It's a poorly written sentence (What? On Slashdot? Never!). It should read more along the lines of:
"This will allow you to use your TV as a display for your phone without a cable. It should also speed up syncs and file transfers to your computer."
Basically it's a data transfer tech. If you route a video signal over it, it'll give you the ability to display what's on your phone on the TV (assuming your TV has a receiver). If you route sync or file data over it, it'll speed up your ability to sync and transfer files (assuming your computer has a receiver and compatible software). Personally I'm more excited about the idea of faster wireless Ethernet. Apparently this is in no way related to the new 802.11 standard though, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
Nice Internet tough guy. Had the kid been trained the proper response would have been, "You are correct sir, there is no law saying that you have to allow me to search your bag, there is however plenty of law allowing me to prevent from passing the gate unless you comply with theater rules. Feel free to go home, or stand here with your bag." i don't personally like these policies, but threatening some kid's life for doing his job, even in jest, is pure unadulterated asshole. I truly wish I'd been behind you when this happened. It would have amused me greatly to call 9-1-1 and explain that there was a police officer here carrying a concealed weapon in a public place (which I bet had signs telling you not to do this if you live in a state where such things are required), and threatening people with it.
It depends on how you define "right". They cannot force you to hand over your bag, but they can (and will) tell you that *unless* you hand over your bag you cannot watch the movie. They also don't owe you a refund most likely, since they warned you ahead of time. It's like most stuff, The airport can't force you submit to a search either. They don't have a warrant. They can however tell you that you're not passing the checkpoint or getting on the plane till you submit. Since that is presumably the reason you came to the airport (Just as watching a movie is presumably the reason you went to the theater) , chances are high that you'll go along.
Personally I think it would be great gun to carry a big man-purse into the theater, loaded down with all sorts of embarrassing (but perfectly legal and not against theater rules) things (sex toys, porn, maybe some bondage gear). Then make a big huge embarrassing deal about while the kid searched the bag. Sadly you'd just be torturing some poor kid doing his job, not really accomplishing anything.
The opinions of "oafs" are material to official policy when "oafs" are the instruments of the policy. If your TSA screener believes that all terrorist are Arabs, then what the official policy is becomes irrelevant to what is happening on the ground. The implementation of policy becomes racist even if the policy itself is not. This results in a two pronged failure. First, he is going to be overly mistrustful of Arab passengers, which will result in more of them being searched or otherwise inconvenienced. Second he is going to be overly trustful of non-Arabs which could result in a higher probability of a non-Arab terrorist getting through.
Worse this is extremely difficult to detect and even harder to prove. He's not a blatant racist. He doesn't *hate* Arabs, he simply believes that as a people they are less trustworthy than others. He may even have Arab friends. It's a subtle enough prejudice that it's quite possible he could personally like his coworker Ali, while still thinking people who look like Ali are generally less trustworthy than others.
It's entirely possible for a non-racist policy to be implemented in a racist way. Look at the literacy tests that were used to disenfranchise black voters in the South for decades. On the face of it there is nothing racist. You must be able to pass a reading test to vote. In practice those who wrote the law knew that blacks were much more likely to be illiterate than whites; and those who enforced the law implemented fixes into the system to further handicap potential black voters.
No one is saying the app is illegal, they're saying that it violates Google's Terms of Use for their app store. First, it doesn't conform to their design guidelines. It doesn't have a proper icon, can't be uninstalled via the normal method, and its settings aren't controlled via the normal interface. Second, while there are possible non-illegal uses (installing on a child's phone, while creepy and weird in my opinion is probably legal, or you could just want a way to forward your own text messages), it's primary advertised use *is* illegal. "Checking up on your lover" in this way, in addition to showing a tremendous lack of trust and being creepy, is a violation of federal wire tapping statues.
In your example, you're right, it's not illegal to sell bugs. On the other hand, most reputable retailers don't sell them. We don't blame Walmart or Best Buy for not selling electronic surveillance equipment. Why should we blame Google for not selling this?
When you talk to a customer service rep on the phone, don't you get a warning that your conversation is being recorded and/or monitored? E-mail is a bit different. By its very nature it's always recorded and most people are aware of this. Even then a lot of companies put e-mail disclaimers in every message to protect themselves. I personally suspect, though I don't know, that SMS would be considered more like telephone conversation than e-mail by the courts. While technologically SMS is more similar to e-mail, socially it's more similar to a phone call. People believe that the only thing between them and the other end is ma bell. There's an expectation of privacy that doesn't exist in e-mail.
I am talking about the practical application of "anti-terrorism" in a day to day way by the average American or Western European. You are talking about the theoretical basis behind the idea of "anti-terrorism". If you went to 1000 average Americans right now, and asked them to describe a "terrorist" I am willing to bet some change that 7/10, at least, would describe an Arab, or some proximity of what they think an Arab looks like. Yes, if you interviewed 1000 FBI counter terrorism experts you'd get a different answer. That's good, but it doesn't really solve the problem. Most of our front line anti-terrorism people are just average Joes: Beat cops, TSA inspectors, and enlisted soldiers.
