Had to look it up - wikipedia has A. H.'s birthday as 4/20/1889. Not close enough for me to conclude that the idiot(s) behind this might have had that reason.
He wants to avoid "democratizing" war, but he is OK with governments doing it - I was also struck by this. Is this typical elitist thinking, or an effort to keep the genie in the bottle? Either way, the elites are thinking about what can happen when technology allows anyone to become their own army. Hey guys, it might be time to consider equality.
They elected the jackass not based on his knowledge at all, but on a number of things: their perception of his values (political and "practical"), his party, media coverage, and more. All that came from images created by the kinds of lies, um, I mean advertisements and commentary, that were disseminated prior to the election.
Then there are more intangible but very important things, like his looks, his name, the degree that the local elections were "crafted" by arranging the polling environment and ability to register, the weather on election day, etc.
I think that's just a watch. Nothing "smart" about those features. A "smartwatch" would interact with you, your changing environment, various networks and databases, to pass information to and from you, and do things based on your commands and other things you do. You won't interact much with it directly because it's tiny, but you could "program it" (set the settings) and read it from a larger device.
>> I wonder how much a system would cost that could switch my light from green to red if it detected a vehicle approaching from a red-lit direction at dangerous speeds.
I don't want to encourage yahoos to drive faster through an intersection against the light, in order to potentially make it safer for them to do that.
Yes, it's true. i took a nutrition course in CC recently, and when the teacher said "if 1 gram of fat provides 9 calories, how many fat calories do you get from this item with 12 grams of fat?", at least half the class screamed loudly and severely protested that the class was advertised as having no math. Really.
Your description, to me, is of a "intro to using computers for office tasks" class. If that's what you need, then using Office as a template isn't a waste of time, though the class should at least mention other office productivity options, their pluses and minuses.
I would expect an "intro to computing" class to cover the basics of input, output, and processing; of code execution, storage, register manipulation; keyboard and mouse operation and displays; of communication, data transfer, IEEE 802.x protocols, wireless and wired transmission. Etc. etc - this is just off the top of my head and there are probably better and more thorough lists of topics around.
I'm terribly impressed that Canada is working on electronic payment systems that don't "donate" a portion of every transaction to the likes of Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, etc. Electronic payments and the defacto currency behind them are real, but "legal tender" offered by host countries has not kept pace with the technology and habits of citizens who use it. Let's hope Canadians can work through the problems with this, and we neandertals in the USA can learn from them. Next in line: national credit cards and checking accounts.
I think these guys have all the source code and back doors they need from domestic developers. It's new features that they need to develop. Foggy Bottom/Langley needs to be able to say "I have an app for that!".
I work with many over 60 year old new computer users. It's my experience that they tend to use family names for passwords without regard to how long they are - they don't seem to consider how much longer or more annoying it would be to type in a longer name, for example. When I choose a password I want to find the shortest one that will do the most good; they don't think that way.
There is no difficulty in balance here - it's a deliberate railroad move. These people are deliberately trying to avoid public scrutiny and do an end-run around their constituents.
If it's such a useful platform that can be modified to do workhorse jobs, why not just build more of them exactly as they exist today? Got to be cheaper than the B-2. Use the B-2 (and new designs yet to be built) for new tasks that the B-52 can't handle, just make less of them. And build new "B-52-2012" units to handle the more boring basic tasks for the next 60 years.
From the FA itself: The 49-person letter was organized by Leighton Steward, chairman of Plants Need CO2, a non-profit with ties to the coal industry.
So you can turn to astronauts and NASA when you're trying to throw sand in the face of climate-change science. And anywhere else you can think of that might slow down public opinion that could hurt your industry, which you know to be a major contributor to CO2 buildup and to global warming. If the fossil-fuel industry is putting major effort into denying climate change, that's a pretty good clue that they think it's real and they think they're culpable.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm afraid of what this means: IBM will be selling "LenovoEMC Legacy Removable Storage Modules" soon.
Get the right job and you can work flying people up there.
Had to look it up - wikipedia has A. H.'s birthday as 4/20/1889. Not close enough for me to conclude that the idiot(s) behind this might have had that reason.
He wants to avoid "democratizing" war, but he is OK with governments doing it - I was also struck by this. Is this typical elitist thinking, or an effort to keep the genie in the bottle? Either way, the elites are thinking about what can happen when technology allows anyone to become their own army. Hey guys, it might be time to consider equality.
