A few months ago I was diagnosed with a dilated cardiomyopathy having an ejection fraction of 20-25%. I weigh about 270 and at the time I went into the hospital. I was bloated with water because of congestive heart failure. I had been on Flurosimide for about six weeks and I had dropped about 30 pounds of water so far, but, I was still pretty squishy.
I was talking to the doctor about what was causing the CHF, congestive heart failure, and he started talking about eating better. I stood up with all the monitor crap and started pounding on my stomach.
Back in my early twenties I had once done 300 sit-ups using a roman chair, 6 sets of 50. You lay back flat with your hands crossed over your chest and come up to about a 45 degree angle. This works the hell out of your abs and it isn't as hard on your back as normal sit-ups. Back in April of 2010 I was working out in a hotel exercise room and some guy who was pretty well ripped was smirking at me as he did roman chair sit-ups. He did 25 or 30 so I knocked out 50. He did another 25 and I did another 50. It was the most I had worked my abs for years and they hurt for days, but, he wasn't smirking any more.
I have great quads, calves and abs. My leg-biceps, my lower back and my upper body are no where near as well developed. My best bench is 315. I worked my way back up to that back in 2006 and 2007, but, then I had to sell my weights so my workouts were limited to my recumbent bike and some dumb bells. I wasn't regular about it and then I tore my rotator cuff so for about a year I just did the recumbent, 30 to 45 minutes a day, moderate workout burning about 300 calories according to the computer.
While I was working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory they had a great employee gym. My bench was 3 sets of 10 using 160. I used the gym until December when I started feeling sick and fatigued. By February I had advanced CHF and that takes us to April when I was standing in the ER pounding my ab muscles telling the doctor that what we thought was a big gut was actually distended abdominal muscles combined with some visceral fat, but, not as much as they probably thought. I have about a 1/4” of fat over my upper abs and a pretty normal roll around my middle. When the doctor figured out I was in a lot better shape than he thought I was he ordered some other tests. Bingo, idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy with an ejection fraction of 20-25%.
Treatment for that? Heart transplant. They can put in a pace maker. They can give you drugs. I can't do 30 minutes on an exercise bike any more. Ten minutes is about the most I can do and I can walk for a couple of hours if I get some resting in.
Median survival for someone with a pacemaker is about 8 years. They install pacemakers at below about 40% EF. Typical survival after a heart transplant is about 6 years. They do heart transplants for people with about 20% EF. Sixty percent of people with a cardiomyopathy having 20-25% EF without a transplant live longer than a year.
So right now my chances for survival beyond 5 years, with or without a pacemaker or transplant are pretty poor.
Http://cinc.mit.edu/archives/2005/pdf/0251.pdf Intelligent Analysis of Long-Term Patient Survival after Pacemaker Implantation
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3314498 Poor survival of patients with idiopathic cardiomyopathy considered too well for transplantation.
If you want to review the chances for survival restrict the google search using the site:*.edu or site:*.gov so you get reliable data instead of all the new age mysticism BS out there.
As usual I don't plan on things working they way people tell me they should. After 30 years in manufacturing and engineering, 15 years in advanced situations where I am typically accomplishing something people tell me is impossible. I figure this is a similar situation, someone tells me what is possible and impossible and then I ignore them and make the impossible happen.
I couldn't count the number of times people with doctorates have argued really dumb positions. The older I get the less respect I have for formal education. All education is self education, the literacy rate of college graduates establishes this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
So what is causing my cardiomyopathy?
There isn't any specific diagnosis concerning the cause. This is typical and they have a name for it, idiopathic. It means the doctor knows the symptoms but does not know what the root cause is. Sometimes the doctor makes assumptions like the idiots who looked at my distended abdominals and bloated water retention deciding that my diet must be merde because I'm fat. Idiots, but, what can you do. Everyone stereotypes and makes stupid bigoted decisions based on their stereotypes. In medicne there are more stereotyped guesses than you would imagine.
If you want to know if a person is “profiling” or stereotyping ask about the standard deviation. A “profile” is a statistical analysis indicating probability. If someone does not know the numbers behind the probability they do not understand the probability and they are just stereotyping. For example, if someone tells you most drug dealers are young blacks ask them what percentage and what the standard deviation is. If they don't know the numbers they are spouting stereotypes, not profiling. Most young blacks are not drug dealers even if most drug dealers are young blacks. Get the idea?
Doctors depend a lot on test results because “patients lie”, or as Greg House explains it, “everyone lies”.
Lets look at a study about obese cardiomyopathy:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16880104 Obesity cardiomyopathy: is it a reality? An ultrasonic tissue characterization study.
We'll look at a a couple of numbers and the mean because the abstract does not give us median or curve modality. With a normal curve the mode, mean and median are all about the same number. “A slightly reduced LV diastolic function was demonstrated in obese patients (transmitral early to late peak diastolic transmitral flow velocities ratio = 1.1 +/- 0.7) as compared with control subjects (1.5 +/- 0.5, P < .02)”
So the range for obese patients is 0.4 to 1.8 with a mean of 1.1 and the range for control subjects is 1.0 to 2.0. The interesting thing here is that we can estimate the standard deviation from these numbers and the standard deviation is higher in obese patients.
About 33% of obese patients will have an LV diastolic function flow velocity between about 1.1 and 1.3. About 17% of non-obese patients will range between 1.0 and 1.35.
Hmmmm, so if someone has a flow velocity of 1.25 are they suffering from obesity related cardiomyopathy? About 20% of obese patients and about 20% of non-obese patients will test at this point. So the doctor looks at the person's weight and appearance and decides if the person is obese.
So what is the standard deviation and probability curve relating to weight? Yep, you guessed it the vast majority of doctors have no clue. What is the calorie requirement based on age, weight and height? Yep, you guessed it most doctors couldn't even tell you that there are two different formulas for this calculation and they really couldn't tell you what the standard deviation for caloric intake is.
Pretty scary since we all depend on these people to analyze probabilities as they pertain to ourselves as individuals and give us medical advice.
In reality doctors are not using probabilities, they are using stereotypes with minimal factual basis in probability.
You have to hope you have a good guesser, like “Greg House” and lets face it the probability is that your doctor is an average guesser. 66% of doctors will be average guessers. About 4% will be exceptional guessers. 4% will suck at guessing. About 13% will be above average guessers and 13% will be below average guessers. So you have about a 2/3 chance of having an average to good guesser who will guess right X% of the time, on average.
