The "HR filter" does have a rational idea behind it. The college degree does demonstrate one important thing. That the holder can *finish* a long, sometimes boring and somewhat bureaucratic process. Many people can start a "project", only some of them can finish a "project".
In computer science the university program does offer valuable training. While it is possible to be self taught in these topics very few individuals will actually do so. People who are self taught tend to only study those topic they are interested in. They tend to have obvious gaps in their knowledge compared to the university trained. I only know one self taught person who had the discipline, initiative and ability to read and understand university level textbooks on the full range of topics covered in a university program.
I would agree that some levels of debt seem insane and make it hard to justify the university education but to be honest the problem seems somewhat exaggerated. If one goes to a state university and works part time when class is in session and full time in the summer one can still graduate debt free or with minimal debt. IIRC the average tuition+boarding cost for a 4-year school is US$13K per year. Even without working at all the debt would be about half what you cite.
A cloud provider going away is very much like a hard drive failing.
Except we are told that it's considerably less likely because operating a reliable service is their core business and hence should be something they're very good at.
Hard drive manufacturers have offering a reliable device as their core business and they should be good at it too.:-)
I get your point but I am discussing the result of an event not the likelihood of an event. Also consider the event spurring this discussion, the gov't takedown of a service provider. That is an external event that does not reflect upon the provider's reliability.
Then there is the inevitable fact that not all service providers are equal. There will be, or are, discount providers that will provide less reliability at a lower price. Much like hard drive manufacturers offer consumer grade products at a lower price than server grade products. Much like web hosts offer budget solutions where the user does patches and other maintenance and full service solutions where the provider takes care of patches and other maintenance.
Qualifying on the range is one thing, real life situations are something entirely different.
"New York City police statistics show that simply hitting a target, let alone hitting it in a specific spot, is a difficult challenge. In 2006, in cases where police officers intentionally fired a gun at a person, they discharged 364 bullets and hit their target 103 times, for a hit rate of 28.3 percent... a 43 percent accuracy rate when the target ranged from zero to six feet away."
"In Los Angeles, where there are far fewer shots discharged, the police fired 67 times in 2006 and had 27 hits, a 40 percent hit rate..."
There is nothing magic about the "Cloud". From a practical perspective it is little more than a remote hard drive. A cloud provider going away is very much like a hard drive failing.
There's another catch, which also applies to other fields, not just my personal niche: It's nice that I can add 3D models, videos and all. But creating these kinds of objects takes a lot of time. Time that expert authors don't have.
Your thinking seems antiquated, from many decades past. Textbooks are no longer just text with graphics so simple that the typical author could manage it. Art, graphics and accompanying software often comes from others. I was once part of a team that did the software accompanying a chemistry textbook, we also did some of the videos demonstrating various concepts. Our work would have fit in quite well with this Apple initiative.
I agree that the TSA is out of control but I can't imagine any sane person thinks preventing guns on plans is a bad thing. Guns are for hunting - who are you hunting on a plane?
Guns are also for target shooting. Putting holes in pieces of paper, knocking over metal plates, breaking pieces of clay, etc. Its an olympic sport. Of course your larger point is still entirely correct, none of these sporting activities are appropriate in flight entertainment.
Indeed. Scanning for knives from 80 feet (unless the circus is in town) is useful. For guns, you might as well be close.
Contrary to what you see on TV and in movies a person 80 feet away is hard to hit with a handgun, especially the more compact and concealable models. It requires training and periodic practice, its a perishable skill. Even police officers who don't go to the range often enough have problems. Now add stressful circumstances.
They're not talking about scanning random people on the street and taking their guns. They're talking about scanning arrestees instead of frisking them. If you're getting frisked, we're no longer talking about "law abiding citizens".
You are mistaken, at least with respect to California. Law abiding citizens can be frisked. If a police office wants to *interview* you on the street he has the right to search you for weapons. Now there needs to be justification for the interview but the threshold is far lower than that for an arrest. Your car may be similar to a suspect's, your clothes may be similar, your physical characteristics may be similar, etc.
He was being sarcastic. The sticker says something like "returned product" and displays a modestly lowered price. The interpretation by customers is often "do not buy".
Google, IBM, eBay, BBC, etc, etc - a very long list of small enterprises who make money on the back of GPL (greater and lesser version) that you've probably never heard of, and can be excused for not being able to research.