There is no inherent racism in the idea of counter terrorism. There *is* inherent racism in how we currently *do* counter terrorism.
I'd also argue with your assertion that religion motivates most of the terrorism in the world right now. At least in a direct way. Last I heard ecoterrorism and politically motivated terrorism were still quite common. There's a level of mixed metaphor in a lot of political terrorism, so it can be somewhat hard to make a case either way. People's religion often inform their politics and vice versa. McVeigh's motivations were political, but his extremely right wing Christianity influenced his political views.
That depends on jurisdiction. I seem to recall that German courts recently ruled just he opposite. Having said that, even in such a case the employer is generally required, by law to inform both you (the employee) and the person you are communicating with that that they are being monitored. This app is designed to be hidden and unobtrusive. Unless you know what you're looking for you'll never find it. The person you're communicating with certainly won't know, unless you've first found the app and told them about it, that their communications to you are being monitored.
For the type of application you're talking about to legal, it would have to let the recipient of each message know that their responses are being monitored, and the employee in question would have to know about the app.
I think you're confusing "tucked neatly away" with "hidden". "Tucked neatly away" is often considered good. An app falls into that category if i don't really have to mess with it and it just automatically does what I ask it to. "Hidden" at least in this context, means "I can't get to it through any normal means".
Let's use Windows as an example. An app might be nicely tucked away. It's visible in the file system if I go to "Program Files" and look for it, it's listed in the "Add/Remove Programs" dialog, and maybe it has a little System Tray icon. Driver control panels are a good example of this. There's no big honkin' icon or start menu entry, but any reasonably knowledgeable user can change it if they need to, or uninstall it if they want to.
"Hidden" would be: It has no "Program Files" directory. Maybe it hides itself in a hidden file in the users home directory, or even in another application's directory. It doesn't show up in "Add/Remove Programs". It doesn't have a System Tray icon to let you know it's running. You would have to go out of your way to find out you even had this application installed. Look at the process list (and know which processes on it were supposed to be there). Look in the Registry. Know it's there and know where to look.
Another way to look at it. A text editor and a keylogger do essentially the same thing. The capture key strokes and save them to a file. One does so because the user would like to save what they are typing. One hides and does it secretly so that another user, or someone not a user at all, wants to see what the user is typing.
There is an implicit amount of racism in much of what we call anti-terrorism though. Not to say we should just ignore the threat, but most anti-terrorism as practiced and understood by average people, is focused on one group. Arabs. Well, realistically, anyone who vaguely looks to the average person as though they might be from the Middle East (Including Sikhs, Indians (Asian, or in the most obtuse cases, even American), Kurds, Persians (not the cats), or any various mulattoes whose features happen to include dark brown skin).
Conceptually, there's nothing wrong with anti-terrorism. Practically there's a lot wrong with how we do it.
And, as much of a pain in the butt as it is, we don't let ourselves "be sick". Sometimes letting the body fight off a cold, or small virus is better than trying to beat it. It helps our immune system "buck up" and keep us healthy the next time a little invader hits us.
Then:
I see it daily...people walk in, do their business, and walk out. H*ll, didn't your momma tell you to wash up after you do your business?
Given your theory that more exposure to minor pathogens let's your immune system exercise and get buff, shouldn't you *not* wash your hands? I mean, you're not likely to get HIV from touching your own willy. The worst you're likely to find down there is some minor stomach bug. Seems to me, given the rest of your rant, that we should just calk this one up to "more exposure to minor pathogens" and call it a day.
It's impossible. You'll start breathing again once you pass out. You could use artificial means to prevent that perhaps, but you wouldn't really be "holding your breath" at that point.
Probably a little of both. realistically I think that a "staggered" system of testing and approval would make a lot of sense. Rate patients on a 1-5 scale of:
1) You gonna die: The disease you is invariably fatal, or has reached a phase where the chance of stopping it is remote at best. If these people want to make themselves human experimental subjects on the off chance something works, let them. Nothing is likely to make matters worse at any rate. Drugs for diseases in this category require the least testing and you sign waivers before using most of them.
2) You're quite likely to die, but there's stuff we can try: Similar to one, but includes diseased with 10-20% survival rates. Drug for diseases in this category can be rushed to market, but require some additional testing. These people's chances still aren't good though, so if they want to take chances with risky treatment, it's probably not hurting much. Waivers again required for the more cutting edge treatments.