Now here is one of the issues, there are not a lot of real doctor guessing statistics, but, what there is indicates that the probability of incorrect guessing increases with the severity of the illness.
Yeah, I don't buy that. I figure that people are caught making bad guesses in serious situations more often then they are caught making bad guesses in non-serious situations.
Now there are a bunch of really bad numbers out there on diagnosis, some saying that 98.6% of doctors guessing is correct. This is using numbers similar to those we just reviewed where there is about a 20% overlap between normal and obese patients.
98.6% would mean subjective decisions made by doctors are more accurate than objective decisions made using a standardized test.
Yeah, I'll buy that for a dollar. If you have to ask what that means, don't bother.
In reality, after reviewing the data available I would guess the reported mean for average guessing is between 80% at the high and 70% at the low with a range of about plus or minus 20%. If we guess 75% then most doctors get 3 out of 4 right, which is actually pretty good for subjective interpretation. If stock brokers did this well we would all be billionaires.
So what is the probability those numbers are correct? What are the chances doctors are better at subjective analysis based on reviewing factual reports of objective statistical data than stock brokers? Interesting question. I would guess that the numbers are actually pretty close and the best stock brokers only guess right about 30% of the time (those numbers are easier to come by and objective since bad stock choices are objectively analyzed).
So, looking at the available data I figure the subjective analysis by a doctor is probably correct closer to about 1/3 of the time. In fact, subjective analysis by almost everyone is probably correct about 1/3 of the time. The most of the best are probably right about 45% of the time and guys like me (and I have tracked my subjective analysis stats) are correct about 60% of the time at my best in my area of expertise, between about 45 and 50 years old.
Okay, so doctors probably become better guessers as they age and have more experience and at the best are probably correct around 60% of the time. Statistics including all doctors are probably closer to 30% with, I would guess, a standard deviation of about 10% and these statistics can probably be further refined based on age, medical school and other variables.
Trouble is, we will never know if my analysis is accurate because medicine is no where near an objective science at this time which is why predictability on patient prognosis has so many anecdotal miracle and disaster stories. The prognosis stories are a result of the lack of objectivity and the over lapping data ranges in diagnosis.
Medicine will get better as research develops and data becomes more objective. For example, doctors may eventually have a method of objectively and easily measuring fat and muscle ratio. Maybe an office level scanner that reports muscle tone, water and fat percentages. Maybe brain computer interfaces will develop and doctors will have more confidence in the patients witness concerning their eating and exercise habits.
No way any doctor believed I once did 300 roman chair sit-ups in 6 sets of 50 until I began pounding on my abdominals. I can't blame them, I don't exactly walk around looking at fat guys and saying “I bet that guy has really solid abs”.
It's fun screwing with people though, like the time I was at REI and let the guy running the rock wall talk me into climbing because he thought it would be funny to watch me. After I hooked up he bent down to check his belay and I was already at the rafters. My wife laughed her butt off at the look on the guy's face. I swung over to an overhang and didn't do very well at that and that made the sales man feel better. It had been 15 years since I had done any rock climbing so I didn't feel bad and I didn't try very hard at the overhang. Overhangs were never a strong point for me because of my relative upper body strength. My strength is mostly in my lower body.
So I hope you take the knowledge that doctors are no better at guessing than anyone else is, when people are guessing in their area of expertise. Remember doctors go through a fairly difficult vetting procedure to determine if they are good guessers. Really bad guessers are weeded out and there could be a curve skewed to the above average guessing based on the vetting procedure. Of course charismatic people can be poor guessers and make it through the subjective vetting procedure and people who are un-charismatic and good guessers can be kicked out.
In the end you can only be the “best” person you can be for as long as you are around. In the end everyone is terminal, everyone dies, everyone mourns, everyone loves and everyone leaves love behind. Those of us who are religious have a lot of love to look forward to.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
What is a Recession?
Understanding an Economic Recession
There isn't a real definition for an economic recession. President Clinton used a standard guideline which states that an economic recession is 2 or more quarters of negative economic growth.
That sounds reasonable. Is it?
Not exactly.
Growth is an interesting phenomenon. Suppose a child grows an average of 3” per year. I realize anyone with kids knows this is crap, but, lets just pretend. If a child does not grow the 3” is there something wrong? Yep.
With kids these are called developmental disorders or failure to thrive. Children are supposed to grow so much at each stage of their development. When kids don't achieve milestones we go to doctors and discover problems. I won't go too much into that except as a metaphor.
So what is a recession?
Lets look at “tax cuts” or “spending cuts” as another metaphor. Budgets are planned out years in advance. Politicians argue with each other and with the Presidential administration until they figure out a budget. This takes about 4 years. Suppose the original budget raised taxes by 3% per year and then politicians argue some more and taxes only go up 2% per year. This is what is called a “tax cut” even though taxes went up because the taxes went up less than expected. Same thing with spending, if we say we will increase spending by 3% and then only increase spending by 2% this is called a “spending cut” even though spending went up.
Confused yet? Yeah, I know it sounds stupid but this is politics and it makes very little common sense.
What about recession?
Typically the economy increases at; a mean of about 6%, a modality of about 6%, a median of 2.25% and a standard deviation of 7%. Wow, what the hell does that mean?
Unlike taxes and spending we do not say “recession” when the Gross Domestic Product or GDP raises at a lower than expected amount. Why would a politician use the same rules for GDP as they do for taxes and spending? That might make actual sense.
We could say that a recession is anything below average growth. Guess what? The growth in the 1990's during the Clinton admin never went UP TO the average growth. The highest growth was 6.4% and average is actually 6.5%. During the Bush admin the GDP grew at 6.5% in 2003 and 2004.
Well, I think the economy was pretty good in the 90's and not so great in 2003 and 2004. I could fudge the numbers and make it come out differently and sometimes politicians and economists do that. I won't. You can download the GDP history at www.bea.gov and use a pretty simple calculation to figure out the percentage of GDP increase (I use real dollars, not 2005 dollars). Essentially I divide the GDP of a year (CY or current year) by the previous years GDP (PY or previous year) divided by 100. So....cell=(CY/(PY/100)) or cell=(100-(CY/(PY/100))) which gives me a comparative percentage of change in the GDP from the previous year using the previous year as a standard.
Once we have that info we can calculate the average or mean, the median (Min +((Max-Min)/2)), the modality (You need to use the FREQUENCY function for this) and the Standard Deviation (stdev).
Guess what? That works okay and gives you the numbers we have discussed.
