I do not know of a case where a private firm paid for the cleaning and mitigation of it's own mess. It just isn't done. It is just too simple to delay the process, in which the case we the people have to step in to protect ourselves, hoping to get some compensation later on.
For instance, the Exxon Valdez has never been fully cleaned up and the funds to help those damaged has yet to be paid. You can bet if I burned down the exxon building, they would make every effort to have me pay for every cent that I could.
After 30 years, GE is finally cleaning up some of the hudson river. It is unlikely they will do the job they were originally asked to do. To this day, we are paying for the storage of nuclear waste, with no plan to get rid of it, and more on the way.
The point is that we are to protect ourselves, we must have regulation, fines, and monies for mitigation. The later comes from taxes on the corporations, of which we have seen less of in the past 30 years. What we have seen is skyrocketing deficits from the war on drugs, war on terror, and general expenditures to protect we the people from the few that values money more the people, the socio- and psychopaths that seem to make up some percentage of those in control.
So I am not so worried that the costs are externalized. If we are to maintain our lifestyle we must protect ourselves against our souless neighbors. My concern is that in our zeal to make government small, we are leaving ourselves open to abuse by those without ethics. It would be one thing if I could get the firms who metaphorically shit on my lawn out of the neighborhood in the same way I can with drug dealers, but I can't. But if they pay taxes, and there are regulation, then at least I do not have to personally pay to have it cleaned up.
Basically, religion and other superstitions are maladaptions of our ability to recognize patterns -- and an acceptable alternative to missing some pattern.
There is no mal here. It is a simple matter of doing the best we can with limited data. At some point we as a people realized that every year there was less time of sunlight. We danced in hopes that the sun would not go away completely. The pattern recognition of the time determined pretty accurately the time of least sun, and set the dances then. Even now no one can prove that if no one danced to bring the sun back it would not go away. It is just that we have more useful theories. Knowing that the earth travels around the sun in an eliptical orbit, with equal area traced in equal time, and the we are tilted on axis reletive to the sun, allows us to do a lot more stuff than dancing, even though in some ways dancing is more fun that working out the physics equations, but not in all ways.
Everything else is pretty much the same. As we realize more data, and our schemes of analysis become more sophiticated, we can make models that can be applied in a more generalized way. Saying the very old models were bad makes as little sense as saying the newtonian mechanics is bad.
Likewise, faulting people for living based on those beliefs is equally silly. I bet that many people live thier life based on newtonian mechanics, with no idea at all that there is some chance, no matter how small, that this computer I am typing on migh tunnel though the desk, or even that an electrostatic force, not a vague normal force, is keeping the computer on the desk. Does it matter? Not really. We still live life.
I agree. It is hard to say how what we call teenagers fit into the evolutionary system, I believe that the teen years, as depicted in the late and generation defining John Hughes films are more a reflection of having so much excess production that we not only need to insure that our children do not produce, but are also massive consumers. This is a recent phenomena, and a new state of adolescence.
Evolutionary, we have a biology in which, I am told by people who seem to know, that a 15-17 year old girl is almost perfectly situation to bear offspring. The can carry them without the problems of later year, and often can deliver them without the difficulty of later years. Also the Circadian rhythm seems to change in a teen, allowing teens to sleep later, and in smaller chunks, as one might benefit one who had a child that needed to fed every couple hours. It is strange.
This of course is one issue we have with teens. On one hand we want to treat them children, which they are not. On the other hand, we won't give them a responsibility, which they need. We still have high schools starting at the same time as the elementary schools, a pretty silly thing to do, many adults, if they have a choice, go to work between 8 and 9. Many young people, if they have choice, work the night shift. In this way, adolescence is truly screwed up because the teen is still controlled by the assumptions of the adults, while having legitimate needs that are given no reasonable outlet.
The problem is the no spin zone is that it assumes a preferential reference frame....
In Murdochs world that preferential reference frame is that a few fanatics will allow themselves to spend money the otherwise would not merely because it makes them part a group. This not a judgement call, it is just a fact. Many people pay for cable just to get Fox News. These are people that don't even buy clothes until thier old clothes are falling apart. Just saying.
Likewise, the WSJ model works because almost everyone who subscribes can take it off their taxes. In this socialist reality, the US tax payers pay a significant portion of the subscription.
The realistic, spin zone, which take other reference frames into account, is that people will not pay for everything. For example, Hannity has a presence on Fox News, but I bet more people listen to him for free rather than watch him on cable, and those will go to his free site. The same goes with the rest of the holdings. A few will pay, many will not. The NYT already tried this. They made more money with advertising. Sure they are in financial trouble, as Fox new so like to gloat, and often without honest disclosure about the the ownership of the NY Post.
The number of people who pay for web content is very few, just like the number of people who pay for a newspaper is few. In most case, people take the daily paper and justify the cost with sunday coupons.
Never heard of the application. Summary say it is extremely limited. Is there a reason, other than complexity of interface, that one might choose it over gimp. I suppose gimp does not have all the shapes of a drawing program, but it does paint, with colors.
Capitalism is based on the idea of value added. Libertarian and republican politics is based on the idea that government interference has a net benefit in limited cases. It is up to the consumer to make sure that the value added is worth the costs charged. For instance, a bottle of tap water is sold for a dollar. A throwaway guitar with a picture of Hannah Montana on it is sold for $50. A nylon bag with a prada label is a thousand. Is it up to government to restrict these values?
No, the issue is not that these things are sold. The issue is there are dumb asses out there who will borrow, cheat, and steal to own these things. There is nothing wrong with the things, only that we create a system in which people will ruin their lives to acquire the things.
So if Sun sells a license to perl, maybe it does provide added value. If the AP is going to sell a license, it may not make sense for quotes, but it may make sense for other things. People pay huge amounts of money for a Christian Bilble when a free version has the same words. This is just good sales.
