Hydrogen may not be the answer, but neither is electricity. The 'answer' will probably be a combination of fuels and vehicles depending on requirements.
The problem with electric cars will always be the range/refuel problem. While it's true around town traffic isn't too much of an issue, corridors like I10 and I8 between Phoenix/Tucson and the San Diego/LA need at least one central station between them for people to fill up.
The Nissan Leaf has a 24kWh electric battery that advertises 75miles range. That's IF you don't use the heater or A/C, which in Phoenix means the actual amount is much lower 6 months out of the year. But I'm not stopping every 75 miles for 30 minutes, I want to stop every 300 miles for 30 minutes. So we need to be able to pass almost 100KwH into the car in 30 minutes. I could probably do every 200 miles traveling to LA since it's less than 400 miles. And 200 miles would be acceptable for cross country trips, as my wife and I get older, driving 5 hours between stops isn't as tolerable as it used to be. And I'll bet that we spend 30 minutes at a stop, getting gas, using the restroom, looking at souvenirs.
So doing the math, we need to pump the equivalent of 64KwH in 30 minutes (assuming 24KwH/75 miles). That means the pipe going into the car needs to be able to pump 128KwH in an hour. Most homes have a 200amp service, which is about 44KwH. Each gas station needs to be able to be feed three times what a house is fed in order to charge 1 car in 30 minutes, or a 600amp service for each simultaneous recharge.
The Tesla, with it's 245 mile range, states that each 56 miles requires 16.8KwH to charge. The home charger requires a 90amp 240V circuit and draws 70amps for complete charging in 4 hours. That's 15.4KwH, so the math checks out above. It would require a 560amp service JUST to charge one Tesla in 30 minutes. I guess we will need to site each cross-country refueling station next to a power facility in order to keep the size of the transmission lines in check. Or they will also need huge batteries to store power sent off-hours. That $0.12/KwH is going to start to go up with that type of infrastructure.
Electric cars have a place, but they are not long-distance travel cars and never will be. And the last time I checked, there are no electric-powered jet aircraft. So fossil fuels will remain in place for a long time. We can reduce their use, but never eliminate them. I'm sure a world without fossil fuels is fine with the eco-nuts out there. But I'm not giving up my cross-country motorcycle trips because a few tree-huggers don't mind not doing it.
How about this... eliminate the gas tax completely and just charge taxes to cover the costs. Bicyclists use the road and they don't pay a tax, people walk on the road and they don't pay a tax.
How about we just eliminate all deductions, keep a simple staggered income tax system (3-5 tiers), and just collect the taxes we need to run shit instead of creating jobs for people to just manage collecting taxes differently on thousands of things. Implement one national sales tax, and keep the income tax. We already pay taxes on gas and electricity, so keep the model rolling and just modify it accordingly.
There is nothing 'fair' about taxes. There are plenty of people who pay a lot less and use a lot more, there always will be. Get over it and just get on with the process of running things.
Color is added so that heating oil and diesel fuel can be taxed differently. Yet I can still put heating fuel in a truck, I just get fined if I get caught.
Require every car with a plug to use a special meter that collects tax on electricity differently, part of the cost of owning an electric car anyway is to be able to plug it in. Maybe even an RFID tag in the plug so the car can report where the 'fuel' was purchased so it can be audited/proven taxes are being collected. Someone can always cheat, but they get fined if they get caught. This way vehicles that get great mileage can continue to pay reduced rates to encourage using cars with low MPG (even though I don't think such a method works). Tax rates can then be set at both the federal and national level as desired.
Says someone trying to justify wasting a shitload of money on an education that smart people don't need so he can get a piece of paper proving he knows how to take tests and please his professors.
And yes.. I've taken a few courses. When I've needed to and when someone else was paying for it. Smart people learn how to make other people pay for their education, and learn how much 'educating' they need instead of having to have some tenured drone, who only has his own self-interest at heart, do it for them.
Availability BECAUSE of widespread insurance. This drives up demand and screws with pricing since the people using it don't have to pay based on the type of service received. You see the same thing in our college education system, as the availability of 'free' education has gone up via grants and student loans that delay the financial pain, the costs have risen for essentially no improvement in services. When the lie took over that 'everyone has to have a college education to get anywhere', and everyone bought into it, it became far more expensive. The same type of lie has invaded our medical system; that 'everyone has to have access to health care, no matter what the real costs are'.
Newer, more expensive treatments. My fibula was broken in a motorcycle crash. The billed costs to fix it were over $72K and included a three day hospital stay, a plate in my ankle, several follow-up visits with the surgeon, including one more surgery, and months of physical therapy. 50 years ago, they probably would have thrown a cast on it in the emergency room and I would have limped the rest of my life. The facts are that people are receiving more and better treatments and living longer and better than they ever have before, and it's costing a crap load more money than it used to.
Duplicate/litigious-avoidance medical testing because insurance pays for it. I found it interesting when I had a high-deductible plan and started to question tests how many the doctors really didn't need to do but did so 'because insurance covers it'.
