Repeat that 20 times a day, and one can remain objective. Modern science is based on that premise. This is beyond simply observing the natural world and deriving defensible predictive processes. It is admitting that even though these processes reliably predict all known verifiable phenomena, it could still be wrong.
This is what Kuhn was saying in the Structure of Scientific Revolution. Paradigms, as defined and used in the book, not in the modern sense corrupted by brain dead executives, are created by an elite group of scientists and these paradigms are mistaken for truth. It is a priori truth instead of a posteriori truth, but if we are actively searching for the ultimate nature of the divine, and not just the static representation, then truth is of no use.
History has shown that our static representations of the truth are always incomplete. In An Incomplete Guide to the Art of Discovery Oliver asserts that such incompleteness can be the basis of science. By finding the one verifiable phenomena that does not seem to fit perfectly, we can do science, either by showing an error in the measurement or interpretation of the phenomena or showing that the theory used to describe the phenomena is incomplete.
Which is to say we should really think about what we are talking about. For the most part when scientists argue about this stuff, they are fighting over old and new paradigms. It is often not about whether humans are impacting the climate, which is a conclusion, but often how we go about collecting data and developing the processes used to quantify those changes. Because the average person only cares about conclusions, they really don't see the subtle difference, and they just see a person who says that people they disagree are wrong. But it is not about right or wrong. It is not about really about whether the earth is 10,000 years old or 10,000,000,000. It is about whether we are being honest and developing ideas that reflect the observations we make, and not just what we are raised to believe.
disc-based copy protection
Does this mean that the program is installed on the computer, but the game cannot be played with the original media present in the DVD drive? I have played The Sims on pretty minimal hardware, and I can imagine playing it on a netbook, with no DVD.
First, absolute numbers mean nothing. It is like 200 million for this wasted federal program on the 20 I waste on coffee over equal period. Without know the percent of total, or how much it would really save, or even if the problem can be fixed. As it is, this is just random showboating, perhaps interesting from a theoretical sense if the math is correct, but given the absolutes I doubt the author can really do the math correctly.
Second, define 'waste'. Most rational people would argue that facebook is itself is a waste of bandwidth, and that getting rid of it would leave more bandwidth for what people really want, which is p0rn, unless the rumors extorted in the previous article is true which is that facebook is really about such amateur barely legal material.
But even if we assume that Facebook is wasted, the percentage of bandwidth used is probably not excessive given it's entertainment value. I mean, it would be like getting rid of the department of homeland security. Sure it would lower the taxes we pay by 2%, but don't we already have enough unemployed executives complaining about how hard it is to live on a 1 million dollar severance package?
The nice things about cases like this is that it answers those specific question. There is no question that possessing a pictures of under age children is actionable under US laws, even if nothing else is going on. There is no question that children have been taking or otherwise creating pictures of them in various states of dress for a very long time. Such pictures have been intercepted by the photo lab, parents, or have just been a one off with few duplicates. We know have the case where the average child has the equipment to easily make perfect pictures of themselves, and duplicate these pictures indefinitely. The question is really not whether this in pornography, but whether we wish to discourage this practice, and if we do what is the proper means to do so.
Some will take this ACLU lawsuit as validating the right of children to take nude pictures of themselves and maybe others. After all, if this is not prosecuted under child porn laws, what would else would we do? But that ignores the fact that this is a kind of new problem, and the police might have overreacted. So What I think the ACLU is doing is asking what is the proper means of dealing with this situation, where children take pictures of themselves and, for all intents and purposes, send them to press? What is the proper consequence to limit such actions, if indeed we do.
I think the answers to these question will be useful because I am sure there are many children who do this all the time, and most just send to one person, or delete it and don't send to anyone. But occasionally such pictures enter wide distribution, either my mail over the phone or myspace, and then there is an issue. Setting limits is part of raising children, and at this point I don't think everyone knows what limits to set or that limits even need to be set. For instance, I wonder how many elementary and middle school kids have phones, and how many parents log into the kids accounts to check on the pictures and text.
This is only $100 more than the original phone costs. I generally don't agree that Apple has excessive profit margins, but this seems to indicate that Apple was almost selling the original phone at scalper's prices. I can't imagine that production costs have fallen so much the original couldn't have been sold, with contract, at a much lower price point.
In any case, I hope this will make all the people shut up about having to buy a contract. The iPhone is not the second coming, and if one does not want to have an ATT contract, then don't buy an iPhone. I mean, how lame does one have to be to need such a superficial level of validation to actually need a certain phone. But I am sure some people who considered themselves entitled to such expensive toys will complain about the price instead of buying a cheaper phone and finding self worth through other means.
I think the best setup is that depicted in Max Headroom. The ideal keyboard, a typewriter, hooked up through god knows what to 60's era black and white tvs. Or at least that I what I remember. Quite cool.
Let me just be a little defensive here. First, the Bushies are not Texas, especially the 43 president, or at least not an average texan. He was born in New Haven, and spent adolescence in a easter-style prep school in Houston then a real eastern prep school. I have freinds like this and they spend all their time complaining how lame Texas is and how much the miss New York. In truth, any stupid he might have is due to fact that so many prep school focus on style over substance.