Absolutely not. PDFs are the format of the internet. Anything that has to look the same no matter the platform, no matter the printer, is going to be a PDF. The PDF standard is specific and can be easily implemented. Old PDF files are going to be materially the same as new.
One other advantage of the PDF is it cannot be easily edits. When a PDF is sent out, there is some assurance that it be the same to all recipients, not suspetible to trivial man in the middle attacks.
The thing about word processors is they are an extension of the typewriter. Many of the assumptions derive from the typewriter, an invention which is at least 100 years old, with some page layout and publishing features hacked in. MS Word is a good program, but mostly for writing memos and collaborating on short reports, as was the typewriter. As email takes over, we will see that things like MS Word are mostly useful for short reports that need a high level of collaboration. Long reports are still better done in OO.org or LaTex. Other writing is going to be done in thing like Pages that, for better or worse, understands tat presentation is often more important than content, and understands that the computer can do presentation in ways the typewriter could not.
In any case, any program that cannot directly generate a PDF and HTML file is not 21 century ready.
This is why Google needs an OS. As it is, MS can offer discounts on the OS and web browsers, apparently making it unfeasible for any OEM to sell a cheap PC without the entire MS ecosystem(As an aside I believe the high price of windows has nothing to do with market forces, but only to do with the discounting that is required to keep PC OEM in line).
If google had an ecossytem, which they could offer to OEM, then MS becomes secondary. Right now for many people managing their own PC is the burden. It is why people buy Macs. A bit more upfront, but less maintenance in the long run. For a single creative person, a extra thousand spent upfront is made up quickly in time saved. Google can do the same thing, cheaper. A simple OS. Applications that run on external servers. People are getting used to this. I know people who play all thier games, and have all thier data on external servers. It is simply not so important. Google could sell the entire thing for %50 and offer free hosting for all long as the customer owns the machine. The only barrier is an internet connection, and those are becoming cheaper.
Exactly. When copyright law prohibit some kid from downloading unlicensed music it is unfair, but when copyright law allows them to bypass the normal rules of academic honestly, it is all the rage.
Now these kids may be the average kids who are not going to college, and if they are that is fine. They need to know how to sue to keep their low end jobs and maybe strike it rich when they 'have an accident' in wal mart.
But if they are going to college they should be more concerned with education rather than second guessing the process of which they have no experience. The sad thing is that so many people spend tens of thousands of dollars of a college education and really get nothing for it. One hears about all these college graduates that don't have a job, or can't find a well paying job, and I have to ask if these kids really got educated, or just did what they had to do to get a sheet of paper.
For many people, college has been and will continue to be a scam. The promise of higher salary and a middle class life depends on ones desire to put in the work. Otherwise it is wasted money. And no one is going to say don't go to college. There is too much money involved. Colleges need freshmen. The bring in student loans. College, unlike high schools, don't need to graduate anyone. They get no extra money for graduates, and lose face if the graduates suck. However, students still need to pay back loans. There is no way to get from under a loan. Not even bankruptcy. And banks make more moeny if you default. The government pays the loans, and they get to charge extra fees to get back the money you will have to eventually pay anyway. Even if you don't graduate. Even if you are working at 29 hours a week at wal mart.
This settlement is even more sad that the RIAA settlements. In the RIAA cases, there is likely no long term damage. In this case the lesson taught to kids is to attack those who are trying to help you, and that self serving immediate needs are paramount to long term goals. This may explain why arizona has almost a percentage point few per capitia college graduates than other states. People are more interested in looking good than being good.
I deal with the issue as well. Here is my opinion, take it or leave it. For certain pro software, you buy the machine that runs the software, no the other way round. So, in many cases, the Mac is not an option without a VM. I use my mac to run these tools, but I use a VM. For cad work, there is simply no substitute for Solidworks or Autodesk. For circuit and control work, it is National Instruments. There is a push to get these ported to the Mac, but so far to no avail. Autodesk does not run so well under the VM, so I often run it on a dedicated machine or boot into Windows.
I would say that it these students are in an engineering or science program, they must know how to use these tools, just like someone in a science/math program must know how to use Mathematica. That said, if the course in question is just a survey course, the specific tools may be less important than the exposure. For this there may be alternatives. For instance, an only breadboard simulator is available. Google circuit simulators and there may be more available. I am not sure what is available for CAD.
Here is another issue. If the class teaches the design techniques and not the application, the maybe students can use whatever they want. What distresses me is that we are no longer teaching the high level concepts, but the mouse based menu selection. Instead of teaching the concept of cut and paste, we are teaching the menu commands. The problem is when the menu changes, the students are SOL. For career training, this is fine, but I think we should be teaching at a higher level for college. For instance, in my college, we were just told to write a program to solve the problem or create a simulation. How we did it using the available tools were up to us.
What specialty stores do often have is used copies, which I suppose the labels would likely want to consider as pirated copies. After all, everyone knows that the user simply goes home, copies the recording, and then sells the music back. As such, the small retailer that deals in used music is facilitating criminal activity.
I am not sure if this policy changes anything for such retailers. Many years ago I was talking to a retailer about the fact that a big label recording was $18 while an indie recording was $15. Her explanation was that the big labels gave her almost no discount as she did not buy in quantity, while the indie people would give discounts on small quantities. Given that places like Wal Mart offers huge discounts, the specialty stores will likely do better buying big label stock through them, at lower than wholesale. Also many years ago, I worked in a small town pharmacy where we did the same thing. We would go into town and buy stock from the discount retailer and resell it to the local population.
I would say that the specialty stores survive on used sales, local unsigned artists, and, of course, surf and skate gear.
This was my thinking. Apple stores were opened to solve specific problems. There was almost no retail space dedicated to Apple products. Apple had no face to face support for their products,and no easy way to fix products. Apple had no way to show how products were integrated or train the SOHO user or consumer. The apple store solved these problems.