3) The disease you have is often fatal, but we have lots of treatments options: These people have the various cancers, heart, and nerve related diseases that the bulk of medical research is focused on. There's a number of main line treatments for what they have, but these treatments aren't 100%. New drugs in this field should undergo the normal level of rigorous testing that we expect. The testing should be sped up as much as possible, but it should be done. Of course people in this category (if not cured or stabilized) often move into category 2 or 1. When this happens they can reevaluate their options. Letting someone die of an untested treatment for a disease which has tested treatments would be tragedy.
4) The disease you have is potentially fatal, but very rarely is for normal people, or is debilitating but not fatal: Things like severe Flu, or Pneumonia would fit the first criteria, things like MS or Parkinson's the second. These are the drugs that should get the testing process that we typically see now. They're important. People die of them or have their lives permanently damaged by them, but in relative terms they don't kill very many people, or they are controllable to one degree or another by existing medication.
5) You have an annoying disease: The common cold is definitely in this batch. These drugs should have the lowest testing priority. There should be controls in place to make sure that they aren't totally forgotten about, but if it takes an extra year or two, who cares? There should also be more thorough testing of these drugs. It would be pretty annoying to take something for your extremely non-fatal cold and wind up dying of it.
Two points (neither of which help you much sadly):
1) Some people just have problems with polarity based stereo. It's unfortunate, but true. Hopefully for the sake of you and people like you 2D versions won't ever go completely away. On the other hand I love stereo when it's done well (I agree with OP pretty much completely), and would hate to have it go away before people really learn how to use it. If done well it's great (IMO), we just need to get to the point where it's done well most of the time.
2) The attempt to bring Coraline's big screen stereo to the DVD was an utter failure. It had beautiful 3D in the theater. I never watch the 3D side of my DVD though.
The big problem is all the movies that the 3D is tacked onto as an afterthought. Avatar's 3D was awesome. It was an organic integrated part of the film. I understand that a lot of people didn't like the movie all that much (the plot was a bit heavy handed to say the least), but the 3D was seamless and perfectly integrated. That's mostly because Cameron made a 3D movie from the ground up and avoided gimmicky shots. Avatar's 3D was integrated to the point of being almost unnoticeable in conscious way, while at the same time contributing to the experience. On the other hand, most of the 3D movies I've seen have been crap. The 3D varied from "contributes nothing" to "actively detracts from the experience".
In a perfect world, I'd like to see 3D used as a tool. When a director feels that it will contribute, and is willing to put in the effort to do it right, it should be there for him. When the director doesn't want to use it, that's fine too.
Meh, be careful what you state. There are lots of things you can calculate that you only think you can calculate accurately. If most of this stuff was accurately calculable, we wouldn't have things like stock market crashes. The industry has very, very smart mathematicians working to accurately predict market behaviors. Quite often they get it right. Reasonably often they get it wrong. Occasionally they get it disastrously wrong.
In theory anything can be calculated. In practice limitations in formulae, computational power, and known variables make calculating many things not much more accurate than guessing.
There's that guy sure. But the opposite side of the coin is me. If you'd made me choose at that age, I'd never have kept going in math. I *failed* Algebra I in eighth grade. It just wouldn't click. I tried, really hard in fact, but I couldn't understand the concepts. Then I took it again and it did click, and everything after it clicked too. I have no trouble with abstract mathematical concepts and got through a couple years of calculus just fine.
What happened? Well, one answer is biology. Supposedly people's capability for higher cognition jumps in the early teenage years. Happens to different people at different times. Apparently it happened to me a bit later than my course load dictated it should have.
There's a *lot* of biology going on in a young teenager. Capabilities are changing, growing, even making first appearances in early to mid adolescence. Beyond that, kids that age almost universally have a confidence problem, and tend to this that anything they aren't *awesome* at, they're *bad* at. All in all, it's a pretty terrible time for people to making decisions like the ones we're talking about.
The author's point, however is valid. We spend a large amount of time and money teaching people a lot of crap that most of them will never use. I'd venture a guess that less then 10% of the population needs any advanced math at all. The number may be higher, but I doubt it. Given that something on the order of 25-30% of the population of the US has an undergraduate degree, and of those 25-30% only the smaller number with a degree in science, math, engineering or an "applied science" like medical people, ever use any advanced math at all. For the vast majority of the rest, a few courses in basic statistics would probably be all the math they ever need beyond arithmetic.
The problem is that we don't *know* in 7th or 8th grade who is likely to need more math 5 or 6 years down the line. Most kids, if you tell them in 7th grade that they can stop taking math, they're going to. Then they hit junior or senior year of high school, realize they want to be an engineer, and they have none of the needed mathematical background. Basically we teach 4-5 years of advanced math to every student in the country, so that the 10-15% if them who will actually need it, have it. It's wasteful as Hell, but I can't think of a better way to do it without forcing life altering career choices on 13-14 year olds.
