I'm old enough to remember what mobile phones used to be like before the iPhone, and old enough to remember Windows CE, the PocketPC, and Microsoft's first foray into tablet computing.
The fundamental reason why Microsoft failed in the mobile market was because they doggedly tried to shoehorn some scaled-down version of Windows into a mobile device, and the hardware at the time simply did not permit that to happen. Their strategy had always been about leveraging their existing dominance in the OS market, because they knew people were hooked on Windows and Office. So, in theory, by extending these products into other areas of computing, they could continue that advantage.
This, of course, simply did not work. It certainly didn't work the way it worked with Internet Explorer back when they crushed Netscape, and yes, a lot of that had to do with the teams that were responsible for developing Windows CE and their mobile strategy. But what is most telling about Ballmer's disclosure here is that it reflects a continued inability to understand exactly why Apple (and later, Google) were successful when Microsoft was not.
Apple succeeded because they built a self-contained, refined product that was better than anything else at the time. Back in 2007, remember what kind of phones existed then. Don't measure the original iPhone by what we have now, but by who were the market leaders at the time, which were Nokia and Samsung. Apple's success came from taking what the hardware at the time was capable of doing, and then building software that worked seamlessly with it, while offering new features. What they recognized was that the existing mobile phones were being held back by hardware companies who were only interested in incremental improvements on old hardware and old design. They saw an opportunity to break through that by offering something completely new.
That's not to say Microsoft didn't have vision. It's just that their vision was essentially that they would have miniature versions of Windows on all kinds of mobile devices. The proof of that is the Casio PocketPC I owned way back in the day. It was clunky and slow but I was so enamored of the idea of a portable computing device I put up with it. And I remember my friends buying their tablet PCs too. But ultimately, Windows just didn't translate well, and that's why they were failures.
The lesson is one that Apple has always espoused--build the hardware and software together. Make them work together. It doesn't have to be fully featured, but it does have to work seamlessly and reliably, and be easy to use. How you get there is up to you. Google approached it from another angle--they built the OS and gave it away. And now we can understand why Microsoft bought Nokia--they realized that this integrative strategy is the only way to compete. But it is much too late.
Your suggestion of romanization addresses orthography, not phonetics, which is quite ironic considering that the problem has to do with *speaking* a particular dialect. That is to say, spoken Taiwanese, Shanghainese, Mandarin, and Cantonese all sound very different to the point of being mutually unintelligible, but they all share the same orthography, which is why your suggestion is irrelevant. Romanization could make it slightly easier to TYPE, but it doesn't address the issue of spoken language at all.
You also seem to be unaware of the existence of zhuyin, which is commonly taught to Taiwanese children as part of the process of learning the characters, and in effect is a system for inputting Chinese text on electronic devices. Do you really think that hundreds of millions of Chinese smartphone and computer users have been using English or Pinyin to communicate all this time, or that they are doing so with thousand-keyed keyboards? You also seem to be unaware that the writing system has already undergone a simplification process, spearheaded by the PRC government in an attempt to make it more efficient to write. However, Simplified Chinese can be a bit perplexing to read for those who have learned only the traditional forms of the characters.
Any transition away from the existing character writing system is going to take a LONG time. It's not as if you can just say "let's just romanize everything" and then expect all forms of written communications to transition in a few decades, or even a century. You don't seem to have any grasp of the historical continuity of the Chinese civilization, and in particular its language which has essentially remained as it is for far longer than English has ever existed in any form. To think of Chinese orthography as a "problem" that needs to be solved, and to propose romanization as a solution, is reflection of ethnic biases.
The value of rote learning in mathematics is completely lost upon American educators, primarily because they believe learning by repetition is too boring and tedious for American kids, who have grown up in a society of "easy everything"--easy food, easy entertainment, easy computers.
But if you take a careful and honest look at how mathematics is learned, and investigate which pedagogical models of mathematics are most successful, you will find that repetition is by far what works the best. It's not this "integrated math" or "Common Core" marketing BS. It is simply doing problems, over and over and over until it sinks in and your error rate approaches zero, because that is what is required to develop proficiency. Is it soul-crushing for some students to do it this way? Yes, I don't deny it. But that is just TOO BAD. It's either that, or you don't learn. I don't understand where people suddenly got the idea that learning was supposed to be always fun, enjoyable, and easy. It seems like a uniquely American notion, that there not only exists some way to make the educational process painless, but that painlessness is a goal unto itself.
Take a look, for example, at Kumon math. That stuff is the archetype of rote mathematics learning. Even *I* find it mind-numbingly boring, and I have a degree in mathematics. But does it work? Without a doubt. The parent may have to force the child to do it, but the learning curve is absurdly gradual. Students eventually discover that it feels good to do things quickly and perfectly. That's not to say I believe Kumon is the extent to which rote learning should take place--far from it--but the basic point is that American educators are on the opposite end of the spectrum, mainly because of politics, cultural preconceptions, and MONEY. These constant revisions in math curriculum are driven by publishers who keep pushing the latest technologies in order to maximize profit.
I personally have had teaching experience in the US at the high school level, and as an Asian-American, I don't think it's BS. Korea is a different country with very different cultural attitudes towards the value of learning, parental responsibility for child rearing, and the importance of fostering individuality rather than collective standards of behavior, compared to the US. Therefore, educational and classroom models that apply in Korea may not apply in the US, and vice versa. You cannot assume that just because a different model exists and is successful, that other models must be intrinsically flawed.
