And the densities are completely different, meaning that the composition and internal structure are entirely different.
When you think about it, the similarities of two planets depends upon the features that you characterize them by. So we say the Moon and Mercury look similar because of their cratered surface that is largely the by product of having no atmosphere. (And a few other factors.) We say that Earth and Mars look similar since they both show evidence of tectonic activity, volcanism, and erosion. (And a few other factors.) But the reality is that these are all very different places if we look at other features, like density (thus overall composition), the similarities become trivial.
The update cycle for Chrome may be faster, but people knew that from day one. Those who didn't like the update cycle didn't adopt it. On the other hand, Firefox went from a slow update cycle with easily distinguished bug and feature updates to something similar to Chrome. So people who are more conservative with updates (rightfully) feel burnt.
And did I mention the user interface? Chrome and Firefox may be quite similar these days, and are liberally borrowing from each other. On the other hand, Firefox's UI has changed dramatically over the past few years while Chrome has been more of a steady evolution.
In short, all of this change has alienated existing Firefox users. All of this change also gives a sense that Firefox lacks any real sense of direction. Is it any wonder why people are slowly ditching it?
The one thing that I love about these articles is that they always bring out the paranoids who believe that we are days away from living in a totalitarian state simply because they have studied certain chapters in their history books and ignored others.
Portability would be my first thought. I've noticed that a lot of people who use tablets and e-readers buy cases to protect them. By the time you do that, the 10" tablets are as large as some laptops. And, ignoring the Fire, e-ink devices have considerable benefits over traditional backlit displays for reading.
Of course, cost is another factor. If you have a particular use in mind, spending $80 to $200 is a lot better than spending $500. Especially since these gadgets will only last a couple of years (if you're lucky).
About 10 years ago, I read an article that discussed how universities were planning to deliver instruction via television in the 1960's. This particular article noted that a particular university was designed around that philosophy, by incorporating television studios as well as other infrastructure to support the new wave. Alas, it all failed because students didn't want to learn through the impersonal instruction offered via televised lectures and inexperienced teaching assistants.
But hey, they declared, all of that infrastructure is a boon in the 2000's because it can be adapted to the new era of online learning. Which gave me a chuckle, because online learning is the televised learning of the 21st century.
Alas, when I told my friends about this they all scoffed at me saying that online learning is the wave of the future. Well, one friend didn't. But she lived through the tail end of the televised learning fad, so she understood that university is about a heck of a lot more than stuffing information into brains. Heck, it's even about more than learning.
While such sentiments lack empathy, a classroom teacher's job is to communicate. If they're unable to do so because of an accent or a speech impediment then they are unable to perform their responsibilities. If they believe that they should keep their job in spite of that, then they are the ones who have a sense of entitlement.
That is not to say that they should not teach. There are other ways that they can pursue that passion. They may undergo speech therapy if it is effective for their condition. If they have fine motor skills they may wish to become a teacher for the deaf. They can teach online courses. Or maybe they'll become an educational consultant (provided that their role doesn't depend upon verbal communications).
Standing up for privacy where there is a reasonable expectation for privacy is entirely reasonable. People expect privacy in their homes. People expect their personal correspondence to be private (e.g. phone calls, letter mail, email). The same goes for things they stuff in their bags or cram onto their computers because whatever is inside forms a sort of private space. We see those boundaries to privacy being violated all of the time, and I think that most people would be supportive of protecting privacy in those spaces.
But the moment that you start screaming about privacy in places where there isn't a reasonable expectation for it, a lot of people just tune out. They will either assume that you are an antisocial nutbar, a paranoid nutcase, or a criminal. Streets, parks, transit, and businesses are places where you don't have a reasonable expectation for privacy because you are interacting or intermingling with other people. Most people recognize that, and behave accordingly.
So if you want to do everyone a favour, argue for privacy but do so on reasonable grounds. The moment you adopt an extremist position, you are fighting the battle for the other side because you will lose legitimacy in the eyes of the people who you are trying to persuade.