What problem is MS trying to solve? The lack of coolness. As the old IBM showed so well, there is no profit to being cool on the back end. Just efficient. Unlike Apple, any MS store will compete with the other retail outlets. The best thing to have such stores will be xBox items and the like, which will compete with other stores. Perhaps they will have computers there as well, but how to choose the makes and models. Seems like if they have Compaq and HP, then everyone else will file a suite.
Honestly, it seems like it wold be better to offer any retailer the ability to build a MS support center in existing retail space. Like the current I'm a PC commercials, the entire venture seems to be desperate money spent for no apparent reason. Make the OS work. Lower prices. Get out the next xBox. This is what the people wnat.
Re:Museums or real science
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The Geek Atlas
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I have been to the Los Alamos Musem and the recently reopened National Museum of Nuclear Science & History. I agree that both, in a way, talk down to the viewer. Most science museums, in fact most widely used science curriculum, is geared to the 10 year old. There is a fear of making things too complex. I will say the Los Alamos museum was more in depth in the science, while the National museum was more in depth with the artifacts.
What i find really interesting is how you point is proven in the choice of the site. While the Trinity site is of great historical importance, it is a tourist site with little context outside of the twice a year tour. In terms of how science is done, something a geek might be more interested in rather than just an outcome, the musuems are better.
I see your point, but I am not sure if you see the point of the article. One issue, as I understand it, preventing the use of renewable energy is their lack of ability to supply energy at peak times. Right now, apparently, we have infracture that is mostly not used, except at certain peak times. This is a social problem, not an engineering problem. Takes roads for example. We can build roads so that people can get to work at peak times, but that does not provide a long term solution. The long term solution is social.
Localized energy storage is not going to provide the 100% guaranteed power we require in the US. There is simply no tolerance for unreliability. Localized power returned to the grid is useful if the grid can store the power, so that the power is not wasted, otherwise it is simply an incentive for people to generate power, just like the peak power rates.
Such a policy of peak pricing may be temporary, but it may last long enough to change behavior. There are many tasks that can be done overnight if the automation is put in place. This will require investment, and one way to spur the investment is to make energy expensive.
Also, such pricing does have an effect on conservative users. When I was younger, I went to great length to keep my power usage below a threshold, because below that threshold I was changed very little. As soon I crossed the threshold I was charged a lot more. It encouraged me to watch my usage.
The reason people dislike this kind of plan is because they don't want to give anything up. They want to have low fuel consumption, but they want it in a military transport. They want low electric bills buy they want a big screen TV. They want to save money, but can't because they spend it on bottled water and energy drinks. The reality is that we need better management of power. It has to visible, not hidden so that people think there are no negative consequences. If that means lowering the energy cost for those that even out their power usage and increasing costs for those who don't, well that is one tool we have in the free market.
Honestly, I think this describes exactly what the problem is, and is related to the post: too many choices, too much time. Imagine the way we must have evolved our concept of love. There are a limited number of reasonable partners in the village at any given time, in modern sense, at school when one is between 15 and 20. Although estimate vary, the average life expectance was until the 15th to 19th century was not much more than 40, at least for the common person. This lead for just enough time to have a several children, some of which would survive to adult hood. I do not think choice was an overwhelming issue, and there were not a huge number of cases where people were married for 50 years.
But now, with the divorce rate the way it is, people are looking for a perfect relationship that will last 50 years. I don't know if we are built to do that sort of thing. I think we are doing well when a couple manages to stay together through the raising of the kids. I do see couples that stay together for a very long time, but that is because the only thing that mattes to them is the marriage. There is no idea of a personal benefit. For example, I know men who work, make close to 6 figure salaries, and never see a penny of it. The are dedicated to the marriage.
The benefit of dating sites, are, then to limit the choice of partners. One way to do this is to require very large sums of money. People tend to value what they pay for, and if they pay a few thousand, then that may mean a relationship is valuable. On the other hand, a couple may just be looking for sex. There are sites for that. And sites in between.
For those who say they are lonely, going out is not enough. One has to be emotionally accessible. One has to separate the media typecast from reality. One has to be honest about what one wants. Physical attention, emotional support, validation, financial security? And I am beginning to think if we want marriage, we should worry about if the other person wants to get married as much as we do. There is quote from Moonlighting that I really like: "A relationship is when two people see a lot of each other while they wait for something better to come along." Dating does suck.
The phones are expensive. I think we have seen a drop in prices. I have seen smart phones advertised for $30 with two year contract. That puts the entire two year cost well under $1000, much less that the average two year of landline would costs, assuming that you started with a decent cordless phone.
I can tell you the first phones that appeared after the ATT breakup were pieces of crap. They were cool novelties, but the quality sucked. About the only benefit to the average person was that geeks could plug in a modem.
If the user would pay for it, a multi protocol phones could be the norm. This could be mandated, but congress would likely not do it as it would increase the price of all phones, although it would ultimately benefit the user.
What the exclusivity deals do is lock in the user. The price difference between carriers is not so significant, and typically does reflect quality. Cricket is cheap but does not have coverage. Verizon is expensive but has coverage. The exclusivity deals are just another step to insure recurring fees. First it was a one year contract, then a two year contract, now it is a piece of equipment. I personally would prefer a one year contract and lock in with a piece of equipment. My greatest complaint against the iPhone is that, unlike other phones, it requires two year contract, or a pay as you go contract.
Obviously Verizon is not scared of the iPhone. ATT needs it, which is why they let apple do what apple wanted to do. At this time I don't see anyone else allowing the same access to the network, except maybe t-mobile. I would prefer to see congress mandate minimum service levels, 1 year contract unless the phone is free, and then let the carriers compete on phones. There is no best phone, and there is no shortage of phones. One chooses the compromise between carrier and phone.
Yet we all know the studios are in it for the money. We know they will work out the numbers so the film makes no money.