Look at what American kids are like, and compare that with Korean kids. You will find they hold very different notions of acceptable social behavior. You'll also find that Korean students are FAR more respectful to their teachers, not necessarily because Korean teachers are more knowledgeable or strict or experienced, but because Korean society as a whole places much more value on the educational process. The parents drill it into their kids, and the kids see the evidence of what constitutes a successful future in how their society rewards those who emerge at the top with respect to higher education. This is also true of China, Japan, and Singapore, among other Asian (and non-Asian) nations.
Take a Korean teacher and put them in front of a class of 30 American students, and see how long their pedagogical and disciplinary model lasts. American students know that they can't be punished and ultimately can't be held accountable for their own bad behavior--the worst that can happen is their parents have to discipline them at home, and how many American parents, with their own lack of self-control, really have what it takes to do that?
You misunderstand. I make no judgment of the legal or ethical questions surrounding leaks by individuals. I merely stated that in general, the motive for leaking is based in a belief that the public has a right to know such information, as opposed to, for example, a malicious intent to harm the public interest. Whether the individual source of the leak is actually doing the right thing is not something that can be addressed broadly--that depends on the nature of the revealed information.
Furthermore, the straw man argument of "primacy of individual points of view" is not valid because the same principle could be applied to those individuals in government--elected and unelected alike--who possess the power to make sweeping decisions without oversight or disclosure. For example, did lawmakers who passed the Patriot Act know that, at the time of passage, it would be used as justification for NSLs? If not, then who made the decision to do so, and under what constitutional authority? Being elected to office doesn't mean that the public implicitly consents to whatever that official may do. And it is the unfortunate reality that the very nature of government secrets implies that the power to decide if such secrets should be revealed often comes down to a handful of people, or a single person.
As for your final point, there already exist laws punishing the disclosure of classified information. Ask Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden whether they simply "felt like" doing what they did. I don't think you really grasped the significance of my previous post--in particular, the last paragraph thereof.
Generally, leaks by the public happen not because such individuals wish to do harm, but because they feel it is in the public's interest to know such information. Therefore, in order to stop such leaks from occurring, it is the government's responsibility to conduct themselves in a manner so as to permit accountability and oversight by those who presumably elected them.
In short, if you don't want leaks of "sensitive" information, then don't do business in a way that creates such secrets to begin with. We aren't talking about corporate espionage, or nuclear missile launch codes. We are talking about actions at the behest of some government entity that purports to serve the public, but that same public has not even the slightest degree of oversight with respect to determining whether such actions are in fact legitimate.
To talk about needing more laws and more restrictions to hide government secrets in the name of "security" is the height of sophistry and hubris. It is Machiavellian and Orwellian reasoning, and it is the very thing that achieves what the actual terrorists intend. No sovereign nation will be brought to its knees by the direct loss of life and safety through sporadic murders, bombings, and violent mayhem. Nations fall for two reasons: conquest by another nation's military, or because the governments that rule over its citizens become so egregiously corrupt that a revolution occurs from within. The essential aim of terrorism is to achieve such a collapse through the latter means, because terrorists are aware that they lack the resources to do the former. It makes no difference whether the draconian behavior of a government is well-intentioned. The loss of basic democratic freedoms, in any form, is a win for terrorists.
Just because there are flaws in measurement methodology doesn't mean the solution is to extrapolate the resulting measurement. The correct solution is to revise the way the data is collected and the resulting measure is calculated. You don't somehow extend the flawed measurement to try to recover some meaning that might have been lost. A procedure that is limited in its ability to quantify some property of interest, but is essentially valid within its stated scope, is still preferable to trying to extend the scope in a way that it was never designed to address.
What exactly does one mean by "scientific creativity?" Is it a simple knack for problem solving, or is it something more nuanced and complex, like the sort of ability to postulate entire new theories based on scientific evidence (e.g., Newton and Einstein?) And what exactly does one mean by "spatial ability?" Is such a thing measurable, and if so, what is the scope of such a notion?
Suppose we are speaking of some notion of creativity in the sense of the latter above, and furthermore, that by spatial ability we are referring to a specific ability to comprehend the structure of geometric abstractions without them needing to actually exist. Then of course it stands to reason that such ability would be a benefit in scientific (and mathematical) thinking. Would it be a *predictor* of scientific creativity? I think one could only say such a thing to the extent that, say, being good at math is a predictor of scientific aptitude; that is, ability is beneficial and perhaps influential, but not deterministic. There's a certain kind of convergence of imagination and logical deduction involved in many tests for "spatial ability"--for example, the task involves not just imagining what an object looks like, but also the relationships between features *if* that object were to exist.
So, on a very basic level, I'd be quite surprised if there were no correlation between the two. But do I think that the association is proportional? Hardly. Being especially good at mentally folding patterned nets of cubes isn't going to mean you are expected to be commensurately talented in particle physics (or vice versa). And I don't think that such a strong assertion is what these studies are attempting to demonstrate.
Not everyone likes wearing things on their wrists. Years ago, I tried wearing a wristwatch, but I found it gets in the way. It makes typing uncomfortable for me, and I have several hobbies for which wearing anything on my hands would mean they'd get dirty or damaged, or be a safety hazard--so I also do not wear any rings on my fingers. From a functional standpoint, I already have a device that does what I need it to do--my phone.
As for being "an old fart," I should point out that people used to have pocket watches before wristwatches were common.
Just because a dedicated device exists for doing something, doesn't necessarily mean that it is a better solution.
I have gotten my phone out of my pocket during a movie in two situations: (1) when the movie is supremely boring or it's dragging on, and I want to check the time--which I do as stealthily as possible so as not to let the illumination of the screen be obtrusive to others around me; and (2) the exceedingly rare situation where someone has dropped something important on the floor or it fell out of a pocket (like a wallet) and we have to find it. This is usually done only at the end of a film, though.
