Addendum: In case it's unclear, I realize that they measure how long the infants observed the pictures in question. That doesn't make the study or it's conclusions useful.
I'm going off of the linked article here. Those articles almost always misrepresent the studies, but I can hardly be expected to dig up primary sources for every link I read on the net.
I don't think that's enough. Can you isolate the experiment from their expectations? Are those scientists subject to preconceived notions shaped by culture and their exposure to similar media? A larger sample doesn't improve your data if your data is already corrupted.
The whole "men are manly men born to hunt" conclusion seems to be just repeating what we've been taught to believe. There's no proof for that, and really no reason to even believe it. It's a blind guess.
Speculation is great except when it's confused with science.
I assume that they picked such young children to avoid the nature vs nurture debate, but this still seems a long way from objective. Aren't we really just reinforcing our own preconceptions with this kind of pseudoscience? It says that the girls "looked" more fearful. It seems foolish to base a scientific study off of some scientist's ability to objectively judge facial expressions in infants. That's not science.
People will use which ever tool is best suited to the job at hand. I don't see how much deeper you can take the discussion than that.
The OP said that sometimes people leave Open Source for things like more features... implying that Open Source regularly has less. If we ignore broken assumptions like that, the equation is pretty simple and obvious: people will use whatever offers them the best tools to do their job. Sometimes that's open source, especially if they have programmers that want to customize their tools, but sometimes what they want isn't available in open source.
Child's play.
I believe the OP was attempting to add some analysis to the article by suggesting that the MS i4i suit might play a role in helping this to break Microsoft's hold on the word processor market and start a new standard format. Or at least a diversity of formats.
I'm not sure what the consequences of this would be at the consumer level. The OP talks about breaking MS's monopoly on word suites, and the largest benefit of that would be moving away from.doc formatting. I think the largest concern I have about Microsoft's dominance of the market is that most people seem to assume that.doc is a standard format, and think that it supports any kind of interoperability. Of course it really doesn't and isn't. As far as I can tell however that's only an issue at the consumer level. Sure my friends, and my boss might send me.doc, but any kind professional publisher expects.rtf formats. Basically anything with any legitimacy at all will call for.rtf, which while still spawned by microsoft is at least a standard format that encourages interoperability. A much bigger win would be OpenOffice suites actually supporting.rtf formats properly, so that legitimate work could be done through them.
"Because it means very little when applied outside of software."
Exactly.
I'm a fan of openness and technology that the user can understand, interact with and generally "own." But calling it open source just muddies the water.
It's also just one more thing that can break, putting computers and printed circuit boards into cars has decreased their lifespan and made them harder to fix. It's just one more thing that can break, one more thing that only the authorized dealer can repair.
If you want people to be safer while driving, ban cellphones and make them take defensive driving classes to renew their license every five years. Gadgets are just one more crutch to rely on while you put on mascara in the rearview mirror.
The broader application of the term Open Source outside of software frustrates me.
Open Source seems to be equated with transparency, public domain, or even ownership.
People have been rebuilding their own cars for years without that being called Open Source, but give it a few more years and someone will hit on the revolutionary idea of Open Source automobiles.
It *is* nice that the idea is gaining some popularity, but I don't think that most people have the slightest idea what it means. Not that I blame them really.
I can't tell if it's just observational bias because I started reading slashdot and got a job in the tech industry... but it sure does seem to be a big buzz word lately.
Then again, most of my "civilian" friends without tech jobs or nerdy habits still have no clue what the hell it means.
That's a very good point.
With that in mind... the best way to deter theft would be to lower the price of the Kindle to a more reasonable number. You're locked into Amazon marketing anyway, so it's kind of like a restaurant charging you for the cutlery.
They don't want to watch you. They just want to increase their profit margin. Killing resale and locking devices can't hurt their profits, can it? Especially if it bricks if you try to tamper with it, or kill its access to the internet.
It's easy to give these devices GPS locators or some kind of backdoor that will allow the owner to disable them.
But that raises the issue of security. If you can disable or find your device you can bet that other people will be able to as well.
Sure you can talk firewalls and secure connections, but the more they try to seal it and make it uncrackable for your protection, the more proprietary and closed the system is going to become.
I don't think Apple, Amazon, or anyone selling software or hardware is particularly concerned about damaging the resale value of their products.
Look at their recent concern about the resale of software by companies like EB Games, DRM, and online distribution.
Companies don't WANT you reselling their products. If I buy a paperback I can lend it to a friend, share it, sell it, or burn it as I desire. Not so with ebooks.
I think that cleaning up a mess sixteen times the size of texas would actually be quite an enormous undertaking, especially if you're trying to do it without causing further damage to the ecosystem its in.
I think that marine biologists are concerned about the amount of sea life they'd destroy in the process. They're concerned that there's a lot of marine life living amidst the garbage, so any kind of heavy handed solution would cause further environmental damage.
That's how I feel about environmentalism. It isn't that we have some moral responsibility to the planet, it's that we're in the process of making the world into an extremely uncomfortable place for ourselves to live in.
The mass production of plastics didn't take off until about the 1950s. What we're looking at is approximately 60 years worth of garbage. The pile they have looked at is approximately twice the size of Texas. If that doesn't seem large now, then it certainly will in another fifty years if we continue to discard plastics at our current rates. I suspect that you'd find that our use of plastic has curved upward sine the 50s, rather than remaining at a constant rate... so I think that hoping for an island only four times the size of texas by 2050 would be optimistic.
Possibly. But that would've been unsubstantiated speculation on my part, and I was trying to stick to observable trends that I felt I knew a little bit about!
Slashdot Mirror
Addendum: In case it's unclear, I realize that they measure how long the infants observed the pictures in question. That doesn't make the study or it's conclusions useful.