Insurance companies are some of the lowest margin companies in the US that have driven down health care costs by forcing hospitals and doctors to accept lower payments. It's a double edged sword, while they have helped drive costs down, the increased demand has driven it back up.
Tax laws and accounting procedures used by healthcare providers. Ever wonder why your hospital bill is $40K, but the insurance only pays $12K?? The $12K is the 'negotiated rate', while the $40K is the full rate. Everyone who fails to pay results in a $40K write-off for the hospital, not a $12K. And if you are in a car crash in many states, the hospitals can go after the at-fault person for the $28K difference. A friend of mine, who had chosen to not buy insurance where she works, needed an expensive procedure. When the hospital was offered cash, they took 50% off the price. So don't tell me that the prices being charged are real.
Lack of transparency/competition coupled with government subsidies. Why is it auto repair facilities have to give a detailed estimate and are held to it, yet our hospitals don't have to?? My son, who doesn't have insurance, hurt his ankle and went to the hospital. He wanted to get it checked, and being a responsible person was going to pay for it. The hospital was unwilling to tell him how much it was going to cost, so he left. However, the next day they called him back and told him they were able to get the state insurance program to pay for it.
No one is entitled to affordable health care, there is no reason why everyone should be able to have liver transplants regardless of income level. We should have access to fairly priced health care that we can work out the details of paying for it. And choose whether or not it's worth the money to us as individuals. Not the government deciding.
If you answered anything but 'money', you are wrong. You need to know the basic of making money and the processes that help a company know if they are making a profit or not. You need to be able to do a cost analysis of a project so if it's something you really think is a good thing to do, you can prove it from a 'making money' perspective, or at least 'not losing as much'. The cool thing is, many of these skills are transferable to your personal life in how you handle money also. Accounts payable, receivable, book keeping, and budgeting are all skills one needs in the daily life to manage finances. For instance, an understanding of ROI can help one decide if they should spend the extra money on the higher grade of carpeting.
You don't need to be an expert, some basic account, marketing, and ethics knowledge will suffice. It used to be that developers would spend time out in the field learning these things. I've sat with accountants, bookkeepers, and other office staff for hours at a time learning their trade to help design software for them, and in doing so picked up a lot of skills. But opportunities like that don't happen as much anymore; with the advent of more formal SDLC procedures the ability of developers to mingle with their users has limited that path to a few higher level jobs, like project leaders and architects.
It's not important whether you learn by taking formal classes or buying books and studying or just being observant at work. But you do need to know it. Or be prepared to be nothing more than a code monkey the rest of your career.
Dave Feldman appears to be out of touch, or has an agenda. I don't know which. I see no one whining about the overwhelming choice of cars available. If Apple made cars, they would all look the same, the only option would be engine size, and you would only get a couple of colors. Sure, there is the old joke that women just want to pick from red or blue, but it's a joke. Hmmm...that joke says a lot about the men that choose iPhones, doesn't it.
I modify my Android interface quite a bit. Only one desktop page, bunches of folders. Never rooted it, don't want to spend the effort or take the perceived risk of ending up with a brick. I play around a lot and explore all the various features, and use the ones I want to.
My wife, on the other hand, is happy to let new programs drop on her desktop, she just remembers where the icons are. She has never added or removed desktop pages and rarely reorders. She sometimes uses my phone and wants to know why it does something, but rarely asks me to show her how to do it. She has never complained about it being too difficult to navigate to find the stuff she uses and feels she needs.
Two people, two different wants of using the same product. Or rather, two different phones and two different tablets running the same OS because my wife has different preferences than I have in both features (for example, she likes bigger screens and has a Galaxy Note and 10" tablet, I prefer more compact and have a Samsung S4 phone and 8" tablet.)
Thanks Android and Samsung and all the other Android manufacturers for giving us choices.
Only lazy developers. I've worked on plenty of legacy software over the years that other people wouldn't touch, and the common thread was they were either too lazy or just not smart enough. It takes determination, patience, and a lot of detail to work on it. But it was all far from unmaintainable. And the end result was I was the one kept around during layoffs instead of the guys that said "I can't do it" (translation... it's too hard for me.)
OK.. no source code at all pretty much makes it difficult to maintain. Or not being sure if what is in use is the current code.
As for the 'use a framework'.. what BS. Frameworks come and go. What is well used today can be a long forgotten, unsupported mess 5 years from now. Like NetBeans and Swing?? All those GUIs I wrote 5 years ago probably now fall into the 'unmaintainable' software category, even though all the code is actually there, and anyone that understands GUI programming at a basic level can still make modifications. It's not easy (i.e. not for the lazy), but it's possible. And how many times has a framework version made upgrading difficult because of extensive changes???
It's OK to use Hibernate, ICE, and all that stuff that makes the job easier today, but learn how stuff actually works and only use it when necessary. It will make you more valuable in the long run, and the code more maintainable in the future. If I hear one more ignorant programmer tells me 'But Hibernate can write SQL that way even if it is more efficient' I'm going to shove a SQL manual up their ass and tell them to actually learn something.