Furthermore, unlike real texans who are pround to attend TAMU or UT or even Rice or a city university, he solidified his eastern credentials by attending Yale and Havard. He was not even southern enough to stay in Alabama for his national guard training, preferring to move north to Memphis.
His Texasfication is a recent phenomenon which was totally political. Connecticut has the sense to disown him. Texas should do the same.
As far as technology, i must say that anyone who thinks Texas is a backwood is extremely ignorant. Even if one is limited to oil, the amount of engineering necessary to get oil out of the ground is exceptional. Add to that that TI has been part of every technology innovation since the 50's, and concurrent with fairchild developed the first IC, you get some pretty high end resources. Of course, there are not many eggheads as Texans tend to be practical people. To get the kind of financiers and charlatans, like the Enron finance gy who stole all the money, or GW Bush, you have to look east. We call them carpet baggers.
Then one must look at what the money is spent on. Unlike some states that are always in debt with nothing to show for it, Texas has a number of wonderful community projects, without a deficit(by the way, the only reason GW Bush did not run a deficit when governor of texas was because of the tobacco settlement money, which, if any one was looking, he squandered and clearly indicated the kind of irresponsible liberal he wa when it came to money).
Both Houston and Dallas have major ballet, opera, and symphony companies, which means almost everyone is with a few hour drive of very reasonable priced cultural entertainment. I mean tickets are the price as i pay in other states. Each has major museums, zoos, and other attractions. Houston has de Menil collection, which is free. Even the poorest family can educate their kids on the entire world of art. Tell me where else such education can occur.
You are correct under the assumption that Texas just extracted the oil. but it doesn't. It engineers the equipment, processes, and creates the business processes needed to support project that run billions of dollars.
And of course, unlike other lame parts of the country, we do not have electricity shortages. Our lines are not foolishly connected to our neighbors who do not have the technical skill we do and allow themselves to be stripped of resources with no compensation.
I have tried to do some stuff for cray, so i know how hard it is to write these types of applications. But someone correct me if i am wrong, but i thought the solution was virtualization. We know most applications can run on a modest chip. The issue is that if one is running several processes, the chip has to save state, run the new process, save state, restore state, and the run the old process. This happens many times a second, and everything is so fast, we most of the time don't notice. I am watching a movie, writing this, and running a GUI all on the same machine. I don't notice any delays.
However, there is an issue of overhead with switching, and it seems like running specific processes on specific cores would do enough to help here. I don't see why the average application needs run on more thane one core. It seems like the OS can assign a core a process, and there would no issue beyond the current multithreading.
Now, like the stuff written for the cray, there is some applications could take advantage of the parallel processing, but I don't see a general need for this. It would be like the original Mac where certain processes weree shifted to the graphics processor by the OS. Not that programs are not going to written differently, but this will happen over time. DOS applications did not become full fledged window applications over night.
I understand what you are saying, but the scientific method is based on the pretext "we might be wrong". For the scientific method to be of value, we must begin with a stance of humility, and open ourselves to a perhaps more complete revealed truth. Euclid and the greeks did this by drawing with straight edges and compasses in the sand. Galileo did this by carefully examining the world and seeing what were the invariants, what really was going on, and how that differed from what we believed. One thing he found was that the giants of the ancients would not be as practical as some believed, as certain aspects would not scale linearly. Micheal Servetus, who rejected the trinity, also was one of the first people to postulate that the heart pumped the blood through the body.
So the issue is whether the teacher and students are open to this sense or wonder and comfortable in a world where god is not something you read about in a book, but as Newton did, experienced through the careful observation of creation. I cannot instill skepticism in a students who is told the 95% of the time outside of my classroom that a book has the revealed truth superior to our experience, that somehow god is going to following the rules set by man.
I have had these arguments my whole life. The ability of a a priori to do science is limited by those things that he or she believes are invariant. This person may do better work than a less constricted scientist, but the limits still exist. In terms of kids, some of these limitations are reduced as the student matures and begins to understand cause and effect and leaves magical thinking behind. The problem is that many people will use skepticism not for sake of discovering revealed truths, but to hand on the handed down truths. So, as my friend said when I said we we have artifacts from over 10,000 years ago, and, as I was reading Lucy at the time, we had hominins 3 million years old, he told that god planted these things so the unbelievers could be identified and burned in hell. And that is private schooled educated, 14 year old logic for you.
And the high end machine is $200 more, still with a slower processor, though it has more memory.
Also note that it a pound heavier with much more volume. But it does have the all important removable battery.
Apple is hard to beat on high end machines. Major OEMs just can't do it. The way to do it is to build that machine yourself and value your time at nothing. I recall a few years I ago I needed a high end laptop. I got a 15" HP. The machine was more expensive than my 17" Apple I bought around the same time. Thing is my 17" Apple is still working quite well. The HP, OTOH, seems slow as dog in comparison. Thanks Apple for your software upgrades that can actually make a machine run faster.
According to an article in the register carriers are more concerned, as ould be expected, with how to extract a profit from a phone rather than an innovative feature set.
Given the phones that have not made it to the US market, and the fact that the iPhone has to bypass the carriers all together, I do not trust their judgement on how interesting a phone might be. OTOH, given that it is a Dell, and does run an MS OS, I would assume that it was just another phone, perhaps full of gee whiz features, but not worth stocking over any other mobile device.