You know, sometimes people like to eat and talk with *gasp* other people while they listen to music that doesn't happen to be whatever the restaurant is piping in. Not to say that this idea doesn't have holes; I agree with several people that say it should use 3.5mm connectors so that it's not limited to iDevices (I use an iPhone, but really, why limit yourself to such a small subset of people when it would be trivial to expand the idea). Your objection just doesn't make sense though. Of course if you're sitting by yourself you can use headphones, but I doubt that's the intended use case here.
I dunno. I was around the IT world at the time. It was certainly the case that IE was *the* standard corporate web browser at the time, but even then I recall reading a lot of articles about why writing apps that depended on a lot of these proprietary browser extensions was a bad idea. Precisely for most of the reasons it turns out to have been a bad idea.
People said "Sure it's the standard now, but what about ten years from now... After all Netscape was the standard five years ago."
People said "Even if IE stays the standard how do we know that Microsoft will continue to support all these particular extensions. They seem to still be trying to figure out their strategy in this market."
People said "All these extensions in the browser seem to be asking for security and stability problems."
Meanwhile companies blithely bought (or wrote) tons of these applications. It *never* really seemed like a good idea, except from the point of view that it was dead easy, and thus dead cheap, to do. Well, lots of companies did the dead easy, dead cheap, thing; and like most dead cheap options they got what they paid for. They're highly reliant on an insecure, unstable browser than is no longer the standard and only minimally support by Microsoft (who are going to drop even the "minimal" part soon).
Companies dug their own graves, and now try to blame Microsoft. Microsoft certain deserves part of the blame, they wrote the stupid thing after all, but to be fair to them it's not like they woke up one morning last week and decided to drop support. They said *years* ago that IE6 was a mistake, and that they couldn't keep supporting all the proprietary extensions. If It managers had read the writing on the wall then, they could have long since weaned their companies off of these apps with minimal quarterly impacts (or at the very least be well along on the process). Of course that would mean admitting they made a mistake in the first place.
It was a turn of phrase. I understand that Moore's Law is a continuous progression in theory, but in practice it results in released processors that progress incrementally. The processor I buy today doesn't have.021% more transistors than the processor I bought last week. Intel releases a processor than has incrementally more transistors than the last one. Could you be any more friggen literal minded?
1) As sibling mentions, a lot of portables can now control the functions of various media software as a "remote control". Apple produces an iDevice app that is awesome for controlling iTunes. In the most extreme cases there are even VNC apps for every smart phone I'm aware of. You could literally control the whole HTPC from the OS up from with one of these devices rather than just use it as a "remote".
2) IR blaster cables are extremely small , flexible, and can be quite long. It's much easier to remote out the IR blaster if you don't have to run HDMI cable back to the TV as well.
3) If these devices become common I could easily see them being bundled with a WiFi remote control that essentially performs like a portable running a remote app, except special purpose to do only that. Write a daemon that listens for the remote "signal" (really a network connection) and pipes that to your media software just like a conventional IR receiver software would.
Realistically in my mind I see this as being more awesome for being able to easily pipe my laptop to the TV, but that's mostly because I've never really gotten into the whole HTPC thing. For people in the HTPC crowd, remote controlling seems like a pretty trivial problem to solve once you can cut the HDMI cable.
C is portable, a given piece of C code is not necessarily. I guarantee that if I write a program of any complexity in C on Windows, and don't make specific efforts, that program will not compile on Linux or MacOS. You're continuing to ignore the point. Yes, you can write stuff in C and port it to any platform. No one is denying that. The point is that it costs extra money to port it, when you could just write it in Java and have it work on all those platforms. This is a significant cost savings for multi-platform apps.
There are a great number of applications (and the number grows every time Moore's Laws increments) that simply don't need more performance. The person behind the keys simply doesn't care that his/her accounts receivable application *could* have responded in.0005 seconds had it been natively compiled but instead responds in.001 seconds because it runs through an interpreter. Faster than human thought is faster than human thought.
For lots of things performance remains important. For those things, people will keep using compiled languages and dealing with the headaches of porting. For everything else, Java is fine, and a huge cost saver in a lot of cases.
C isn't portable. If I write something in Java it will probably (for a very high value of "probably" too) work on any of a dozen platforms. If I write something in C I have to port it. Porting it costs programmer time and we've already established that programmer time is more costly than machine time. In theory C could be made to be somewhat portable (It would still have to be compiled on every platform and the binaries distributed separately), but in practice this would require a lot of OS vendors that hate each other to standardize a lot of APIs. It's probably not going to happen.
You're so right. I (a grown man) spend a few hours a day chasing Epic Loot on my imaginary Night Elf. Other guys (and girls) I know spend a ton of time actually playing the kids game the guy in your example is crying over. I venture to guess that almost no one doesn't have some sort of time waster they spend more time then they should on to no real benefit. Personally I think Farmville is boring as Hell, but I know perfectly well that plenty of people think that about WoW. Whatcha gonna do?