I have seen others text/tweet/facebook etc. during a movie, however. It does happen, and it generally affects you if you're sitting in the row immediately behind the offender, and it's not stadium seating. On one occasion I have seen someone use a laser pointer on the screen--that is really annoying and completely unacceptable.
Amazon's position may be principled, but it won't do any good to fight the subpoena. We have already seen that the FISC (FISA court) is just a rubber stamp operation, and that the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the government want ever greater power and authority under the guise of the "war on terror." Indeed, according to the government, it would be illegal for Amazon to inform the individual(s) whose information is being requested that a request even exists.
The problem isn't merely that warrantless surveillance exists. The problem is that there are no checks in place, no means by which the people themselves, can directly hold the government accountable for such programs. Constitutionality is a farce, easily overcome in the name of "national security." And this is precisely what the terrorists hope to achieve--the use of guerrilla tactics to provoke a government to enact increasingly draconian laws and curtail basic civil liberties, until the government becomes the oppressor against its people. Their eventual goal is to cause the collapse of that government. To this end, such surveillance programs play into the hands of the terrorists.
Also, the proper word is "ciphertext." Not "cypher text."
Granted, the population size of individuals with measured IQs above 150 is relatively small (about 1 in 1000), but it's a little bit misleading to consider people with IQs in the range below 140 as having "high IQ." 120-140 is "above average," certainly, but fairly common. Being more intelligent than someone scoring 80-100 doesn't automatically mean you have "high IQ." This study shows that intelligence correlates with a specific motion tracking task, but only in the studied IQ range due to the relative difficulty of finding individuals above IQ 150 or below IQ 80.
I think such a study should include age as a predictor as well. It would be interesting to see more data, especially in the higher IQ range from 150 to 180. Above 180, there are too few people in the world who are able to test that high.
Precisely. The burden of proof is not on showing some improbably fanciful version of reality is false, but that what we can observe, quantify, test, and use to predict about the universe should be superseded by myths and superstition that have no such power. See Russell's teapot argument: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
Geographically it may be close to the center, but I suggest that an alternative metric be used to compute the centroid, one that accounts for population density and per-capita network traffic volume. Even so, such a centroid may not be a particularly good candidate for a starting point, in as much as it makes little sense to claim that a good estimate for the roll of a fair six-sided die is 3.5 because that is the expected value of the outcome.
Cost aside, it would make more sense to build such a network in a heavy-traffic area, to see how questions of scalability and impact on end users will play out in the worse-case scenarios, rather than to build it in a small town only to discover the business model doesn't work for big cities. The reason why the former approach tends not to be chosen is because small towns are under-served for internet connectivity, their small size makes it feasible to lay out the infrastructure at less cost, and the lack of preexisting services and hardware makes adoption more likely.
Even so, the publisher's argument, as relayed by you, is obviously untenable. To claim that the word "under" refers to jurisdiction and in particular the location of production, would invalidate the copyright provisions of any product manufactured outside the US--that would include iPhones, which are designed in California but assembled and produced in China. Analogously, that a publisher may manufacture (i.e., print) a text outside the US whereas the author of its content may have written it anywhere in the world, does not and should not automatically mean that they are not subject to US copyright law.
So for instance, if Wiley's argument were to be considered valid, one would be forced to invalidate the doctrine of first sale for any device or product not made on American soil, even if it was designed or substantively created therein. That is so overly broad as to nullify the intent of the provision in the first place. And I would think that this must have been part of the rationale that the Supreme Court used in their judgment.
That Mr. Brin doesn't seem to understand the difference between the two words is not a good sign that he has carefully considered the point he wishes to make.
Do mobile devices (not just smartphones) have the potential to make face-to-face interaction less likely or desirable? Sure. Where we once needed to actually be in immediate proximity to another individual in order to sustain a meaningful dialogue or communication with them, we now have the convenience of tweeting them or posting something on their (heaven forbid) Facebook wall. We can text them, even if they are halfway around the globe. Does this necessarily decrease the quality of interaction? The most honest answer I can furnish is that it depends.
Throughout history, humans have been devising ways to make communication easier. We invented written languages, books, telegraphy, telephony, television, and the internet. We did all these things because we found it facilitated connection. Does it mean that when the telephone was invented, people started to lament that telephones were "emasculating" (sic) because they made it possible to talk to someone without being physically in the same room? That's an absurdly regressive, not to mention historically and technologically naive, view. It borders on sophistry.
Let's be clear that over-reliance on smartphones and mobile connectivity, to the point of eschewing physical interaction, is a definite phenomenon. I don't want anyone to get the impression that I'm an apologist for all the spoiled teens whose interactions with their peers is primarily through virtual, rather than real, means--and rack up the bills to show for it. Or that I'm excusing full-grown adults who insist on checking their feeds every 5 minutes, who can't be bothered to put their phones down for a real-life conversation in the flesh. But it is painfully obvious that Mr. Brin has an agenda here, which is to sell his company's glasses as the solution to this problem. As such, whatever legitimate criticisms he has lacks credibility because of his bias.
Moreover, there's another problem with Mr. Brin's accusations, and that is the unspoken assumption that these glasses *must* be an improvement. That is a claim that remains to be seen, because it isn't at all obvious. I, for one, would be very uneasy at the prospect of living in a society whose members are constantly recording each others' movements and activities. I suppose Mr. Brin (and Google) takes the attitude that we will simply become accustomed to this omnipresent surveillance, but I think that it is an entirely legitimate question to ask why we as a society SHOULD move in this direction in the first place. Thus far I have not seen any compelling rationale to do so.