So you haven't looked at the budget have you?? Even if the military spending was eliminated, we would still have a yearly deficit. Thanks to social security, welfare, health/education, and spending on the debt. Those other things, like NASA, scientific research, and a host of $100M projects don't amount to crap.
Wise up.. EVERYTHING has to be reduced. The US is heading down the same road so many in Europe did a few years ago.. depend on the national government to solve everything instead of local (i.e. state/county/city) governments. Giving money to the feds so they can turn around and give it back creates government jobs which steals a portion of each dollar they collect. Plus, they then have the power to put onerous requirements (i.e. drinking age, school lunch requirements, one-child-left-behind) on the states in order to GET THEIR OWN CITIZENS'S MONEY BACK!
Eliminate federal welfare, health, social security, disaster recovery, education, highway, agriculture and a host of other national funded every-day programs over the next 30 years. Let states set their own tax rates to fund their own programs. As I recall, a few European countries had to install austerity programs which resulted in them becoming more financial stable. Why isn't the US following their example?? Because the idiots in Congress won't cut anything. Whine if you will about the House, at least someone is trying to cut something.
Oh.. I can hear it now.. The whiners about 'such and such a state can't afford good schools. Or highways'. Fine.. let THEM borrow the money. Maybe a few states that are making money can band together and loan it to them. Find a way other than the federal government handling it. You can only go to mom and dad so often for help before they start to create conditions on you for spending. And when they have to start going to the bank to borrow money to give to you, it's never ends. The federal government works about the same way. Going to the feds for money to solve problems is the lazy way out, it doesn't require any work and local politicians look good because they brought 'free' money into the state. It's time to knuckle down and solve the real problems instead of just throwing money at things. Take schools for example, why is it we spend more and more all the time and get less and less. Why is it that back in the 60s and 70s when school buildings were utilitarian, teachers didn't have aids, and there weren't so many half days, kids could make change in their head. Throwing more teaches and aids at the problem isn't working, time to address the real root cause, parent involvement, elimination of competition, respect, and pride as motivational forces, and a lack of discipline.
People whine about the military spending during the Iraq war causing so much debt. That problem with that argument is that spending stops, and it can be paid back (see WWII). Spending on social programs, like welfare, social security, health care, spending, for example, NEVER STOP. Once those programs are created, they last forever. Borrowing money to fund them is just making it worse for the future. I don't have a problem with those programs as long as they are 100% funded from the revenue stream, NOT debt.
The privacy and security you seek on the Internet, will not come from the laws of politicians, decisions of courts, or blood of protesters. It will come from the mathematics of cryptography, and the collaboration of engineers worldwide, working in the background for the liberty of us all.
Anyone seeking privacy and security on public networks, phone systems, mail, or any other public system is an idiot.
Kinda of like people on facebook getting all indignant because someone they don't know might see a photo they posted. It's not *YOUR* server, or network, or email system. Wanting privacy is one thing, being surprised because you don't get it is naive.
I think a semi-rational argument, more than "sex bad violence good", is that kids are more likely to see sex and want to have sex than they are to see violence and want to be violent.
From the time most men enter puberty until they hit middle age, they have an almost constant desire to have sex (at least I did.. and still do even in my 50s). Seeing it in a magazine just reminds them of it. Or, as the old joke goes, women require 20 minutes of foreplay, men just need to hear the words 'here it is, come and get it.' Men have an instinctual desire to have sex, magazines don't create it.
But I don't think most people have a natural tendency to hurt other people. I think most have been taught that hurting other people is bad, and I'm not aware of any instinctual desire in myself to kill someone except in self defense or the protection of property. I know I've never had a desire while walking down the street to just beat the crap out of the next person I see. But I have a very vivid memory of when I was in my early 20s and became aroused while standing on some bleachers when a very attractive woman walked in front of me and her head was at just the right height.
I think there could be some truth in the 'too much violence desensitizes', but no more than the 'too much porn desensitizes' or 'too much of anything desensitizes'.
On the other hand, reading about sex in a book can be very educational, my wife thanks me for all the porn I've read of the years.
Nudity is ALWAYS exploitation of women. As feminist say, sexual exploitation of women is worst then murder. Since feminism is the official state doctrine, it is unsurprising that this fanatical craze is present everywhere.
INB4 Misogynist! I don't care about women and there obsessive complains, no hate or love. I am just pointing out why there is a crusade against nudity(and not violence) in America.
There is a crusade because a bunch of prudes think that men can't look at naked women without getting aroused, and that covering all women up is the best way to do this. I guess a bunch of women have a very low opinion of men, and a bunch more are willing to exploit men's willingness to pay for porn and women's willingness to take it of for money. For instance, Suze Randall has a lesbian web site full of naked women, so who is exploiting whom??? When someone is doing it willingly, it's not exploitation. Only if they are forced or coerced. Some people actually enjoy getting naked and having their picture taken, or having sex. Where are the people screaming about the exploitation of Ron Jeremy and Peter North??? Or any successful porn star. They aren't.. because they aren't being exploited. I'll bet you can go into just about any industry and find examples where people are being exploited one way or the other. Sometimes I feel my company exploits me, until I remember that I can always get a job somewhere else and I exploit their willingness to hire me in exchange for a paycheck. What a whore I am....