Using those numbers I would define anything below about 2% growth as a recession. The number is not exactly arbitrary but the math behind it becomes more complex. A more realistic growth mean of GDP is about 7.25%. The median is closer to 6 and the modality is still about 6. The standard deviation becomes about 2.5%. This gives us a normal curve running from about -1% to 13% that is skewed very slightly to the lower end. 70 of the 81 years of data fall within this range.
Ever been graded on a curve? Lets use a pretty standard curve grading procedure.
Lets grade the economy on a standard 4.0 grade. Anything over the mean + 2 standard deviations is a 4.0, outstanding. Between the mean and +1 std dev is a 3.0, Above Average, anything around the mean is 2.0 or average. Anything -1 std dev below the mean is a 1.0 or below average. Anything -2 std dev or more below the mean sucks or fails.
So essentially anything below about 2.25% growth becomes a recession or a failing grade.
This means that 2008 and 2009 were recession years according to the data from BEA.gov.
Personally, I think most people can agree with that.
2010 is now longer positive growth since we have drawn our grading line at 2.25 to 4.75, it becomes a “D”, a “1.0” and if you consider a 1.0 grade passing I don't care much for your education, but, it reality many consider it a passing grade so lets give 2010 a passing year.
When were the last two years we received a “C” for our GDP? 1987 and 1988. How about a “A”? 1983. Clinton receives a “C-” for GDP with all years within the range of C-, Bush receives an average “D” with 3 years of C and 5 years of “D”. These grades run 1993 to 2000 and 2001 to 2008. We could argue that the mortgage deregulation in 1999 during the Clinton admin caused the mortgage meltdown, but, whatever. In reality Congress has a lot to do with the budget and it takes 4 years for a president to take over the budget so Clinton's numbers should run from 1997 to 2004, Bush 2005 to 2012. I could “massage” the data around but I am leaving it like it is, admin oriented.
Typically the average person feels the effects of a poor grade or a good grade on the economy a year or two later. This is a subjective and rather arbitrary observation of my own based on economic perception and consumer confidence indexes.
In conclusion I believe any annual economic growth of the Gross Domestic Product below 2.25% is a recession. Economic Growth below 4.75% is BAD or “Piss Poor”. Economic growth at 7.25% plus or minus 1.25% is AVERAGE or GOOD.
Calling this economic mess anything except BAD is just political bull and it wastes everyone's time.
There isn't a real definition for an economic recession. President Clinton used a standard guideline which states that an economic recession is 2 or more quarters of negative economic growth.
That sounds reasonable. Is it?
Not exactly.
Growth is an interesting phenomenon. Suppose a child grows an average of 3” per year. I realize anyone with kids knows this is crap, but, lets just pretend. If a child does not grow the 3” is there something wrong? Yep.
With kids these are called developmental disorders or failure to thrive. Children are supposed to grow so much at each stage of their development. When kids don't achieve milestones we go to doctors and discover problems. I won't go too much into that except as a metaphor.
So what is a recession?
Lets look at “tax cuts” or “spending cuts” as another metaphor. Budgets are planned out years in advance. Politicians argue with each other and with the Presidential administration until they figure out a budget. This takes about 4 years. Suppose the original budget raised taxes by 3% per year and then politicians argue some more and taxes only go up 2% per year. This is what is called a “tax cut” even though taxes went up because the taxes went up less than expected. Same thing with spending, if we say we will increase spending by 3% and then only increase spending by 2% this is called a “spending cut” even though spending went up.
Confused yet? Yeah, I know it sounds stupid but this is politics and it makes very little common sense.
What about recession?
Typically the economy increases at; a mean of about 6%, a modality of about 6%, a median of 2.25% and a standard deviation of 7%. Wow, what the hell does that mean?
Unlike taxes and spending we do not say “recession” when the Gross Domestic Product or GDP raises at a lower than expected amount. Why would a politician use the same rules for GDP as they do for taxes and spending? That might make actual sense.
We could say that a recession is anything below average growth. Guess what? The growth in the 1990's during the Clinton admin never went UP TO the average growth. The highest growth was 6.4% and average is actually 6.5%. During the Bush admin the GDP grew at 6.5% in 2003 and 2004.
Well, I think the economy was pretty good in the 90's and not so great in 2003 and 2004. I could fudge the numbers and make it come out differently and sometimes politicians and economists do that. I won't. You can download the GDP history at www.bea.gov and use a pretty simple calculation to figure out the percentage of GDP increase (I use real dollars, not 2005 dollars). Essentially I divide the GDP of a year (CY or current year) by the previous years GDP (PY or previous year) divided by 100. So....cell=(CY/(PY/100)) or cell=(100-(CY/(PY/100))) which gives me a comparative percentage of change in the GDP from the previous year using the previous year as a standard.
Once we have that info we can calculate the average or mean, the median (Min +((Max-Min)/2)), the modality (You need to use the FREQUENCY function for this) and the Standard Deviation (stdev).
Guess what? That works okay and gives you the numbers we have discussed.
Using those numbers I would define anything below about 2% growth as a recession. The number is not exactly arbitrary but the math behind it becomes more complex. A more realistic growth mean of GDP is about 7.25%. The median is closer to 6 and the modality is still about 6. The standard deviation becomes about 2.5%. This gives us a normal curve running from about -1% to 13% that is skewed very slightly to the lower end. 70 of the 81 years of data fall within this range.
Ever been graded on a curve? Lets use a pretty standard curve grading procedure.
Lets grade the economy on a standard 4.0 grade. Anything over the mean + 2 standard deviations is a 4.0, outstanding. Between the mean and +1 std dev is a 3.0, Above Average, anything around the mean is 2.0 or average. Anything -1 std dev below the mean is a 1.0 or below average. Anything -2 std dev or more below the mean sucks or fails.
So essentially anything below about 2.25% growth becomes a recession or a failing grade.
This means that 2008 and 2009 were recession years according to the data from BEA.gov.
Personally, I think most people can agree with that.
2010 is now longer positive growth since we have drawn our grading line at 2.25 to 4.75, it becomes a “D”, a “1.0” and if you consider a 1.0 grade passing I don't care much for your education, but, it reality many consider it a passing grade so lets give 2010 a passing year.
When were the last two years we received a “C” for our GDP? 1987 and 1988. How about a “A”? 1983. Clinton receives a “C-” for GDP with all years within the range of C-, Bush receives an average “D” with 3 years of C and 5 years of “D”. These grades run 1993 to 2000 and 2001 to 2008. We could argue that the mortgage deregulation in 1999 during the Clinton admin caused the mortgage meltdown, but, whatever. In reality Congress has a lot to do with the budget and it takes 4 years for a president to take over the budget so Clinton's numbers should run from 1997 to 2004, Bush 2005 to 2012. I could “massage” the data around but I am leaving it like it is, admin oriented.