Perhaps they should approach Cricket or Boost Mobile. I don't think either of those has a smart phone, and Dell can likely make it cheap enough, as MS probably has some motivation to get into this extremely low level market sector.
Here is the issue. I can more go into Best Buy and get a generic laptop with Linux any more than I can get a generic laptop with Mac OS on it. Until that day arrives, MS has no moral standing to complain about branding.
Most of the time we have no problem paying for branding. We pay for MS brand, we pay for IBM brand, we pay for HP brand, we pay for the Dell brand. Any shop can throw together parts and put on Linux for half the cost of all but the cheapest desktop or a laptop.I suspect I could order laptops from china and put linux on sell them for half of what a Vista Pro machine would costs. And yes, most people would be able to do what they had to do with a bit of training.
What MS is really bitching about is that it has spent most of it's time as a cut rate brand and is having trouble attracting the high end customers. This is the same situation Wal Mart is in. It is trying to attract higher end clientele, and has pretty much given up. It knows on which side the bread is buttered. MS has a similiar failure with Vista. But, unlike Walmart that laughs all the way to the bank, MS embarrasses itself by making comments that prove to the rest of the world that it is a low class establishment.
Here is what MS is where MS is good. Supplying software that can put on the cheap machines deployed to thousands of worker bess and development tools to for the much smaller number of developers. The workers bees will by similar machine for home use simply because the can get the rest of the software from work and know how to use the software.
Many people save significant money if they did not have to pay for the MS brand. Even with a choice, many would willingly pay for the MS brand. Such saving are not available to most consumers because MS will use other revenues to subsidize markets in which it's normal fees would make a machine more expensive, and buys laws that prevent the sale of naked machines, and apparently puts clauses in contracts preventing the sale of competing products.
Apple, OTOH, is good at creating a product that the consumer and individual legitimate business person can use. If there is problem, Apple will fix it. I know, they have fixed my problems even why they did not have to. For most business, having a backup machine around is not a huge issue. Most general software is 100 a pop, and the rest is licensed as normal. It is not like you have to pay $300 for a new copy of vista. Sure the machine is too expensive for the worker bee, but so what. Let the other companies lose money on those sales and take the support headaches. This level of support and integration Apple gives costs money, so the brand costs more. Perhaps more than it should, but, like MS, not more than the market will bear.
Exactly, concentrate on techniques. Moving languages requires an understanding of the how the language approaches a problem, and what the typical errors and pitfalls are, and such an understand only comes with long use. For instance, I remember being 17 after a few years of writing Fortran, and seeing a non descript error appear. I knew what it was, and realized at that point I understood the language. The same thing happened in C after a few years.
What can and should be learned in school is the various levels of architecture for developing a piece of software. Composite and structured programming in which data is isolated and a minimum knowledge of the data exists outside the relevant functions. We did this even before we had fancy OO programming. Factoring code into base units and refactoring to improve legibility. I have been on some interviews where all i did was write the functions that would be needed to solve the problem, and that was enough. If one has the write architecture, and code money can fill in the blanks.
Some of this requires classes. I would not be able to write a kernel because I have not had OS architecture, or microprocessor architecture, or even complier design, though I have written simple compilers. I think that these are wonderful things to know, but on my interviews what they wanted was a CS degree, preferable masters, and the ability to put some code on paper.
It is my belief that the CD was the death of the Recorded Album. The amount of information, form factor, thickness, durability, just was not conducive to really long term success. Look a the vinyl album. When one bought an album one got a nice size picture up from, often some liner notes. an a record that could be stored in a rack for easy browsing. The number of songs on the album were few enough so that in most cases they tightly edited and few so that the need for filler was minimized. Usually either the entire album sucked or it was generally ok. The lifetime was limited, which was good for the record industry as greatest hits albums could be produced.
The CD changed that. The size no longer allowed a continuous large picture. In the early days a cardboard cover was included over the plastic case for the purpose of the picture, and also shrinkage prevention, but it was significantly smaller, not something you and your friends could pass around and lust over. Eventually this wasteful practice stopped. Then came the cd itself. Instead of filling 45 minutes, an artists now had to fill 70. Even with improved technology to streamline the process, a human had to at some point write the songs and lay down the tracks. One can imagine that some simply went to filler material, such as lame tracks or more loosely edited songs, if for no other reason that to compete with other hour+ recordings. This bloat extended to the liner notes, which now could be a dozen pages or more. No longer were we passively scanning a square foot of paper. We were reading a book. All this ended the idea of a cohesive album, and for many simply created a random loosely knit collection.
As a disclosure, most of what I have owned in my adult life are CDs. I would buy LP albums when I was younger, but seldom tapes for the reasons I have described. Likes tapes, the CD devalued music as a commodity, in the same way only selling paper back books would. It limits the experience, and in marketing one is selling an experience not only a product. So know we are at the stage where we have a choice to buy a loosely knit collection or individual songs. The deflation of the value of music has created a situation where buying individual songs makes sense. Where before, in inflation agdusted songs, we might pay 3+ dollars for a song and a b-side, then 25+ dollars for the album, a single song is $1. There is no one to blame. It is just the evolution ofthe market and lack of innovation.