If someone doesn't like it, they don't have to buy it. Writing a story is not the same as taking pictures, no one is being exploited.
Except the buyer who spends his money.
So I guess General Motors exploits car buyers and we should ban all cars next....
Because we know that every person who graduates with a degree knows what they are talking about. The computer profession proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, that training and certification proves that someone is better than another person that is self-taught.
And let me fix that statement for you...
Some educated professionals function very poorly outside their knowledge-domain, and due to a lifetime of considering themselves to be smart people, assume they're competent where they are not.
He isn't dispensing legal advice, he's giving an opinion. Kinda like what you did. Except his makes sense and is logical and sometimes even has facts to back it up, unlike yours.
Because a few 'criminals' (that is, someone who breaks the law) cause problems, why do we need to make the people who follow the laws suffer with more regulation???
I got it!!! Register all drones. Create a bunch of rules that will keep people what shouldn't have drones from having them. Create obstacles so that those the follow the law already and don't cause problems bear the brunt of the new regulations.
Outlaw drones.. and only outlaws will have drones.....
If the existing laws are being ignored, why would any sane person think adding more laws would make the problem go away. When existing laws are being ignored, it's only the uncreative and lazy that don't find new ways to enforce them and prefer instead to add more laws.
Laws that won't be followed and have absolutely no impact.. except on the majority of people who follow the law.
So exactly what African American rights is it that William Lowell Putnam III says his family has identified with, and why are they any different than the rights any other person living in the US has? Is it the right to beat up someone because you find them creepy?? To pummel someone just because you think they are following you, even though they haven't made any overtly threatening moves? Simple because someone is a racist and thinks that if a light skinned person is following them the 'crackah' must be up to no good??
Or is it some other made-up rights that I'm not aware of???
It's only controversial to those that tried their best to turn it into a race thing instead of a self-defense thing. The racists that forced Florida to have a wasted trial with no real evidence for the prosecution just to appease so many racists. Those that want to ignore the evidence presented in court and play 'what if' games that don't use any facts at all but assumptions made my people who weren't even there.
Go ahead.. name your asteroid Trayvon. It will still be an insignificant speck of dust in the universe. Kind of fitting really... an insignificant asteroid named for someone that tried to kill someone else. That if he had lived could very well be in jail by now.
I re-read the article and found that it is reporting another article. So, yes indeed, it is required.. no choice. They worked with Apple (no conflict there).
More specifically...
Beginning in fall 2013, all incoming students will be required to purchase an iPad mini, which will come loaded with the student’s summer reading and core curriculum texts, created by Lynn faculty.
So it's not all the textbooks, just the core curriculum that Lynn has created. $475 is just the starting point and the iPad may not be useful for other classwork.
I appreciate that the university is trying to save their students money and possibly give them a better(?) education, if those are the true reasons. As noted, students often buy used books. The short article doesn't mention if that is still possible, or how long these books will be available to the student, are the textbooks going to be available when the students leave the University?? Can I get access to textbooks for classes I am not taking??
My first exposure to computers was when I was a math major at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The professor gave us extra credit if we wrote a program that would print out a quadratic equation on paper. After I learned BASIC using the free manuals at the computer lab, I decided that I didn't need to pay to take courses, I could just buy the text book. So I bought a FORTRAN WATFIV textbook from the bookstore next and learned that. Then I learned COBOL. All in the span of a few months. 30 years later, I have a 6 figure income without having to follow the college rules, and followed a different route that was more suited to me than the one the aptitude tests suggested I take. All because I had choices. (And don't say I can go to another school, at some point all colleges and universities could use this model.)
Now, I'm not suggesting that learning on your own is for everyone, some people do better with a more formal and structured education. But why should students not have a choice??? Why shouldn't they be able to 'buy' a text for another class just because they want to learn on their own?
This type of activity brings out the cynic in me, who wonders if the colleges are really interested in education, or just trying to perpetuate the lie that people have to go to college to get ahead in the world by making it more and more difficult to learn things without going and continue with the stranglehold using their overpriced methods that are returning less and less value for every dollar spent.
It doesn't get me to work any faster since it will probably obey the traffic laws and not go over the speed limit. It won't get me to any destination faster, since it probably will not go over the speed limit. It probably won't speed up half a block away to 10 over the speed limit to catch a green light. And I have no desire to sit and play video games while my car is driving itself. I'm sure the driver will still need to pay attention anyway in case anything goes wrong, especially with early models. I'm sure we will see laws that prevent the driver from watching videos or texting even in a self-driving car.