Typically the average person feels the effects of a poor grade or a good grade on the economy a year or two later. This is a subjective and rather arbitrary observation of my own based on economic perception and consumer confidence indexes.
In conclusion I believe any annual economic growth of the Gross Domestic Product below 2.25% is a recession. Economic Growth below 4.75% is BAD or “Piss Poor”. Economic growth at 7.25% plus or minus 1.25% is AVERAGE or GOOD.
Calling this economic mess anything except BAD is just political bull and it wastes everyone's time.
communication and the end of science in the States
I like reading. I read a lot. Recently I have been on a fiction reading jag, John D. MacDonald, Rex Stout, Lawrence Block, J.K. Rowling, Jack Higgins, Michael Crichton, Tom Clancy.
Since the Mid-1990's I focused on reading papers I was downloading from *.edu websites. Thesis and published papers that were inside of faculty members campus computer storage. Over the years I have watched the security change so that it has become more difficult to reach published papers without accessing through specific libraries or campus computer security systems. You can still find a lot of papers out there though.
There are a couple of things in common between fact based papers and fiction, one is the attempt to communicate an idea or group of ideas and the other is subjective and often inaccurate assumptions.
I worked for 6 years with a company that was developing a manufacturing process. The theoreticians pretty much ruled the roost and didn't understand the variability in the application. I would have arguments and be told things like "amplitude is constant" quite loudly and with very little respect for my expertise. After a year or two I would prove that process variability had a range. For example I claimed we were losing amplitude under force. It took about 18 months to fund the testing and prove my theory.
What I loved about that was once we discovered I was right and amplitude decreased as force increased people came up with a really neat linear equation to predict amplitude loss.
Just so people get this, every time you place force on an object you are essentially creating a spring. Grab a broom stick and put it between two chairs. Push down in the middle. The more force the more the stick will bend, BUT, as force increases the displacement per an amount of force will decrease. The first ten pounds of force will bend the broomstick more than the second ten pounds of force. This is just the way stuff works.
Now if you have ever graphed anything like this you know that the curve cannot be linear, it has to be curved.
It becomes even better, when I finally showed the variability in amplitude was skewed to the low side of the range some moron with a masters pulled out a statistics book which said "all distributions are normal distributions". If you know statistics you are probably laughing right now. It's no joke.
These are the kinds of assumptions that people writing papers make and the hard part in understanding them is identifying the assumptions.
One of Einstein's most famous incorrect assumptions was that the sun is a sphere. Duh, a plasma ball spinning deforms into a flattened out ellipsoid. If Einstein had thought about it he understood the issue and being unable to define the ellipsoid he reverted to a well defined sphere. When scientists could define the ellipsoid they did and discovered that the modification changed Einstein's results only slightly and not enough to invalidate the conclusions.
Did Einstein know his assumption was incorrect? Maybe. Maybe he didn't address the assumption because he didn't want to deal with whinny morons. Maybe Einstein ran the numbers with some various ellipsoids and while he couldn't define the ellipsoid he knew that identifying the sun as an unidentified ellipsoid would confuse the issue and create wasted argument. Maybe.
In reality a lot of scientists make assumptions where they know their data is not "exactly" correct, like the spring function,and they publish anyway. A shallow curve can be defined as a line segment and within a specific range of the curve a linear equation will closely approximate the curve. Yeah, tech speak for estimate.
The thing is, the author has to run the numbers enough to understand the curve. Was that done? Did Einstein do it? I know authors I have worked with have not done the homework behind the estimates and have made invalid assumptions.
When I read a paper I identify the assumptions, often writing them out as I read. Then I figure out where the assumptions came from.
The shear and tensile strength of a material is given as a number. This is an assumption or estimate based on statistical data from testing of materials within the standards. In reality the material breaking strength is a curve with a mean, a modality, a median and a standard deviation. If all four of these numbers are not available the data is an estimate.
People do not publish these four numbers in tensile strength testing data so all tensile strength numbers are estimates or assumptions.
Pretty crazy huh? Communication is beginning to seem like a joke even when dealing with "factual scientific papers" or "factual scientific data".
Of course what is happening is people are making simplifying assumptions about the data so that not every calculation is a probability equation based on other probabilities.
So what happens? The simplified assumption becomes invalid data. I wrote a recent blog about how Lawrence Block's character was whining about Batman killing people and how the original Batman had killed people. Ignorant assumptions based on insufficient data always make me laugh.
So some people take the em-PHA-sis (emphasis or Em-pha-sis) off the data and place it on the spelling, grammar and other assorted crap.
When people complain about spelling and grammar they are changing the subject from the data to the methodology or form of communication.
I like talking to and reading papers by people whose first language is not English. Typically people whose first language is not English are more interested in the content of the communication. People whose first language is not English often work very hard to understand regardless of the form of communication.
That is why people of other nations will surpass the United States in technology as long as the primary language of science is not their first language, they strive for understanding of the content while morons in the States focus on form.
You see this everywhere in the culture of the US, "You can't just do the job, you have to do it with style" and so people in the States ignore the work if it isn't stylish enough, pretty enough, "kewl" enough.
Just like Lawrence Block communicated his ignorant perception of Batman as being a mistake by movie producers more and more scientists in the States perceive things incorrectly because they focus on the form instead of the content.
By focusing on the form, the style, the "wow factor" the people in the US flawlessly present incorrect assumption built on incorrect assumption until they have developed a service based economy asking an uninterested world "would you like fries with that?" because some idiot has assumed that people want services from a nation who cares more about form than content. People who care about the Styrofoam packaging than the McBurger inside.
Imagine for a moment that you taste a standard cardboard burger for the first time and you hear the people in the nation which produces these things is complaining about the wrapper instead of the burger. Would you trust these people to do anything right?
Since the Mid-1990's I focused on reading papers I was downloading from *.edu websites. Thesis and published papers that were inside of faculty members campus computer storage. Over the years I have watched the security change so that it has become more difficult to reach published papers without accessing through specific libraries or campus computer security systems. You can still find a lot of papers out there though.
There are a couple of things in common between fact based papers and fiction, one is the attempt to communicate an idea or group of ideas and the other is subjective and often inaccurate assumptions.