Yet there is so much money that everyone who wants to make a quick buck will get in bed with these known con artists. When the con appears, everyone cries out like this was something unexpected. I really have to ask. Given that we know the studios are cheats, who will sign a contract based on future recipts? People who are greedy, and willing to take the risk, perhaps?
As I see it the studios have invested at least 300 million in these movies, and probably twice that much. Investor supply this insane amount of money because they expect an insane return. Would the movie had been made it large returns on investment were not going to be great? Do the heirs, who did not right a single word, really care about the movie at all, or that it makes books which are based on wonderful language in a farce? Sure assembly line books like Harry Potter suffer nothing by going into movie form, but this is literature.
Re:C is the only starting language
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Hello World!
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Fortunately I learned C on a real Unix machine. By the time I moved to MS Dos, I knew enough to compensate for the inadequate platform.
The advantage of Python has nothing to do with OSS. C and C++ is at least as open source as Python, and both have a definitions superior to Python. In fact, many would use the same OSS IDE, Eclipse, for any of these, on any platform. No, the advantage of Python, as with the advantage of other higher level languages, is that, as the poster indicates, protects the user from the complications of the hardware. In addition, it simplifies the GUI design which is the basis of most modern programming. The disadvantage is that if a kid wants to know how to do more than connect widgets to databases, they may be SOL.
Of course the same could be said about Ruby and Rails, which seems to be even more modern and useful for modern programming. In particular Ruby implements the MVC methods, so at least the kid learns good programming.
The emphasis for the past decade or so has been to deploy increasingly complex OS that can take advantage of the increasingly capable hardware. Both MS Windows and Mac OS X require a microprocessor in the 1.5 GHz range and 2 GB if ram and graphics coprocessor to run well. The problem is that computers from 5 years ago is good enough for the average person, so there is some reluctance to spend the money for these machines. So MS tries to continue the trend with a MS Vista, and people rebelled. Is the average person going to spend a couple hundred dollars more to get a prettier UI when XP seems to work just well. Mac OS X has gotten away with it because Apple are supposed to be expensive, and Apple has spent the past several years optimizing, so it runs well on older hardware. However, OS X for iPhone is not so good, and does not run well on the first iPhone.
So google is doing something different. Build an OS from scratch that does not assume huge available horsepower. This will be the future for the average consumer. I know that everyone will say that the corporate market wants MS, and the employees want a similar machine, but I have a lot of people buy their machine for their use, not to do work. And if the Apps are free, then MS lose their advantage through corporate licensing.
Exactly, those that have worked on alternatively powered cars have a portfolio that will allow them to produce such cars. Those who have not are going to be left behind. This is right and proper. The companies include GM and Chrysler. Though it was probably ok to bail out these companies to assist semi-skilled semi-educated employees who would have otherwise been left with little hope of gainful employment, we do have to admit that the technical and management expertise seems so antiquated that there seems little hope that they will be able to compete. And don't complain about the expensive pay to workers. That is why they existed, to allow the semi-skilled high school graduate to enter the middle class. It did not prevent them from better funding appropriate research. A year ago the volt would have been a lifesaver. Now, who is going to buy a car from a company that may not be able to back it up?
The study is not quite interesting, it is quite worthless, because the conclusion has nothing to do with the data, and much of it is dependent on other conclusions that can only be stipulated, not proven, to be true. This seems to be a classic instance of a mathematician not trained in science trying to do science.
The only data we have are people who claim to be good at math and people who claim to be good at english, and what they think about a case, that is presented in verbal form. So the only conclusion that can be reached would be related to why people who think that are good at one subject or another might choose a reach differing conclusions after reading a bit of text. IMHO, occom's razor indicats that those with writing skills also had higher reading skills, and therefore like had a better understanding of what they read. After all, legal documents are often written a high level, and may be difficult to understand by those who don't have and regularly use a complex vocabulary. Likewise, if the survey gave a summary of the text, and the survey was written by a math person, who is not an expert in developing surveys, artifacts could be introduced to invalidate any results. What I found most scary is that we were lead to a confidence level generator. Confidence levels are complex things, and those that believe them outright are also those that believe a house is a magical money factory.
The problem with maths is that it does not have a built in reality check. This is sometimes good, as it leads science to interesting conclusions, but only because science does the reality check. Statistics get a bad reputation because people who are good at math abuse it for their own gain. It is easy to confuse people because most people don't understand it.
Finally, science must be based on what can be measured. In this case we measured how people feel about them selves with respect to certain skills. If we wanted to measure the skills, we would have to develop an instrument on that. Basic skills is a basic test. If we wanted to measure deeper analytical skills, then we might make a set of tricky problems, but on a survey like this we might be measuring enjoyment and motivation to do math as much as the ability. Measuring human quantities is nontrivial.
I congratulate the author for once again proving that people who are good at math are deceitful perverts. It will serve to insure that rest of the population continues to be afraid of us.
The iPod, full version, was expensive. This was mostly because the harddrive. At the time it was determined that the cost of the player was on order of the retail price of the hard drive. It was the cheapest not because of quality, but because it had huge storage.
Even so, it was competitive with what I paid for my Nomad II. When the iPod Mini was released, it was on the order of what I paid for the Nomad II. I replaced the Nomad witha mini for two reasons. First, it has a better capacity. Second, filling the nomad over USB 1.1 was terribly slow, while firewire was by comparison instantaneous.
Even now, people pay for capacity. The 16 and 32 gigabyte is 3X and 4X as must as the Creative stuff, but one only gets 8GB with the creative. Of course, MS has stuck with hard disk, which hasn't seemed to work.
Well, because you are interested in getting work done, not running porn programs.
In any case, there are no widely available phones that are truly open. The G1 is controlled by T-mobile, and t-mobile can change features as it wishes. The same is true for the pre. Any freedom has one has is an illusion. The only open platfor I have seen is something like the Open Moko, which, apparently, no one wanted.