Having a car with smart cruise control or alerts me to cars in blind spots or a host of other things that automatic cars have to have I would like. But I actually enjoy driving and don't see it as a chore. When my wife and I go places, we enjoy watching the scenery go by and pulling over for unplanned stops. We sing along with the radio and watch for neat little places to stop. We do this thing called 'talking' while we drive to pass the time instead of burying our heads into our tablets or video screens.
I don't think any car is ever going to be 100% automatic. So we will end up with people that don't drive very much, and become far worse drivers, in areas where they have to have the best skills... parking lots. Or close-quarter driving where a GPS is useless. Or places where the GPS hasn't defined roads yet so no route is known.
Just another bad reason for people to withdraw into their little shells and not have to interact with other people except on a video screen.
Maybe when I can't drive myself it will be worthwhile. I just don't see much of a benefit to having an autonomous car. Maybe people that live in traffic hell areas like LA or San Diego will need them so they can drive in the special 'autonomous car' lanes. But here in Phoenix, traffic just isn't bad enough.
And self driving motorcycles will never find a market.....
Slashdot Mirror
Hydrogen may not be the answer, but neither is electricity. The 'answer' will probably be a combination of fuels and vehicles depending on requirements.
The problem with electric cars will always be the range/refuel problem. While it's true around town traffic isn't too much of an issue, corridors like I10 and I8 between Phoenix/Tucson and the San Diego/LA need at least one central station between them for people to fill up.
The Nissan Leaf has a 24kWh electric battery that advertises 75miles range. That's IF you don't use the heater or A/C, which in Phoenix means the actual amount is much lower 6 months out of the year. But I'm not stopping every 75 miles for 30 minutes, I want to stop every 300 miles for 30 minutes. So we need to be able to pass almost 100KwH into the car in 30 minutes. I could probably do every 200 miles traveling to LA since it's less than 400 miles. And 200 miles would be acceptable for cross country trips, as my wife and I get older, driving 5 hours between stops isn't as tolerable as it used to be. And I'll bet that we spend 30 minutes at a stop, getting gas, using the restroom, looking at souvenirs.
So doing the math, we need to pump the equivalent of 64KwH in 30 minutes (assuming 24KwH/75 miles). That means the pipe going into the car needs to be able to pump 128KwH in an hour. Most homes have a 200amp service, which is about 44KwH. Each gas station needs to be able to be feed three times what a house is fed in order to charge 1 car in 30 minutes, or a 600amp service for each simultaneous recharge.
The Tesla, with it's 245 mile range, states that each 56 miles requires 16.8KwH to charge. The home charger requires a 90amp 240V circuit and draws 70amps for complete charging in 4 hours. That's 15.4KwH, so the math checks out above. It would require a 560amp service JUST to charge one Tesla in 30 minutes. I guess we will need to site each cross-country refueling station next to a power facility in order to keep the size of the transmission lines in check. Or they will also need huge batteries to store power sent off-hours. That $0.12/KwH is going to start to go up with that type of infrastructure.
Electric cars have a place, but they are not long-distance travel cars and never will be. And the last time I checked, there are no electric-powered jet aircraft. So fossil fuels will remain in place for a long time. We can reduce their use, but never eliminate them. I'm sure a world without fossil fuels is fine with the eco-nuts out there. But I'm not giving up my cross-country motorcycle trips because a few tree-huggers don't mind not doing it.
How about this ... eliminate the gas tax completely and just charge taxes to cover the costs. Bicyclists use the road and they don't pay a tax, people walk on the road and they don't pay a tax.
... and cheaper.
How about we just eliminate all deductions, keep a simple staggered income tax system (3-5 tiers), and just collect the taxes we need to run shit instead of creating jobs for people to just manage collecting taxes differently on thousands of things. Implement one national sales tax, and keep the income tax. We already pay taxes on gas and electricity, so keep the model rolling and just modify it accordingly.
There is nothing 'fair' about taxes. There are plenty of people who pay a lot less and use a lot more, there always will be. Get over it and just get on with the process of running things.
Simpler is often better
Color is added so that heating oil and diesel fuel can be taxed differently. Yet I can still put heating fuel in a truck, I just get fined if I get caught.
Require every car with a plug to use a special meter that collects tax on electricity differently, part of the cost of owning an electric car anyway is to be able to plug it in. Maybe even an RFID tag in the plug so the car can report where the 'fuel' was purchased so it can be audited/proven taxes are being collected. Someone can always cheat, but they get fined if they get caught. This way vehicles that get great mileage can continue to pay reduced rates to encourage using cars with low MPG (even though I don't think such a method works). Tax rates can then be set at both the federal and national level as desired.
Just because there's a lot of 'em doesn't mean they're all good.
Just because someone has a degree doesn't mean they are smart.
Just because someone doesn't have a degree doesn't mean they aren't smart.
Did you have a point???
Says someone trying to justify wasting a shitload of money on an education that smart people don't need so he can get a piece of paper proving he knows how to take tests and please his professors.