I tried to RTFA but it locked up browser. I head that those scandinavians has super efficient browser and hyper speed bandwidth, but wowsers. My computer and connection are so lame that it can't load a page. Would have been cool to see the bikini chicks. I guess I will just have to settle for page 3.
Just so we are not picking on capital one, let me say that other banks has the same kind of security issues. Not necessarily critical, but issues that indicate they may be cutting corners or trying to monetized customer at the expense of security. For instance, I set a new machine the other day and when I tried to log in the bank said that I had cookies turned off. I checked and the banks cookies were being accepted. The only think I could figure is that some third party cookies were going to be set. I don't know why this would be an issue, does the bank need a 2o7 cookies, and why would I want such a cookie leading back to my bank account.
In any case, bank security is continuing to fall for the need for profits. For instance, another bank send my a survey. Linked through some random survey generator. No personal information, but why even begin to establish a pattern?
Accelerator as a mini-mashup that delivers information from another Web site directly to your current browser page.
I have this set up with widgets. It is useful to have certain snippets of web pages at ones fingertips. So I agree that it is a cool feature.
OTOH, implanting this in the browser seems like a serious security risk to me. How many times have we seen something like this used to steal someone's password to their bank account or otherwise make people believe they are on a secure site? How will they keep this feature from being hijacked?
In the end this sounds like feature bloat. It is not part of what MS said IE8 would be, which is a faster, more standards based browser.
I thought that google liked the DCMA as it protects them from lawsuits and other more extensive harassment. As it is now, all the have to do is take down the content. If this wasn't there they would be overrun with lawsuits. The only thing it seems to fight are things that might hurt it's ad business.
Those that are atheist have no place else to go or no one else to blame, so they work to do what they can to create a better life for their children. Since most atheist realize that it is up to them, and the only thing that matters is the children, they plan their lives accordingly with appropriate resources, and don't waste resources on extending life as the life is already extended though the family values that atheism inherently espouses.
God fearing folks however, are obsessed with the afterlife. These people tend to do things like build expensive temples, leaving the fate of their family to god through the welfare system. This obsession with god continues to death, when, unsure weather they have fulfilled all requirement for personal salvation, willing bankrupts the family and the state for the opportunity of making another pointless offering.
Again, not that anyone actually thinks that this is what happens, but it is an interesting thought.
The first bit of real science I was involved in, as were most of the science people I know, involved cleaning up after the the real real scientists. The as time progressed I was allowed to do other exciting tasks such as putting lugging and putting together equipment, and sitting next to a machine making sure it was working correctly and collecting data. Other real scientists I know weighed hundred of small rocks, or went to the library and copied dozens of articles. In other words, if you want to get students involved in real science, try to get them to a real lab as gophers. This is the same for students who wants to do real art, or real business. They will hear genuine chatter, see genuine methodology, and learn from genuine mistakes. If the find this boring, they will learn that science is not for them. I myself helped in a lab as a small tyke and thought it was the most wonderful place in the world. Summer interns or courses are available for most of that age range at many universities.
But that may not be answer wanted. Real science involves curious observation of something that does not comply with known assumption, systematic study to verify the validity of the observation, and, if valid, further observations to relate the disparate fact to the broader laws, resulting in modified or restructured laws. So to do real science all a student has to do is go out into the world, write down things he or she does not understand, and the research the topic until some degree of understanding emerges. Extra credit will of course be given for any observations made, as long as the description is detailed and accurate. In science observation is half the battle, that is why it was so important for scientists to learn how to draw. More extra credit is given for real research using secondary sources, and then primary experimentation. For an 11 year old, the question would be why does the hot water run out. For a older girl, why does some makeup make me break out. Perhaps a new driver might want to know why we have school zones.
This may not be an answer either. So we have applied science where we take emerging technologies and use them in practice to help establish validity and create new stuff, or to find new phenomenon. This is what the question seems to be alluding to. For instance, so cleaver person realized that we would see a drop in light when a planet passes in front of the sun. Know any scientist can apply that insight to postulate new planets. We have the technology to look for non-random signals from space that we would postulate indicate life forms. We can take accessible robotics to create new structures. The galaxy zoo is fun because it teaches kids organization. Other examples of this are organizations that over a few years has kids build suborbital rockets, or design and build other projects. These tend to be sexy and attract those that want something they can hold in their hands.
Science is also about becoming an expert in a field. An 11 year old that knows everything about dinosaurs, or galaxies has experienced the joy of being an expert. A senior who can work through newtons laws or work in vapour pressure tables has experienced such joy. One thing we can do as teachers, which is seldom emphasized, is allow a student to delve deeply into a single area and become an expert. Like the middle school student who has learned dinosaurs, the knowledge may never be applied to a real problem, but the experience of learning, developing, and categorizing the knowledge is important in itself.
So we have a knockoff of a fashion product. The thing is that most knock offs costs a fraction of the price. In fact fashion knocks off often costs just a bit more than a regular product. In this case a MacBook Air at 1.87Ghz is $2500, while the slower dell is $2000.
I hardly see how this competes with the Mac Air. The average thickness is greater. It is slower, and only comes with the home software. Unless you are willing to pay more than a Macbook Air, you will have to live with a very slow machine that does not have enough memory for Vista. For the machine that works, the cost is $2700. Of course some will say how wonderful all the extra ports are, and the built in mobile broad band is a plus.