Billing based upon the Mb/s a data service provides is about as meaningful as billing based upon the A an electrical service provides.
Which is to say that it doesn't make sense at all. You need to provide way too much capacity for peak consumption so the cost of providing service skyrockets.
Canadian ISPs tried to fix that with UBB. Their approach may have been deeply flawed, but it was an acknowledgement that billing needs to be based upon consumption. The people who consume a lot pay more for the network infrastructure, and those who do not consume as much pay less for the network infrastructure. The problem is people were screaming bloody murder about that because they basically want everything for free.
And please don't try to claim otherwise if you are opposed to UBB because you're basically saying that you want to pay a buck for a cup of coffee with unlimited refills, even if you decide to hang around the coffee shop all day and get 20 refills. When you reach that point, you are really paying to make yourself feel better. You're not actually paying for the service.
So instead we're stuck with throttling, which is mostly a way of trying to distribute service usage over a longer time period. (Unless you download a disproportionate amount, in which case you're getting less service.)
This troll may represent widespread sentiment about the CRTC. To be fair to those trolls, the CRTC seems to be both ineffective and under disproportionate industry control. Yet I have also found that these trolls have an overly simplistic view of the CRTC and demand that it is disbanded because of that.
The reality is that we need the CRTC in Canada. We need a reformed CRTC to be certain, but insisting that disbanding the CRTC will end the abusive domination of communications companies is beyond irrational.
I realise that it is trendy to be cynical of anyone who has gained any form of celebrity, but I think that it is also appropriate to remind people that the person behind the spotlight is as human as anyone else that you meet. Just like us, the make mistakes. Just like us, sometimes they are regretful because they were caught. And just like us, sometimes the regret that they express is sincere.
I don't know this photographer, so I don't know how sincere that regret is. On the other hand, I'm not willing to let cynicism overwhelm me by simply assuming that he is insincere.
First, see what's available. Many departments have computing options available that depend upon scheduling and departmental budgets.
If that doesn't work out, what are you doing? Serial processing or based upon existing software, then 'contract it out' (if that's an option). It's easier, and probably cheaper, especially in the early stages.
Parallel processing though needs more serious consideration. Cheap SIMD was being offloaded onto GPU's the last time I looked (which, admittedly, is probably too long ago). So it may be best to look to 'homebrew' configurations in that case.
It's like a smoker using air filters to clean up second hand smoke. Sure it may reduce the consequences of their actions, but it doesn't negate the fact that the addiction is the source of their problem.
That being said, I don't want to dismiss their research altogether. The data will probably be useful for improving climate models and we may just have to resort to such tactics since we've been doing relatively little about climate change even though we've been aware of the issue for decades.
Well, there are many. But I recall seeing one such turing test in the 1990s where the human operators would try to convince the user that they were a computer. Sometimes they would do simple things, like pretending that they weren't as 'smart' as they actually were (e.g. they would pretend that they didn't know things that they knew in order to avoid looking encyclopedic about a topic). Other times they would insert mistakes that a typical computer would make, such as misinterpreting a question in a wonky way.
Then there is a boatload of other issue. How do you quantify the humanness of a subject? Are we looking at socialization or linguistic skills (i.e. is a computer that can smooth over a misunderstanding more human than a computer that can understand what is being said but reacts in an anti social manner), and so forth.
Then he noticed that our uselessly slow Internet connection was actually amazingly fast when it wasn't being hammered by improperly configured P2P clients.
I can see this working for some readers, but it would be an awfully delicate balance.
The music would have to compliment the text, rather than distract from it. That means no gimmicks (e.g. sound effects), smooth transitions (remember, people read at different speeds), and quite probably multiple sound tracks (what one person finds emotionally moving, another will find annoying).
Production costs are another issue. Books cost bugger all to produce, at least compared to other media and the duration that people will use it. But they typically suffer from low volume sales. Are consumers willing to pay for that?