Slashdot Mirror
It's a poorly written sentence (What? On Slashdot? Never!). It should read more along the lines of:
"This will allow you to use your TV as a display for your phone without a cable. It should also speed up syncs and file transfers to your computer."
Basically it's a data transfer tech. If you route a video signal over it, it'll give you the ability to display what's on your phone on the TV (assuming your TV has a receiver). If you route sync or file data over it, it'll speed up your ability to sync and transfer files (assuming your computer has a receiver and compatible software). Personally I'm more excited about the idea of faster wireless Ethernet. Apparently this is in no way related to the new 802.11 standard though, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.
Nice Internet tough guy. Had the kid been trained the proper response would have been, "You are correct sir, there is no law saying that you have to allow me to search your bag, there is however plenty of law allowing me to prevent from passing the gate unless you comply with theater rules. Feel free to go home, or stand here with your bag." i don't personally like these policies, but threatening some kid's life for doing his job, even in jest, is pure unadulterated asshole. I truly wish I'd been behind you when this happened. It would have amused me greatly to call 9-1-1 and explain that there was a police officer here carrying a concealed weapon in a public place (which I bet had signs telling you not to do this if you live in a state where such things are required), and threatening people with it.
It depends on how you define "right". They cannot force you to hand over your bag, but they can (and will) tell you that *unless* you hand over your bag you cannot watch the movie. They also don't owe you a refund most likely, since they warned you ahead of time. It's like most stuff, The airport can't force you submit to a search either. They don't have a warrant. They can however tell you that you're not passing the checkpoint or getting on the plane till you submit. Since that is presumably the reason you came to the airport (Just as watching a movie is presumably the reason you went to the theater) , chances are high that you'll go along.
Personally I think it would be great gun to carry a big man-purse into the theater, loaded down with all sorts of embarrassing (but perfectly legal and not against theater rules) things (sex toys, porn, maybe some bondage gear). Then make a big huge embarrassing deal about while the kid searched the bag. Sadly you'd just be torturing some poor kid doing his job, not really accomplishing anything.
The opinions of "oafs" are material to official policy when "oafs" are the instruments of the policy. If your TSA screener believes that all terrorist are Arabs, then what the official policy is becomes irrelevant to what is happening on the ground. The implementation of policy becomes racist even if the policy itself is not. This results in a two pronged failure. First, he is going to be overly mistrustful of Arab passengers, which will result in more of them being searched or otherwise inconvenienced. Second he is going to be overly trustful of non-Arabs which could result in a higher probability of a non-Arab terrorist getting through.
Worse this is extremely difficult to detect and even harder to prove. He's not a blatant racist. He doesn't *hate* Arabs, he simply believes that as a people they are less trustworthy than others. He may even have Arab friends. It's a subtle enough prejudice that it's quite possible he could personally like his coworker Ali, while still thinking people who look like Ali are generally less trustworthy than others.
It's entirely possible for a non-racist policy to be implemented in a racist way. Look at the literacy tests that were used to disenfranchise black voters in the South for decades. On the face of it there is nothing racist. You must be able to pass a reading test to vote. In practice those who wrote the law knew that blacks were much more likely to be illiterate than whites; and those who enforced the law implemented fixes into the system to further handicap potential black voters.
No one is saying the app is illegal, they're saying that it violates Google's Terms of Use for their app store. First, it doesn't conform to their design guidelines. It doesn't have a proper icon, can't be uninstalled via the normal method, and its settings aren't controlled via the normal interface. Second, while there are possible non-illegal uses (installing on a child's phone, while creepy and weird in my opinion is probably legal, or you could just want a way to forward your own text messages), it's primary advertised use *is* illegal. "Checking up on your lover" in this way, in addition to showing a tremendous lack of trust and being creepy, is a violation of federal wire tapping statues.
In your example, you're right, it's not illegal to sell bugs. On the other hand, most reputable retailers don't sell them. We don't blame Walmart or Best Buy for not selling electronic surveillance equipment. Why should we blame Google for not selling this?
When you talk to a customer service rep on the phone, don't you get a warning that your conversation is being recorded and/or monitored? E-mail is a bit different. By its very nature it's always recorded and most people are aware of this. Even then a lot of companies put e-mail disclaimers in every message to protect themselves. I personally suspect, though I don't know, that SMS would be considered more like telephone conversation than e-mail by the courts. While technologically SMS is more similar to e-mail, socially it's more similar to a phone call. People believe that the only thing between them and the other end is ma bell. There's an expectation of privacy that doesn't exist in e-mail.
I am talking about the practical application of "anti-terrorism" in a day to day way by the average American or Western European. You are talking about the theoretical basis behind the idea of "anti-terrorism". If you went to 1000 average Americans right now, and asked them to describe a "terrorist" I am willing to bet some change that 7/10, at least, would describe an Arab, or some proximity of what they think an Arab looks like. Yes, if you interviewed 1000 FBI counter terrorism experts you'd get a different answer. That's good, but it doesn't really solve the problem. Most of our front line anti-terrorism people are just average Joes: Beat cops, TSA inspectors, and enlisted soldiers.
