The areas we were able to cover include technology growth policies in the U.S., Internet taxes, H1B visas, venture capital tax issues and renewable energy.
We were not able to cover net neutrality, the digital divide, mobile spectrum allocation issues, identity theft, China censorship or intellectual property issues on this call. They missed the really good ones! If the congress vote on internet tax was 402-0 I think it's pretty obvious where that issue is going to go, and is a pretty dumb question. Net Neutrality, IP, censorship - those are all things that are very easy to feel one way or the other, or the myriad ways in between, especially since he already hinted at imposing trade sanctions or the like on China for IP problems. Poor choices on the editors, IMHO, but H1B was a good question as were the follow-ups. Here's hoping for round two!
Everything. I personally don't give a rat's ass about cell phones - it's not really a big deal or very innovative until you just have a communicator built in. Everything else though, from doors, lights, running tasks on a computer, etc. is what's really cool. Little inane things that just piss you off in life - like having to get up from the bed with the girl/boy on it to turn the light off, or setting a TV up for a movie, or having the computer do everything you want. I'd much rather say "wait until this song ends, then play "Helter Skelter," and then put up an away message and turn the display off." (Not that I can't really do that already, it's just more aggravating)
Just hook up a generator to your whining and the problem is solved. You can sell the extra electricity for money, which you can use to buy music, thereby becoming both part of the problem and solution!
It seems like the impetus for this is to give the NSA greater powers to protect the government from "cyber-attacks." In that vein, it's a smart move - hell, it is the National Security Agency.
I doubt it's that contained. The government protecting itself by better monitoring its own channels is obvious, but it's hard to disconnect the NSA from their past. As TFA said, "The NSA has particular expertise in monitoring a vast, complex array of communications systems..." This whole thing sounds to me like steps to make their dubious actions more allowable. That's how you'd start it anyway, first declare the NSA in charge of protecting the government. Then, since "90% of the threat" lies in the private sector, it needs to protect that. And so on.
At the very least, though, it's nice to know that some things are being done to make some of the important machines more secure.
It's worth a shot, no? In some cases, if they've got a small chance it could be worth it, especially if they can annoy the other group to just settle to avoid the hassle. This, though, seems nigh impossible to win, so I can't quite see the point other than a really, really quick settlement to just get it over with. There are some companies you just don't screw with, and you certainly don't screw with 33 of them.
I always visualized it akin to your telephone number - yeah, it's your number, but anyone can look it up in the pages. You work a bit to get on the no-call list and taken out of the directory, and of course, you can change your number or hide it from caller ID.
I'm as much a computer lover as the next person, but there are a number of reasons why a TV currently and will always occupy a niche different from a puter:
1. Bigness. The gap is narrowing, but you can still get a bigger TV for less than a smaller monitor. As far as I can tell, more families have a room based off a TV screen than a computer screen. 2. Options. With monitors, it's either overpriced and pretty from Apple, or less overpriced and less pretty from someone else. With TVs, you can still pick a plethora of options. 3. Ease of use. The wiimote was so revolutionary, but the friggin REmote has been pretty much perfect for decades. It's simple, there's nothing extraneous like apps or downloads or email. You can switch back and forth between hundreds of options seamlessly, whereas on a computer you've got to load up the site and browse to the exact item. If you know what you want, the intarwebs are good, but if you wanna surf, TV is still better. 4. A lot easier to turn on/off. 5. No one is gonna sue you for making a tape of a movie.
The differences are narrowing, but for now, there's definite differences. Something kind of like AppleTV has a definite future in the world but we're still gonna sit around the set for the Super Bowl, not a computer (well, we will, but others won't).
This is really awesome. For too long, the "human genome" has been what we know of a few guys who ran the HGP. Since then, many more have been sequenced but not systematically, and not for the sole purpose of cataloging the countless variations present. This sort of database is the first giant leap towards effectively creating a solid understanding of human variation, allowing us to perfect everything from medical treatment to diet supplements (the GATTACA option in the poll is so relevant). Really, this is just setting the stage, paving the way for when we get to the Genomics X-Prize and beyond. It's about time there was another push of serious capital in this arena.
...the fact that criminalising consumers so as to combat digital piracy is not the right solution. (emphasis mine)
When was the last time anyone aside from the consumer expressed that view so blatantly? When was the last time anyone in government expressed that view? The two together is just about as close to Christmas in January as you can get - and I'm not just saying that 'cause I'm a Jew...
Anyone who says "Evolution is taken as faith" or doesn't understand that the theory is based on the evidence, and that new evidence means changing the theory can look at this and shut up. A rather fundamental point was proposed to be rather fundamentally different based on new research and that's just fine. Whether it pans out or not, this is a beautiful example of the glory of science.