.. I've taken a few courses. When I've needed to and when someone else was paying for it. Smart people learn how to make other people pay for their education, and learn how much 'educating' they need instead of having to have some tenured drone, who only has his own self-interest at heart, do it for them.
And yes
That looked a lot better when I previewed it ....
No one is entitled to affordable health care, there is no reason why everyone should be able to have liver transplants regardless of income level. We should have access to fairly priced health care that we can work out the details of paying for it. And choose whether or not it's worth the money to us as individuals. Not the government deciding.
If you answered anything but 'money', you are wrong. You need to know the basic of making money and the processes that help a company know if they are making a profit or not. You need to be able to do a cost analysis of a project so if it's something you really think is a good thing to do, you can prove it from a 'making money' perspective, or at least 'not losing as much'. The cool thing is, many of these skills are transferable to your personal life in how you handle money also. Accounts payable, receivable, book keeping, and budgeting are all skills one needs in the daily life to manage finances. For instance, an understanding of ROI can help one decide if they should spend the extra money on the higher grade of carpeting.
You don't need to be an expert, some basic account, marketing, and ethics knowledge will suffice. It used to be that developers would spend time out in the field learning these things. I've sat with accountants, bookkeepers, and other office staff for hours at a time learning their trade to help design software for them, and in doing so picked up a lot of skills. But opportunities like that don't happen as much anymore; with the advent of more formal SDLC procedures the ability of developers to mingle with their users has limited that path to a few higher level jobs, like project leaders and architects.
It's not important whether you learn by taking formal classes or buying books and studying or just being observant at work. But you do need to know it. Or be prepared to be nothing more than a code monkey the rest of your career.
Dave Feldman appears to be out of touch, or has an agenda. I don't know which. I see no one whining about the overwhelming choice of cars available. If Apple made cars, they would all look the same, the only option would be engine size, and you would only get a couple of colors. Sure, there is the old joke that women just want to pick from red or blue, but it's a joke. Hmmm...that joke says a lot about the men that choose iPhones, doesn't it.
I modify my Android interface quite a bit. Only one desktop page, bunches of folders. Never rooted it, don't want to spend the effort or take the perceived risk of ending up with a brick. I play around a lot and explore all the various features, and use the ones I want to.
My wife, on the other hand, is happy to let new programs drop on her desktop, she just remembers where the icons are. She has never added or removed desktop pages and rarely reorders. She sometimes uses my phone and wants to know why it does something, but rarely asks me to show her how to do it. She has never complained about it being too difficult to navigate to find the stuff she uses and feels she needs.
Two people, two different wants of using the same product. Or rather, two different phones and two different tablets running the same OS because my wife has different preferences than I have in both features (for example, she likes bigger screens and has a Galaxy Note and 10" tablet, I prefer more compact and have a Samsung S4 phone and 8" tablet.)
Thanks Android and Samsung and all the other Android manufacturers for giving us choices.
Apple user: Please Apple ... tell me what colors and options I need and don't let me change anything of consequence.
.. let me do what I want.
Android user: Please Android
It makes perfect sense why Apple users are called iDrones.....
Yet Apple's profit was greater than the other's combined
Which provides evidence on how overpriced Apple products are, and how many idiots will pay far too much to get nothing extra in return.
Only lazy developers. I've worked on plenty of legacy software over the years that other people wouldn't touch, and the common thread was they were either too lazy or just not smart enough. It takes determination, patience, and a lot of detail to work on it. But it was all far from unmaintainable. And the end result was I was the one kept around during layoffs instead of the guys that said "I can't do it" (translation ... it's too hard for me.)
.. no source code at all pretty much makes it difficult to maintain. Or not being sure if what is in use is the current code.
.. what BS. Frameworks come and go. What is well used today can be a long forgotten, unsupported mess 5 years from now. Like NetBeans and Swing?? All those GUIs I wrote 5 years ago probably now fall into the 'unmaintainable' software category, even though all the code is actually there, and anyone that understands GUI programming at a basic level can still make modifications. It's not easy (i.e. not for the lazy), but it's possible. And how many times has a framework version made upgrading difficult because of extensive changes???
OK
As for the 'use a framework'
It's OK to use Hibernate, ICE, and all that stuff that makes the job easier today, but learn how stuff actually works and only use it when necessary. It will make you more valuable in the long run, and the code more maintainable in the future. If I hear one more ignorant programmer tells me 'But Hibernate can write SQL that way even if it is more efficient' I'm going to shove a SQL manual up their ass and tell them to actually learn something.
So you haven't looked at the budget have you?? Even if the military spending was eliminated, we would still have a yearly deficit. Thanks to social security, welfare, health/education, and spending on the debt. Those other things, like NASA, scientific research, and a host of $100M projects don't amount to crap.
.. EVERYTHING has to be reduced. The US is heading down the same road so many in Europe did a few years ago .. depend on the national government to solve everything instead of local (i.e. state/county/city) governments. Giving money to the feds so they can turn around and give it back creates government jobs which steals a portion of each dollar they collect. Plus, they then have the power to put onerous requirements (i.e. drinking age, school lunch requirements, one-child-left-behind) on the states in order to GET THEIR OWN CITIZENS'S MONEY BACK!