But really, how much extra is one going to pay for a Dell. For Apple the markup is ok. Everyone expects to pay extra for an Apple. But for a dell?
Not all uninsured motorist are broke, they just don't want to pay the insurance. This is particularly true for the under 25 crowd, and especially under 18 crowd. I know many people in this situation with no insurance for precisely this reason. In my mind, if one can own a 20 thousand dollar truck, one can pay insurance. And if not, then one should have bought a cheaper vehicle so that one could afford insurance.
Insurance is a pain. I remember when it was required and how hard it was to scrounge the cash. But I did it. Of course, I did not have to do so until I was working. I wasn't one of these kids that had a car. In fact, many times I did not have a car so I took the bus.
I do not necessarily agree that insurance should be mandated, but understand why it is. Anyone can cause huge amount of damage using a car, kill any number of people. Teen girls back from a game can kill an unborn child and several others. Teen girls coming back from a game can run into a semi, perhaps severely damaging it, and some family depends on that semi to eat. Some otherwise innocent person can be run off the road and destroy a house. I know of two houses that have been partially destroyed by cars running into them. And who should pay for these things? Since most of us drives car, perhaps the government and taxpayers. Or we cover our own financial responsibility.
Really we must get out of this idea of entitlements. I am an Amercian so I am entitled to a car even if I can't afford it. If I damage something the state will take care of it. And since I do not produce enough to purchase everything I want, I should be given special dispensation so the normal laws do not apply to me.
This is what I was thinking. Many studies has shown that when one leaves college, or work, mental and physical abilities begin to decline.
I see many people leave school, learn their jobs for a few years, then just stop. This is why, I believe, we has such a problem with retraining. Rather then expect to learn new skills during one's adult life to insure employability, to many people expect to stop learning between 18 and 25. Of course, if one no longer uses the mind, then it like any organ will go into decline.
I agree. In particular there was a time when many people had the radio build into a pair of headphones. The only reason I see why we don't build an MP3 player into a pair of headphones is because the industry has moved away from the big earphones to the tiny ear buds, at least for MP3 players.
That said, I wish that Apple would have designed the player so that when any pair of headphones were inserted it would just start to play. This is possible because the headphones are removed it stops. I can get it to sometimes work with anohter pair of headphones, but not always. There is realy no reasn why we should not be able to do this. Once the volume is set, i often just want to go through a playlist, so controls are not absolutely neccesary.
People obsess over their right to bear arms, and I do no dispute the inherent importance of killing an animal or blowing off the head of your fellow person, but how long has it been since such primitive weapons as promoted by the NRA has actually really defended a country. The Iraqis defended themselves with IED. The Israeli's depend on missiles. In both cases an understanding of explosives is important, and in the later case the people must understand rocketry. sure, in some sense the NRA is right. If there is enough cannon fodder around with simple to use guns, of the type they support, battles can be won. This is proved by the weapons smuggled into Mexico from the US and used against the Mexican legal authorities. But really, such things are toys and the people who obsess over them are just playing games. The real action is rocketry, and anyone who infringes on our right to practice rocketry is risking the security of the free state.
Let the toy soldiers wear their camouflage underwear and play with their guns. Those of us in the know see the key in chemistry, physics, and the willingness to build a gadget that will solve the problem. For better or worse.
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This is what Kuhn was saying in the Structure of Scientific Revolution. Paradigms, as defined and used in the book, not in the modern sense corrupted by brain dead executives, are created by an elite group of scientists and these paradigms are mistaken for truth. It is a priori truth instead of a posteriori truth, but if we are actively searching for the ultimate nature of the divine, and not just the static representation, then truth is of no use.
History has shown that our static representations of the truth are always incomplete. In An Incomplete Guide to the Art of Discovery Oliver asserts that such incompleteness can be the basis of science. By finding the one verifiable phenomena that does not seem to fit perfectly, we can do science, either by showing an error in the measurement or interpretation of the phenomena or showing that the theory used to describe the phenomena is incomplete.
Which is to say we should really think about what we are talking about. For the most part when scientists argue about this stuff, they are fighting over old and new paradigms. It is often not about whether humans are impacting the climate, which is a conclusion, but often how we go about collecting data and developing the processes used to quantify those changes. Because the average person only cares about conclusions, they really don't see the subtle difference, and they just see a person who says that people they disagree are wrong. But it is not about right or wrong. It is not about really about whether the earth is 10,000 years old or 10,000,000,000. It is about whether we are being honest and developing ideas that reflect the observations we make, and not just what we are raised to believe.
disc-based copy protection
Does this mean that the program is installed on the computer, but the game cannot be played with the original media present in the DVD drive? I have played The Sims on pretty minimal hardware, and I can imagine playing it on a netbook, with no DVD.
Second, define 'waste'. Most rational people would argue that facebook is itself is a waste of bandwidth, and that getting rid of it would leave more bandwidth for what people really want, which is p0rn, unless the rumors extorted in the previous article is true which is that facebook is really about such amateur barely legal material.