Just because something works somewhere else doesn't mean it works everywhere. My computer works perfectly, but that doesn't mean yours won't crash tomorrow. Just because nations for thousands of years have thrown soldiers into a war didn't make Vietnam anymore "winnable" for the US.
But it's more than that, it's preventative. Just because your paper ballots have worked flawlessly (you assume) doesn't mean they will continue to do so. Our elections worked nicely until the hanging chads. We don't want another debacle, so we're turning to more methods. Hopefully, these methods will be more secure, as well as more convenient and easier - after all, counting tens of millions of ballots by hand sucks.
Besides, the article was speaking to American concerns. Over two million of us can't figure out how to punch holes in paper ballots, and clearly need a different system.
Hell, one of my favorite games, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, introduced me to a bunch of music I'd never heard before. This really goes to show you want can happen when a discerning eye hand picks tracks, akin to the free downloads on iTunes. Nobody'd ever heard of those guys before, and suddenly they're discovering it. See, sharing music DOES work!
It's something that's been changing for a while now. In a world where typing your name and writing your email address can legally constitute a signature, it would seem that we can remain disconnected easier. If anything, while it may make things like a handshake more rare, it makes it much more valuable. Imagine if you received a handwritten letter in the mail - it could be a death threat and you'd still be blown away by the care and thoughtfulness the author put into it.
Technology is ALL about bringing us closer. Most no one's invented or created anything that brings us further away from each other. How close we used to be to people at 5mi can now be replicated at 10mi, making the people 5mi away that much closer. Humans crave contact - nothing will ever replace hanging out and joking around with some friends - and things like email, Facebook, IM, and SMS make it easier. It's the old argument of making the world smaller.
This is just stupid. Wasting $65M to $90M is pointless, but they deserve it. Moving backwards isn't the answer, and neither is moving only slightly backwards. There's no way that for that kind of money, they couldn't have gotten a series of machines that actually works. I don't want to spit the same old Diebold sucks, yay linux/open source/etc. vitriol but there are a lot of options available to a small business, not to mention a bloody STATE. The instant these things weren't working properly eight years ago, they should've given Diebold an ultimatum and then gone elsewhere.
Maryland expects to be back on the paper trail, following states such as Florida and California, which have also decided that all-electronic systems make it too easy to compromise elections. Hmm... an all-electronic system doesn't work, and neither does all-paper. Gee, I wonder if there's someway to combine the two and maybe get some sort of hybrid, combining the best of both worlds...
From TFA:
thanks to the threat of a high-profile legal action, plenty of free advertising. Given: 1. There's little, if anything, the prosecutors can do to TPB. 2. The vast majority of the Swedish people sympathize with them, if not are down right on their side. 3. Their name and "product" will gets tons of new airtime at now charge to them (it's happened before).
If you ask me, getting sued is the best thing that may happen to The Pirate Bay since the invention of broadband!
You can't screw up your own DNA by eating meat that has faulty DNA. Ever hear of Prions? It's not exactly in DNA, but screwed up is screwed up and anything that's present within something you ingest is present within you - you are what you eat, as they say. Don't get me wrong, I think cloning animals and using them to help produce more robust stocks of cattle is a great idea, as in engineering food products, but it's naive to think that just because a defect isn't within your own DNA means it won't harm us.
This behavior is perhaps what is expected. In a highly predatory environment, it's far more advantageous to reproduce early on because you may not live to reach adulthood. Those kids are less likely to survive than if the organism had waited until maturation, but they are effectively "worth" more as they in turn will reproduce quickly, and so on. This high generation rate as well as very strong forces of selection probably contributed to the increased multitudes of life jumping into existence.
I thought the whole thing was a big deal. The movie rentals deal was amazing, as was the revamp of AppleTV. I don't think it's quite there, but combined with having every major studio available for cheap rentals should make it a much more desirable product. I for one will actually use the damn thing now; I've never bought a single movie in my life for the reasons Steve said - you only watch a movie once or twice or so in your entire life. With rentals, hell, it's cheaper than Blockbuster and FAR less difficult to use. I don't have to waste money on subscriptions like NetFlix so it's really a rather awesome deal.
I actually thought the biggest thing in the presentation was how humble Steve-o was. He didn't talk about the awesome progress most Apple devices made, and he mentioned flat out two or three instances where Apple didn't meet expectations. You could see him shy about announcing 4M iPhones (When everyone thought it would be five) and he just said that they were wrong with AppleTV. I don't know if I like it yet, but it's refreshing!
