The threat to human survival isn't primarily external, it's what we do and how we live. In the span of a century, we have gone from a hardly any effect on the global environment to big changes of the ocean and athmosphere. We can't run away from that, and we face the same problems even more severely on our trips and elsewhere:
* Just getting to another star system requires an extended period of maintaining a totally self-contained environment.
* Colonizing planets like Mars would be far more difficult than even colonizing Antarctica and would require a degree of stewardship that people have never shown to be capable of.
* Even if we find an Eden-like planet, we can do to it what we have done to earth within a few centuries, probably before that planet has the resources to send out more colonies.
Space colonization isn't the answer yet; humanity first needs to learn to live sustainably. If we can't live sustainably here, we'll die out no matter where we run because probably won't get there, and even if we did, we'd kill ourselves faster than we can colonize.
I think putting pictures of the faces of your neighbors' children on porn stars is disturbin and wrong. But...
Quote 1:
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 ruled that "virtual child pornography," in which no children were actually harmed, is protected speech and does not constitute a crime.
Quote 2:
Since then, "more and more of these guys are using morphed images, image manipulations" in an attempt to circumvent prosecution, Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said Wednesday.
Which part of "protected speech" does Ernie Allen not understand? Even if "virtual child pornography" causes someone to commit a crime against children they otherwise wouldn't have, that's the price of free speech. I'm sorry, I don't want to live in a fascist state just so that everybody is maximally safe.
I think they may have a case based on the misuse of the image itself. But the reason for legal action wouldn't be child pornography, it would be that the image of a person is used without their permission in a pornographic context.
Yes, but... they have been saying that for a while, so I wouldn't hold my breath.
The question is: why is it taking them so long? That seems like a pretty straightforward feature, in particular since they already handle outbound number transfers.
If Google has a number shortage, it's kind of odd that they don't let people transfer their existing numbers to Google Voice. That would probably free up a lot of the numbers they already have.
I have a Google Voice number, and if I could transfer my existing number into it, I would do so.
There are about 130 cases of loss of smell "after" application of Zicam. People concluded it was the Zicam because after squirting it into their nose too vigorously, they experienced pain and then they lost their smell later. But it would be hard to get this stuff up your nose far enough to reach your smell receptors, and people who did were not using it as instructed ("So he held the nasal gel to his nose, pumped and inhaled.").
A more likely explanation is that in hundreds of millions of uses every year, some people experience loss of smell by chance (it's fairly common), and among those, some people used it incorrectly or irritated their nose when using Zicam and drew the wrong conclusions.
It's probably no big deal by itself if Zicam gets taken off the market: there is little evidence that it works. It's also mislabeled because it isn't actually "homeopathic". But the principle and reasoning itself are disturbing.
By that standard, project's like OpenGL and x86 fail to be open standards. However, if we simply use your flawed definition of "open" then you are correct.
Quite incorrect. Both OpenGL and x86 have multiple independent implementations. Java does not.
Oh and by the by: Just for comparison, how many people has Sun brought in for litigation or wiped off the face of the Earth? Now ask yourself, how many has Microsoft done the same?
Are you kidding? Sun has picked legal fights with IBM, Microsoft, Danger, Apache, and many more that have chosen not to come forward. Several companies I have worked for (no, not Microsoft) were threatened and badgered by Sun's lawyers over ridiculous intellectual property claims. When Java initially came out, there were some commercial third party implementations; Sun killed them. With Sun, there isn't a possibility of legal threats and killing third party implementation, Sun has a long history going back to day one.
I don't know about who Microsoft has sued, but they have never sued or even threatened any company I have worked for (all competitors). Microsoft's misdeeds seem to be mainly related to bundling agreements and monopolization.
You're not required to use the dead weight, I'm not seeing your point here.
Oh, but unlike all other platforms, I am required to install and ship the dead weight. It says so right there in the license agreement.
However, calling Java not-open and.NET more open is just Java bashing, pure and simple.
Java deserves to be bashed, but that's not even the point here. I really don't care whether you use Java or COBOL or Forth. Hey, whatever floats your boat.
I'm just using Java as a point of comparison. I'm saying that if something with so many legal, license, and patent issues hanging over it as Java is acceptable to open source developers, then people have absolutely no reason to complain about Mono.