In summary, I am distrustful of anyone who advocates for a new technology as a solution to a problem that is largely symptomatic of cultural attitudes and a lack of etiquette. Don't want your mobile devices to turn your social life into a virtual experience? The answer is not to buy the next fancy gadget, be it some silly-looking headwear or something yet to be invented, but to simply make the conscious decision to be a better person by interacting in person. And similarly there is a point at which a society needs to collectively decide for itself that it is better to experience the world first-hand, rather than through a handheld electronic device. To the extent that such a device facilitates that goal, the more power to it. That is the reason for technology--to enrich our lives, not become what we live our lives through.
Having to observe both American *and* Chinese holidays is a bit too much. Mid-Autumn festival, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the solar New Year, and the lunar New Year--and for each one I'm expected to go home and spend time with the parents. If the lunar new year becomes a federal holiday, there goes my last excuse!
Indeed. It sounds to me like the lesson to be learned here is that you don't throw out lowball offers when you have an opportunity to disrupt the market. Google made a miscalculation. Spend generously when you need to, in order to reap greater value down the line.
Now, whether that is ultimately important in light of Android's undisputed success and Apple's seeming disinterest in continuing to innovate with iOS, is another story. iOS has basically stagnated, and that's coming from someone who has stayed with Apple since the original iPhone. I've never purchased an Android device and even I can tell that it is a more flexible and capable platform.
You're typing and typing but you're not actually listening--typical behavior for someone doesn't want to actually think about the issue.
The whole point of having a privacy policy is that people can see that Delta is at least meeting their obligations to inform its customers. It's not about what Delta already has on them. It's about showing some basic, minimum level of responsibility--and they apparently can't even do that. It's NOT hard for them to do, and it IS the law.
And if you haven't noticed, the lack of a privacy policy does mean that Delta could technically store all your photos taken with your phone through their app, and potentially use them for marketing purposes--your consent having been implicitly given as part of your usage of the application. That isn't something that SkyMiles customers would or *should* be expected to know, nor is it information that Delta already has.
Silly? I don't think it's silly at all. It's a perfectly reasonable lawsuit, one that is likely to succeed.
Something that needs to be pointed out here is that the CA online privacy law is really NOT that onerous. It's not setting some insanely high bar for developers and companies to pass--as it applies to this case, it is simply requiring that users be notified upon installation of what information may be collected through the app and how it might be used. It's not as if that law even has any real teeth with respect to getting developers to protect the data they collect, as far too many people ignore privacy policies and just automatically click "Accept," because as sites like Facebook prove, most users are willing to sacrifice their privacy to a significant degree in order to obtain some entertainment or convenience.
So again, it's not that big a hurdle to simply ask for a privacy policy. The fact that Delta didn't even bother to do that makes me think twice about how conscientious they may be about protecting all that data they DO collect, and that is a much more serious concern.
Last time I checked, the educational process does not involve the presentation of scientific falsehoods as if they were truth, then expecting students to determine for themselves which is which. That would be fundamentally intellectually dishonest. "Teach the controversy/debate/both sides" is nothing more than a naked attempt at putting creationism on equal footing with science.
Maybe if they spent just as much effort to organize and protest against the Taliban and fundamentalist Islam, then it would be easier to dismiss such videos in the first place.
Anyone who has listened to or read Sam Harris knows that Islam has some very basic problems at the core of its doctrine that its present-day followers have overwhelmingly failed to address. To speak up about this is not to be Islamophobic. It's to state factual aspects of a religion that is not, despite claims from its moderate adherents, the "religion of peace." Because if it were peaceful, THESE PEOPLE WOULDN'T BE PROTESTING GOOGLE. They'd be doing everything in their power to excommunicate and weed out all the extremist mullahs and imams that call for death for apostasy, and violent jihad. The fact that we see protests against Western freedoms rather than Islamic oppression tells you everything you need to know. Moderates cannot just keep repeating "but we're peaceful and we're offended!" It's YOUR religion to claim, so CLAIM it. But don't go around to non-Muslims and pretend as if you're doing your duty, because the fight is not with us. It's with the extremists in your midst that threaten to pull your religion in THEIR direction. Unless, of course, you moderates agree with them, in which case you're not really moderate at all, and it's all just an act.
I'd like to make a rather pedantic point of clarification here: it is a "chromatic aberration" in the general sense that the system images spurious color, but it is not an aberration caused by dispersion (the variation of refractive index as a function of wavelength), nor is it a Seidel aberration.
If the purple hue comes from incomplete filtering of wavelengths outside the visible range, then it would be easy to test this theory by simply taking four kinds of photos: one that shows the flare with the unmodified camera, one of the same scene with a UV filter placed in front of the lens, a third with an IR filter placed in front of the lens, and finally, one with both UV + IR filters.
From the summary: "But if you're looking to get in God's good graces, or you're simply in the market for a family-friendly tablet,..."
Sorry, but Christian != "family-friendly." There is nothing "friendly" about brainwashing and indoctrinating your children into a superstitious, fearful, dogmatic, and guilt-obsessed worldview. Conversely, there is nothing intrinsically "unfriendly" about being non-Christian--i.e., it is a fallacy to imply that Christians have some kind of exclusive claim on being more wholesome or moral than others, simply by being Christian.
Oh, and one more thing: this whole article is just a thinly-veiled slashvertisement.