But even if we assume that Facebook is wasted, the percentage of bandwidth used is probably not excessive given it's entertainment value. I mean, it would be like getting rid of the department of homeland security. Sure it would lower the taxes we pay by 2%, but don't we already have enough unemployed executives complaining about how hard it is to live on a 1 million dollar severance package?
Some will take this ACLU lawsuit as validating the right of children to take nude pictures of themselves and maybe others. After all, if this is not prosecuted under child porn laws, what would else would we do? But that ignores the fact that this is a kind of new problem, and the police might have overreacted. So What I think the ACLU is doing is asking what is the proper means of dealing with this situation, where children take pictures of themselves and, for all intents and purposes, send them to press? What is the proper consequence to limit such actions, if indeed we do.
I think the answers to these question will be useful because I am sure there are many children who do this all the time, and most just send to one person, or delete it and don't send to anyone. But occasionally such pictures enter wide distribution, either my mail over the phone or myspace, and then there is an issue. Setting limits is part of raising children, and at this point I don't think everyone knows what limits to set or that limits even need to be set. For instance, I wonder how many elementary and middle school kids have phones, and how many parents log into the kids accounts to check on the pictures and text.
In any case, I hope this will make all the people shut up about having to buy a contract. The iPhone is not the second coming, and if one does not want to have an ATT contract, then don't buy an iPhone. I mean, how lame does one have to be to need such a superficial level of validation to actually need a certain phone. But I am sure some people who considered themselves entitled to such expensive toys will complain about the price instead of buying a cheaper phone and finding self worth through other means.
I think the best setup is that depicted in Max Headroom. The ideal keyboard, a typewriter, hooked up through god knows what to 60's era black and white tvs. Or at least that I what I remember. Quite cool.
Furthermore, unlike real texans who are pround to attend TAMU or UT or even Rice or a city university, he solidified his eastern credentials by attending Yale and Havard. He was not even southern enough to stay in Alabama for his national guard training, preferring to move north to Memphis.
His Texasfication is a recent phenomenon which was totally political. Connecticut has the sense to disown him. Texas should do the same.
As far as technology, i must say that anyone who thinks Texas is a backwood is extremely ignorant. Even if one is limited to oil, the amount of engineering necessary to get oil out of the ground is exceptional. Add to that that TI has been part of every technology innovation since the 50's, and concurrent with fairchild developed the first IC, you get some pretty high end resources. Of course, there are not many eggheads as Texans tend to be practical people. To get the kind of financiers and charlatans, like the Enron finance gy who stole all the money, or GW Bush, you have to look east. We call them carpet baggers.
Then one must look at what the money is spent on. Unlike some states that are always in debt with nothing to show for it, Texas has a number of wonderful community projects, without a deficit(by the way, the only reason GW Bush did not run a deficit when governor of texas was because of the tobacco settlement money, which, if any one was looking, he squandered and clearly indicated the kind of irresponsible liberal he wa when it came to money).
Both Houston and Dallas have major ballet, opera, and symphony companies, which means almost everyone is with a few hour drive of very reasonable priced cultural entertainment. I mean tickets are the price as i pay in other states. Each has major museums, zoos, and other attractions. Houston has de Menil collection, which is free. Even the poorest family can educate their kids on the entire world of art. Tell me where else such education can occur.
You are correct under the assumption that Texas just extracted the oil. but it doesn't. It engineers the equipment, processes, and creates the business processes needed to support project that run billions of dollars.
And of course, unlike other lame parts of the country, we do not have electricity shortages. Our lines are not foolishly connected to our neighbors who do not have the technical skill we do and allow themselves to be stripped of resources with no compensation.
However, there is an issue of overhead with switching, and it seems like running specific processes on specific cores would do enough to help here. I don't see why the average application needs run on more thane one core. It seems like the OS can assign a core a process, and there would no issue beyond the current multithreading.
Now, like the stuff written for the cray, there is some applications could take advantage of the parallel processing, but I don't see a general need for this. It would be like the original Mac where certain processes weree shifted to the graphics processor by the OS. Not that programs are not going to written differently, but this will happen over time. DOS applications did not become full fledged window applications over night.
So the issue is whether the teacher and students are open to this sense or wonder and comfortable in a world where god is not something you read about in a book, but as Newton did, experienced through the careful observation of creation. I cannot instill skepticism in a students who is told the 95% of the time outside of my classroom that a book has the revealed truth superior to our experience, that somehow god is going to following the rules set by man.
I have had these arguments my whole life. The ability of a a priori to do science is limited by those things that he or she believes are invariant. This person may do better work than a less constricted scientist, but the limits still exist. In terms of kids, some of these limitations are reduced as the student matures and begins to understand cause and effect and leaves magical thinking behind. The problem is that many people will use skepticism not for sake of discovering revealed truths, but to hand on the handed down truths. So, as my friend said when I said we we have artifacts from over 10,000 years ago, and, as I was reading Lucy at the time, we had hominins 3 million years old, he told that god planted these things so the unbelievers could be identified and burned in hell. And that is private schooled educated, 14 year old logic for you.
Also note that it a pound heavier with much more volume. But it does have the all important removable battery.