Java is based on an open standard... the fully open-source reference JDK.
The purpose of a reference implementation is to serve as a reference for independent third party implementations that illustrates behavior (reference implementations are typically simple, clean, and low performance). It's more than a decade after Java first appeared; where are the independent third party implementations that use OpenJDK as a reference?
In order for it to be a reference implementation, it would have to be a reference implementation of a standard, but there is no Java standard. That's because the only way you can actually implement Java without infringing on Sun's intellectual property is if you pass their compatibility tests. For practical purposes, you can't do that unless you actually sign a license agreement with them. That's why Microsoft developed.NET and Google developed Dalvik, deliberately incompatible implementations that work around Sun's intellectual property.
As for OpenJDK, you have two choices: you can use it under the GPL, which precludes many commercial uses, or you can license it from Sun.
Of course, it is good that we have the "OpenJDK" under the GPL now, compared to the situation before that. But that's not the same as Java being an "open standard". Compared to most other programming languages, Java is one of the most legally encumbered languages in existence.
As two examples, but I'm sure you can head over to JCP and see everything that they have done. But I'm guessing you won't.
I was a Java developer for over a decade and still develop in it occasionally, painful as that is. Take it from me: the JCP has produced enormous bloat and few innovative APIs.
Your idea of "open" misses the idea of "open." However, I'll just fault whoever it was that taught you what "open" means, since you do no research yourself.
No, your idea of "open standard" misses the idea of "open". "Open standard" means that anybody can implement and use it for any purpose, without having to get special permission from the originator of the standard. Java cannot be implemented that way because you need to pass Sun's compatibility test and because the specifications themselves are owned by Sun.
Call me a troll and mod me down like a motherfucker, but I'll have to call it like I see it and call you an idiot or you really like to pull people's legs.
You're a victim of Sun marketing and brainwashing. Sun promised an open standard, ISO/ANSI standardization, and cross-platform functionality. What they delivered was a proprietary platform, the JCP, and worse cross-platform capabilities than Tcl/Tk, plus a lot of marketing to confuse gullible people like you.
I think quite differently. The JCP has brought us things like JOGL, JAXP, and many more advancements of the Java technology.
If you consider OpenGL and XML parser bindings "advancements", then Java technology is really starting very low.
Because Sun saw fit to prevent Microsoft from making a bastard version of Java? Because such a version would have destroyed the entire point of Java, Write once/Run everywhere? Much like their MS LDAP? (I mean Active Directory.)
Who cares what reasons Sun gave? The result is the same: Java is not an open standard.
Do you care to point them out?
Go search on Google Patents; they are say enough to find.
And how OpenJDK has worked around those?
It doesn't have to; Sun has made those patents specifically available for "OpenJDK" under the GPL. However, everybody else has to license their patents. That's one of the things that makes Java not an open standard.
Because Microsoft is a big software bully.
Sun/Oracle is a big software bully, too. And Microsoft can sue over OpenJDK, Sun/Oracle can sue over Mono, and IBM can sue over both.
Java like.NET is a platform.
Yes. They are also brand names.
Sun's Java implementation is to Microsoft's.NET implementation as OpenJDK's Java implementation is to Mono's.NET implementation.
Not at all. Sun Java and OpenJDK are largely the same codebase and share most of their APIs. Microsoft.NET and Mono are completely different implementations and share almost no APIs on the default installs. Mono happens to have a set of.NET compatibility libraries, but those are neither needed nor used much.
I can see that you can tell the difference between MS.NET and Mono.NET, I hope I've cleared up the comparison for JVMs as well.
You need to clear up your confusion if you think that there is more than one Java implementation in the world. All there is is Sun Java and its derivatives.
I know it is a bit old but, we'll file one once they publish which part they're going to patent
The patent system doesn't work that way. Anything that they could possibly patent would have had to have been filed years ago and is publicly available now.
Is it because.NET is a standard through an organized body? [ecma-international.org] Whereas, Java is basically a community process with Sun at the head of the community? [jcp.org]
Yes. Sun, in fact, promised ISO, ANSI, and then ECMA standardization. They reneged on those promises because it forced them to open up the language too much, which tells you that the JCP is not a standards process. From a practical point of view, I think the JCP has pretty much destroyed Java.