Let's just admire the new photos of humanities first forays to the Moon, and forget about the deniers. There is no point in the latter, because they will never be convinced. The thing that really matters is presenting ever better photos (i.e. evidence) as our technology improves so that future generations won't be tarnished by the cynicism and denial of conspiracy theorists.
It depends upon how different the implementation is. I could, for example, come up with two different implementations of the magnetic breakaway plug that are unlikely to violate Apple's patent. (The caveat being that they would be much more expensive to produce.)
Now I'm not saying that Apple deserves a 20 year monopoly on their implementation, but I do think it is overly easy to over generalize a patent into an idea then dismiss that patent on the merits of the idea rather than dismissing the patent on the merits of the patent. (By that I mean, ideas are more general than patents thus are easier to demonize.)
Google is a business. They are out to make money. The fact that they have to axe a few products that you probably aren't using (never mind paying for, since a few of those things were freebies) does not mean that they've decided to follow the path of evil. It just means that they have good business sense.
IMHO, it isn't even a refresh rate issue. The problem is with how quickly the Kindle renders a PDF page. I have found that Duokan (a replacement for the Kindle software) is much better in that respect. After my Kindle broke, I picked up a Kobo. Rendering PDFs is much faster (though the tiny screen is a problem).
Amazon needs to fix the PDF reader on the Kindle, as well as offer other improvements. (Example: offer ePub support, so that it works with existing mechanisms that libraries use to lend ebooks.) Of course a colour e-ink display would help tremendously too, especially on the DX, but I don't know if the technology for that even exists.
narcc: I agree with you in every respect except "who wants an e-reader without an e-ink display?" I can see a lot of people wanting that, for things like curling up in bed and reading without needing a lamp (or candlelight, as I had to do with my Kindle during power outages) or simply being able to see colour pictures and diagrams.
Still, the new Kindle sounds like a multifunction device which defeats the "quiet" part (which I also think is important), it wouldn't last long in a power outage, and a true tablet can do much more while running the Kindle software. So I really don't see this as being an engaging product.
Yet Amazon is fighting a two front war. There are a lot of e-ink readers on the market and there are a lot of tablets on the market. Both are encroaching on Amazon's teritory so they have to do something. (I simply don't agree on what they have decided to do.)
As for other people, well, they do have a tremendous influence upon lives. They have the ability to enrich lives, and they have the ability to destroy them. After all, no man is an island unto himself. That is true no matter how independent they may believe themselves to be. Even a shotgun wielding hermit in a cave is depending upon others to respect his claim or provide him with bullets. Yet the more common reality is this: in order to share in the fruits of society, to obtain things like food and electricity, we need money. Money requires a form of employment. Employment requires us to fit within certain social norms. If we are even rumoured to violate those norms then we are shutout society.
Highly simplified I know, but far less simplistic than the notion of absolute freedoms and the right to do harm unto others through absolute anonymity.
Mass murder, no. But defamation can cause significant harm to a person's life. If you accused someone of child molestation, the target's life would be destroyed. Even if they were making a speech in front of billions of people while on live television at the time of the alleged crime, people would still believe that the target was guilty.
Even smaller things like office gossip can have a psychological toll if it is vicious enough and goes on for long enough. So by allowing anonymity you are really sanctioning harassment.
Now we shouldn't be denying anonymity over every tiny thing, especially when it is contrary to the public interest, but there are times where we have to uncloak people because they are using anonymity to hide from the law.
Slashdot Mirror
And the densities are completely different, meaning that the composition and internal structure are entirely different.
When you think about it, the similarities of two planets depends upon the features that you characterize them by. So we say the Moon and Mercury look similar because of their cratered surface that is largely the by product of having no atmosphere. (And a few other factors.) We say that Earth and Mars look similar since they both show evidence of tectonic activity, volcanism, and erosion. (And a few other factors.) But the reality is that these are all very different places if we look at other features, like density (thus overall composition), the similarities become trivial.