Actually the problem is that you have missed the context of this discussion. Since we are discussing software that is being *distributed*, in-house undistributed software is an irrelevant tangent. Whatever Google is doing in-house is irrelevant to the issues that NASA faces in distributing this software.
The NASA terms require the contributor to identify themselves as the creator, i.e. the copyright holder, and to also submit a change log. This statement and the log are the paper trail. Note that the NASA terms also define the rights to use, modify and redistribute. If you just grab someone else's code you are a licensee not a copyright holder and do not have the authority to agree with NASA's terms. Only the copyright holder can agree to NASA's terms.
The issue is that a license like the GPL is discriminatory to certain business models, namely those that keep source code changes private.
Huh, the GPL doesn't forbid you from keeping changes private. It forbids you from distributing changes without source. If you don't distribute, there is no problem.
And there is no business model so your point is not on topic.;-)
Furtheremore, Whatever, GPL isn't the only free license. Use a BSD-style license or any other license without copyleft.
Agreed.
I still don't understand how an agency of the US government can claim copyright, though. Usually what happens is that the government subcontracts to individuals and are then bound by the copyright claims of those individuals. How is NASA getting away with this?
The contracts established between NASA and the individuals or subcontractors could include some sort of "work for hire" type clause where copyright is assigned to NASA? Much like the Regents of the University of California held the copyright on all the code written by professors and students back in the day.
The problem is that the wording in the NASA license insists that the work must be your "original creation". You seem to not address the problem of how this wording seems to not allow you to grab someone else's code and combine it with NASA's to create a new work.
On the contrary, the following quote from my post precisely addresses grabbing someone else's code:
"NASA has a clear paper trail and a clear assignment of the right to use, modify and distribute from the copyright holder."
By ensuring the contributor is the copyright holder various problems and unintended consequences can be avoided.
It's not that hard. Use an existing license. Stop inventing your own licenses that conflict with truly free collaboration.
Use an existing license. Stop inventing your own licenses that conflict with truly free collaboration.
The issue is that a license like the GPL is discriminatory to certain business models, namely those that keep source code changes private. The problem is that such discriminatory terms are inappropriate in a taxpayer funded project. Taxpayers who chose to make derived works and keep the changes private should be allowed to do so.
If you fund a project yourself you have every right to make that project GPL based. However if you seek taxpayer funding you have to be fair and accommodating to all taxpayers, even those you disagree with.
And why does NASA release software under a non-free license?
GNU's specific complaint: "The NASA Open Source Agreement, version 1.3, is not a free software license because it includes a provision requiring changes to be your “original creation”. Free software development depends on combining code from third parties, and the NASA license doesn't permit this."
NASA's actual terms: "Each Contributor represents that that its Modification is believed
to be Contributor's original creation and does not violate any
existing agreements, regulations, statutes or rules, and further that
Contributor has sufficient rights to grant the rights conveyed by this
Agreement."
The GNU complaint seems somewhat bogus. By claiming to be the creator, i.e. the copyright holder, and providing the mandatory change logs there is an audit history. NASA has a clear paper trail and a clear assignment of the right to use, modify and distribute from the copyright holder. The Linux kernel being locked into GPL v2 seems to suggest that NASA has thought this through more than the GNU folks did, or perhaps learned from the mistakes of the GNU folks.
"Scientists" don't always follow science either. With respect to religion the pro- and anti- camps have both let personal biases interfere with the scientific process. For example leading scientists of the day dismissed the big bang theory because it "smelled like creationism". These eminent scientists were biased because the big bang theory was introduced by catholic priest.
And yet it's accepted by almost every scientist today.
And various Christian churches accept the Copernican model (the sun, not the earth, is the center of the solar system), that the earth is billions of years old, etc. Scientists are not the only ones able to change their view based upon scientific study and observation.
That's what makes science difference from other "ways of knowing" - evidence always wins the argument in the end.
I believe the catholic church has explicitly stated that scientific observations are not in conflict in faith, including those observations related to evolution. Also the scientific "way of knowing" - observe, hypothesize, predict, test - was largely established in the west by members of the clergy in the middle ages.
It is a myth to believe that science and the scientific process are inherently in conflict with christianity.
This is just an example why you can't really 'argue' with a creationist. Anything you come up with, they can make a magic-fairy-dust argument that it's because God wanted it that way. It isn't science.
"Scientists" don't always follow science either. With respect to religion the pro- and anti- camps have both let personal biases interfere with the scientific process. For example leading scientists of the day dismissed the big bang theory because it "smelled like creationism". These eminent scientists were biased because the big bang theory was introduced by catholic priest.
"Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître ( lemaitre.ogg (helpinfo) 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain. He was the first person to propose the theory of the expansion of the Universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble. He was also the first to derive what is now known as the Hubble's law and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant which he published in 1927, two years before Hubble's article. Lemaître also proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, which he called his 'hypothesis of the primeval atom'." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaitre.
The NASA video shows them bringing whole hab in on 3 semi-trailers -
Why not airdrop the major components in, and see if putting the thing up while encumbered with a suit is feasible.
Testing is done in stages. First see if we have the concepts and solution correct with basic equipment. Then figure out how to ruggedize the equipment. If the concept was flawed or the basic equipment lacking then ruggedizing would be a waste of time and money.
There seems to be a misunderstanding and exaggeration due to what can happen when entering the US and undergoing a customs inspection. Customs can look at the files, they have the authority to search for contraband, just as they do when they open packages and other sealed/closed items. However this is a very special circumstance involving crossing the US border. These intrusive type of searches can not happen once inside the US without a warrant.
According to federal law, the border is 100 miles thick. No part of Boston is "inside the US" as you seem to think. Two thirds of Americans live within the border, and the constitution does not apply.
Perhaps for checking a car or truck for drugs or people that crossed the border illegally but checking files on a laptop or phone is something entirely different.
I disagree. Although the younger crowd might stomp on the gas at every light, the adult crowd tends to outgrow such things
I wouldn't put so much weight on driver's age. When 16 and borrowing my grandfather's big and underpowered car I did not punch it, it was a futile thing to do. When my grandfather took a grandkid's overpowered car for a ride he punched it with a smile. I believe driving style is more a result of opportunity than age.
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The "HR filter" does have a rational idea behind it. The college degree does demonstrate one important thing. That the holder can *finish* a long, sometimes boring and somewhat bureaucratic process. Many people can start a "project", only some of them can finish a "project".
In computer science the university program does offer valuable training. While it is possible to be self taught in these topics very few individuals will actually do so. People who are self taught tend to only study those topic they are interested in. They tend to have obvious gaps in their knowledge compared to the university trained. I only know one self taught person who had the discipline, initiative and ability to read and understand university level textbooks on the full range of topics covered in a university program.
I would agree that some levels of debt seem insane and make it hard to justify the university education but to be honest the problem seems somewhat exaggerated. If one goes to a state university and works part time when class is in session and full time in the summer one can still graduate debt free or with minimal debt. IIRC the average tuition+boarding cost for a 4-year school is US$13K per year. Even without working at all the debt would be about half what you cite.
There is a high incident in aviation too.
I would expect auto and construction too. Basically any industry that requires high quality components for safety and/or durability.
A cloud provider going away is very much like a hard drive failing.
Except we are told that it's considerably less likely because operating a reliable service is their core business and hence should be something they're very good at.
Hard drive manufacturers have offering a reliable device as their core business and they should be good at it too. :-)
I get your point but I am discussing the result of an event not the likelihood of an event. Also consider the event spurring this discussion, the gov't takedown of a service provider. That is an external event that does not reflect upon the provider's reliability.
Then there is the inevitable fact that not all service providers are equal. There will be, or are, discount providers that will provide less reliability at a lower price. Much like hard drive manufacturers offer consumer grade products at a lower price than server grade products. Much like web hosts offer budget solutions where the user does patches and other maintenance and full service solutions where the provider takes care of patches and other maintenance.
Qualifying on the range is one thing, real life situations are something entirely different.
... a 43 percent accuracy rate when the target ranged from zero to six feet away."
..."
"New York City police statistics show that simply hitting a target, let alone hitting it in a specific spot, is a difficult challenge. In 2006, in cases where police officers intentionally fired a gun at a person, they discharged 364 bullets and hit their target 103 times, for a hit rate of 28.3 percent
"In Los Angeles, where there are far fewer shots discharged, the police fired 67 times in 2006 and had 27 hits, a 40 percent hit rate
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/weekinreview/09baker.html?pagewanted=all
There is nothing magic about the "Cloud". From a practical perspective it is little more than a remote hard drive. A cloud provider going away is very much like a hard drive failing.
80 ft is ~26 yards, well within the effective range of most handheld firearms.
Of course, but I'm not discussing the gun's capabilities. I'm discussing the user's capabilities.