There is no inherent racism in the idea of counter terrorism. There *is* inherent racism in how we currently *do* counter terrorism.
I'd also argue with your assertion that religion motivates most of the terrorism in the world right now. At least in a direct way. Last I heard ecoterrorism and politically motivated terrorism were still quite common. There's a level of mixed metaphor in a lot of political terrorism, so it can be somewhat hard to make a case either way. People's religion often inform their politics and vice versa. McVeigh's motivations were political, but his extremely right wing Christianity influenced his political views.
That depends on jurisdiction. I seem to recall that German courts recently ruled just he opposite. Having said that, even in such a case the employer is generally required, by law to inform both you (the employee) and the person you are communicating with that that they are being monitored. This app is designed to be hidden and unobtrusive. Unless you know what you're looking for you'll never find it. The person you're communicating with certainly won't know, unless you've first found the app and told them about it, that their communications to you are being monitored.
For the type of application you're talking about to legal, it would have to let the recipient of each message know that their responses are being monitored, and the employee in question would have to know about the app.
I think you're confusing "tucked neatly away" with "hidden". "Tucked neatly away" is often considered good. An app falls into that category if i don't really have to mess with it and it just automatically does what I ask it to. "Hidden" at least in this context, means "I can't get to it through any normal means".
Let's use Windows as an example. An app might be nicely tucked away. It's visible in the file system if I go to "Program Files" and look for it, it's listed in the "Add/Remove Programs" dialog, and maybe it has a little System Tray icon. Driver control panels are a good example of this. There's no big honkin' icon or start menu entry, but any reasonably knowledgeable user can change it if they need to, or uninstall it if they want to.
"Hidden" would be: It has no "Program Files" directory. Maybe it hides itself in a hidden file in the users home directory, or even in another application's directory. It doesn't show up in "Add/Remove Programs". It doesn't have a System Tray icon to let you know it's running. You would have to go out of your way to find out you even had this application installed. Look at the process list (and know which processes on it were supposed to be there). Look in the Registry. Know it's there and know where to look.
Another way to look at it. A text editor and a keylogger do essentially the same thing. The capture key strokes and save them to a file. One does so because the user would like to save what they are typing. One hides and does it secretly so that another user, or someone not a user at all, wants to see what the user is typing.
There is an implicit amount of racism in much of what we call anti-terrorism though. Not to say we should just ignore the threat, but most anti-terrorism as practiced and understood by average people, is focused on one group. Arabs. Well, realistically, anyone who vaguely looks to the average person as though they might be from the Middle East (Including Sikhs, Indians (Asian, or in the most obtuse cases, even American), Kurds, Persians (not the cats), or any various mulattoes whose features happen to include dark brown skin).
Conceptually, there's nothing wrong with anti-terrorism. Practically there's a lot wrong with how we do it.
And, as much of a pain in the butt as it is, we don't let ourselves "be sick". Sometimes letting the body fight off a cold, or small virus is better than trying to beat it. It helps our immune system "buck up" and keep us healthy the next time a little invader hits us.
Then:
I see it daily...people walk in, do their business, and walk out. H*ll, didn't your momma tell you to wash up after you do your business?
Given your theory that more exposure to minor pathogens let's your immune system exercise and get buff, shouldn't you *not* wash your hands? I mean, you're not likely to get HIV from touching your own willy. The worst you're likely to find down there is some minor stomach bug. Seems to me, given the rest of your rant, that we should just calk this one up to "more exposure to minor pathogens" and call it a day.
It's impossible. You'll start breathing again once you pass out. You could use artificial means to prevent that perhaps, but you wouldn't really be "holding your breath" at that point.
Probably a little of both. realistically I think that a "staggered" system of testing and approval would make a lot of sense. Rate patients on a 1-5 scale of:
1) You gonna die: The disease you is invariably fatal, or has reached a phase where the chance of stopping it is remote at best. If these people want to make themselves human experimental subjects on the off chance something works, let them. Nothing is likely to make matters worse at any rate. Drugs for diseases in this category require the least testing and you sign waivers before using most of them.
2) You're quite likely to die, but there's stuff we can try: Similar to one, but includes diseased with 10-20% survival rates. Drug for diseases in this category can be rushed to market, but require some additional testing. These people's chances still aren't good though, so if they want to take chances with risky treatment, it's probably not hurting much. Waivers again required for the more cutting edge treatments.