If this is your beef with Java then what exactly is different between how Java is made versus something like, Linux [lkml.org] or GNU HURD? [gnu.org]
Linux and the Hurd are not standards, they are open source projects. Sun Java, likewise, isn't a standard, it's a dual-licensed project.
Besides, what is all this seemingly bad blood between.NET and Java?
I don't know about.NET, since I don't use it. I do use Mono. In any case, I really don't care whether people use Java, but Java is a good example to contrast with Mono because many people regard it as "open", yet it is far more encumbered than ECMA C# or Mono: Sun owns key parts of the Java specifications and they have numerous patents on core Java and the libraries. If that doesn't bother open source developers, why should using Mono bother any open source developer?
Even though Microsoft submitted the CLI and C# main components of.NET, MIcrosoft does hold at least one patent on the.NET infrastructure.
First of all, they "don't hold a patent", they have filed a patent application. Whether that application gets granted remains to be seen, and even if it does, it's unclear what such a patent actually would cover or whether it could be enforced.
Furthermore, even if the patent were valid and enforceable, it is irrelevant as far as Tomboy is concerned, since Tomboy and most other Mono desktop applications don't use the ".NET infrastructure", they use ECMA C# libraries and standard Linux libraries.
Were I a Debian leader, I would simply approach Microsoft with the Mono code and the ECMA code of conduct and demand it in writing that for this snapshot of the code you have a forever royalty free
What's there to put in writing? You might as well demand Microsoft to put in writing that GNU C++, the Linux kernel, and Python are forever free from Microsoft royalties.
Apparently, Debian doesn't have the same concerns over using specifications patented by Microsoft and licensed under undisclosed terms
Microsoft has filed a patent on the.NET APIs, but Tomboy (and most Mono applications) don't use the.NET APIs, they use the ECMA APIs and standard Linux APIs. Mono is no different in that way from Python, Ruby, Perl, or many other languages people commonly use on Linux: it uses proprietary APIs on Windows, and open source APIs on Linux.
Furthermore, Mono is way ahead of languages like Java in that regard because, unlike Java, Mono is based on an open standard and there are no known patents on the language core or core libraries.
If anybody can point to an actual patent that Mono or Tomboy violate, please file an issue report against the Mono project; if it is credible, the infringing functionality will be removed from Mono. So far, nobody has been able to come up with anything.
Listen to what disabled users do, not to what you think they should speak.
Even most user interfaces for non-disabled users contain serious problems. For disabled users, there are many more variations and restrictions, and the developer can't even use himself as a model and test subject.
It's easy to say "do it better", but doing it better requires a lot more time and money given current tools. A single developer costs $100k-$200k/year, and to come up with a really good user interface takes many developers and a lot of time. It also takes a lot of time with users and user testing, something users don't seem to be too interested in doing either.
Another approach would be the development of better tools and more automation in user interface development for the disabled, but that takes research funding, and there isn't a lot of that either.
Even developing better speech recognition is not exactly lavishly funded anymore and there isn't that much of a market.
Developers have to eat somehow. When they deliver half-baked solutions and inconvenient user interfaces, it's because they don't have time to do a better job or they don't even have the training.
Furthermore, the UI necessarily comes second to the actual functionality: software consisting of a great UI for a non-working back-end is less useful than software consisting of a bad UI for a great back-end.
So, I think while it would certainly be nice if more developers took user concerns and UIs more seriously, that's not enough. Good UI development for small target populations with many different needs means a lot of extra time and money, time and money that needs to come from somewhere.
fall into the lazy trap of wanting to assign rotework that can be endlessly recycled as work for new students
Actually, assigning "rotework" is not much effort; coming up with meaningful assignments is hard.
a model that fails when the students treat their work as useful in and of itself and therefore worthy of making public for their peers and other interested parties who find them through search results, links, etc.
Who cares? Students have plenty of other resources to cheat on their homework if they want to. If they don't actually do the work, they won't learn and they'll fail their final exam.
While looking under a microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue
Unfortunately, her scientific career was short-lived because she was thrown out of school after she had actually obtained the sample of her own intestinal tissue in class.
As a language, Fortran supports pretty much what C++ supports (including overloading, templates, and objects), but is probably easier to use.