There's another catch, which also applies to other fields, not just my personal niche: It's nice that I can add 3D models, videos and all. But creating these kinds of objects takes a lot of time. Time that expert authors don't have.
Your thinking seems antiquated, from many decades past. Textbooks are no longer just text with graphics so simple that the typical author could manage it. Art, graphics and accompanying software often comes from others. I was once part of a team that did the software accompanying a chemistry textbook, we also did some of the videos demonstrating various concepts. Our work would have fit in quite well with this Apple initiative.
I agree that the TSA is out of control but I can't imagine any sane person thinks preventing guns on plans is a bad thing. Guns are for hunting - who are you hunting on a plane?
Guns are also for target shooting. Putting holes in pieces of paper, knocking over metal plates, breaking pieces of clay, etc. Its an olympic sport. Of course your larger point is still entirely correct, none of these sporting activities are appropriate in flight entertainment.
Indeed. Scanning for knives from 80 feet (unless the circus is in town) is useful. For guns, you might as well be close.
Contrary to what you see on TV and in movies a person 80 feet away is hard to hit with a handgun, especially the more compact and concealable models. It requires training and periodic practice, its a perishable skill. Even police officers who don't go to the range often enough have problems. Now add stressful circumstances.
They're not talking about scanning random people on the street and taking their guns. They're talking about scanning arrestees instead of frisking them. If you're getting frisked, we're no longer talking about "law abiding citizens".
You are mistaken, at least with respect to California. Law abiding citizens can be frisked. If a police office wants to *interview* you on the street he has the right to search you for weapons. Now there needs to be justification for the interview but the threshold is far lower than that for an arrest. Your car may be similar to a suspect's, your clothes may be similar, your physical characteristics may be similar, etc.
He was being sarcastic. The sticker says something like "returned product" and displays a modestly lowered price. The interpretation by customers is often "do not buy".
Google, IBM, eBay, BBC, etc, etc - a very long list of small enterprises who make money on the back of GPL (greater and lesser version) that you've probably never heard of, and can be excused for not being able to research.
Actually the problem is that you have missed the context of this discussion. Since we are discussing software that is being *distributed*, in-house undistributed software is an irrelevant tangent. Whatever Google is doing in-house is irrelevant to the issues that NASA faces in distributing this software.
I don't see Corning Corporation on the list, which puzzles me. I thought that Apple uses Gorilla Glass in a bunch of their products?
If so Corning may license the process to another manufacturer and not do the manufacturing themselves.
Wait, are you telling me we can download planes now? Sweet! Yes, RIAA, I totally would download a plane.
But would you fly in it? :-)
... It's part of many organisations' business models ...
But not the business models I was referring to. I wrote "certain business models", not "all business models".
The NASA terms require the contributor to identify themselves as the creator, i.e. the copyright holder, and to also submit a change log. This statement and the log are the paper trail. Note that the NASA terms also define the rights to use, modify and redistribute. If you just grab someone else's code you are a licensee not a copyright holder and do not have the authority to agree with NASA's terms. Only the copyright holder can agree to NASA's terms.
The issue is that a license like the GPL is discriminatory to certain business models, namely those that keep source code changes private.
Huh, the GPL doesn't forbid you from keeping changes private. It forbids you from distributing changes without source. If you don't distribute, there is no problem.
And there is no business model so your point is not on topic. ;-)
Furtheremore, Whatever, GPL isn't the only free license. Use a BSD-style license or any other license without copyleft.
Agreed.
I still don't understand how an agency of the US government can claim copyright, though. Usually what happens is that the government subcontracts to individuals and are then bound by the copyright claims of those individuals. How is NASA getting away with this?
The contracts established between NASA and the individuals or subcontractors could include some sort of "work for hire" type clause where copyright is assigned to NASA? Much like the Regents of the University of California held the copyright on all the code written by professors and students back in the day.
The problem is that the wording in the NASA license insists that the work must be your "original creation". You seem to not address the problem of how this wording seems to not allow you to grab someone else's code and combine it with NASA's to create a new work.
On the contrary, the following quote from my post precisely addresses grabbing someone else's code:
"NASA has a clear paper trail and a clear assignment of the right to use, modify and distribute from the copyright holder."
By ensuring the contributor is the copyright holder various problems and unintended consequences can be avoided.
Why does NASA, a government agency, claim copyright on software?
And why does NASA release software under a non-free license?