I also might suggest that matter of openess has taken a change in times of the script kiddie. Now, a phoneis open if it can be hacked using script kiddie tools, or if one can download a program that will let one do something that generally cannot be done. This is not useful, and are really just indicative of children having temper trantrums because they can't have another piece of candy.
In a more traditional sense, open means that almost anyone can write software. This is where Apple has always been better than some other companies. Apple comes from the tradition where hardware is just a platform for software. Therefore the hardware is controlled while the software is extremely well documented and most tools very cheap or freely available. The G1 and pre are of the same ilk. However, as Apple is commercial enterprise, it does charge $100 a year for the developer. My understanding is that this allow the developer to not only test on the personal iPhone or iPod Touch, but on up to 100 phones. Far from controlling software that can be run, Apples is provided, for $100, the tools one needs to write and deploy code. Android is very competitive here, with the Eclipse IDE plugin. I don't know if the Pre is competitive.
I disagree. Nueromancer is important because it translates common themes into a new language. This is all science fiction was and is. A literary form that helps us deal with a technologies(the telling of skill) that the average person has increasingly difficulties understanding. I think most people understood a pencil or a lever or even a car, but how many people understand a transistor, or the working of a stage two booster on a Saturn V, or how Little Boy is different from Fat Man. I certainly don't. I understand the effects, but not the details of the process. So we have a conflict, in the archaic language, of man versus machine.
The theme is old. Hero is punished by god/king/country/corporation for a minor mistake. Hero find a way to redemption, but a great personal costs, and in a morally dubious manner. Hero has help from friends picked up along the way. Hero is double crossed. Hero is more or less vindicated. The wonderful thing about Neuromancer is that Gibson translates this old theme into a context in which the hero is not based solely on physical strength, or cleaverness, or the ability to con with good looks, but on access to information and the ability to deal with machines. This was kind of revolutionary. Perhaps the phone think is not so important because the synchronous voice communications are inefficient and we may see it fall to a more efficient asynchronous data feed.
In any case, most science fiction gets most of the details wrong, and it matters little as it merely reflects the world the author is living in, not the fundamental conflict. For instance, many pulp writers assumed we would get automatic house cleaning and diagnosticians before we got automatic astronavigation. By the time star trek came around, and we had computers that did math, but not clean floors, this was corrected. BTW, Star Trek was notable because it translated the form of The Odyssey into a modern language, just as Huckleberry Finn did before it. The important thing about these, then, is not the predictive element, as a stopped clock will be right twice a day, but the preperation such books can give the reader to live with then not well known technologies,
I was looking at the Kindle to read journals. By and large the journals are not available through Amazon, but are available through the web, as text or PDF. I currently read these on laptop, but, to answer another question, the clamshell form factor does not always work when reading. I think I will buy a Kindle when the web browser is no longer beta, as that is my preferred method of getting my reading material.
Unless something better comes along. That is a device that does not waste real estate with a tiny useless keyboard. I would rather have a smaller device and have to use a touchscreen. After all, I won't be writing novels on it. I can almost read a book on my iPhone. An e-book reader with the area of three iphones would be perfect.
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For instance, the Exxon Valdez has never been fully cleaned up and the funds to help those damaged has yet to be paid. You can bet if I burned down the exxon building, they would make every effort to have me pay for every cent that I could.
After 30 years, GE is finally cleaning up some of the hudson river. It is unlikely they will do the job they were originally asked to do. To this day, we are paying for the storage of nuclear waste, with no plan to get rid of it, and more on the way.
The point is that we are to protect ourselves, we must have regulation, fines, and monies for mitigation. The later comes from taxes on the corporations, of which we have seen less of in the past 30 years. What we have seen is skyrocketing deficits from the war on drugs, war on terror, and general expenditures to protect we the people from the few that values money more the people, the socio- and psychopaths that seem to make up some percentage of those in control.
So I am not so worried that the costs are externalized. If we are to maintain our lifestyle we must protect ourselves against our souless neighbors. My concern is that in our zeal to make government small, we are leaving ourselves open to abuse by those without ethics. It would be one thing if I could get the firms who metaphorically shit on my lawn out of the neighborhood in the same way I can with drug dealers, but I can't. But if they pay taxes, and there are regulation, then at least I do not have to personally pay to have it cleaned up.
There is no mal here. It is a simple matter of doing the best we can with limited data. At some point we as a people realized that every year there was less time of sunlight. We danced in hopes that the sun would not go away completely. The pattern recognition of the time determined pretty accurately the time of least sun, and set the dances then. Even now no one can prove that if no one danced to bring the sun back it would not go away. It is just that we have more useful theories. Knowing that the earth travels around the sun in an eliptical orbit, with equal area traced in equal time, and the we are tilted on axis reletive to the sun, allows us to do a lot more stuff than dancing, even though in some ways dancing is more fun that working out the physics equations, but not in all ways.
Everything else is pretty much the same. As we realize more data, and our schemes of analysis become more sophiticated, we can make models that can be applied in a more generalized way. Saying the very old models were bad makes as little sense as saying the newtonian mechanics is bad.
Likewise, faulting people for living based on those beliefs is equally silly. I bet that many people live thier life based on newtonian mechanics, with no idea at all that there is some chance, no matter how small, that this computer I am typing on migh tunnel though the desk, or even that an electrostatic force, not a vague normal force, is keeping the computer on the desk. Does it matter? Not really. We still live life.
Evolutionary, we have a biology in which, I am told by people who seem to know, that a 15-17 year old girl is almost perfectly situation to bear offspring. The can carry them without the problems of later year, and often can deliver them without the difficulty of later years. Also the Circadian rhythm seems to change in a teen, allowing teens to sleep later, and in smaller chunks, as one might benefit one who had a child that needed to fed every couple hours. It is strange.