Apple is hard to beat on high end machines. Major OEMs just can't do it. The way to do it is to build that machine yourself and value your time at nothing. I recall a few years I ago I needed a high end laptop. I got a 15" HP. The machine was more expensive than my 17" Apple I bought around the same time. Thing is my 17" Apple is still working quite well. The HP, OTOH, seems slow as dog in comparison. Thanks Apple for your software upgrades that can actually make a machine run faster.
Given the phones that have not made it to the US market, and the fact that the iPhone has to bypass the carriers all together, I do not trust their judgement on how interesting a phone might be. OTOH, given that it is a Dell, and does run an MS OS, I would assume that it was just another phone, perhaps full of gee whiz features, but not worth stocking over any other mobile device.
Perhaps they should approach Cricket or Boost Mobile. I don't think either of those has a smart phone, and Dell can likely make it cheap enough, as MS probably has some motivation to get into this extremely low level market sector.
Most of the time we have no problem paying for branding. We pay for MS brand, we pay for IBM brand, we pay for HP brand, we pay for the Dell brand. Any shop can throw together parts and put on Linux for half the cost of all but the cheapest desktop or a laptop.I suspect I could order laptops from china and put linux on sell them for half of what a Vista Pro machine would costs. And yes, most people would be able to do what they had to do with a bit of training.
What MS is really bitching about is that it has spent most of it's time as a cut rate brand and is having trouble attracting the high end customers. This is the same situation Wal Mart is in. It is trying to attract higher end clientele, and has pretty much given up. It knows on which side the bread is buttered. MS has a similiar failure with Vista. But, unlike Walmart that laughs all the way to the bank, MS embarrasses itself by making comments that prove to the rest of the world that it is a low class establishment.
Here is what MS is where MS is good. Supplying software that can put on the cheap machines deployed to thousands of worker bess and development tools to for the much smaller number of developers. The workers bees will by similar machine for home use simply because the can get the rest of the software from work and know how to use the software.
Many people save significant money if they did not have to pay for the MS brand. Even with a choice, many would willingly pay for the MS brand. Such saving are not available to most consumers because MS will use other revenues to subsidize markets in which it's normal fees would make a machine more expensive, and buys laws that prevent the sale of naked machines, and apparently puts clauses in contracts preventing the sale of competing products.
Apple, OTOH, is good at creating a product that the consumer and individual legitimate business person can use. If there is problem, Apple will fix it. I know, they have fixed my problems even why they did not have to. For most business, having a backup machine around is not a huge issue. Most general software is 100 a pop, and the rest is licensed as normal. It is not like you have to pay $300 for a new copy of vista. Sure the machine is too expensive for the worker bee, but so what. Let the other companies lose money on those sales and take the support headaches. This level of support and integration Apple gives costs money, so the brand costs more. Perhaps more than it should, but, like MS, not more than the market will bear.
What can and should be learned in school is the various levels of architecture for developing a piece of software. Composite and structured programming in which data is isolated and a minimum knowledge of the data exists outside the relevant functions. We did this even before we had fancy OO programming. Factoring code into base units and refactoring to improve legibility. I have been on some interviews where all i did was write the functions that would be needed to solve the problem, and that was enough. If one has the write architecture, and code money can fill in the blanks.
Some of this requires classes. I would not be able to write a kernel because I have not had OS architecture, or microprocessor architecture, or even complier design, though I have written simple compilers. I think that these are wonderful things to know, but on my interviews what they wanted was a CS degree, preferable masters, and the ability to put some code on paper.
The CD changed that. The size no longer allowed a continuous large picture. In the early days a cardboard cover was included over the plastic case for the purpose of the picture, and also shrinkage prevention, but it was significantly smaller, not something you and your friends could pass around and lust over. Eventually this wasteful practice stopped. Then came the cd itself. Instead of filling 45 minutes, an artists now had to fill 70. Even with improved technology to streamline the process, a human had to at some point write the songs and lay down the tracks. One can imagine that some simply went to filler material, such as lame tracks or more loosely edited songs, if for no other reason that to compete with other hour+ recordings. This bloat extended to the liner notes, which now could be a dozen pages or more. No longer were we passively scanning a square foot of paper. We were reading a book. All this ended the idea of a cohesive album, and for many simply created a random loosely knit collection.
As a disclosure, most of what I have owned in my adult life are CDs. I would buy LP albums when I was younger, but seldom tapes for the reasons I have described. Likes tapes, the CD devalued music as a commodity, in the same way only selling paper back books would. It limits the experience, and in marketing one is selling an experience not only a product. So know we are at the stage where we have a choice to buy a loosely knit collection or individual songs. The deflation of the value of music has created a situation where buying individual songs makes sense. Where before, in inflation agdusted songs, we might pay 3+ dollars for a song and a b-side, then 25+ dollars for the album, a single song is $1. There is no one to blame. It is just the evolution ofthe market and lack of innovation.
I tried to RTFA but it locked up browser. I head that those scandinavians has super efficient browser and hyper speed bandwidth, but wowsers. My computer and connection are so lame that it can't load a page. Would have been cool to see the bikini chicks. I guess I will just have to settle for page 3.
In any case, bank security is continuing to fall for the need for profits. For instance, another bank send my a survey. Linked through some random survey generator. No personal information, but why even begin to establish a pattern?
I have this set up with widgets. It is useful to have certain snippets of web pages at ones fingertips. So I agree that it is a cool feature.
