Disqus - Latest Comments for Amanda

Re: Bad Theories that Track Robust Regularities

Amanda — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 05:26:21 -0000

INTP. I think my I is trending towards E, maybe for the same reason as Will. And the N is surprisingly weak.

Re: Are Libertarians Cheerier?

Amanda — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 06:37:31 -0000

I think a certain amount of optimism has to go along with libertarianism. If, like me, you think people are generally great, and things tend to work out, you're unlikely to think much meddling is necessary.

If you constantly think the country is in decline, or the Big Bad Scaries are coming, or people are just waiting to rip each other apart, you almost have to be for a big stompy-foot government to keep things in line.

Re: Meta-atheism, Death by Accident, and the Mysteries of Religious Experience

Amanda — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 12:23:15 -0000

I think the question isn't so much whether the belief in God (or even afterlife) is real, but whether the belief in the inescapability of the punishment is. And in the Christian theology I'm familiar with, committing adultery (for example) isn't an instant one-way ticket to hell; it's something you can repent of.

People fail to act in accordance with their belief in an afterlife in the exact same way as they fail to act in accordance with their belief that, say, reckless driving may result in death - we're not very good at evaluating less-than-immediate risks.

Re: Bangkok Bleg

Amanda — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:26:53 -0000

Neither of these is really off the beaten path, but:

I ate at Baan Khanitha twice the week I was there because it was so excellent (high-end Thai food in a lovely setting; I also bought some of their arty serving pieces). Apparently there are two but I think the one we went to was on Soi 23 Sukhumvit.

Also Chatuchak (aka Jatujak) Market on the weekend. It is almost overwhelmingly huge - getting out was like an orienteering adventure. We stuck to the fairly touristy areas buying silks and wood carvings and so forth; I'd been told to visit the food-selling areas to see all sorts of exotic meat for sale but I wasn't sure I could stomach it.

Re: Get One of These, Now

Amanda — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 13:49:06 -0000

I'd bet you were being affected by the CO. Fatigue, irritability, and confusion are typical symptoms of low-level CO poisoning.

Re: Saving King Kong

Amanda — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 10:23:57 -0000

I'm wondering whether, in a world without copyright, the movies shown in the pirate theaters would be the same as those in the official theaters. I don't mean that they'd show different movies (though they might), but that they'd show different versions of the same movie.

King Kong might be the best example of this: it's a good movie, but would have been much better with significantly tighter editing. Could a pirate house make money by doing the editing that should've been done in the first place and showing a 2-hour version of King Kong?

Many people would probably want to see the official version, the one they'd read about in reviews. (Could reviewers be induced to write about pirate-edited films? Professionals probably wouldn't or they'd lose industry perks, but internet buzz is becoming a larger and larger force...)

However, some people avoided seeing King Kong *because* of what they'd read in reviews - it was too long, the insect scenes were too disgusting, etc. You might be able to get a decent-sized audience by advertising a shortened version with a smaller gross-out factor.

Re: Our Deadly Organ Donation System

Amanda — Sat, 27 May 2006 23:05:20 -0000

Seth, I'm aware of your (1) and (2). Those are obviously terrible problems. But it seems to me that they stem NOT from allowing people to sell their own organs, but from not stopping people from selling other people's organs! Those are two totally different things, and I don't see how the second follows from the first.

For example, it's currently legal for women to sell their eggs in the US. It's pretty lucrative, too. And yet, I haven't heard any stories of people having their eggs forcibly extracted and sold against their will. Surely, if the causation you suggest were realistic, this would be happening.

More likely, we'd have stringent requirements for organ donors, just like we currently have for egg donors. They'd have to go through extensive psychological and medical counseling, with opportunities to back out at any point. There would probably be laws regulating the money transfer; for example it could only go into a bank account owned by the organ donor. All of this might be required to be vetted by an independent agency.

I really don't see China-type abuses happening in a country that generally respects its citizens' human rights.

Re: Misquotes on Global Warming

Amanda — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 16:28:44 -0000

I agree. The clear reading of that is that the "constraints" to which Hansen refers are: there's no way the forcing could be above that caused by exponential growth, and there's no way the forcing could go below the amount caused by continued use of fossil fuels.

IOW, staying within those constraints means staying somewhere between the most optimistic and most pessimistic reasonable assumptions -- NOT constraining our emissions.

Re: Google: Not So Evil

Amanda — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 23:04:55 -0000

That's interesting, and I don't blame Google for protecting its trademark at all.

But surely people aren't using it generically! I mean, if I ask somebody for a kleenex and am given a Puffs brand facial wipe, I'm not going to be upset. But if I want a Google search and get Lycos or Yahoo instead I'll be seriously pissed!

In other words, while "I googled that hottie" sounds generic, if I were to write that my meaning would be "I ran a Google search on that hottie," not "I searched for that hottie on the web." It's not at all a description for the sector; rather a generic-SOUNDING description for a very specific brand.

Of course there's no way to be sure which one is meant (and perhaps some less quality-conscious people do use it generically). But I'm curious whether this has happened in previous genericization cases.

Re: Welcome Hance Haney!

Amanda — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 10:33:15 -0000

Particularly in tech policy, where it seems that folks who disagree with someone's position are quick to assume that he or she is a shill for some interest for another, a reputation for intellectual honesty is a valuable thing. To my mind, TLF's posters have done quite a good job cultivating such a reputation, and should guard it carefully. Becoming associated with an institution whose entire claim to fame is intellectual dishonesty strikes me as an astonishingly poor move.