.. I can hear it now.. The whiners about 'such and such a state can't afford good schools. Or highways'. Fine .. let THEM borrow the money. Maybe a few states that are making money can band together and loan it to them. Find a way other than the federal government handling it. You can only go to mom and dad so often for help before they start to create conditions on you for spending. And when they have to start going to the bank to borrow money to give to you, it's never ends. The federal government works about the same way. Going to the feds for money to solve problems is the lazy way out, it doesn't require any work and local politicians look good because they brought 'free' money into the state. It's time to knuckle down and solve the real problems instead of just throwing money at things. Take schools for example, why is it we spend more and more all the time and get less and less. Why is it that back in the 60s and 70s when school buildings were utilitarian, teachers didn't have aids, and there weren't so many half days, kids could make change in their head. Throwing more teaches and aids at the problem isn't working, time to address the real root cause, parent involvement, elimination of competition, respect, and pride as motivational forces, and a lack of discipline.
Wise up
Eliminate federal welfare, health, social security, disaster recovery, education, highway, agriculture and a host of other national funded every-day programs over the next 30 years. Let states set their own tax rates to fund their own programs. As I recall, a few European countries had to install austerity programs which resulted in them becoming more financial stable. Why isn't the US following their example?? Because the idiots in Congress won't cut anything. Whine if you will about the House, at least someone is trying to cut something.
Oh
People whine about the military spending during the Iraq war causing so much debt. That problem with that argument is that spending stops, and it can be paid back (see WWII). Spending on social programs, like welfare, social security, health care, spending, for example, NEVER STOP. Once those programs are created, they last forever. Borrowing money to fund them is just making it worse for the future. I don't have a problem with those programs as long as they are 100% funded from the revenue stream, NOT debt.
The privacy and security you seek on the Internet, will not come from the laws of politicians, decisions of courts, or blood of protesters. It will come from the mathematics of cryptography, and the collaboration of engineers worldwide, working in the background for the liberty of us all.
Anyone seeking privacy and security on public networks, phone systems, mail, or any other public system is an idiot.
Kinda of like people on facebook getting all indignant because someone they don't know might see a photo they posted. It's not *YOUR* server, or network, or email system. Wanting privacy is one thing, being surprised because you don't get it is naive.
I think a semi-rational argument, more than "sex bad violence good", is that kids are more likely to see sex and want to have sex than they are to see violence and want to be violent.
From the time most men enter puberty until they hit middle age, they have an almost constant desire to have sex (at least I did .. and still do even in my 50s). Seeing it in a magazine just reminds them of it. Or, as the old joke goes, women require 20 minutes of foreplay, men just need to hear the words 'here it is, come and get it.' Men have an instinctual desire to have sex, magazines don't create it.
But I don't think most people have a natural tendency to hurt other people. I think most have been taught that hurting other people is bad, and I'm not aware of any instinctual desire in myself to kill someone except in self defense or the protection of property. I know I've never had a desire while walking down the street to just beat the crap out of the next person I see. But I have a very vivid memory of when I was in my early 20s and became aroused while standing on some bleachers when a very attractive woman walked in front of me and her head was at just the right height.
I think there could be some truth in the 'too much violence desensitizes', but no more than the 'too much porn desensitizes' or 'too much of anything desensitizes'.
On the other hand, reading about sex in a book can be very educational, my wife thanks me for all the porn I've read of the years.
Nudity is ALWAYS exploitation of women. As feminist say, sexual exploitation of women is worst then murder. Since feminism is the official state doctrine, it is unsurprising that this fanatical craze is present everywhere.
INB4 Misogynist! I don't care about women and there obsessive complains, no hate or love. I am just pointing out why there is a crusade against nudity(and not violence) in America.
There is a crusade because a bunch of prudes think that men can't look at naked women without getting aroused, and that covering all women up is the best way to do this. I guess a bunch of women have a very low opinion of men, and a bunch more are willing to exploit men's willingness to pay for porn and women's willingness to take it of for money. For instance, Suze Randall has a lesbian web site full of naked women, so who is exploiting whom??? When someone is doing it willingly, it's not exploitation. Only if they are forced or coerced. Some people actually enjoy getting naked and having their picture taken, or having sex. Where are the people screaming about the exploitation of Ron Jeremy and Peter North??? Or any successful porn star. They aren't .. because they aren't being exploited. I'll bet you can go into just about any industry and find examples where people are being exploited one way or the other. Sometimes I feel my company exploits me, until I remember that I can always get a job somewhere else and I exploit their willingness to hire me in exchange for a paycheck. What a whore I am....
If someone doesn't like it, they don't have to buy it. Writing a story is not the same as taking pictures, no one is being exploited.
Except the buyer who spends his money.
So I guess General Motors exploits car buyers and we should ban all cars next....
Is someone getting paid to post ads for Steam disguised as articles????
And let me fix that statement for you...