This of course is one issue we have with teens. On one hand we want to treat them children, which they are not. On the other hand, we won't give them a responsibility, which they need. We still have high schools starting at the same time as the elementary schools, a pretty silly thing to do, many adults, if they have a choice, go to work between 8 and 9. Many young people, if they have choice, work the night shift. In this way, adolescence is truly screwed up because the teen is still controlled by the assumptions of the adults, while having legitimate needs that are given no reasonable outlet.
In Murdochs world that preferential reference frame is that a few fanatics will allow themselves to spend money the otherwise would not merely because it makes them part a group. This not a judgement call, it is just a fact. Many people pay for cable just to get Fox News. These are people that don't even buy clothes until thier old clothes are falling apart. Just saying.
Likewise, the WSJ model works because almost everyone who subscribes can take it off their taxes. In this socialist reality, the US tax payers pay a significant portion of the subscription.
The realistic, spin zone, which take other reference frames into account, is that people will not pay for everything. For example, Hannity has a presence on Fox News, but I bet more people listen to him for free rather than watch him on cable, and those will go to his free site. The same goes with the rest of the holdings. A few will pay, many will not. The NYT already tried this. They made more money with advertising. Sure they are in financial trouble, as Fox new so like to gloat, and often without honest disclosure about the the ownership of the NY Post.
The number of people who pay for web content is very few, just like the number of people who pay for a newspaper is few. In most case, people take the daily paper and justify the cost with sunday coupons.
Never heard of the application. Summary say it is extremely limited. Is there a reason, other than complexity of interface, that one might choose it over gimp. I suppose gimp does not have all the shapes of a drawing program, but it does paint, with colors.
No, the issue is not that these things are sold. The issue is there are dumb asses out there who will borrow, cheat, and steal to own these things. There is nothing wrong with the things, only that we create a system in which people will ruin their lives to acquire the things.
So if Sun sells a license to perl, maybe it does provide added value. If the AP is going to sell a license, it may not make sense for quotes, but it may make sense for other things. People pay huge amounts of money for a Christian Bilble when a free version has the same words. This is just good sales.
One other advantage of the PDF is it cannot be easily edits. When a PDF is sent out, there is some assurance that it be the same to all recipients, not suspetible to trivial man in the middle attacks.
The thing about word processors is they are an extension of the typewriter. Many of the assumptions derive from the typewriter, an invention which is at least 100 years old, with some page layout and publishing features hacked in. MS Word is a good program, but mostly for writing memos and collaborating on short reports, as was the typewriter. As email takes over, we will see that things like MS Word are mostly useful for short reports that need a high level of collaboration. Long reports are still better done in OO.org or LaTex. Other writing is going to be done in thing like Pages that, for better or worse, understands tat presentation is often more important than content, and understands that the computer can do presentation in ways the typewriter could not.
In any case, any program that cannot directly generate a PDF and HTML file is not 21 century ready.
If google had an ecossytem, which they could offer to OEM, then MS becomes secondary. Right now for many people managing their own PC is the burden. It is why people buy Macs. A bit more upfront, but less maintenance in the long run. For a single creative person, a extra thousand spent upfront is made up quickly in time saved. Google can do the same thing, cheaper. A simple OS. Applications that run on external servers. People are getting used to this. I know people who play all thier games, and have all thier data on external servers. It is simply not so important. Google could sell the entire thing for %50 and offer free hosting for all long as the customer owns the machine. The only barrier is an internet connection, and those are becoming cheaper.
Now these kids may be the average kids who are not going to college, and if they are that is fine. They need to know how to sue to keep their low end jobs and maybe strike it rich when they 'have an accident' in wal mart.
But if they are going to college they should be more concerned with education rather than second guessing the process of which they have no experience. The sad thing is that so many people spend tens of thousands of dollars of a college education and really get nothing for it. One hears about all these college graduates that don't have a job, or can't find a well paying job, and I have to ask if these kids really got educated, or just did what they had to do to get a sheet of paper.
For many people, college has been and will continue to be a scam. The promise of higher salary and a middle class life depends on ones desire to put in the work. Otherwise it is wasted money. And no one is going to say don't go to college. There is too much money involved. Colleges need freshmen. The bring in student loans. College, unlike high schools, don't need to graduate anyone. They get no extra money for graduates, and lose face if the graduates suck. However, students still need to pay back loans. There is no way to get from under a loan. Not even bankruptcy. And banks make more moeny if you default. The government pays the loans, and they get to charge extra fees to get back the money you will have to eventually pay anyway. Even if you don't graduate. Even if you are working at 29 hours a week at wal mart.
This settlement is even more sad that the RIAA settlements. In the RIAA cases, there is likely no long term damage. In this case the lesson taught to kids is to attack those who are trying to help you, and that self serving immediate needs are paramount to long term goals. This may explain why arizona has almost a percentage point few per capitia college graduates than other states. People are more interested in looking good than being good.
I would say that it these students are in an engineering or science program, they must know how to use these tools, just like someone in a science/math program must know how to use Mathematica. That said, if the course in question is just a survey course, the specific tools may be less important than the exposure. For this there may be alternatives. For instance, an only breadboard simulator is available. Google circuit simulators and there may be more available. I am not sure what is available for CAD.
Here is another issue. If the class teaches the design techniques and not the application, the maybe students can use whatever they want. What distresses me is that we are no longer teaching the high level concepts, but the mouse based menu selection. Instead of teaching the concept of cut and paste, we are teaching the menu commands. The problem is when the menu changes, the students are SOL. For career training, this is fine, but I think we should be teaching at a higher level for college. For instance, in my college, we were just told to write a program to solve the problem or create a simulation. How we did it using the available tools were up to us.