I worked for 6 years with a company that was developing a manufacturing process. The theoreticians pretty much ruled the roost and didn't understand the variability in the application. I would have arguments and be told things like "amplitude is constant" quite loudly and with very little respect for my expertise. After a year or two I would prove that process variability had a range. For example I claimed we were losing amplitude under force. It took about 18 months to fund the testing and prove my theory.
What I loved about that was once we discovered I was right and amplitude decreased as force increased people came up with a really neat linear equation to predict amplitude loss.
Just so people get this, every time you place force on an object you are essentially creating a spring. Grab a broom stick and put it between two chairs. Push down in the middle. The more force the more the stick will bend, BUT, as force increases the displacement per an amount of force will decrease. The first ten pounds of force will bend the broomstick more than the second ten pounds of force. This is just the way stuff works.
Now if you have ever graphed anything like this you know that the curve cannot be linear, it has to be curved.
It becomes even better, when I finally showed the variability in amplitude was skewed to the low side of the range some moron with a masters pulled out a statistics book which said "all distributions are normal distributions". If you know statistics you are probably laughing right now. It's no joke.
These are the kinds of assumptions that people writing papers make and the hard part in understanding them is identifying the assumptions.
One of Einstein's most famous incorrect assumptions was that the sun is a sphere. Duh, a plasma ball spinning deforms into a flattened out ellipsoid. If Einstein had thought about it he understood the issue and being unable to define the ellipsoid he reverted to a well defined sphere. When scientists could define the ellipsoid they did and discovered that the modification changed Einstein's results only slightly and not enough to invalidate the conclusions.
Did Einstein know his assumption was incorrect? Maybe. Maybe he didn't address the assumption because he didn't want to deal with whinny morons. Maybe Einstein ran the numbers with some various ellipsoids and while he couldn't define the ellipsoid he knew that identifying the sun as an unidentified ellipsoid would confuse the issue and create wasted argument. Maybe.
In reality a lot of scientists make assumptions where they know their data is not "exactly" correct, like the spring function,and they publish anyway. A shallow curve can be defined as a line segment and within a specific range of the curve a linear equation will closely approximate the curve. Yeah, tech speak for estimate.
The thing is, the author has to run the numbers enough to understand the curve. Was that done? Did Einstein do it? I know authors I have worked with have not done the homework behind the estimates and have made invalid assumptions.
When I read a paper I identify the assumptions, often writing them out as I read. Then I figure out where the assumptions came from.
The shear and tensile strength of a material is given as a number. This is an assumption or estimate based on statistical data from testing of materials within the standards. In reality the material breaking strength is a curve with a mean, a modality, a median and a standard deviation. If all four of these numbers are not available the data is an estimate.
People do not publish these four numbers in tensile strength testing data so all tensile strength numbers are estimates or assumptions.
Pretty crazy huh? Communication is beginning to seem like a joke even when dealing with "factual scientific papers" or "factual scientific data".
Of course what is happening is people are making simplifying assumptions about the data so that not every calculation is a probability equation based on other probabilities.
So what happens? The simplified assumption becomes invalid data. I wrote a recent blog about how Lawrence Block's character was whining about Batman killing people and how the original Batman had killed people. Ignorant assumptions based on insufficient data always make me laugh.
So some people take the em-PHA-sis (emphasis or Em-pha-sis) off the data and place it on the spelling, grammar and other assorted crap.
When people complain about spelling and grammar they are changing the subject from the data to the methodology or form of communication.
I like talking to and reading papers by people whose first language is not English. Typically people whose first language is not English are more interested in the content of the communication. People whose first language is not English often work very hard to understand regardless of the form of communication.
That is why people of other nations will surpass the United States in technology as long as the primary language of science is not their first language, they strive for understanding of the content while morons in the States focus on form.
You see this everywhere in the culture of the US, "You can't just do the job, you have to do it with style" and so people in the States ignore the work if it isn't stylish enough, pretty enough, "kewl" enough.
Just like Lawrence Block communicated his ignorant perception of Batman as being a mistake by movie producers more and more scientists in the States perceive things incorrectly because they focus on the form instead of the content.
By focusing on the form, the style, the "wow factor" the people in the US flawlessly present incorrect assumption built on incorrect assumption until they have developed a service based economy asking an uninterested world "would you like fries with that?" because some idiot has assumed that people want services from a nation who cares more about form than content. People who care about the Styrofoam packaging than the McBurger inside.
Imagine for a moment that you taste a standard cardboard burger for the first time and you hear the people in the nation which produces these things is complaining about the wrapper instead of the burger. Would you trust these people to do anything right?
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Harry Potter and the KJV
A few years ago I was chatting with an internet friend about the KJV and the “Forbidden Books of the Bible” and how they originated.
I'll give you a quick review of how all the books of the Bible originated. Christ walked around. People wrote letters and anecdotal accounts of what they knew about Christ. Other people copied those books and gave other people the opportunity to copy them. Until the invention of the printing press no one cared about “copyright”, people cared if a book was stolen. Copy any book you want, just don't steal it.
Now, this may amaze you but people are all individuals and some copy more precisely than others. Some people leave things out or “enhance” details that they believe are important. Some people make up stories that fit the characters and sell those stories. Even today people will fake “ancient” copies of stories they just made up.
About 300 A.D. A group of scholars was assembled and they reviewed all the books about Christ that were circulated. These scholars chose the books with the best accreditation and assembled them into a group of books they called the Bible. The standard used was not what Books gave the reader the most knowledge of Christianity. The standard used was which Books were necessary to help teach the Good News of the Forgiveness of Sins through Christ.
As amazing as this sounds not everyone agreed with the decisions of this group of scholars. Sarcasm does not translate well into writing and I am being sarcastic. Getting three people to agree on where to eat lunch is pretty difficult. Imagine getting any group of scholars to decide which are the best books to use to teach salvation.
What the group ended up with was a majority decision breaking the books into three groups. The books that the majority believed were most important to teach salvation. The books that were useful to teach wisdom. The books that were about as useful as tabloid articles, books like the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas” which while entertaining communicated no useful wisdom or instruction in salvation.
People argued and just as every University in the world has books that they refuse to add into their library the Catholic Church issued a decree that the tabloid article type books could not be used by priests for instruction or guidance.
So where did Priests get their Bibles? They copied them during their education. Priests in training worked as scribes and had a little time to copy their own Bible during their education. Guess what, Priests copied different books from the two groups of acceptable books and not every Bible copied by every Priest had every “acceptable” book. As time went on most standardized on a form called the Latin Vulgate.