In terms of compilers, GNU Fortran supports Fortran 95 and many newer features; it's pretty much as good (or bad) as commercial Fortran implementations.
Python probably is a good first language. But writing numerical code in Python is actually harder than in modern Fortran because a lot of "natural" code in Python (loops over arrays) will run very slowly; in Python, if you want to write fast numerical code, you need to figure out how to convert it to array expressions. Fortran has both array expressions and loops, and they both run fast.
If people are going to learn just one language, with modern Fortran dialects and compilers, Fortran may be a reasonable choice again. In many ways, for people writing numerical code, Python is not an easy language. In fact, many people may opt for Matlab, because Matlab now (apparently) has a JIT that makes numerical loop code run fast as well, so it combines some of the advantages of Fortran and Python (but it's hugely expensive and a not a very good language IMO).
more then an order of magnitude stronger then you would find near even the strongest transmitters.
That's like arguing that because the supply voltage of a device is 5V, injecting 500mV variation in any of its signal lines don't matter. That's a bad argument. Even a tiny variation in field strengths matters because these are systems that are operating near their thresholds, and that's not even taking into account a whole lot of other effects that can further amplify small disturbances.
What is it with people with training in physics or electrical engineering that when they approach biological systems, all their training and ability to reason goes out the window?
So? What does it matter whether it's "an actual stream of electrons moving along like wires"? Electrical signals in biological systems get generated and transmitted by tiny local movements of ions across membranes in order to change local electrical fields, fields that then change the shape of charged molecules slightly. The process is very sensitive to electrical fields, and it can be affected by radio waves.
I think the term "invent" is stretching things a bit. Real-time collaboration on documents has existed for decades. Ozzie just has been trying to bring a version of it to Microsoft Office (a thankless and ultimately doomed task).
It matters what patents exist. If it is the position of the FFMpeg authors that the patent license that Google has obtained is actually required for royalty-free distribution, then nobody can redistribute FFMpeg at all.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you've watched too much Star Trek.
The threat to human survival isn't primarily external, it's what we do and how we live. In the span of a century, we have gone from a hardly any effect on the global environment to big changes of the ocean and athmosphere. We can't run away from that, and we face the same problems even more severely on our trips and elsewhere:
* Just getting to another star system requires an extended period of maintaining a totally self-contained environment.
* Colonizing planets like Mars would be far more difficult than even colonizing Antarctica and would require a degree of stewardship that people have never shown to be capable of.
* Even if we find an Eden-like planet, we can do to it what we have done to earth within a few centuries, probably before that planet has the resources to send out more colonies.
Space colonization isn't the answer yet; humanity first needs to learn to live sustainably. If we can't live sustainably here, we'll die out no matter where we run because probably won't get there, and even if we did, we'd kill ourselves faster than we can colonize.
I think putting pictures of the faces of your neighbors' children on porn stars is disturbin and wrong. But...
Quote 1:
Quote 2:
Which part of "protected speech" does Ernie Allen not understand? Even if "virtual child pornography" causes someone to commit a crime against children they otherwise wouldn't have, that's the price of free speech. I'm sorry, I don't want to live in a fascist state just so that everybody is maximally safe.
I think they may have a case based on the misuse of the image itself. But the reason for legal action wouldn't be child pornography, it would be that the image of a person is used without their permission in a pornographic context.
Yes, but... they have been saying that for a while, so I wouldn't hold my breath.
The question is: why is it taking them so long? That seems like a pretty straightforward feature, in particular since they already handle outbound number transfers.
If Google has a number shortage, it's kind of odd that they don't let people transfer their existing numbers to Google Voice. That would probably free up a lot of the numbers they already have.
I have a Google Voice number, and if I could transfer my existing number into it, I would do so.
There are about 130 cases of loss of smell "after" application of Zicam. People concluded it was the Zicam because after squirting it into their nose too vigorously, they experienced pain and then they lost their smell later. But it would be hard to get this stuff up your nose far enough to reach your smell receptors, and people who did were not using it as instructed ("So he held the nasal gel to his nose, pumped and inhaled.").