Re: Welcome Hance Haney!

Amanda — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 09:29:47 -0000

Mike, don't you see how being an employee of an organization "No intelligent person would take... seriously" might harm someone's credibility?

Re: How Does Government Lose So Many Laptops?

Amanda — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 10:50:08 -0000

When I was a federal employee, we "lost" several laptops that (to the best of my knowledge) never left their designated service.

What happened is that every now and then, someone would decide that we needed a better system for tracking equipment. So they'd roll out a database that didn't work very well and give contradictory instructions about who was supposed to fill it out. The people who were supposed to use it didn't always have access, and compliance wasn't that great anyway because it was a pain in the ass.

So fairly frequently, a piece of equipment would get entered into the database when it entered our office, and not checked out of the database when it left (even though it was going where it was supposed to, not to somebody's eBay shop or anything), whether because someone helpfully checked it in without bothering to ascertain who it belonged to, or the person who checked it in left and the new person didn't have access to the database, or whatever.

Eventually there would be an audit and a dozen things that the database said were in our office, wouldn't be there. Presto, "lost" equipment.

While obviously some government employees are losing or stealing laptops, when I read stories about how audits turned up tens or hundreds of missing laptops, I tend to assume that, like my experience, it's an artifact of a crappy tracking system.

Re: Piet

Amanda — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 21:26:07 -0000

If you're interested in unusual programming languages, you should read Good Math, Bad Math, where a "pathological" programming language is featured every Friday. He hasn't done Piet, though!

Re: A Republican Conspiracy in Florida?

Amanda — Wed, 01 Nov 2006 15:06:37 -0000

You obviously don't use ATMs enough. I've had the misaligned-touch-screen experience more than once. $40, $60; checking, savings; it's all the same right? (Grocery store self-check machines do this too, with the added bonus of - at least at my local store - registering only about half of touches.)

Re: Voting Glitches in Ohio

Amanda — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 14:31:17 -0000

The third worry is that the election workers turned people away instead of giving them paper ballots! When I trained as an election judge in St. Louis, they were very clear that we were never, ever to turn a voter away. If we didn't know how to handle something, we called the Election Board and found out. I can't believe they turned people away.

Re: Amazing Gains in Digital Storage Technology

Amanda — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 18:22:47 -0000

Wow, terabyte hard drives. I remember when that was crazy NSA stuff.

When I got my first job out of college, in 2003, I was entrusted with a 2GB USB thumb drive. I was pretty impressed that something so small could store so much, and looked it up to see how much it was worth - some 600 bucks. Last month I got a 1GB thumb drive for free (well, retail was $55 but there was a rebate). Even better was when I saw 32MB thumb drives in the Target checkout lane - next to the gum - for 5 dollars.

Good stuff.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » MySpace to Provide Parental Monitoring Tools

Amanda — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 12:00:30 -0000

For people who don't subscribe to the WSJ, the Washington Post also has a report on the software.

I'm not sure how many parents are likely to use this software. There's already a free and easy way for parents to keep tabs on their kids' online activities: keep the computer in the living room and take note of what the kids are doing.

But, it's certainly better to provide tools, whether of questionable utility or not, to parents rather than to the government.

Re: Welcome Brooke Oberwetter

Amanda — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 12:30:18 -0000

Welcome, Brooke! I'll look forward to reading your posts here.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Why Not Meter?

Amanda — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:46:21 -0000

I don't understand why ISPs don't do what many web hosts do, and charge a flat rate for some high amount of bandwidth, then meter over that. It seems like they could set the limit high enough that 90% of users wouldn't be affected, just as most websites don't go over bandwidth allotments.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Why Not Meter?

Amanda — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 10:23:05 -0000

Adam - my mistake. I didn't read very closely and thought you were talking about strict metering. So I guess we agree!

Re: A Weird “Piggybacking” Case

Amanda — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 11:40:45 -0000

The other bizarre thing about the story is that the reason this 21-year-old man is using the internet from his car is that he lives with his parents, who curtail his internet use after 9pm.

Re: The Digg Incident Was Nothing LIke the Boston Tea Party

Amanda — Sat, 05 May 2007 21:09:00 -0000

I want to know exactly precisely which "kind[s] of government granted monopoly and unjust use of power" it is permissible to protest against.

Re: A Rant

Amanda — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:49:18 -0000

My impression is that internet-based customer service does cut down on labor costs because it allows companies to use much stupider people as CS reps. I came to this conclusion while ago when I was spending a lot of time trying to get things done over web-based chats. I spent most of my waiting time trying to decide whether there was a bot or a person on the other end. Many answers were non-responsive to the questions I'd asked and seemed to be based on key words; on the other hand, presumably bots would be programmed to use correct spelling and fewer grammar errors in their canned responses. I finally decided that what it was, was an intellectually-challenged person equipped with a big book of flowheets.

On the phone, a person has to at least be able to think quickly enough to respond to questions (customers get too frustrated if they're put on hold after every exchange); on the web that's not the case. They also don't need to be good with people at all, since they can just look up "Irate Customer" in their book and type in "You seem distress. I am trying to solve you problem. Please give me a three minutes." rather than actually responding to your concern.

So that's my theory. They could just be annoying you on purpose, though.

Re: Fair Use?

Amanda — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:55:29 -0000

The movie, as I recall, is Der Untergang (I think the English title was Downfall). IMDb lists Bruno Ganz as playing Hitler, which sounds right to me. I'm not familiar with Helge Schneider though perhaps I should be.