It's not that hard. Use an existing license. Stop inventing your own licenses that conflict with truly free collaboration.
Use an existing license. Stop inventing your own licenses that conflict with truly free collaboration.
The issue is that a license like the GPL is discriminatory to certain business models, namely those that keep source code changes private. The problem is that such discriminatory terms are inappropriate in a taxpayer funded project. Taxpayers who chose to make derived works and keep the changes private should be allowed to do so.
If you fund a project yourself you have every right to make that project GPL based. However if you seek taxpayer funding you have to be fair and accommodating to all taxpayers, even those you disagree with.
And why does NASA release software under a non-free license?
GNU's specific complaint: "The NASA Open Source Agreement, version 1.3, is not a free software license because it includes a provision requiring changes to be your “original creation”. Free software development depends on combining code from third parties, and the NASA license doesn't permit this."
NASA's actual terms: "Each Contributor represents that that its Modification is believed to be Contributor's original creation and does not violate any existing agreements, regulations, statutes or rules, and further that Contributor has sufficient rights to grant the rights conveyed by this Agreement."
The GNU complaint seems somewhat bogus. By claiming to be the creator, i.e. the copyright holder, and providing the mandatory change logs there is an audit history. NASA has a clear paper trail and a clear assignment of the right to use, modify and distribute from the copyright holder. The Linux kernel being locked into GPL v2 seems to suggest that NASA has thought this through more than the GNU folks did, or perhaps learned from the mistakes of the GNU folks.
"Scientists" don't always follow science either. With respect to religion the pro- and anti- camps have both let personal biases interfere with the scientific process. For example leading scientists of the day dismissed the big bang theory because it "smelled like creationism". These eminent scientists were biased because the big bang theory was introduced by catholic priest.
And yet it's accepted by almost every scientist today.
And various Christian churches accept the Copernican model (the sun, not the earth, is the center of the solar system), that the earth is billions of years old, etc. Scientists are not the only ones able to change their view based upon scientific study and observation.
That's what makes science difference from other "ways of knowing" - evidence always wins the argument in the end.
I believe the catholic church has explicitly stated that scientific observations are not in conflict in faith, including those observations related to evolution. Also the scientific "way of knowing" - observe, hypothesize, predict, test - was largely established in the west by members of the clergy in the middle ages.
It is a myth to believe that science and the scientific process are inherently in conflict with christianity.
This is just an example why you can't really 'argue' with a creationist. Anything you come up with, they can make a magic-fairy-dust argument that it's because God wanted it that way. It isn't science.
"Scientists" don't always follow science either. With respect to religion the pro- and anti- camps have both let personal biases interfere with the scientific process. For example leading scientists of the day dismissed the big bang theory because it "smelled like creationism". These eminent scientists were biased because the big bang theory was introduced by catholic priest.
"Monsignor Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître ( lemaitre.ogg (helpinfo) 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain. He was the first person to propose the theory of the expansion of the Universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble. He was also the first to derive what is now known as the Hubble's law and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant which he published in 1927, two years before Hubble's article. Lemaître also proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, which he called his 'hypothesis of the primeval atom'."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaitre.
The NASA video shows them bringing whole hab in on 3 semi-trailers - Why not airdrop the major components in, and see if putting the thing up while encumbered with a suit is feasible.
Testing is done in stages. First see if we have the concepts and solution correct with basic equipment. Then figure out how to ruggedize the equipment. If the concept was flawed or the basic equipment lacking then ruggedizing would be a waste of time and money.
There seems to be a misunderstanding and exaggeration due to what can happen when entering the US and undergoing a customs inspection. Customs can look at the files, they have the authority to search for contraband, just as they do when they open packages and other sealed/closed items. However this is a very special circumstance involving crossing the US border. These intrusive type of searches can not happen once inside the US without a warrant.
According to federal law, the border is 100 miles thick. No part of Boston is "inside the US" as you seem to think. Two thirds of Americans live within the border, and the constitution does not apply.
Perhaps for checking a car or truck for drugs or people that crossed the border illegally but checking files on a laptop or phone is something entirely different.
I disagree. Although the younger crowd might stomp on the gas at every light, the adult crowd tends to outgrow such things
I wouldn't put so much weight on driver's age. When 16 and borrowing my grandfather's big and underpowered car I did not punch it, it was a futile thing to do. When my grandfather took a grandkid's overpowered car for a ride he punched it with a smile. I believe driving style is more a result of opportunity than age.