Enter King James Version. At the time of the Kind James version there were several English Translations of the scripture. Just as Council of Nicea had standardized on the group of Biblical books the KJV standardized the English translation of the Biblical Books. The KJV standardized the translation of the primary and secondary group of books. The primary books became known as the New and Old Testament and the secondary group of books were called the Apocrypha.
If you buy a Catholic Bible it will have the New Testament, the Apocrypha and the Old Testament. Protestants decided that because the Apocrypha was not Canonized into the primary group of scripture by those original scholars back in 300 A.D. it should not be included in the KJV even though the scholars who originally translated the KJV also translated the Apocrypha into the KJV. Confused yet?
Everyday throughout the United States books are burned. People pitch them out, libraries toss them into dumpsters. The number of books that are destroyed on a daily basis astounds me. Go around to your local library, typically they will try and sell off books and then they will try donating them. Some books, damaged books, outdated reference materials will end up in the trash bin.
Of course these same people who pitch the favorite books of some people will scream at the top of their lungs when others pitch their favorite books.
The group who receives the bad press on pitching books depends a lot on the carisma and volume of the the screaming. One group is pitching or burning the “bad books” and the other group is “evil”. Yeah, whatever.
Getting back to a chat discussion with some friends on the internet I explained all of this and the response was typical. There were those who claimed that my reasoning was ridiculous, all the books selected for the Bible must be wrong since none of them were first editions AND all the “forbidden” books were just as real and important as the books selected for the Bible.
Okay, people have weird ideas. I get it and no one can prove things one way or the other so why can't they be just as correct as I am? Right? Not hardly.
In everything that we learn there is theory and application. Learning a quadratic equation is theory. Doing a story problem that requires the quadratic formula is application. Too bad most teachers hate story problems as much as the students. Me, I love story problems because story problems are application. I have worked with a lot of degreed engineers who have a lot of difficulty in applying their theoretical knowledge to application and I have watched millions wasted because people don't understand the application of the theory.
Trying to claim that the Bible is inaccurate because they didn't include the tabloid books or because the books that were used to standardized on were not first editions but were copies which were adpated to the use of language at the time of their copying is ignoring basic common sense application of theory.
Enter Harry Potter.
Those of us who enjoy reading have discovered a plethora of information available on the internet. One day, in this chat room where we had previously discussed the theory and application of Biblical books we were engaged in a discussion of Harry Potter's latest book 7.
Now some of you may know that any time you have a popular character, Jessie James, Buffalo Bill Cody, the Three Musketeers, writers will “steal” the character and write stories that do not quite mesh with the original authors stories. Dime novels, super market tabloids, movies, television shows, all these media sources use and twist characters to suit their own story telling skills. If you understand the theory and the application I don't have to explain that this has been going on since people started doing cave paintings and that it undoubtedly happened with religious figures like Christ.
So here we have Harry Potter, a popular character and someone or some group has produced an alternate book 7 that a couple of people had read and said that they liked it as well or better than the original by J.K. Rowling. Someone posted the link and I downloaded it and it sat on my computer with tons of other books.
With the excitement in the air over the last segment of the Harry Potter movies I re-read the books and thought once again of this “just as good” Harry Potter book 7 which, of course, could not be an example of the kind of authorship that developed books such the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas”. No, all the “biblical” books that have survived or not must have been just as real as the books selected for inclusion in the Bible and this example of Harry Potter was just some strange and unique “new” creation because of the internet.
Now personally I liked this alternate book 7. Ginny goes on the search for the horcruxes, pre-marital sex (not graphic), Dudley Dursley becomes a dark wizard, Snape is evil to the end and Draco helps defeat the Dark Lord. No Deadly Hallows, no Elder Wand, nada. Just the same seven horcruxes and different ways of destroying them.
Good story though even if it does not belong in the set of books that comprise the 7 Harry Potter Books. Of course I didn't read J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter 7 in it's original edition and “language”, I read some US publication edition.
Now of course this is some newly developed idea which could never have existed at the time of Christ and no one back then would ever have written a fake letter or a fake gospel or anything else just for the fun of it the way this author(s) did for Harry Potter.
Of course, in 300 years no one will be able to tell the real book seven from the fake book seven, well, maybe a group of scholars who have access to the earliest editions available and have studied the writing styles and language of the various writers. Even having studied these things some scholars could disagree on which is the “real” book 7.
Just for your information, there are bunches of fake Harry Potter books out there in the internet and I have heard of some of them. There are probably fake books that would end up causing totally different endings, except Harry Potter will always kill Voldemort in the end. Some will be obvious fakes to those familiar with J.K. Rowling's style. Others will probably not be and some people may prefer a fake book or two to the original books.
To me it was hilarous, “listening” to this chat where the same people who talked about this fake Harry Potter book had thought the idea of fake biblical books as being ridiculous.
In the end does it matter?
Of course it does. You might as well ask if it matters which of the two Harry Potter book 7's that you read. Does it matter if you read the “real” book 7?
In the end you are the only one who can decide what you like best and what has the best application in your life.
I believe that making that decision from ignorance is a lot like reading the fake book 7 and claiming that it was the “real” book 7. Someone can learn the theory and the application and make the decision which applies and someone can say, “Yep, I know this is not J.K. Rowling's book 7 but I like it better” or someone can ridicule J.K. Rowling's book 7 as the fake and claim the alternate book is the “real” book.
People can even claim that knowledge of this “real” alternate book makes them the “educated” people and others “ignorant”.
Just ignore me as I sit here biting my tongue as I try and keep a serious look on my face while inside I am laughing my head off at the ignorance of those who argue different sides of the same theoretical idea without ever understanding the application.
I'll give you a quick review of how all the books of the Bible originated. Christ walked around. People wrote letters and anecdotal accounts of what they knew about Christ. Other people copied those books and gave other people the opportunity to copy them. Until the invention of the printing press no one cared about “copyright”, people cared if a book was stolen. Copy any book you want, just don't steal it.
Now, this may amaze you but people are all individuals and some copy more precisely than others. Some people leave things out or “enhance” details that they believe are important. Some people make up stories that fit the characters and sell those stories. Even today people will fake “ancient” copies of stories they just made up.
About 300 A.D. A group of scholars was assembled and they reviewed all the books about Christ that were circulated. These scholars chose the books with the best accreditation and assembled them into a group of books they called the Bible. The standard used was not what Books gave the reader the most knowledge of Christianity. The standard used was which Books were necessary to help teach the Good News of the Forgiveness of Sins through Christ.