It's their fault for not (1) randomizing the initial password, and (2) forcing new subscribers to immediately change their password after the first login, both of which are standard practices on properly secured systems.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm old enough to remember what mobile phones used to be like before the iPhone, and old enough to remember Windows CE, the PocketPC, and Microsoft's first foray into tablet computing.
The fundamental reason why Microsoft failed in the mobile market was because they doggedly tried to shoehorn some scaled-down version of Windows into a mobile device, and the hardware at the time simply did not permit that to happen. Their strategy had always been about leveraging their existing dominance in the OS market, because they knew people were hooked on Windows and Office. So, in theory, by extending these products into other areas of computing, they could continue that advantage.
This, of course, simply did not work. It certainly didn't work the way it worked with Internet Explorer back when they crushed Netscape, and yes, a lot of that had to do with the teams that were responsible for developing Windows CE and their mobile strategy. But what is most telling about Ballmer's disclosure here is that it reflects a continued inability to understand exactly why Apple (and later, Google) were successful when Microsoft was not.
Apple succeeded because they built a self-contained, refined product that was better than anything else at the time. Back in 2007, remember what kind of phones existed then. Don't measure the original iPhone by what we have now, but by who were the market leaders at the time, which were Nokia and Samsung. Apple's success came from taking what the hardware at the time was capable of doing, and then building software that worked seamlessly with it, while offering new features. What they recognized was that the existing mobile phones were being held back by hardware companies who were only interested in incremental improvements on old hardware and old design. They saw an opportunity to break through that by offering something completely new.
That's not to say Microsoft didn't have vision. It's just that their vision was essentially that they would have miniature versions of Windows on all kinds of mobile devices. The proof of that is the Casio PocketPC I owned way back in the day. It was clunky and slow but I was so enamored of the idea of a portable computing device I put up with it. And I remember my friends buying their tablet PCs too. But ultimately, Windows just didn't translate well, and that's why they were failures.
The lesson is one that Apple has always espoused--build the hardware and software together. Make them work together. It doesn't have to be fully featured, but it does have to work seamlessly and reliably, and be easy to use. How you get there is up to you. Google approached it from another angle--they built the OS and gave it away. And now we can understand why Microsoft bought Nokia--they realized that this integrative strategy is the only way to compete. But it is much too late.
Your suggestion of romanization addresses orthography, not phonetics, which is quite ironic considering that the problem has to do with *speaking* a particular dialect. That is to say, spoken Taiwanese, Shanghainese, Mandarin, and Cantonese all sound very different to the point of being mutually unintelligible, but they all share the same orthography, which is why your suggestion is irrelevant. Romanization could make it slightly easier to TYPE, but it doesn't address the issue of spoken language at all.
You also seem to be unaware of the existence of zhuyin, which is commonly taught to Taiwanese children as part of the process of learning the characters, and in effect is a system for inputting Chinese text on electronic devices. Do you really think that hundreds of millions of Chinese smartphone and computer users have been using English or Pinyin to communicate all this time, or that they are doing so with thousand-keyed keyboards? You also seem to be unaware that the writing system has already undergone a simplification process, spearheaded by the PRC government in an attempt to make it more efficient to write. However, Simplified Chinese can be a bit perplexing to read for those who have learned only the traditional forms of the characters.
Any transition away from the existing character writing system is going to take a LONG time. It's not as if you can just say "let's just romanize everything" and then expect all forms of written communications to transition in a few decades, or even a century. You don't seem to have any grasp of the historical continuity of the Chinese civilization, and in particular its language which has essentially remained as it is for far longer than English has ever existed in any form. To think of Chinese orthography as a "problem" that needs to be solved, and to propose romanization as a solution, is reflection of ethnic biases.
The value of rote learning in mathematics is completely lost upon American educators, primarily because they believe learning by repetition is too boring and tedious for American kids, who have grown up in a society of "easy everything"--easy food, easy entertainment, easy computers.
But if you take a careful and honest look at how mathematics is learned, and investigate which pedagogical models of mathematics are most successful, you will find that repetition is by far what works the best. It's not this "integrated math" or "Common Core" marketing BS. It is simply doing problems, over and over and over until it sinks in and your error rate approaches zero, because that is what is required to develop proficiency. Is it soul-crushing for some students to do it this way? Yes, I don't deny it. But that is just TOO BAD. It's either that, or you don't learn. I don't understand where people suddenly got the idea that learning was supposed to be always fun, enjoyable, and easy. It seems like a uniquely American notion, that there not only exists some way to make the educational process painless, but that painlessness is a goal unto itself.
Take a look, for example, at Kumon math. That stuff is the archetype of rote mathematics learning. Even *I* find it mind-numbingly boring, and I have a degree in mathematics. But does it work? Without a doubt. The parent may have to force the child to do it, but the learning curve is absurdly gradual. Students eventually discover that it feels good to do things quickly and perfectly. That's not to say I believe Kumon is the extent to which rote learning should take place--far from it--but the basic point is that American educators are on the opposite end of the spectrum, mainly because of politics, cultural preconceptions, and MONEY. These constant revisions in math curriculum are driven by publishers who keep pushing the latest technologies in order to maximize profit.
I personally have had teaching experience in the US at the high school level, and as an Asian-American, I don't think it's BS. Korea is a different country with very different cultural attitudes towards the value of learning, parental responsibility for child rearing, and the importance of fostering individuality rather than collective standards of behavior, compared to the US. Therefore, educational and classroom models that apply in Korea may not apply in the US, and vice versa. You cannot assume that just because a different model exists and is successful, that other models must be intrinsically flawed.