3) The disease you have is often fatal, but we have lots of treatments options: These people have the various cancers, heart, and nerve related diseases that the bulk of medical research is focused on. There's a number of main line treatments for what they have, but these treatments aren't 100%. New drugs in this field should undergo the normal level of rigorous testing that we expect. The testing should be sped up as much as possible, but it should be done. Of course people in this category (if not cured or stabilized) often move into category 2 or 1. When this happens they can reevaluate their options. Letting someone die of an untested treatment for a disease which has tested treatments would be tragedy.
4) The disease you have is potentially fatal, but very rarely is for normal people, or is debilitating but not fatal: Things like severe Flu, or Pneumonia would fit the first criteria, things like MS or Parkinson's the second. These are the drugs that should get the testing process that we typically see now. They're important. People die of them or have their lives permanently damaged by them, but in relative terms they don't kill very many people, or they are controllable to one degree or another by existing medication.
5) You have an annoying disease: The common cold is definitely in this batch. These drugs should have the lowest testing priority. There should be controls in place to make sure that they aren't totally forgotten about, but if it takes an extra year or two, who cares? There should also be more thorough testing of these drugs. It would be pretty annoying to take something for your extremely non-fatal cold and wind up dying of it.
Two points (neither of which help you much sadly):
1) Some people just have problems with polarity based stereo. It's unfortunate, but true. Hopefully for the sake of you and people like you 2D versions won't ever go completely away. On the other hand I love stereo when it's done well (I agree with OP pretty much completely), and would hate to have it go away before people really learn how to use it. If done well it's great (IMO), we just need to get to the point where it's done well most of the time.
2) The attempt to bring Coraline's big screen stereo to the DVD was an utter failure. It had beautiful 3D in the theater. I never watch the 3D side of my DVD though.
The big problem is all the movies that the 3D is tacked onto as an afterthought. Avatar's 3D was awesome. It was an organic integrated part of the film. I understand that a lot of people didn't like the movie all that much (the plot was a bit heavy handed to say the least), but the 3D was seamless and perfectly integrated. That's mostly because Cameron made a 3D movie from the ground up and avoided gimmicky shots. Avatar's 3D was integrated to the point of being almost unnoticeable in conscious way, while at the same time contributing to the experience. On the other hand, most of the 3D movies I've seen have been crap. The 3D varied from "contributes nothing" to "actively detracts from the experience".
In a perfect world, I'd like to see 3D used as a tool. When a director feels that it will contribute, and is willing to put in the effort to do it right, it should be there for him. When the director doesn't want to use it, that's fine too.
Meh, be careful what you state. There are lots of things you can calculate that you only think you can calculate accurately. If most of this stuff was accurately calculable, we wouldn't have things like stock market crashes. The industry has very, very smart mathematicians working to accurately predict market behaviors. Quite often they get it right. Reasonably often they get it wrong. Occasionally they get it disastrously wrong.
In theory anything can be calculated. In practice limitations in formulae, computational power, and known variables make calculating many things not much more accurate than guessing.
There's that guy sure. But the opposite side of the coin is me. If you'd made me choose at that age, I'd never have kept going in math. I *failed* Algebra I in eighth grade. It just wouldn't click. I tried, really hard in fact, but I couldn't understand the concepts. Then I took it again and it did click, and everything after it clicked too. I have no trouble with abstract mathematical concepts and got through a couple years of calculus just fine.
What happened? Well, one answer is biology. Supposedly people's capability for higher cognition jumps in the early teenage years. Happens to different people at different times. Apparently it happened to me a bit later than my course load dictated it should have.
There's a *lot* of biology going on in a young teenager. Capabilities are changing, growing, even making first appearances in early to mid adolescence. Beyond that, kids that age almost universally have a confidence problem, and tend to this that anything they aren't *awesome* at, they're *bad* at. All in all, it's a pretty terrible time for people to making decisions like the ones we're talking about.
The author's point, however is valid. We spend a large amount of time and money teaching people a lot of crap that most of them will never use. I'd venture a guess that less then 10% of the population needs any advanced math at all. The number may be higher, but I doubt it. Given that something on the order of 25-30% of the population of the US has an undergraduate degree, and of those 25-30% only the smaller number with a degree in science, math, engineering or an "applied science" like medical people, ever use any advanced math at all. For the vast majority of the rest, a few courses in basic statistics would probably be all the math they ever need beyond arithmetic.
The problem is that we don't *know* in 7th or 8th grade who is likely to need more math 5 or 6 years down the line. Most kids, if you tell them in 7th grade that they can stop taking math, they're going to. Then they hit junior or senior year of high school, realize they want to be an engineer, and they have none of the needed mathematical background. Basically we teach 4-5 years of advanced math to every student in the country, so that the 10-15% if them who will actually need it, have it. It's wasteful as Hell, but I can't think of a better way to do it without forcing life altering career choices on 13-14 year olds.