I'm going off of the linked article here. Those articles almost always misrepresent the studies, but I can hardly be expected to dig up primary sources for every link I read on the net.
I don't think that's enough. Can you isolate the experiment from their expectations? Are those scientists subject to preconceived notions shaped by culture and their exposure to similar media? A larger sample doesn't improve your data if your data is already corrupted.
The whole "men are manly men born to hunt" conclusion seems to be just repeating what we've been taught to believe. There's no proof for that, and really no reason to even believe it. It's a blind guess. Speculation is great except when it's confused with science.
I assume that they picked such young children to avoid the nature vs nurture debate, but this still seems a long way from objective. Aren't we really just reinforcing our own preconceptions with this kind of pseudoscience? It says that the girls "looked" more fearful. It seems foolish to base a scientific study off of some scientist's ability to objectively judge facial expressions in infants. That's not science.
People will use which ever tool is best suited to the job at hand. I don't see how much deeper you can take the discussion than that. The OP said that sometimes people leave Open Source for things like more features... implying that Open Source regularly has less. If we ignore broken assumptions like that, the equation is pretty simple and obvious: people will use whatever offers them the best tools to do their job. Sometimes that's open source, especially if they have programmers that want to customize their tools, but sometimes what they want isn't available in open source. Child's play.
On the other hand, most professional publishers insist on .rtf format, which is somewhat cross platform.
I believe the OP was attempting to add some analysis to the article by suggesting that the MS i4i suit might play a role in helping this to break Microsoft's hold on the word processor market and start a new standard format. Or at least a diversity of formats.
I'm not sure what the consequences of this would be at the consumer level. The OP talks about breaking MS's monopoly on word suites, and the largest benefit of that would be moving away from .doc formatting. I think the largest concern I have about Microsoft's dominance of the market is that most people seem to assume that .doc is a standard format, and think that it supports any kind of interoperability. Of course it really doesn't and isn't. As far as I can tell however that's only an issue at the consumer level. Sure my friends, and my boss might send me .doc, but any kind professional publisher expects .rtf formats. Basically anything with any legitimacy at all will call for .rtf, which while still spawned by microsoft is at least a standard format that encourages interoperability. A much bigger win would be OpenOffice suites actually supporting .rtf formats properly, so that legitimate work could be done through them.
"Because it means very little when applied outside of software." Exactly. I'm a fan of openness and technology that the user can understand, interact with and generally "own." But calling it open source just muddies the water.
It's also just one more thing that can break, putting computers and printed circuit boards into cars has decreased their lifespan and made them harder to fix. It's just one more thing that can break, one more thing that only the authorized dealer can repair. If you want people to be safer while driving, ban cellphones and make them take defensive driving classes to renew their license every five years. Gadgets are just one more crutch to rely on while you put on mascara in the rearview mirror.
The broader application of the term Open Source outside of software frustrates me. Open Source seems to be equated with transparency, public domain, or even ownership. People have been rebuilding their own cars for years without that being called Open Source, but give it a few more years and someone will hit on the revolutionary idea of Open Source automobiles. It *is* nice that the idea is gaining some popularity, but I don't think that most people have the slightest idea what it means. Not that I blame them really.
I can't tell if it's just observational bias because I started reading slashdot and got a job in the tech industry... but it sure does seem to be a big buzz word lately. Then again, most of my "civilian" friends without tech jobs or nerdy habits still have no clue what the hell it means.
That's a very good point. With that in mind... the best way to deter theft would be to lower the price of the Kindle to a more reasonable number. You're locked into Amazon marketing anyway, so it's kind of like a restaurant charging you for the cutlery.
They don't want to watch you. They just want to increase their profit margin. Killing resale and locking devices can't hurt their profits, can it? Especially if it bricks if you try to tamper with it, or kill its access to the internet.
It's easy to give these devices GPS locators or some kind of backdoor that will allow the owner to disable them. But that raises the issue of security. If you can disable or find your device you can bet that other people will be able to as well. Sure you can talk firewalls and secure connections, but the more they try to seal it and make it uncrackable for your protection, the more proprietary and closed the system is going to become.
"Device Retrieval." This is where Amazon puts on their best, brightest smile and points to their corporate mercenaries.
I don't think Apple, Amazon, or anyone selling software or hardware is particularly concerned about damaging the resale value of their products. Look at their recent concern about the resale of software by companies like EB Games, DRM, and online distribution. Companies don't WANT you reselling their products. If I buy a paperback I can lend it to a friend, share it, sell it, or burn it as I desire. Not so with ebooks.
One of the symptoms is confusion? Maybe SwineFlu really is at pandemic levels. It would certainly explain some of the comment threads here.
I think that cleaning up a mess sixteen times the size of texas would actually be quite an enormous undertaking, especially if you're trying to do it without causing further damage to the ecosystem its in.
I think that marine biologists are concerned about the amount of sea life they'd destroy in the process. They're concerned that there's a lot of marine life living amidst the garbage, so any kind of heavy handed solution would cause further environmental damage.
That's how I feel about environmentalism. It isn't that we have some moral responsibility to the planet, it's that we're in the process of making the world into an extremely uncomfortable place for ourselves to live in.
The mass production of plastics didn't take off until about the 1950s. What we're looking at is approximately 60 years worth of garbage. The pile they have looked at is approximately twice the size of Texas. If that doesn't seem large now, then it certainly will in another fifty years if we continue to discard plastics at our current rates. I suspect that you'd find that our use of plastic has curved upward sine the 50s, rather than remaining at a constant rate... so I think that hoping for an island only four times the size of texas by 2050 would be optimistic.
Possibly. But that would've been unsubstantiated speculation on my part, and I was trying to stick to observable trends that I felt I knew a little bit about!
I'm sure you're right... but my expertise ends around 1600. ;)