Maybe I just don't know, but why on Earth do these things explode? It seems to happen with alarming frequency given the ubiquitous nature of these things - how hard is to make batteries or wires that don't catch fire when using them? Something like this has been happening a few times a year, and recalls or replacements aren't enough - punishments are in due order for making shoddy, dangerous products.
It's good to see support and advertisement for such things. The overall quality may be nowhere near what a huge corporation of designers, coders, and writers can do, but these things are a great way to get new flavors. Yeah, there's some crap like DBZ V. Street Fighter but there looks to be some innovative, or at least different, games in there that are a great way to add spice to your other wise boring routine.
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Funny, but definitely crass. I'm a firm believer of Serious Business, but it's just weird to see my childhood toy sound like George Bush.
We were not able to cover net neutrality, the digital divide, mobile spectrum allocation issues, identity theft, China censorship or intellectual property issues on this call. They missed the really good ones! If the congress vote on internet tax was 402-0 I think it's pretty obvious where that issue is going to go, and is a pretty dumb question. Net Neutrality, IP, censorship - those are all things that are very easy to feel one way or the other, or the myriad ways in between, especially since he already hinted at imposing trade sanctions or the like on China for IP problems. Poor choices on the editors, IMHO, but H1B was a good question as were the follow-ups. Here's hoping for round two!
Everything. I personally don't give a rat's ass about cell phones - it's not really a big deal or very innovative until you just have a communicator built in. Everything else though, from doors, lights, running tasks on a computer, etc. is what's really cool. Little inane things that just piss you off in life - like having to get up from the bed with the girl/boy on it to turn the light off, or setting a TV up for a movie, or having the computer do everything you want. I'd much rather say "wait until this song ends, then play "Helter Skelter," and then put up an away message and turn the display off." (Not that I can't really do that already, it's just more aggravating)
Just hook up a generator to your whining and the problem is solved. You can sell the extra electricity for money, which you can use to buy music, thereby becoming both part of the problem and solution!
It seems like the impetus for this is to give the NSA greater powers to protect the government from "cyber-attacks." In that vein, it's a smart move - hell, it is the National Security Agency.
I doubt it's that contained. The government protecting itself by better monitoring its own channels is obvious, but it's hard to disconnect the NSA from their past. As TFA said, "The NSA has particular expertise in monitoring a vast, complex array of communications systems..." This whole thing sounds to me like steps to make their dubious actions more allowable. That's how you'd start it anyway, first declare the NSA in charge of protecting the government. Then, since "90% of the threat" lies in the private sector, it needs to protect that. And so on.
At the very least, though, it's nice to know that some things are being done to make some of the important machines more secure.
It's worth a shot, no? In some cases, if they've got a small chance it could be worth it, especially if they can annoy the other group to just settle to avoid the hassle. This, though, seems nigh impossible to win, so I can't quite see the point other than a really, really quick settlement to just get it over with. There are some companies you just don't screw with, and you certainly don't screw with 33 of them.
It was Ebaums, they did it.
I always visualized it akin to your telephone number - yeah, it's your number, but anyone can look it up in the pages. You work a bit to get on the no-call list and taken out of the directory, and of course, you can change your number or hide it from caller ID.
No.
I'm as much a computer lover as the next person, but there are a number of reasons why a TV currently and will always occupy a niche different from a puter:
1. Bigness. The gap is narrowing, but you can still get a bigger TV for less than a smaller monitor. As far as I can tell, more families have a room based off a TV screen than a computer screen.
2. Options. With monitors, it's either overpriced and pretty from Apple, or less overpriced and less pretty from someone else. With TVs, you can still pick a plethora of options.
3. Ease of use. The wiimote was so revolutionary, but the friggin REmote has been pretty much perfect for decades. It's simple, there's nothing extraneous like apps or downloads or email. You can switch back and forth between hundreds of options seamlessly, whereas on a computer you've got to load up the site and browse to the exact item. If you know what you want, the intarwebs are good, but if you wanna surf, TV is still better.
4. A lot easier to turn on/off.
5. No one is gonna sue you for making a tape of a movie.
The differences are narrowing, but for now, there's definite differences. Something kind of like AppleTV has a definite future in the world but we're still gonna sit around the set for the Super Bowl, not a computer (well, we will, but others won't).
This is really awesome. For too long, the "human genome" has been what we know of a few guys who ran the HGP. Since then, many more have been sequenced but not systematically, and not for the sole purpose of cataloging the countless variations present. This sort of database is the first giant leap towards effectively creating a solid understanding of human variation, allowing us to perfect everything from medical treatment to diet supplements (the GATTACA option in the poll is so relevant). Really, this is just setting the stage, paving the way for when we get to the Genomics X-Prize and beyond. It's about time there was another push of serious capital in this arena.