OTOH, implanting this in the browser seems like a serious security risk to me. How many times have we seen something like this used to steal someone's password to their bank account or otherwise make people believe they are on a secure site? How will they keep this feature from being hijacked?
In the end this sounds like feature bloat. It is not part of what MS said IE8 would be, which is a faster, more standards based browser.
I thought that google liked the DCMA as it protects them from lawsuits and other more extensive harassment. As it is now, all the have to do is take down the content. If this wasn't there they would be overrun with lawsuits. The only thing it seems to fight are things that might hurt it's ad business.
Those that are atheist have no place else to go or no one else to blame, so they work to do what they can to create a better life for their children. Since most atheist realize that it is up to them, and the only thing that matters is the children, they plan their lives accordingly with appropriate resources, and don't waste resources on extending life as the life is already extended though the family values that atheism inherently espouses.
God fearing folks however, are obsessed with the afterlife. These people tend to do things like build expensive temples, leaving the fate of their family to god through the welfare system. This obsession with god continues to death, when, unsure weather they have fulfilled all requirement for personal salvation, willing bankrupts the family and the state for the opportunity of making another pointless offering.
Again, not that anyone actually thinks that this is what happens, but it is an interesting thought.
But that may not be answer wanted. Real science involves curious observation of something that does not comply with known assumption, systematic study to verify the validity of the observation, and, if valid, further observations to relate the disparate fact to the broader laws, resulting in modified or restructured laws. So to do real science all a student has to do is go out into the world, write down things he or she does not understand, and the research the topic until some degree of understanding emerges. Extra credit will of course be given for any observations made, as long as the description is detailed and accurate. In science observation is half the battle, that is why it was so important for scientists to learn how to draw. More extra credit is given for real research using secondary sources, and then primary experimentation. For an 11 year old, the question would be why does the hot water run out. For a older girl, why does some makeup make me break out. Perhaps a new driver might want to know why we have school zones.
This may not be an answer either. So we have applied science where we take emerging technologies and use them in practice to help establish validity and create new stuff, or to find new phenomenon. This is what the question seems to be alluding to. For instance, so cleaver person realized that we would see a drop in light when a planet passes in front of the sun. Know any scientist can apply that insight to postulate new planets. We have the technology to look for non-random signals from space that we would postulate indicate life forms. We can take accessible robotics to create new structures. The galaxy zoo is fun because it teaches kids organization. Other examples of this are organizations that over a few years has kids build suborbital rockets, or design and build other projects. These tend to be sexy and attract those that want something they can hold in their hands.
Science is also about becoming an expert in a field. An 11 year old that knows everything about dinosaurs, or galaxies has experienced the joy of being an expert. A senior who can work through newtons laws or work in vapour pressure tables has experienced such joy. One thing we can do as teachers, which is seldom emphasized, is allow a student to delve deeply into a single area and become an expert. Like the middle school student who has learned dinosaurs, the knowledge may never be applied to a real problem, but the experience of learning, developing, and categorizing the knowledge is important in itself.
I hardly see how this competes with the Mac Air. The average thickness is greater. It is slower, and only comes with the home software. Unless you are willing to pay more than a Macbook Air, you will have to live with a very slow machine that does not have enough memory for Vista. For the machine that works, the cost is $2700. Of course some will say how wonderful all the extra ports are, and the built in mobile broad band is a plus.
But really, how much extra is one going to pay for a Dell. For Apple the markup is ok. Everyone expects to pay extra for an Apple. But for a dell?
Insurance is a pain. I remember when it was required and how hard it was to scrounge the cash. But I did it. Of course, I did not have to do so until I was working. I wasn't one of these kids that had a car. In fact, many times I did not have a car so I took the bus.
I do not necessarily agree that insurance should be mandated, but understand why it is. Anyone can cause huge amount of damage using a car, kill any number of people. Teen girls back from a game can kill an unborn child and several others. Teen girls coming back from a game can run into a semi, perhaps severely damaging it, and some family depends on that semi to eat. Some otherwise innocent person can be run off the road and destroy a house. I know of two houses that have been partially destroyed by cars running into them. And who should pay for these things? Since most of us drives car, perhaps the government and taxpayers. Or we cover our own financial responsibility.
Really we must get out of this idea of entitlements. I am an Amercian so I am entitled to a car even if I can't afford it. If I damage something the state will take care of it. And since I do not produce enough to purchase everything I want, I should be given special dispensation so the normal laws do not apply to me.
I see many people leave school, learn their jobs for a few years, then just stop. This is why, I believe, we has such a problem with retraining. Rather then expect to learn new skills during one's adult life to insure employability, to many people expect to stop learning between 18 and 25. Of course, if one no longer uses the mind, then it like any organ will go into decline.
That said, I wish that Apple would have designed the player so that when any pair of headphones were inserted it would just start to play. This is possible because the headphones are removed it stops. I can get it to sometimes work with anohter pair of headphones, but not always. There is realy no reasn why we should not be able to do this. Once the volume is set, i often just want to go through a playlist, so controls are not absolutely neccesary.
Let the toy soldiers wear their camouflage underwear and play with their guns. Those of us in the know see the key in chemistry, physics, and the willingness to build a gadget that will solve the problem. For better or worse.