A more likely explanation is that in hundreds of millions of uses every year, some people experience loss of smell by chance (it's fairly common), and among those, some people used it incorrectly or irritated their nose when using Zicam and drew the wrong conclusions.
It's probably no big deal by itself if Zicam gets taken off the market: there is little evidence that it works. It's also mislabeled because it isn't actually "homeopathic". But the principle and reasoning itself are disturbing.
By that standard, project's like OpenGL and x86 fail to be open standards. However, if we simply use your flawed definition of "open" then you are correct.
Quite incorrect. Both OpenGL and x86 have multiple independent implementations. Java does not.
Oh and by the by: Just for comparison, how many people has Sun brought in for litigation or wiped off the face of the Earth? Now ask yourself, how many has Microsoft done the same?
Are you kidding? Sun has picked legal fights with IBM, Microsoft, Danger, Apache, and many more that have chosen not to come forward. Several companies I have worked for (no, not Microsoft) were threatened and badgered by Sun's lawyers over ridiculous intellectual property claims. When Java initially came out, there were some commercial third party implementations; Sun killed them. With Sun, there isn't a possibility of legal threats and killing third party implementation, Sun has a long history going back to day one.
I don't know about who Microsoft has sued, but they have never sued or even threatened any company I have worked for (all competitors). Microsoft's misdeeds seem to be mainly related to bundling agreements and monopolization.
You're not required to use the dead weight, I'm not seeing your point here.
Oh, but unlike all other platforms, I am required to install and ship the dead weight. It says so right there in the license agreement.
However, calling Java not-open and .NET more open is just Java bashing, pure and simple.
Java deserves to be bashed, but that's not even the point here. I really don't care whether you use Java or COBOL or Forth. Hey, whatever floats your boat.
I'm just using Java as a point of comparison. I'm saying that if something with so many legal, license, and patent issues hanging over it as Java is acceptable to open source developers, then people have absolutely no reason to complain about Mono.
Java is based on an open standard... the fully open-source reference JDK.
The purpose of a reference implementation is to serve as a reference for independent third party implementations that illustrates behavior (reference implementations are typically simple, clean, and low performance). It's more than a decade after Java first appeared; where are the independent third party implementations that use OpenJDK as a reference?
In order for it to be a reference implementation, it would have to be a reference implementation of a standard, but there is no Java standard. That's because the only way you can actually implement Java without infringing on Sun's intellectual property is if you pass their compatibility tests. For practical purposes, you can't do that unless you actually sign a license agreement with them. That's why Microsoft developed .NET and Google developed Dalvik, deliberately incompatible implementations that work around Sun's intellectual property.
As for OpenJDK, you have two choices: you can use it under the GPL, which precludes many commercial uses, or you can license it from Sun.
Of course, it is good that we have the "OpenJDK" under the GPL now, compared to the situation before that. But that's not the same as Java being an "open standard". Compared to most other programming languages, Java is one of the most legally encumbered languages in existence.
As two examples, but I'm sure you can head over to JCP and see everything that they have done. But I'm guessing you won't.
I was a Java developer for over a decade and still develop in it occasionally, painful as that is. Take it from me: the JCP has produced enormous bloat and few innovative APIs.
Your idea of "open" misses the idea of "open." However, I'll just fault whoever it was that taught you what "open" means, since you do no research yourself.
No, your idea of "open standard" misses the idea of "open". "Open standard" means that anybody can implement and use it for any purpose, without having to get special permission from the originator of the standard. Java cannot be implemented that way because you need to pass Sun's compatibility test and because the specifications themselves are owned by Sun.
Call me a troll and mod me down like a motherfucker, but I'll have to call it like I see it and call you an idiot or you really like to pull people's legs.
You're a victim of Sun marketing and brainwashing. Sun promised an open standard, ISO/ANSI standardization, and cross-platform functionality. What they delivered was a proprietary platform, the JCP, and worse cross-platform capabilities than Tcl/Tk, plus a lot of marketing to confuse gullible people like you.
I think quite differently. The JCP has brought us things like JOGL, JAXP, and many more advancements of the Java technology.
If you consider OpenGL and XML parser bindings "advancements", then Java technology is really starting very low.
Because Sun saw fit to prevent Microsoft from making a bastard version of Java? Because such a version would have destroyed the entire point of Java, Write once/Run everywhere? Much like their MS LDAP? (I mean Active Directory.)