Chrome seems to be faster and more responsive.
The update cycle for Chrome may be faster, but people knew that from day one. Those who didn't like the update cycle didn't adopt it. On the other hand, Firefox went from a slow update cycle with easily distinguished bug and feature updates to something similar to Chrome. So people who are more conservative with updates (rightfully) feel burnt.
And did I mention the user interface? Chrome and Firefox may be quite similar these days, and are liberally borrowing from each other. On the other hand, Firefox's UI has changed dramatically over the past few years while Chrome has been more of a steady evolution.
In short, all of this change has alienated existing Firefox users. All of this change also gives a sense that Firefox lacks any real sense of direction. Is it any wonder why people are slowly ditching it?
The one thing that I love about these articles is that they always bring out the paranoids who believe that we are days away from living in a totalitarian state simply because they have studied certain chapters in their history books and ignored others.
Portability would be my first thought. I've noticed that a lot of people who use tablets and e-readers buy cases to protect them. By the time you do that, the 10" tablets are as large as some laptops. And, ignoring the Fire, e-ink devices have considerable benefits over traditional backlit displays for reading.
Of course, cost is another factor. If you have a particular use in mind, spending $80 to $200 is a lot better than spending $500. Especially since these gadgets will only last a couple of years (if you're lucky).
Except that Windows was a windowing system in its original incarnation, leaving us with another descriptive trademark.
About 10 years ago, I read an article that discussed how universities were planning to deliver instruction via television in the 1960's. This particular article noted that a particular university was designed around that philosophy, by incorporating television studios as well as other infrastructure to support the new wave. Alas, it all failed because students didn't want to learn through the impersonal instruction offered via televised lectures and inexperienced teaching assistants.
But hey, they declared, all of that infrastructure is a boon in the 2000's because it can be adapted to the new era of online learning. Which gave me a chuckle, because online learning is the televised learning of the 21st century.
Alas, when I told my friends about this they all scoffed at me saying that online learning is the wave of the future. Well, one friend didn't. But she lived through the tail end of the televised learning fad, so she understood that university is about a heck of a lot more than stuffing information into brains. Heck, it's even about more than learning.
While such sentiments lack empathy, a classroom teacher's job is to communicate. If they're unable to do so because of an accent or a speech impediment then they are unable to perform their responsibilities. If they believe that they should keep their job in spite of that, then they are the ones who have a sense of entitlement.
That is not to say that they should not teach. There are other ways that they can pursue that passion. They may undergo speech therapy if it is effective for their condition. If they have fine motor skills they may wish to become a teacher for the deaf. They can teach online courses. Or maybe they'll become an educational consultant (provided that their role doesn't depend upon verbal communications).
Those policies exist for a number of reasons, and cover a variety of electronic devices:
1) Schools don't want to be held accountable for lost, stolen, or broken devices. And yes, parents blame the school when that happens.
2) Teachers don't want to deal with distracted children. Incidentally, this was true 50 years ago when kids weren't allowed to bring toys into class.
3) These contraptions are a source of bullying in a multitude of ways, ranging from theft to provoking and photographing/recording fights.
Just because you don't understand why policies exist doesn't mean that the school is an "idiot",
Extremism doesn't help here.
Standing up for privacy where there is a reasonable expectation for privacy is entirely reasonable. People expect privacy in their homes. People expect their personal correspondence to be private (e.g. phone calls, letter mail, email). The same goes for things they stuff in their bags or cram onto their computers because whatever is inside forms a sort of private space. We see those boundaries to privacy being violated all of the time, and I think that most people would be supportive of protecting privacy in those spaces.
But the moment that you start screaming about privacy in places where there isn't a reasonable expectation for it, a lot of people just tune out. They will either assume that you are an antisocial nutbar, a paranoid nutcase, or a criminal. Streets, parks, transit, and businesses are places where you don't have a reasonable expectation for privacy because you are interacting or intermingling with other people. Most people recognize that, and behave accordingly.