Look at what American kids are like, and compare that with Korean kids. You will find they hold very different notions of acceptable social behavior. You'll also find that Korean students are FAR more respectful to their teachers, not necessarily because Korean teachers are more knowledgeable or strict or experienced, but because Korean society as a whole places much more value on the educational process. The parents drill it into their kids, and the kids see the evidence of what constitutes a successful future in how their society rewards those who emerge at the top with respect to higher education. This is also true of China, Japan, and Singapore, among other Asian (and non-Asian) nations.
Take a Korean teacher and put them in front of a class of 30 American students, and see how long their pedagogical and disciplinary model lasts. American students know that they can't be punished and ultimately can't be held accountable for their own bad behavior--the worst that can happen is their parents have to discipline them at home, and how many American parents, with their own lack of self-control, really have what it takes to do that?
You misunderstand. I make no judgment of the legal or ethical questions surrounding leaks by individuals. I merely stated that in general, the motive for leaking is based in a belief that the public has a right to know such information, as opposed to, for example, a malicious intent to harm the public interest. Whether the individual source of the leak is actually doing the right thing is not something that can be addressed broadly--that depends on the nature of the revealed information.
Furthermore, the straw man argument of "primacy of individual points of view" is not valid because the same principle could be applied to those individuals in government--elected and unelected alike--who possess the power to make sweeping decisions without oversight or disclosure. For example, did lawmakers who passed the Patriot Act know that, at the time of passage, it would be used as justification for NSLs? If not, then who made the decision to do so, and under what constitutional authority? Being elected to office doesn't mean that the public implicitly consents to whatever that official may do. And it is the unfortunate reality that the very nature of government secrets implies that the power to decide if such secrets should be revealed often comes down to a handful of people, or a single person.
As for your final point, there already exist laws punishing the disclosure of classified information. Ask Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden whether they simply "felt like" doing what they did. I don't think you really grasped the significance of my previous post--in particular, the last paragraph thereof.
Generally, leaks by the public happen not because such individuals wish to do harm, but because they feel it is in the public's interest to know such information. Therefore, in order to stop such leaks from occurring, it is the government's responsibility to conduct themselves in a manner so as to permit accountability and oversight by those who presumably elected them.
In short, if you don't want leaks of "sensitive" information, then don't do business in a way that creates such secrets to begin with. We aren't talking about corporate espionage, or nuclear missile launch codes. We are talking about actions at the behest of some government entity that purports to serve the public, but that same public has not even the slightest degree of oversight with respect to determining whether such actions are in fact legitimate.
To talk about needing more laws and more restrictions to hide government secrets in the name of "security" is the height of sophistry and hubris. It is Machiavellian and Orwellian reasoning, and it is the very thing that achieves what the actual terrorists intend. No sovereign nation will be brought to its knees by the direct loss of life and safety through sporadic murders, bombings, and violent mayhem. Nations fall for two reasons: conquest by another nation's military, or because the governments that rule over its citizens become so egregiously corrupt that a revolution occurs from within. The essential aim of terrorism is to achieve such a collapse through the latter means, because terrorists are aware that they lack the resources to do the former. It makes no difference whether the draconian behavior of a government is well-intentioned. The loss of basic democratic freedoms, in any form, is a win for terrorists.
Just because there are flaws in measurement methodology doesn't mean the solution is to extrapolate the resulting measurement. The correct solution is to revise the way the data is collected and the resulting measure is calculated. You don't somehow extend the flawed measurement to try to recover some meaning that might have been lost. A procedure that is limited in its ability to quantify some property of interest, but is essentially valid within its stated scope, is still preferable to trying to extend the scope in a way that it was never designed to address.
What exactly does one mean by "scientific creativity?" Is it a simple knack for problem solving, or is it something more nuanced and complex, like the sort of ability to postulate entire new theories based on scientific evidence (e.g., Newton and Einstein?) And what exactly does one mean by "spatial ability?" Is such a thing measurable, and if so, what is the scope of such a notion?
Suppose we are speaking of some notion of creativity in the sense of the latter above, and furthermore, that by spatial ability we are referring to a specific ability to comprehend the structure of geometric abstractions without them needing to actually exist. Then of course it stands to reason that such ability would be a benefit in scientific (and mathematical) thinking. Would it be a *predictor* of scientific creativity? I think one could only say such a thing to the extent that, say, being good at math is a predictor of scientific aptitude; that is, ability is beneficial and perhaps influential, but not deterministic. There's a certain kind of convergence of imagination and logical deduction involved in many tests for "spatial ability"--for example, the task involves not just imagining what an object looks like, but also the relationships between features *if* that object were to exist.
So, on a very basic level, I'd be quite surprised if there were no correlation between the two. But do I think that the association is proportional? Hardly. Being especially good at mentally folding patterned nets of cubes isn't going to mean you are expected to be commensurately talented in particle physics (or vice versa). And I don't think that such a strong assertion is what these studies are attempting to demonstrate.
Not everyone likes wearing things on their wrists. Years ago, I tried wearing a wristwatch, but I found it gets in the way. It makes typing uncomfortable for me, and I have several hobbies for which wearing anything on my hands would mean they'd get dirty or damaged, or be a safety hazard--so I also do not wear any rings on my fingers. From a functional standpoint, I already have a device that does what I need it to do--my phone.
As for being "an old fart," I should point out that people used to have pocket watches before wristwatches were common.
Just because a dedicated device exists for doing something, doesn't necessarily mean that it is a better solution.
I have gotten my phone out of my pocket during a movie in two situations: (1) when the movie is supremely boring or it's dragging on, and I want to check the time--which I do as stealthily as possible so as not to let the illumination of the screen be obtrusive to others around me; and (2) the exceedingly rare situation where someone has dropped something important on the floor or it fell out of a pocket (like a wallet) and we have to find it. This is usually done only at the end of a film, though.