Who cares what reasons Sun gave? The result is the same: Java is not an open standard.
Do you care to point them out?
Go search on Google Patents; they are say enough to find.
And how OpenJDK has worked around those?
It doesn't have to; Sun has made those patents specifically available for "OpenJDK" under the GPL. However, everybody else has to license their patents. That's one of the things that makes Java not an open standard.
Because Microsoft is a big software bully.
Sun/Oracle is a big software bully, too. And Microsoft can sue over OpenJDK, Sun/Oracle can sue over Mono, and IBM can sue over both.
Java like .NET is a platform.
Yes. They are also brand names.
Sun's Java implementation is to Microsoft's .NET implementation as OpenJDK's Java implementation is to Mono's .NET implementation.
Not at all. Sun Java and OpenJDK are largely the same codebase and share most of their APIs. Microsoft .NET and Mono are completely different implementations and share almost no APIs on the default installs. Mono happens to have a set of .NET compatibility libraries, but those are neither needed nor used much.
I can see that you can tell the difference between MS .NET and Mono .NET, I hope I've cleared up the comparison for JVMs as well.
You need to clear up your confusion if you think that there is more than one Java implementation in the world. All there is is Sun Java and its derivatives.
I know it is a bit old but, we'll file one once they publish which part they're going to patent
The patent system doesn't work that way. Anything that they could possibly patent would have had to have been filed years ago and is publicly available now.
Is it because .NET is a standard through an organized body? [ecma-international.org] Whereas, Java is basically a community process with Sun at the head of the community? [jcp.org]
Yes. Sun, in fact, promised ISO, ANSI, and then ECMA standardization. They reneged on those promises because it forced them to open up the language too much, which tells you that the JCP is not a standards process. From a practical point of view, I think the JCP has pretty much destroyed Java.
If this is your beef with Java then what exactly is different between how Java is made versus something like, Linux [lkml.org] or GNU HURD? [gnu.org]
Linux and the Hurd are not standards, they are open source projects. Sun Java, likewise, isn't a standard, it's a dual-licensed project.
Besides, what is all this seemingly bad blood between .NET and Java?
I don't know about .NET, since I don't use it. I do use Mono. In any case, I really don't care whether people use Java, but Java is a good example to contrast with Mono because many people regard it as "open", yet it is far more encumbered than ECMA C# or Mono: Sun owns key parts of the Java specifications and they have numerous patents on core Java and the libraries. If that doesn't bother open source developers, why should using Mono bother any open source developer?
Even though Microsoft submitted the CLI and C# main components of .NET, MIcrosoft does hold at least one patent on the .NET infrastructure.
First of all, they "don't hold a patent", they have filed a patent application. Whether that application gets granted remains to be seen, and even if it does, it's unclear what such a patent actually would cover or whether it could be enforced.
Furthermore, even if the patent were valid and enforceable, it is irrelevant as far as Tomboy is concerned, since Tomboy and most other Mono desktop applications don't use the ".NET infrastructure", they use ECMA C# libraries and standard Linux libraries.
Were I a Debian leader, I would simply approach Microsoft with the Mono code and the ECMA code of conduct and demand it in writing that for this snapshot of the code you have a forever royalty free
What's there to put in writing? You might as well demand Microsoft to put in writing that GNU C++, the Linux kernel, and Python are forever free from Microsoft royalties.
Apparently, Debian doesn't have the same concerns over using specifications patented by Microsoft and licensed under undisclosed terms
Microsoft has filed a patent on the .NET APIs, but Tomboy (and most Mono applications) don't use the .NET APIs, they use the ECMA APIs and standard Linux APIs. Mono is no different in that way from Python, Ruby, Perl, or many other languages people commonly use on Linux: it uses proprietary APIs on Windows, and open source APIs on Linux.
Furthermore, Mono is way ahead of languages like Java in that regard because, unlike Java, Mono is based on an open standard and there are no known patents on the language core or core libraries.
If anybody can point to an actual patent that Mono or Tomboy violate, please file an issue report against the Mono project; if it is credible, the infringing functionality will be removed from Mono. So far, nobody has been able to come up with anything.
Listen to what disabled users do, not to what you think they should speak.