...the fact that criminalising consumers so as to combat digital piracy is not the right solution. (emphasis mine)When was the last time anyone aside from the consumer expressed that view so blatantly? When was the last time anyone in government expressed that view? The two together is just about as close to Christmas in January as you can get - and I'm not just saying that 'cause I'm a Jew...
Anyone who says "Evolution is taken as faith" or doesn't understand that the theory is based on the evidence, and that new evidence means changing the theory can look at this and shut up. A rather fundamental point was proposed to be rather fundamentally different based on new research and that's just fine. Whether it pans out or not, this is a beautiful example of the glory of science.
Just because something works somewhere else doesn't mean it works everywhere. My computer works perfectly, but that doesn't mean yours won't crash tomorrow. Just because nations for thousands of years have thrown soldiers into a war didn't make Vietnam anymore "winnable" for the US.
But it's more than that, it's preventative. Just because your paper ballots have worked flawlessly (you assume) doesn't mean they will continue to do so. Our elections worked nicely until the hanging chads. We don't want another debacle, so we're turning to more methods. Hopefully, these methods will be more secure, as well as more convenient and easier - after all, counting tens of millions of ballots by hand sucks.
Besides, the article was speaking to American concerns. Over two million of us can't figure out how to punch holes in paper ballots, and clearly need a different system.
Hell, one of my favorite games, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, introduced me to a bunch of music I'd never heard before. This really goes to show you want can happen when a discerning eye hand picks tracks, akin to the free downloads on iTunes. Nobody'd ever heard of those guys before, and suddenly they're discovering it. See, sharing music DOES work!
Well, then, it won't win. Problem solved.
It's something that's been changing for a while now. In a world where typing your name and writing your email address can legally constitute a signature, it would seem that we can remain disconnected easier. If anything, while it may make things like a handshake more rare, it makes it much more valuable. Imagine if you received a handwritten letter in the mail - it could be a death threat and you'd still be blown away by the care and thoughtfulness the author put into it.
Technology is ALL about bringing us closer. Most no one's invented or created anything that brings us further away from each other. How close we used to be to people at 5mi can now be replicated at 10mi, making the people 5mi away that much closer. Humans crave contact - nothing will ever replace hanging out and joking around with some friends - and things like email, Facebook, IM, and SMS make it easier. It's the old argument of making the world smaller.
1. There's little, if anything, the prosecutors can do to TPB.
2. The vast majority of the Swedish people sympathize with them, if not are down right on their side.
3. Their name and "product" will gets tons of new airtime at now charge to them (it's happened before).
If you ask me, getting sued is the best thing that may happen to The Pirate Bay since the invention of broadband!
This behavior is perhaps what is expected. In a highly predatory environment, it's far more advantageous to reproduce early on because you may not live to reach adulthood. Those kids are less likely to survive than if the organism had waited until maturation, but they are effectively "worth" more as they in turn will reproduce quickly, and so on. This high generation rate as well as very strong forces of selection probably contributed to the increased multitudes of life jumping into existence.
I thought the whole thing was a big deal. The movie rentals deal was amazing, as was the revamp of AppleTV. I don't think it's quite there, but combined with having every major studio available for cheap rentals should make it a much more desirable product. I for one will actually use the damn thing now; I've never bought a single movie in my life for the reasons Steve said - you only watch a movie once or twice or so in your entire life. With rentals, hell, it's cheaper than Blockbuster and FAR less difficult to use. I don't have to waste money on subscriptions like NetFlix so it's really a rather awesome deal.
I actually thought the biggest thing in the presentation was how humble Steve-o was. He didn't talk about the awesome progress most Apple devices made, and he mentioned flat out two or three instances where Apple didn't meet expectations. You could see him shy about announcing 4M iPhones (When everyone thought it would be five) and he just said that they were wrong with AppleTV. I don't know if I like it yet, but it's refreshing!
Maybe I just don't know, but why on Earth do these things explode? It seems to happen with alarming frequency given the ubiquitous nature of these things - how hard is to make batteries or wires that don't catch fire when using them? Something like this has been happening a few times a year, and recalls or replacements aren't enough - punishments are in due order for making shoddy, dangerous products.
It's good to see support and advertisement for such things. The overall quality may be nowhere near what a huge corporation of designers, coders, and writers can do, but these things are a great way to get new flavors. Yeah, there's some crap like DBZ V. Street Fighter but there looks to be some innovative, or at least different, games in there that are a great way to add spice to your other wise boring routine.