As amazing as this sounds not everyone agreed with the decisions of this group of scholars. Sarcasm does not translate well into writing and I am being sarcastic. Getting three people to agree on where to eat lunch is pretty difficult. Imagine getting any group of scholars to decide which are the best books to use to teach salvation.
What the group ended up with was a majority decision breaking the books into three groups. The books that the majority believed were most important to teach salvation. The books that were useful to teach wisdom. The books that were about as useful as tabloid articles, books like the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas” which while entertaining communicated no useful wisdom or instruction in salvation.
People argued and just as every University in the world has books that they refuse to add into their library the Catholic Church issued a decree that the tabloid article type books could not be used by priests for instruction or guidance.
So where did Priests get their Bibles? They copied them during their education. Priests in training worked as scribes and had a little time to copy their own Bible during their education. Guess what, Priests copied different books from the two groups of acceptable books and not every Bible copied by every Priest had every “acceptable” book. As time went on most standardized on a form called the Latin Vulgate.
Enter King James Version. At the time of the Kind James version there were several English Translations of the scripture. Just as Council of Nicea had standardized on the group of Biblical books the KJV standardized the English translation of the Biblical Books. The KJV standardized the translation of the primary and secondary group of books. The primary books became known as the New and Old Testament and the secondary group of books were called the Apocrypha.
If you buy a Catholic Bible it will have the New Testament, the Apocrypha and the Old Testament. Protestants decided that because the Apocrypha was not Canonized into the primary group of scripture by those original scholars back in 300 A.D. it should not be included in the KJV even though the scholars who originally translated the KJV also translated the Apocrypha into the KJV. Confused yet?
Everyday throughout the United States books are burned. People pitch them out, libraries toss them into dumpsters. The number of books that are destroyed on a daily basis astounds me. Go around to your local library, typically they will try and sell off books and then they will try donating them. Some books, damaged books, outdated reference materials will end up in the trash bin.
Of course these same people who pitch the favorite books of some people will scream at the top of their lungs when others pitch their favorite books.
The group who receives the bad press on pitching books depends a lot on the carisma and volume of the the screaming. One group is pitching or burning the “bad books” and the other group is “evil”. Yeah, whatever.
Getting back to a chat discussion with some friends on the internet I explained all of this and the response was typical. There were those who claimed that my reasoning was ridiculous, all the books selected for the Bible must be wrong since none of them were first editions AND all the “forbidden” books were just as real and important as the books selected for the Bible.
Okay, people have weird ideas. I get it and no one can prove things one way or the other so why can't they be just as correct as I am? Right? Not hardly.
In everything that we learn there is theory and application. Learning a quadratic equation is theory. Doing a story problem that requires the quadratic formula is application. Too bad most teachers hate story problems as much as the students. Me, I love story problems because story problems are application. I have worked with a lot of degreed engineers who have a lot of difficulty in applying their theoretical knowledge to application and I have watched millions wasted because people don't understand the application of the theory.
Trying to claim that the Bible is inaccurate because they didn't include the tabloid books or because the books that were used to standardized on were not first editions but were copies which were adpated to the use of language at the time of their copying is ignoring basic common sense application of theory.
Enter Harry Potter.
Those of us who enjoy reading have discovered a plethora of information available on the internet. One day, in this chat room where we had previously discussed the theory and application of Biblical books we were engaged in a discussion of Harry Potter's latest book 7.
Now some of you may know that any time you have a popular character, Jessie James, Buffalo Bill Cody, the Three Musketeers, writers will “steal” the character and write stories that do not quite mesh with the original authors stories. Dime novels, super market tabloids, movies, television shows, all these media sources use and twist characters to suit their own story telling skills. If you understand the theory and the application I don't have to explain that this has been going on since people started doing cave paintings and that it undoubtedly happened with religious figures like Christ.
So here we have Harry Potter, a popular character and someone or some group has produced an alternate book 7 that a couple of people had read and said that they liked it as well or better than the original by J.K. Rowling. Someone posted the link and I downloaded it and it sat on my computer with tons of other books.
With the excitement in the air over the last segment of the Harry Potter movies I re-read the books and thought once again of this “just as good” Harry Potter book 7 which, of course, could not be an example of the kind of authorship that developed books such the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas”. No, all the “biblical” books that have survived or not must have been just as real as the books selected for inclusion in the Bible and this example of Harry Potter was just some strange and unique “new” creation because of the internet.
Now personally I liked this alternate book 7. Ginny goes on the search for the horcruxes, pre-marital sex (not graphic), Dudley Dursley becomes a dark wizard, Snape is evil to the end and Draco helps defeat the Dark Lord. No Deadly Hallows, no Elder Wand, nada. Just the same seven horcruxes and different ways of destroying them.
Good story though even if it does not belong in the set of books that comprise the 7 Harry Potter Books. Of course I didn't read J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter 7 in it's original edition and “language”, I read some US publication edition.
Now of course this is some newly developed idea which could never have existed at the time of Christ and no one back then would ever have written a fake letter or a fake gospel or anything else just for the fun of it the way this author(s) did for Harry Potter.
Of course, in 300 years no one will be able to tell the real book seven from the fake book seven, well, maybe a group of scholars who have access to the earliest editions available and have studied the writing styles and language of the various writers. Even having studied these things some scholars could disagree on which is the “real” book 7.
Just for your information, there are bunches of fake Harry Potter books out there in the internet and I have heard of some of them. There are probably fake books that would end up causing totally different endings, except Harry Potter will always kill Voldemort in the end. Some will be obvious fakes to those familiar with J.K. Rowling's style. Others will probably not be and some people may prefer a fake book or two to the original books.
To me it was hilarous, “listening” to this chat where the same people who talked about this fake Harry Potter book had thought the idea of fake biblical books as being ridiculous.
In the end does it matter?
Of course it does. You might as well ask if it matters which of the two Harry Potter book 7's that you read. Does it matter if you read the “real” book 7?
In the end you are the only one who can decide what you like best and what has the best application in your life.
I believe that making that decision from ignorance is a lot like reading the fake book 7 and claiming that it was the “real” book 7. Someone can learn the theory and the application and make the decision which applies and someone can say, “Yep, I know this is not J.K. Rowling's book 7 but I like it better” or someone can ridicule J.K. Rowling's book 7 as the fake and claim the alternate book is the “real” book.
People can even claim that knowledge of this “real” alternate book makes them the “educated” people and others “ignorant”.