I am not sure if this policy changes anything for such retailers. Many years ago I was talking to a retailer about the fact that a big label recording was $18 while an indie recording was $15. Her explanation was that the big labels gave her almost no discount as she did not buy in quantity, while the indie people would give discounts on small quantities. Given that places like Wal Mart offers huge discounts, the specialty stores will likely do better buying big label stock through them, at lower than wholesale. Also many years ago, I worked in a small town pharmacy where we did the same thing. We would go into town and buy stock from the discount retailer and resell it to the local population.
I would say that the specialty stores survive on used sales, local unsigned artists, and, of course, surf and skate gear.
What problem is MS trying to solve? The lack of coolness. As the old IBM showed so well, there is no profit to being cool on the back end. Just efficient. Unlike Apple, any MS store will compete with the other retail outlets. The best thing to have such stores will be xBox items and the like, which will compete with other stores. Perhaps they will have computers there as well, but how to choose the makes and models. Seems like if they have Compaq and HP, then everyone else will file a suite.
Honestly, it seems like it wold be better to offer any retailer the ability to build a MS support center in existing retail space. Like the current I'm a PC commercials, the entire venture seems to be desperate money spent for no apparent reason. Make the OS work. Lower prices. Get out the next xBox. This is what the people wnat.
What i find really interesting is how you point is proven in the choice of the site. While the Trinity site is of great historical importance, it is a tourist site with little context outside of the twice a year tour. In terms of how science is done, something a geek might be more interested in rather than just an outcome, the musuems are better.
Localized energy storage is not going to provide the 100% guaranteed power we require in the US. There is simply no tolerance for unreliability. Localized power returned to the grid is useful if the grid can store the power, so that the power is not wasted, otherwise it is simply an incentive for people to generate power, just like the peak power rates.
Such a policy of peak pricing may be temporary, but it may last long enough to change behavior. There are many tasks that can be done overnight if the automation is put in place. This will require investment, and one way to spur the investment is to make energy expensive.
Also, such pricing does have an effect on conservative users. When I was younger, I went to great length to keep my power usage below a threshold, because below that threshold I was changed very little. As soon I crossed the threshold I was charged a lot more. It encouraged me to watch my usage.
The reason people dislike this kind of plan is because they don't want to give anything up. They want to have low fuel consumption, but they want it in a military transport. They want low electric bills buy they want a big screen TV. They want to save money, but can't because they spend it on bottled water and energy drinks. The reality is that we need better management of power. It has to visible, not hidden so that people think there are no negative consequences. If that means lowering the energy cost for those that even out their power usage and increasing costs for those who don't, well that is one tool we have in the free market.
But now, with the divorce rate the way it is, people are looking for a perfect relationship that will last 50 years. I don't know if we are built to do that sort of thing. I think we are doing well when a couple manages to stay together through the raising of the kids. I do see couples that stay together for a very long time, but that is because the only thing that mattes to them is the marriage. There is no idea of a personal benefit. For example, I know men who work, make close to 6 figure salaries, and never see a penny of it. The are dedicated to the marriage.
The benefit of dating sites, are, then to limit the choice of partners. One way to do this is to require very large sums of money. People tend to value what they pay for, and if they pay a few thousand, then that may mean a relationship is valuable. On the other hand, a couple may just be looking for sex. There are sites for that. And sites in between.
For those who say they are lonely, going out is not enough. One has to be emotionally accessible. One has to separate the media typecast from reality. One has to be honest about what one wants. Physical attention, emotional support, validation, financial security? And I am beginning to think if we want marriage, we should worry about if the other person wants to get married as much as we do. There is quote from Moonlighting that I really like: "A relationship is when two people see a lot of each other while they wait for something better to come along." Dating does suck.
I can tell you the first phones that appeared after the ATT breakup were pieces of crap. They were cool novelties, but the quality sucked. About the only benefit to the average person was that geeks could plug in a modem.
If the user would pay for it, a multi protocol phones could be the norm. This could be mandated, but congress would likely not do it as it would increase the price of all phones, although it would ultimately benefit the user.
What the exclusivity deals do is lock in the user. The price difference between carriers is not so significant, and typically does reflect quality. Cricket is cheap but does not have coverage. Verizon is expensive but has coverage. The exclusivity deals are just another step to insure recurring fees. First it was a one year contract, then a two year contract, now it is a piece of equipment. I personally would prefer a one year contract and lock in with a piece of equipment. My greatest complaint against the iPhone is that, unlike other phones, it requires two year contract, or a pay as you go contract.
Obviously Verizon is not scared of the iPhone. ATT needs it, which is why they let apple do what apple wanted to do. At this time I don't see anyone else allowing the same access to the network, except maybe t-mobile. I would prefer to see congress mandate minimum service levels, 1 year contract unless the phone is free, and then let the carriers compete on phones. There is no best phone, and there is no shortage of phones. One chooses the compromise between carrier and phone.
Yet there is so much money that everyone who wants to make a quick buck will get in bed with these known con artists. When the con appears, everyone cries out like this was something unexpected. I really have to ask. Given that we know the studios are cheats, who will sign a contract based on future recipts? People who are greedy, and willing to take the risk, perhaps?
As I see it the studios have invested at least 300 million in these movies, and probably twice that much. Investor supply this insane amount of money because they expect an insane return. Would the movie had been made it large returns on investment were not going to be great? Do the heirs, who did not right a single word, really care about the movie at all, or that it makes books which are based on wonderful language in a farce? Sure assembly line books like Harry Potter suffer nothing by going into movie form, but this is literature.
The advantage of Python has nothing to do with OSS. C and C++ is at least as open source as Python, and both have a definitions superior to Python. In fact, many would use the same OSS IDE, Eclipse, for any of these, on any platform. No, the advantage of Python, as with the advantage of other higher level languages, is that, as the poster indicates, protects the user from the complications of the hardware. In addition, it simplifies the GUI design which is the basis of most modern programming. The disadvantage is that if a kid wants to know how to do more than connect widgets to databases, they may be SOL.
