Yea, not done reading, but that jumped out. 1.41x as intelligent, not half that. But let us say it is an n^2 process. So a team of humans spends 4 years and generates an AI 2x as smart as the...
  • Commented on What's The Future For Virtual Reality Movies?
    Games have to deal with a lot of these problems. Attention attractors. Consistent visual languages. World boundaries. Triggering events when the player looks at them. 'Gone Home', who's developers I know, is a long way toward being a sort of...
  • Commented on Tragedy as Comfort Fiction: On Death, Drama, Disaster & Saving the World
    This will surely explode some heads: There is a pub near where I work. One of their side dishes is Brussels Sprouts. By default it comes with bacon. I order it without bacon!!!! This appears to put the staff on...
  • Commented on Tragedy as Comfort Fiction: On Death, Drama, Disaster & Saving the World
    I once visited a neo-natal intensive care ward. That was pretty disturbing on multiple levels. The quiet, the dim lights, the small babies in incubators, the tiny one surrounded by giant machines....
  • Commented on How To Survive A Death March
    I encountered an interesting bit of research on working long hours and decision making. I believe the specific study was of parole boards in Israel. The result was that they were far more likely to grant parole in the morning,...
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