I have seen others text/tweet/facebook etc. during a movie, however. It does happen, and it generally affects you if you're sitting in the row immediately behind the offender, and it's not stadium seating. On one occasion I have seen someone use a laser pointer on the screen--that is really annoying and completely unacceptable.
Amazon's position may be principled, but it won't do any good to fight the subpoena. We have already seen that the FISC (FISA court) is just a rubber stamp operation, and that the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the government want ever greater power and authority under the guise of the "war on terror." Indeed, according to the government, it would be illegal for Amazon to inform the individual(s) whose information is being requested that a request even exists.
The problem isn't merely that warrantless surveillance exists. The problem is that there are no checks in place, no means by which the people themselves, can directly hold the government accountable for such programs. Constitutionality is a farce, easily overcome in the name of "national security." And this is precisely what the terrorists hope to achieve--the use of guerrilla tactics to provoke a government to enact increasingly draconian laws and curtail basic civil liberties, until the government becomes the oppressor against its people. Their eventual goal is to cause the collapse of that government. To this end, such surveillance programs play into the hands of the terrorists.
Also, the proper word is "ciphertext." Not "cypher text."
Granted, the population size of individuals with measured IQs above 150 is relatively small (about 1 in 1000), but it's a little bit misleading to consider people with IQs in the range below 140 as having "high IQ." 120-140 is "above average," certainly, but fairly common. Being more intelligent than someone scoring 80-100 doesn't automatically mean you have "high IQ." This study shows that intelligence correlates with a specific motion tracking task, but only in the studied IQ range due to the relative difficulty of finding individuals above IQ 150 or below IQ 80.
I think such a study should include age as a predictor as well. It would be interesting to see more data, especially in the higher IQ range from 150 to 180. Above 180, there are too few people in the world who are able to test that high.
Precisely. The burden of proof is not on showing some improbably fanciful version of reality is false, but that what we can observe, quantify, test, and use to predict about the universe should be superseded by myths and superstition that have no such power. See Russell's teapot argument: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
Geographically it may be close to the center, but I suggest that an alternative metric be used to compute the centroid, one that accounts for population density and per-capita network traffic volume. Even so, such a centroid may not be a particularly good candidate for a starting point, in as much as it makes little sense to claim that a good estimate for the roll of a fair six-sided die is 3.5 because that is the expected value of the outcome.
Cost aside, it would make more sense to build such a network in a heavy-traffic area, to see how questions of scalability and impact on end users will play out in the worse-case scenarios, rather than to build it in a small town only to discover the business model doesn't work for big cities. The reason why the former approach tends not to be chosen is because small towns are under-served for internet connectivity, their small size makes it feasible to lay out the infrastructure at less cost, and the lack of preexisting services and hardware makes adoption more likely.
Even so, the publisher's argument, as relayed by you, is obviously untenable. To claim that the word "under" refers to jurisdiction and in particular the location of production, would invalidate the copyright provisions of any product manufactured outside the US--that would include iPhones, which are designed in California but assembled and produced in China. Analogously, that a publisher may manufacture (i.e., print) a text outside the US whereas the author of its content may have written it anywhere in the world, does not and should not automatically mean that they are not subject to US copyright law.
So for instance, if Wiley's argument were to be considered valid, one would be forced to invalidate the doctrine of first sale for any device or product not made on American soil, even if it was designed or substantively created therein. That is so overly broad as to nullify the intent of the provision in the first place. And I would think that this must have been part of the rationale that the Supreme Court used in their judgment.
That Mr. Brin doesn't seem to understand the difference between the two words is not a good sign that he has carefully considered the point he wishes to make.
Do mobile devices (not just smartphones) have the potential to make face-to-face interaction less likely or desirable? Sure. Where we once needed to actually be in immediate proximity to another individual in order to sustain a meaningful dialogue or communication with them, we now have the convenience of tweeting them or posting something on their (heaven forbid) Facebook wall. We can text them, even if they are halfway around the globe. Does this necessarily decrease the quality of interaction? The most honest answer I can furnish is that it depends.
Throughout history, humans have been devising ways to make communication easier. We invented written languages, books, telegraphy, telephony, television, and the internet. We did all these things because we found it facilitated connection. Does it mean that when the telephone was invented, people started to lament that telephones were "emasculating" (sic) because they made it possible to talk to someone without being physically in the same room? That's an absurdly regressive, not to mention historically and technologically naive, view. It borders on sophistry.
Let's be clear that over-reliance on smartphones and mobile connectivity, to the point of eschewing physical interaction, is a definite phenomenon. I don't want anyone to get the impression that I'm an apologist for all the spoiled teens whose interactions with their peers is primarily through virtual, rather than real, means--and rack up the bills to show for it. Or that I'm excusing full-grown adults who insist on checking their feeds every 5 minutes, who can't be bothered to put their phones down for a real-life conversation in the flesh. But it is painfully obvious that Mr. Brin has an agenda here, which is to sell his company's glasses as the solution to this problem. As such, whatever legitimate criticisms he has lacks credibility because of his bias.
Moreover, there's another problem with Mr. Brin's accusations, and that is the unspoken assumption that these glasses *must* be an improvement. That is a claim that remains to be seen, because it isn't at all obvious. I, for one, would be very uneasy at the prospect of living in a society whose members are constantly recording each others' movements and activities. I suppose Mr. Brin (and Google) takes the attitude that we will simply become accustomed to this omnipresent surveillance, but I think that it is an entirely legitimate question to ask why we as a society SHOULD move in this direction in the first place. Thus far I have not seen any compelling rationale to do so.