Of course the same could be said about Ruby and Rails, which seems to be even more modern and useful for modern programming. In particular Ruby implements the MVC methods, so at least the kid learns good programming.
So google is doing something different. Build an OS from scratch that does not assume huge available horsepower. This will be the future for the average consumer. I know that everyone will say that the corporate market wants MS, and the employees want a similar machine, but I have a lot of people buy their machine for their use, not to do work. And if the Apps are free, then MS lose their advantage through corporate licensing.
Exactly, those that have worked on alternatively powered cars have a portfolio that will allow them to produce such cars. Those who have not are going to be left behind. This is right and proper. The companies include GM and Chrysler. Though it was probably ok to bail out these companies to assist semi-skilled semi-educated employees who would have otherwise been left with little hope of gainful employment, we do have to admit that the technical and management expertise seems so antiquated that there seems little hope that they will be able to compete. And don't complain about the expensive pay to workers. That is why they existed, to allow the semi-skilled high school graduate to enter the middle class. It did not prevent them from better funding appropriate research. A year ago the volt would have been a lifesaver. Now, who is going to buy a car from a company that may not be able to back it up?
The only data we have are people who claim to be good at math and people who claim to be good at english, and what they think about a case, that is presented in verbal form. So the only conclusion that can be reached would be related to why people who think that are good at one subject or another might choose a reach differing conclusions after reading a bit of text. IMHO, occom's razor indicats that those with writing skills also had higher reading skills, and therefore like had a better understanding of what they read. After all, legal documents are often written a high level, and may be difficult to understand by those who don't have and regularly use a complex vocabulary. Likewise, if the survey gave a summary of the text, and the survey was written by a math person, who is not an expert in developing surveys, artifacts could be introduced to invalidate any results. What I found most scary is that we were lead to a confidence level generator. Confidence levels are complex things, and those that believe them outright are also those that believe a house is a magical money factory.
The problem with maths is that it does not have a built in reality check. This is sometimes good, as it leads science to interesting conclusions, but only because science does the reality check. Statistics get a bad reputation because people who are good at math abuse it for their own gain. It is easy to confuse people because most people don't understand it.
Finally, science must be based on what can be measured. In this case we measured how people feel about them selves with respect to certain skills. If we wanted to measure the skills, we would have to develop an instrument on that. Basic skills is a basic test. If we wanted to measure deeper analytical skills, then we might make a set of tricky problems, but on a survey like this we might be measuring enjoyment and motivation to do math as much as the ability. Measuring human quantities is nontrivial.
I congratulate the author for once again proving that people who are good at math are deceitful perverts. It will serve to insure that rest of the population continues to be afraid of us.
Even so, it was competitive with what I paid for my Nomad II. When the iPod Mini was released, it was on the order of what I paid for the Nomad II. I replaced the Nomad witha mini for two reasons. First, it has a better capacity. Second, filling the nomad over USB 1.1 was terribly slow, while firewire was by comparison instantaneous.
Even now, people pay for capacity. The 16 and 32 gigabyte is 3X and 4X as must as the Creative stuff, but one only gets 8GB with the creative. Of course, MS has stuck with hard disk, which hasn't seemed to work.
In any case, there are no widely available phones that are truly open. The G1 is controlled by T-mobile, and t-mobile can change features as it wishes. The same is true for the pre. Any freedom has one has is an illusion. The only open platfor I have seen is something like the Open Moko, which, apparently, no one wanted.
I also might suggest that matter of openess has taken a change in times of the script kiddie. Now, a phoneis open if it can be hacked using script kiddie tools, or if one can download a program that will let one do something that generally cannot be done. This is not useful, and are really just indicative of children having temper trantrums because they can't have another piece of candy.
In a more traditional sense, open means that almost anyone can write software. This is where Apple has always been better than some other companies. Apple comes from the tradition where hardware is just a platform for software. Therefore the hardware is controlled while the software is extremely well documented and most tools very cheap or freely available. The G1 and pre are of the same ilk. However, as Apple is commercial enterprise, it does charge $100 a year for the developer. My understanding is that this allow the developer to not only test on the personal iPhone or iPod Touch, but on up to 100 phones. Far from controlling software that can be run, Apples is provided, for $100, the tools one needs to write and deploy code. Android is very competitive here, with the Eclipse IDE plugin. I don't know if the Pre is competitive.
The theme is old. Hero is punished by god/king/country/corporation for a minor mistake. Hero find a way to redemption, but a great personal costs, and in a morally dubious manner. Hero has help from friends picked up along the way. Hero is double crossed. Hero is more or less vindicated. The wonderful thing about Neuromancer is that Gibson translates this old theme into a context in which the hero is not based solely on physical strength, or cleaverness, or the ability to con with good looks, but on access to information and the ability to deal with machines. This was kind of revolutionary. Perhaps the phone think is not so important because the synchronous voice communications are inefficient and we may see it fall to a more efficient asynchronous data feed.
In any case, most science fiction gets most of the details wrong, and it matters little as it merely reflects the world the author is living in, not the fundamental conflict. For instance, many pulp writers assumed we would get automatic house cleaning and diagnosticians before we got automatic astronavigation. By the time star trek came around, and we had computers that did math, but not clean floors, this was corrected. BTW, Star Trek was notable because it translated the form of The Odyssey into a modern language, just as Huckleberry Finn did before it. The important thing about these, then, is not the predictive element, as a stopped clock will be right twice a day, but the preperation such books can give the reader to live with then not well known technologies,
Unless something better comes along. That is a device that does not waste real estate with a tiny useless keyboard. I would rather have a smaller device and have to use a touchscreen. After all, I won't be writing novels on it. I can almost read a book on my iPhone. An e-book reader with the area of three iphones would be perfect.