Even most user interfaces for non-disabled users contain serious problems. For disabled users, there are many more variations and restrictions, and the developer can't even use himself as a model and test subject.
It's easy to say "do it better", but doing it better requires a lot more time and money given current tools. A single developer costs $100k-$200k/year, and to come up with a really good user interface takes many developers and a lot of time. It also takes a lot of time with users and user testing, something users don't seem to be too interested in doing either.
Another approach would be the development of better tools and more automation in user interface development for the disabled, but that takes research funding, and there isn't a lot of that either.
Even developing better speech recognition is not exactly lavishly funded anymore and there isn't that much of a market.
Developers have to eat somehow. When they deliver half-baked solutions and inconvenient user interfaces, it's because they don't have time to do a better job or they don't even have the training.
Furthermore, the UI necessarily comes second to the actual functionality: software consisting of a great UI for a non-working back-end is less useful than software consisting of a bad UI for a great back-end.
So, I think while it would certainly be nice if more developers took user concerns and UIs more seriously, that's not enough. Good UI development for small target populations with many different needs means a lot of extra time and money,
time and money that needs to come from somewhere.
fall into the lazy trap of wanting to assign rotework that can be endlessly recycled as work for new students
Actually, assigning "rotework" is not much effort; coming up with meaningful assignments is hard.
a model that fails when the students treat their work as useful in and of itself and therefore worthy of making public for their peers and other interested parties who find them through search results, links, etc.
Who cares? Students have plenty of other resources to cheat on their homework if they want to. If they don't actually do the work, they won't learn and they'll fail their final exam.
While looking under a microscope at slides of her own intestinal tissue
Unfortunately, her scientific career was short-lived because she was thrown out of school after she had actually obtained the sample of her own intestinal tissue in class.
As a language, Fortran supports pretty much what C++ supports (including overloading, templates, and objects), but is probably easier to use.
In terms of compilers, GNU Fortran supports Fortran 95 and many newer features; it's pretty much as good (or bad) as commercial Fortran implementations.
Python probably is a good first language. But writing numerical code in Python is actually harder than in modern Fortran because a lot of "natural" code in Python (loops over arrays) will run very slowly; in Python, if you want to write fast numerical code, you need to figure out how to convert it to array expressions. Fortran has both array expressions and loops, and they both run fast.
If people are going to learn just one language, with modern Fortran dialects and compilers, Fortran may be a reasonable choice again. In many ways, for people writing numerical code, Python is not an easy language. In fact, many people may opt for Matlab, because Matlab now (apparently) has a JIT that makes numerical loop code run fast as well, so it combines some of the advantages of Fortran and Python (but it's hugely expensive and a not a very good language IMO).
more then an order of magnitude stronger then you would find near even the strongest transmitters.
That's like arguing that because the supply voltage of a device is 5V, injecting 500mV variation in any of its signal lines don't matter. That's a bad argument. Even a tiny variation in field strengths matters because these are systems that are operating near their thresholds, and that's not even taking into account a whole lot of other effects that can further amplify small disturbances.
What is it with people with training in physics or electrical engineering that when they approach biological systems, all their training and ability to reason goes out the window?
So? What does it matter whether it's "an actual stream of electrons moving along like wires"? Electrical signals in biological systems get generated and transmitted by tiny local movements of ions across membranes in order to change local electrical fields, fields that then change the shape of charged molecules slightly. The process is very sensitive to electrical fields, and it can be affected by radio waves.
I'd think that even a small solar cell on the device would give more power on average than that.
Why would Oracle want to make it hard to use ZFS? ZFS has an uphill battle to gain acceptance anyway.
I think "sharing" is a bit too generous. Live Mesh seems to be little more than file syncing software.
I think the term "invent" is stretching things a bit. Real-time collaboration on documents has existed for decades. Ozzie just has been trying to bring a version of it to Microsoft Office (a thankless and ultimately doomed task).
Unfortunately, some of them try to be "helpful" and prevent you from moving the window title above the top of the screen.
I wish it had the nipple
Don't we all
It matters what patents exist. If it is the position of the FFMpeg authors that the patent license that Google has obtained is actually required for royalty-free distribution, then nobody can redistribute FFMpeg at all.