He isn't dispensing legal advice, he's giving an opinion. Kinda like what you did. Except his makes sense and is logical and sometimes even has facts to back it up, unlike yours.
Because a few 'criminals' (that is, someone who breaks the law) cause problems, why do we need to make the people who follow the laws suffer with more regulation???
.. and only outlaws will have drones.....
.. except on the majority of people who follow the law.
I got it!!! Register all drones. Create a bunch of rules that will keep people what shouldn't have drones from having them. Create obstacles so that those the follow the law already and don't cause problems bear the brunt of the new regulations.
Outlaw drones
If the existing laws are being ignored, why would any sane person think adding more laws would make the problem go away. When existing laws are being ignored, it's only the uncreative and lazy that don't find new ways to enforce them and prefer instead to add more laws.
Laws that won't be followed and have absolutely no impact
... that the government can find and plug into these as easily as anyone else?? And then load software to track who is downloading??
Another creative ideas from people from children living in their mom's basements who really don't have a clue.
So exactly what African American rights is it that William Lowell Putnam III says his family has identified with, and why are they any different than the rights any other person living in the US has? Is it the right to beat up someone because you find them creepy?? To pummel someone just because you think they are following you, even though they haven't made any overtly threatening moves? Simple because someone is a racist and thinks that if a light skinned person is following them the 'crackah' must be up to no good??
.. name your asteroid Trayvon. It will still be an insignificant speck of dust in the universe. Kind of fitting really ... an insignificant asteroid named for someone that tried to kill someone else. That if he had lived could very well be in jail by now.
Or is it some other made-up rights that I'm not aware of???
It's only controversial to those that tried their best to turn it into a race thing instead of a self-defense thing. The racists that forced Florida to have a wasted trial with no real evidence for the prosecution just to appease so many racists. Those that want to ignore the evidence presented in court and play 'what if' games that don't use any facts at all but assumptions made my people who weren't even there.
Go ahead
More specifically
So it's not all the textbooks, just the core curriculum that Lynn has created. $475 is just the starting point and the iPad may not be useful for other classwork.
I appreciate that the university is trying to save their students money and possibly give them a better(?) education, if those are the true reasons. As noted, students often buy used books. The short article doesn't mention if that is still possible, or how long these books will be available to the student, are the textbooks going to be available when the students leave the University?? Can I get access to textbooks for classes I am not taking??
My first exposure to computers was when I was a math major at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The professor gave us extra credit if we wrote a program that would print out a quadratic equation on paper. After I learned BASIC using the free manuals at the computer lab, I decided that I didn't need to pay to take courses, I could just buy the text book. So I bought a FORTRAN WATFIV textbook from the bookstore next and learned that. Then I learned COBOL. All in the span of a few months. 30 years later, I have a 6 figure income without having to follow the college rules, and followed a different route that was more suited to me than the one the aptitude tests suggested I take. All because I had choices. (And don't say I can go to another school, at some point all colleges and universities could use this model.)
Now, I'm not suggesting that learning on your own is for everyone, some people do better with a more formal and structured education. But why should students not have a choice??? Why shouldn't they be able to 'buy' a text for another class just because they want to learn on their own?
This type of activity brings out the cynic in me, who wonders if the colleges are really interested in education, or just trying to perpetuate the lie that people have to go to college to get ahead in the world by making it more and more difficult to learn things without going and continue with the stranglehold using their overpriced methods that are returning less and less value for every dollar spent.
Oh .. wait .... nevermind.....
It doesn't get me to work any faster since it will probably obey the traffic laws and not go over the speed limit. It won't get me to any destination faster, since it probably will not go over the speed limit. It probably won't speed up half a block away to 10 over the speed limit to catch a green light. And I have no desire to sit and play video games while my car is driving itself. I'm sure the driver will still need to pay attention anyway in case anything goes wrong, especially with early models. I'm sure we will see laws that prevent the driver from watching videos or texting even in a self-driving car.
... parking lots. Or close-quarter driving where a GPS is useless. Or places where the GPS hasn't defined roads yet so no route is known.
Having a car with smart cruise control or alerts me to cars in blind spots or a host of other things that automatic cars have to have I would like. But I actually enjoy driving and don't see it as a chore. When my wife and I go places, we enjoy watching the scenery go by and pulling over for unplanned stops. We sing along with the radio and watch for neat little places to stop. We do this thing called 'talking' while we drive to pass the time instead of burying our heads into our tablets or video screens.
I don't think any car is ever going to be 100% automatic. So we will end up with people that don't drive very much, and become far worse drivers, in areas where they have to have the best skills
Just another bad reason for people to withdraw into their little shells and not have to interact with other people except on a video screen.
Maybe when I can't drive myself it will be worthwhile. I just don't see much of a benefit to having an autonomous car. Maybe people that live in traffic hell areas like LA or San Diego will need them so they can drive in the special 'autonomous car' lanes. But here in Phoenix, traffic just isn't bad enough.
And self driving motorcycles will never find a market.....