So if you want to do everyone a favour, argue for privacy but do so on reasonable grounds. The moment you adopt an extremist position, you are fighting the battle for the other side because you will lose legitimacy in the eyes of the people who you are trying to persuade.
Billing based upon the Mb/s a data service provides is about as meaningful as billing based upon the A an electrical service provides.
Which is to say that it doesn't make sense at all. You need to provide way too much capacity for peak consumption so the cost of providing service skyrockets.
Canadian ISPs tried to fix that with UBB. Their approach may have been deeply flawed, but it was an acknowledgement that billing needs to be based upon consumption. The people who consume a lot pay more for the network infrastructure, and those who do not consume as much pay less for the network infrastructure. The problem is people were screaming bloody murder about that because they basically want everything for free.
And please don't try to claim otherwise if you are opposed to UBB because you're basically saying that you want to pay a buck for a cup of coffee with unlimited refills, even if you decide to hang around the coffee shop all day and get 20 refills. When you reach that point, you are really paying to make yourself feel better. You're not actually paying for the service.
So instead we're stuck with throttling, which is mostly a way of trying to distribute service usage over a longer time period. (Unless you download a disproportionate amount, in which case you're getting less service.)
Actually, it is a troll.
This troll may represent widespread sentiment about the CRTC. To be fair to those trolls, the CRTC seems to be both ineffective and under disproportionate industry control. Yet I have also found that these trolls have an overly simplistic view of the CRTC and demand that it is disbanded because of that.
The reality is that we need the CRTC in Canada. We need a reformed CRTC to be certain, but insisting that disbanding the CRTC will end the abusive domination of communications companies is beyond irrational.
I realise that it is trendy to be cynical of anyone who has gained any form of celebrity, but I think that it is also appropriate to remind people that the person behind the spotlight is as human as anyone else that you meet. Just like us, the make mistakes. Just like us, sometimes they are regretful because they were caught. And just like us, sometimes the regret that they express is sincere.
I don't know this photographer, so I don't know how sincere that regret is. On the other hand, I'm not willing to let cynicism overwhelm me by simply assuming that he is insincere.
First, see what's available. Many departments have computing options available that depend upon scheduling and departmental budgets.
If that doesn't work out, what are you doing? Serial processing or based upon existing software, then 'contract it out' (if that's an option). It's easier, and probably cheaper, especially in the early stages.
Parallel processing though needs more serious consideration. Cheap SIMD was being offloaded onto GPU's the last time I looked (which, admittedly, is probably too long ago). So it may be best to look to 'homebrew' configurations in that case.
It's like a smoker using air filters to clean up second hand smoke. Sure it may reduce the consequences of their actions, but it doesn't negate the fact that the addiction is the source of their problem.
That being said, I don't want to dismiss their research altogether. The data will probably be useful for improving climate models and we may just have to resort to such tactics since we've been doing relatively little about climate change even though we've been aware of the issue for decades.
Well, there are many. But I recall seeing one such turing test in the 1990s where the human operators would try to convince the user that they were a computer. Sometimes they would do simple things, like pretending that they weren't as 'smart' as they actually were (e.g. they would pretend that they didn't know things that they knew in order to avoid looking encyclopedic about a topic). Other times they would insert mistakes that a typical computer would make, such as misinterpreting a question in a wonky way.
Then there is a boatload of other issue. How do you quantify the humanness of a subject? Are we looking at socialization or linguistic skills (i.e. is a computer that can smooth over a misunderstanding more human than a computer that can understand what is being said but reacts in an anti social manner), and so forth.
... and block P2P traffic.
My roommate blew up when I did that.
Then he noticed that our uselessly slow Internet connection was actually amazingly fast when it wasn't being hammered by improperly configured P2P clients.
Then peace returned.
I can see this working for some readers, but it would be an awfully delicate balance.