So it's ITFA.
They elected the jackass not based on his knowledge at all, but on a number of things: their perception of his values (political and "practical"), his party, media coverage, and more. All that came from images created by the kinds of lies, um, I mean advertisements and commentary, that were disseminated prior to the election.
Then there are more intangible but very important things, like his looks, his name, the degree that the local elections were "crafted" by arranging the polling environment and ability to register, the weather on election day, etc.
I think that's just a watch. Nothing "smart" about those features.
A "smartwatch" would interact with you, your changing environment, various networks and databases, to pass information to and from you, and do things based on your commands and other things you do. You won't interact much with it directly because it's tiny, but you could "program it" (set the settings) and read it from a larger device.
>> I wonder how much a system would cost that could switch my light from green to red if it detected a vehicle approaching from a red-lit direction at dangerous speeds.
I don't want to encourage yahoos to drive faster through an intersection against the light, in order to potentially make it safer for them to do that.
Patent zombies?
Patent dragons?
Patent vampires?
Patently boundless.
And definitely not in front of.
...to build a robot that can watch movies, then go out and buy themed merchandise.
Sounds like they're building autonomous worker bees; next they'll fund "manager bots" that instruct them to do things that are not logical.
Yes, it's true. i took a nutrition course in CC recently, and when the teacher said "if 1 gram of fat provides 9 calories, how many fat calories do you get from this item with 12 grams of fat?", at least half the class screamed loudly and severely protested that the class was advertised as having no math. Really.
Your description, to me, is of a "intro to using computers for office tasks" class. If that's what you need, then using Office as a template isn't a waste of time, though the class should at least mention other office productivity options, their pluses and minuses.
I would expect an "intro to computing" class to cover the basics of input, output, and processing; of code execution, storage, register manipulation; keyboard and mouse operation and displays; of communication, data transfer, IEEE 802.x protocols, wireless and wired transmission. Etc. etc - this is just off the top of my head and there are probably better and more thorough lists of topics around.
But I'm biased.
I'm terribly impressed that Canada is working on electronic payment systems that don't "donate" a portion of every transaction to the likes of Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, etc. Electronic payments and the defacto currency behind them are real, but "legal tender" offered by host countries has not kept pace with the technology and habits of citizens who use it. Let's hope Canadians can work through the problems with this, and we neandertals in the USA can learn from them. Next in line: national credit cards and checking accounts.
Free speech is absolutely necessary in a democracy. Free speech is the last refuge of soundrels.
I think these guys have all the source code and back doors they need from domestic developers. It's new features that they need to develop. Foggy Bottom/Langley needs to be able to say "I have an app for that!".
I work with many over 60 year old new computer users. It's my experience that they tend to use family names for passwords without regard to how long they are - they don't seem to consider how much longer or more annoying it would be to type in a longer name, for example. When I choose a password I want to find the shortest one that will do the most good; they don't think that way.
It's the biological equivalent of thousands of monkeys typing random letters and eventually typing out shakespeare.
Suppose it's discovered that optimizing the genes for athleticism turns off genes for intelligence? And vice-versa?
Then it's one or the other, or mediocrity.
There is no difficulty in balance here - it's a deliberate railroad move.
These people are deliberately trying to avoid public scrutiny and do an end-run around their constituents.
If it's such a useful platform that can be modified to do workhorse jobs, why not just build more of them exactly as they exist today? Got to be cheaper than the B-2. Use the B-2 (and new designs yet to be built) for new tasks that the B-52 can't handle, just make less of them. And build new "B-52-2012" units to handle the more boring basic tasks for the next 60 years.
Why not?
From the FA itself:
The 49-person letter was organized by Leighton Steward, chairman of Plants Need CO2, a non-profit with ties to the coal industry.
So you can turn to astronauts and NASA when you're trying to throw sand in the face of climate-change science. And anywhere else you can think of that might slow down public opinion that could hurt your industry, which you know to be a major contributor to CO2 buildup and to global warming.
If the fossil-fuel industry is putting major effort into denying climate change, that's a pretty good clue that they think it's real and they think they're culpable.
Blow it up in the air.
Stuxnet could be so much more powerful.