You know, sometimes people like to eat and talk with *gasp* other people while they listen to music that doesn't happen to be whatever the restaurant is piping in. Not to say that this idea doesn't have holes; I agree with several people that say it should use 3.5mm connectors so that it's not limited to iDevices (I use an iPhone, but really, why limit yourself to such a small subset of people when it would be trivial to expand the idea). Your objection just doesn't make sense though. Of course if you're sitting by yourself you can use headphones, but I doubt that's the intended use case here.
I dunno. I was around the IT world at the time. It was certainly the case that IE was *the* standard corporate web browser at the time, but even then I recall reading a lot of articles about why writing apps that depended on a lot of these proprietary browser extensions was a bad idea. Precisely for most of the reasons it turns out to have been a bad idea.
People said "Sure it's the standard now, but what about ten years from now... After all Netscape was the standard five years ago."
People said "Even if IE stays the standard how do we know that Microsoft will continue to support all these particular extensions. They seem to still be trying to figure out their strategy in this market."
People said "All these extensions in the browser seem to be asking for security and stability problems."
Meanwhile companies blithely bought (or wrote) tons of these applications. It *never* really seemed like a good idea, except from the point of view that it was dead easy, and thus dead cheap, to do. Well, lots of companies did the dead easy, dead cheap, thing; and like most dead cheap options they got what they paid for. They're highly reliant on an insecure, unstable browser than is no longer the standard and only minimally support by Microsoft (who are going to drop even the "minimal" part soon).
Companies dug their own graves, and now try to blame Microsoft. Microsoft certain deserves part of the blame, they wrote the stupid thing after all, but to be fair to them it's not like they woke up one morning last week and decided to drop support. They said *years* ago that IE6 was a mistake, and that they couldn't keep supporting all the proprietary extensions. If It managers had read the writing on the wall then, they could have long since weaned their companies off of these apps with minimal quarterly impacts (or at the very least be well along on the process). Of course that would mean admitting they made a mistake in the first place.
It was a turn of phrase. I understand that Moore's Law is a continuous progression in theory, but in practice it results in released processors that progress incrementally. The processor I buy today doesn't have .021% more transistors than the processor I bought last week. Intel releases a processor than has incrementally more transistors than the last one. Could you be any more friggen literal minded?
A couple thoughts on this:
1) As sibling mentions, a lot of portables can now control the functions of various media software as a "remote control". Apple produces an iDevice app that is awesome for controlling iTunes. In the most extreme cases there are even VNC apps for every smart phone I'm aware of. You could literally control the whole HTPC from the OS up from with one of these devices rather than just use it as a "remote".
2) IR blaster cables are extremely small , flexible, and can be quite long. It's much easier to remote out the IR blaster if you don't have to run HDMI cable back to the TV as well.
3) If these devices become common I could easily see them being bundled with a WiFi remote control that essentially performs like a portable running a remote app, except special purpose to do only that. Write a daemon that listens for the remote "signal" (really a network connection) and pipes that to your media software just like a conventional IR receiver software would.
Realistically in my mind I see this as being more awesome for being able to easily pipe my laptop to the TV, but that's mostly because I've never really gotten into the whole HTPC thing. For people in the HTPC crowd, remote controlling seems like a pretty trivial problem to solve once you can cut the HDMI cable.
C is portable, a given piece of C code is not necessarily. I guarantee that if I write a program of any complexity in C on Windows, and don't make specific efforts, that program will not compile on Linux or MacOS. You're continuing to ignore the point. Yes, you can write stuff in C and port it to any platform. No one is denying that. The point is that it costs extra money to port it, when you could just write it in Java and have it work on all those platforms. This is a significant cost savings for multi-platform apps.
There are a great number of applications (and the number grows every time Moore's Laws increments) that simply don't need more performance. The person behind the keys simply doesn't care that his/her accounts receivable application *could* have responded in .0005 seconds had it been natively compiled but instead responds in .001 seconds because it runs through an interpreter. Faster than human thought is faster than human thought.
For lots of things performance remains important. For those things, people will keep using compiled languages and dealing with the headaches of porting. For everything else, Java is fine, and a huge cost saver in a lot of cases.
C isn't portable. If I write something in Java it will probably (for a very high value of "probably" too) work on any of a dozen platforms. If I write something in C I have to port it. Porting it costs programmer time and we've already established that programmer time is more costly than machine time. In theory C could be made to be somewhat portable (It would still have to be compiled on every platform and the binaries distributed separately), but in practice this would require a lot of OS vendors that hate each other to standardize a lot of APIs. It's probably not going to happen.
You're so right. I (a grown man) spend a few hours a day chasing Epic Loot on my imaginary Night Elf. Other guys (and girls) I know spend a ton of time actually playing the kids game the guy in your example is crying over. I venture to guess that almost no one doesn't have some sort of time waster they spend more time then they should on to no real benefit. Personally I think Farmville is boring as Hell, but I know perfectly well that plenty of people think that about WoW. Whatcha gonna do?