The music would have to compliment the text, rather than distract from it. That means no gimmicks (e.g. sound effects), smooth transitions (remember, people read at different speeds), and quite probably multiple sound tracks (what one person finds emotionally moving, another will find annoying).
Production costs are another issue. Books cost bugger all to produce, at least compared to other media and the duration that people will use it. But they typically suffer from low volume sales. Are consumers willing to pay for that?
Let's just admire the new photos of humanities first forays to the Moon, and forget about the deniers. There is no point in the latter, because they will never be convinced. The thing that really matters is presenting ever better photos (i.e. evidence) as our technology improves so that future generations won't be tarnished by the cynicism and denial of conspiracy theorists.
It depends upon how different the implementation is. I could, for example, come up with two different implementations of the magnetic breakaway plug that are unlikely to violate Apple's patent. (The caveat being that they would be much more expensive to produce.)
Now I'm not saying that Apple deserves a 20 year monopoly on their implementation, but I do think it is overly easy to over generalize a patent into an idea then dismiss that patent on the merits of the idea rather than dismissing the patent on the merits of the patent. (By that I mean, ideas are more general than patents thus are easier to demonize.)
Impressive yes, but it looks like they`re defining a motor as an armateur while ignoring the equipment that generates the electric fields.
Give me a break.
Google is a business. They are out to make money. The fact that they have to axe a few products that you probably aren't using (never mind paying for, since a few of those things were freebies) does not mean that they've decided to follow the path of evil. It just means that they have good business sense.
IMHO, it isn't even a refresh rate issue. The problem is with how quickly the Kindle renders a PDF page. I have found that Duokan (a replacement for the Kindle software) is much better in that respect. After my Kindle broke, I picked up a Kobo. Rendering PDFs is much faster (though the tiny screen is a problem).
Amazon needs to fix the PDF reader on the Kindle, as well as offer other improvements. (Example: offer ePub support, so that it works with existing mechanisms that libraries use to lend ebooks.) Of course a colour e-ink display would help tremendously too, especially on the DX, but I don't know if the technology for that even exists.
narcc: I agree with you in every respect except "who wants an e-reader without an e-ink display?" I can see a lot of people wanting that, for things like curling up in bed and reading without needing a lamp (or candlelight, as I had to do with my Kindle during power outages) or simply being able to see colour pictures and diagrams.
Still, the new Kindle sounds like a multifunction device which defeats the "quiet" part (which I also think is important), it wouldn't last long in a power outage, and a true tablet can do much more while running the Kindle software. So I really don't see this as being an engaging product.
Yet Amazon is fighting a two front war. There are a lot of e-ink readers on the market and there are a lot of tablets on the market. Both are encroaching on Amazon's teritory so they have to do something. (I simply don't agree on what they have decided to do.)
Or through the loss of their current status.
As for other people, well, they do have a tremendous influence upon lives. They have the ability to enrich lives, and they have the ability to destroy them. After all, no man is an island unto himself. That is true no matter how independent they may believe themselves to be. Even a shotgun wielding hermit in a cave is depending upon others to respect his claim or provide him with bullets. Yet the more common reality is this: in order to share in the fruits of society, to obtain things like food and electricity, we need money. Money requires a form of employment. Employment requires us to fit within certain social norms. If we are even rumoured to violate those norms then we are shutout society.
Highly simplified I know, but far less simplistic than the notion of absolute freedoms and the right to do harm unto others through absolute anonymity.
Mass murder, no. But defamation can cause significant harm to a person's life. If you accused someone of child molestation, the target's life would be destroyed. Even if they were making a speech in front of billions of people while on live television at the time of the alleged crime, people would still believe that the target was guilty.
Even smaller things like office gossip can have a psychological toll if it is vicious enough and goes on for long enough. So by allowing anonymity you are really sanctioning harassment.
Now we shouldn't be denying anonymity over every tiny thing, especially when it is contrary to the public interest, but there are times where we have to uncloak people because they are using anonymity to hide from the law.