Just ignore me as I sit here biting my tongue as I try and keep a serious look on my face while inside I am laughing my head off at the ignorance of those who argue different sides of the same theoretical idea without ever understanding the application.
Friday, July 08, 2011
e-book reader 3, Kindle
I have to say that so far the touch-pad Android reader scores highest, the Kindle second highest and the Nook lowest.
What I like about the Kindle?
Excellent screen and power control.
You can read text files.
Other than that it has a lot of the same problems as the Nook, slightly better but not a real solution.
You can't really convert PDF files into something readable. I have converted PDF files and I have read them on the Kindle and it really sucks. Maybe it is because most of the PDF files I use have a lot of graphs and images, micro-sections of materials, etc and I have a lousy converter.
Maybe that is the problem with the Nook too. Maybe they just need a good converter and a file format that handles graphics better.
In the end, I kept the Kindle for reading books I downloaded from the web in text format (www.gutenberg.org for example).
If you get a Kindle be aware that Amazon has deleted books purchased legitimately from Amazon off of some Kindles, You can read about it by searching "incest" and "Kindle" on Google. That scared the crap out of me because one of my favorite authors, Robert A. Heinlein, has an incest thread that runs through many of his books where one of the characters is in a plural marriage with his own mother. I avoided confrontation by purchasing the 802.11 version and never turning the wireless on. Maybe Amazon will turn it on remotely and delete my books anyway. If they do I will post that.
DRM is a big deal because a lot of nations don't recognize the same copyright protections that the United States does. Suppose I purchase a book in Pakistan, is the book deleted when I enter the United States? DRM is pretty screwed up.
In my opinion DRM and Copyright should last 20 years, the same as a patent. Screw all the rest of the greedy arguments.
I still use my XO OLPC laptop for reading PDF papers such as the scientific papers I read for work.
I would really like to try the I-pad sometime, I think it will stack-up favorably or even better to the Android touch-screen tablet.
Right now, in my opinion;
A "hard" book scores 2 out of 10
Nook scores 1 out of 10
Kindle scores 2 out of 10 (txt file capability :-)
Android scores 4 out of 10
XO-OLPC-1 scores 4 out of 10
Palm scores 2 out of 10 (M130, Tungsten W)
Blackberry scores 1 out of 10 (7100, 8320, 8330, 8900)
Normal laptop, windows or Linux scores 1 out of 10
Full size "tablet laptop" with folding screen scores 2 out of 10
Normal desktop....
I really want something in the 7-9 out of 10 range. So far nothing I have tried comes close to that range.
I really want something that:
Reads many different e-book formats
Reads PDF files without conversion no matter what they were published with
Does not crap out on files without DRM
Uses a generic (PGP style) DRM instead of credit card numbers (which always change)
Lasts at least as long as a Kindle
Uses a touch screen and does not get so nasty with finger prints
Is lightweight and small enough to easily carry
Won't break when you drop it a couple of times
Allows me to transfer reading rights of a DRM protected book
Stores books on a server
Won't delete books I have because the company hates the subject
Won't delete books because the company isn't sure I have rights to the book
Does not take the "guilty until proved innocent" DRM attitude of Microsoft, the RIAA and friends.
Plays music
Reads TXT format books to me in various languages, translating on the fly (Yeah, I can dream... :-)
Has a full time *G connection to the internet
Can be used as a browser to read internet websites
Still looking for the "magic bullet" :-) I will write and post as I think about it to let anyone who cares know what I think about the various e-readers I try.
What I like about the Kindle?
Excellent screen and power control.
You can read text files.
Other than that it has a lot of the same problems as the Nook, slightly better but not a real solution.
You can't really convert PDF files into something readable. I have converted PDF files and I have read them on the Kindle and it really sucks. Maybe it is because most of the PDF files I use have a lot of graphs and images, micro-sections of materials, etc and I have a lousy converter.
Maybe that is the problem with the Nook too. Maybe they just need a good converter and a file format that handles graphics better.
In the end, I kept the Kindle for reading books I downloaded from the web in text format (www.gutenberg.org for example).
If you get a Kindle be aware that Amazon has deleted books purchased legitimately from Amazon off of some Kindles, You can read about it by searching "incest" and "Kindle" on Google. That scared the crap out of me because one of my favorite authors, Robert A. Heinlein, has an incest thread that runs through many of his books where one of the characters is in a plural marriage with his own mother. I avoided confrontation by purchasing the 802.11 version and never turning the wireless on. Maybe Amazon will turn it on remotely and delete my books anyway. If they do I will post that.
DRM is a big deal because a lot of nations don't recognize the same copyright protections that the United States does. Suppose I purchase a book in Pakistan, is the book deleted when I enter the United States? DRM is pretty screwed up.
In my opinion DRM and Copyright should last 20 years, the same as a patent. Screw all the rest of the greedy arguments.
I still use my XO OLPC laptop for reading PDF papers such as the scientific papers I read for work.
I would really like to try the I-pad sometime, I think it will stack-up favorably or even better to the Android touch-screen tablet.
Right now, in my opinion;
A "hard" book scores 2 out of 10
Nook scores 1 out of 10
Kindle scores 2 out of 10 (txt file capability :-)
Android scores 4 out of 10
XO-OLPC-1 scores 4 out of 10
Palm scores 2 out of 10 (M130, Tungsten W)
Blackberry scores 1 out of 10 (7100, 8320, 8330, 8900)
Normal laptop, windows or Linux scores 1 out of 10
Full size "tablet laptop" with folding screen scores 2 out of 10
Normal desktop....
I really want something in the 7-9 out of 10 range. So far nothing I have tried comes close to that range.
I really want something that:
Reads many different e-book formats
Reads PDF files without conversion no matter what they were published with
Does not crap out on files without DRM
Uses a generic (PGP style) DRM instead of credit card numbers (which always change)
Lasts at least as long as a Kindle
Uses a touch screen and does not get so nasty with finger prints
Is lightweight and small enough to easily carry
Won't break when you drop it a couple of times
Allows me to transfer reading rights of a DRM protected book
Stores books on a server
Won't delete books I have because the company hates the subject
Won't delete books because the company isn't sure I have rights to the book
Does not take the "guilty until proved innocent" DRM attitude of Microsoft, the RIAA and friends.
Plays music
Reads TXT format books to me in various languages, translating on the fly (Yeah, I can dream... :-)
Has a full time *G connection to the internet
Can be used as a browser to read internet websites
Still looking for the "magic bullet" :-) I will write and post as I think about it to let anyone who cares know what I think about the various e-readers I try.
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