In summary, I am distrustful of anyone who advocates for a new technology as a solution to a problem that is largely symptomatic of cultural attitudes and a lack of etiquette. Don't want your mobile devices to turn your social life into a virtual experience? The answer is not to buy the next fancy gadget, be it some silly-looking headwear or something yet to be invented, but to simply make the conscious decision to be a better person by interacting in person. And similarly there is a point at which a society needs to collectively decide for itself that it is better to experience the world first-hand, rather than through a handheld electronic device. To the extent that such a device facilitates that goal, the more power to it. That is the reason for technology--to enrich our lives, not become what we live our lives through.
Having to observe both American *and* Chinese holidays is a bit too much. Mid-Autumn festival, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the solar New Year, and the lunar New Year--and for each one I'm expected to go home and spend time with the parents. If the lunar new year becomes a federal holiday, there goes my last excuse!
Indeed. It sounds to me like the lesson to be learned here is that you don't throw out lowball offers when you have an opportunity to disrupt the market. Google made a miscalculation. Spend generously when you need to, in order to reap greater value down the line.
Now, whether that is ultimately important in light of Android's undisputed success and Apple's seeming disinterest in continuing to innovate with iOS, is another story. iOS has basically stagnated, and that's coming from someone who has stayed with Apple since the original iPhone. I've never purchased an Android device and even I can tell that it is a more flexible and capable platform.
You're typing and typing but you're not actually listening--typical behavior for someone doesn't want to actually think about the issue.
The whole point of having a privacy policy is that people can see that Delta is at least meeting their obligations to inform its customers. It's not about what Delta already has on them. It's about showing some basic, minimum level of responsibility--and they apparently can't even do that. It's NOT hard for them to do, and it IS the law.
And if you haven't noticed, the lack of a privacy policy does mean that Delta could technically store all your photos taken with your phone through their app, and potentially use them for marketing purposes--your consent having been implicitly given as part of your usage of the application. That isn't something that SkyMiles customers would or *should* be expected to know, nor is it information that Delta already has.
Silly? I don't think it's silly at all. It's a perfectly reasonable lawsuit, one that is likely to succeed.
Something that needs to be pointed out here is that the CA online privacy law is really NOT that onerous. It's not setting some insanely high bar for developers and companies to pass--as it applies to this case, it is simply requiring that users be notified upon installation of what information may be collected through the app and how it might be used. It's not as if that law even has any real teeth with respect to getting developers to protect the data they collect, as far too many people ignore privacy policies and just automatically click "Accept," because as sites like Facebook prove, most users are willing to sacrifice their privacy to a significant degree in order to obtain some entertainment or convenience.
So again, it's not that big a hurdle to simply ask for a privacy policy. The fact that Delta didn't even bother to do that makes me think twice about how conscientious they may be about protecting all that data they DO collect, and that is a much more serious concern.
Last time I checked, the educational process does not involve the presentation of scientific falsehoods as if they were truth, then expecting students to determine for themselves which is which. That would be fundamentally intellectually dishonest. "Teach the controversy/debate/both sides" is nothing more than a naked attempt at putting creationism on equal footing with science.
Maybe if they spent just as much effort to organize and protest against the Taliban and fundamentalist Islam, then it would be easier to dismiss such videos in the first place.
Anyone who has listened to or read Sam Harris knows that Islam has some very basic problems at the core of its doctrine that its present-day followers have overwhelmingly failed to address. To speak up about this is not to be Islamophobic. It's to state factual aspects of a religion that is not, despite claims from its moderate adherents, the "religion of peace." Because if it were peaceful, THESE PEOPLE WOULDN'T BE PROTESTING GOOGLE. They'd be doing everything in their power to excommunicate and weed out all the extremist mullahs and imams that call for death for apostasy, and violent jihad. The fact that we see protests against Western freedoms rather than Islamic oppression tells you everything you need to know. Moderates cannot just keep repeating "but we're peaceful and we're offended!" It's YOUR religion to claim, so CLAIM it. But don't go around to non-Muslims and pretend as if you're doing your duty, because the fight is not with us. It's with the extremists in your midst that threaten to pull your religion in THEIR direction. Unless, of course, you moderates agree with them, in which case you're not really moderate at all, and it's all just an act.
I'd like to make a rather pedantic point of clarification here: it is a "chromatic aberration" in the general sense that the system images spurious color, but it is not an aberration caused by dispersion (the variation of refractive index as a function of wavelength), nor is it a Seidel aberration.
If the purple hue comes from incomplete filtering of wavelengths outside the visible range, then it would be easy to test this theory by simply taking four kinds of photos: one that shows the flare with the unmodified camera, one of the same scene with a UV filter placed in front of the lens, a third with an IR filter placed in front of the lens, and finally, one with both UV + IR filters.
From the summary: "But if you're looking to get in God's good graces, or you're simply in the market for a family-friendly tablet,..."
Sorry, but Christian != "family-friendly." There is nothing "friendly" about brainwashing and indoctrinating your children into a superstitious, fearful, dogmatic, and guilt-obsessed worldview. Conversely, there is nothing intrinsically "unfriendly" about being non-Christian--i.e., it is a fallacy to imply that Christians have some kind of exclusive claim on being more wholesome or moral than others, simply by being Christian.
Oh, and one more thing: this whole article is just a thinly-veiled slashvertisement.
It's their fault for not (1) randomizing the initial password, and (2) forcing new subscribers to immediately change their password after the first login, both of which are standard practices on properly secured systems.