Re:I heard this 10 years ago - the death of the fr
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Are Newspapers Doomed?
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I don't know if you noticed, but the internet is much less free. Much more of the screen realestate is used for ads. Much more selling of our personal information is done. Many websites, like/., have a payment based model.
In these cases, I don't see that it has anything to do with perceived value to the consumer. It has mostly to do with the profits perceived by the operators, owners, and employees. For instance the internet companies of 90's were infected with people who just wanted to get rich quick. Developers who wanted to code a little and play a lot. Sales people to paid based not on revenues genuinely created, but a fictitious revenue that they got to name. this does not include managers and owners who expected payouts way out of line with actual generated revenue. These companies are gone, mostly because they were not headed by old families with cronies in Washington.
Fast forward today. In the US we have many good and profitable companies being destroyed by persons who are only concerned about the immediate income, not the long term financial security. Screw the company if I can make enough in the next five years to retire. Get rich quick. For instance the car execs are complaining about the amount of money they have to pay the workers. The workers may be over paid. But here is the catch. Workers for the japanese auto makers earn in the mid 5 figures, workers in the US automaker earn in the high 5 figures. There is a difference. OTOH, execs in the japanese automakers tend to earn 7 figures while an amercan exec ternds to earn in the 8-9 figure range. It is a matter of the expectations of profits.
Then I hear the nonsense that I dont' want to work because I would have to pay too much in taxes. This is the nonsense that leads to people being on welfare. I don't want to work for $7 an hour because I would have to pay taxes on it, so I will just live on my $150 dollars of benefits. When I did consulting, I had no problem with taxes because I was paid enough. Even now I would have no problem taking a pay check for $250K and paying whatever Obama wants my to pay on it, because in the end at that level I can afford an account and still come up multiples of what I pull in know.
So, newspapers, at lest in america, will disappear only because of the laziness of the american entrepreneur. Otherwise they will transformed by people who wnat to earn a living, and not just such at the government coffers.
Religious discrimination in the workplace is nothing new. In the united states it just isn't much a of problem because the majority of the people are christian. It turns up though. For instance there was the case where one group wanted time to pray during work time, but the profit driven secural community would not allow it. Such discrimination has become worse over the past few years. For example churches are allowed to accept government funds, funds that should be used in a neutral fashion, but in fact use those funds to discriminate against people who believe differently.
So tome this a complicated case. Here is guy with a private business, who in this time of successful deregulation and religious tolerance maybe should be allowed to do what the executives feels is necessary for the bottom line. OTOH, they are an american company, and american federal laws says you cannot discriminate against people based on religion, and I think most people would consider such action discrimination. I certainly would consider it discrimination if I had to listen to, for instance, OSteen tell me to pray before I went to buy a cell phone, or pray that the client would accept my deceptive offer, even if I did get paid for such mad ravings.
In the end, if this guy wants the freedom to discriminate, perhaps he should open a church instead of a bussiness. Given the profit that some churches brings in, he could still sell his software.
Although the RIAA has clearly overreacted to this whole download thing, obviously prompted by artists who are scared that they may have to get a job, and promotors scared that the gravy train of cocaine and hookers might be over, in this case I think the issue is reporting on the intent rather that what the RIAA said.
First, I heard nothing about these 'months of not filing lawsuits' until now. Clearly we have seen lawsuits filed in the several months. I think we saw one on this site filed against some helpless person. Anyone who reports that such a statement is true is either incompetent or trying to mislead the public. Since Wired and the WSJ has both been complicit in many of the scams that has hurt the US economy over the past 10 years, I suspect the later.
Second, the letter from the RIAA says they will now focus on convincing ISPs to cut off access to people who they feel violate the copyright of members IP, and overtime will escalate to lawsuits. So it is reasonable that they will still file lawsuits, and nothing in the letter says that they will stop filing lawsuits period.
To win against the aristocrats who wish to feed off the public tit while the many go without food and medical care we cannot sink down to the level of the aristocrats. They make the rules, and they have much more experience winning the PR game. We cannot counter Britneys Spear lack of a Lear Jet with some greasy teens inability to afford her music, yet be socially required to own it. Obviously the WSJ wants to help their own.
This has been the trend for a very long time. Once, a long time ago, people wrote code in assembly. Even not so long ago, say 20 years, there were enough applications where it still made sense to do assembly simply because it was the only way for affordable hardware to perform well.
Ten years ago many web servers were hand coded in relatively low level complied languages. Even though hardware had become cheaper, and the day of the RAID rack of PCs were coming on us, to get real performance one had to have software developers, not just web developers.
Of course cheap powerful hardware has made that all a thing of the past. There is no reason for an average software developer to have anything but a passing familiarity with assembly. There is no reason for a web developer to know anything other than interpreted scripting languages. Hardware is, and always has been, cheaper than people. That is why robots build cars. That is why ISM sold a but load of typewriters. That is why the jacquard loom was such a kick but piece of machinery.
The only question is how much cheaper is hardware, and when does it make sense to a replace a human wiht a machine, or maybe a piece of software. This is not always clear. There are still reletively develop places in the world where it is cheaper to pay someone to wash you clothes by hand than buy and maintain a washing machine.
Who in their right mind would go to this right wing country full of religious fundamentalist, well other than like minded religious fundamentalists that are scare of alcohol and the opposite sex.
In the past year they have arrested tourist for having a bit of cannabis on the shoe. They apparently also reserve the right to arrest people for carrying poppy seeds.. You can also apparently get four years for codeine, and other drugs one might have for urgent a valid medical needs.
And lets not forget what happens to you, if you, god forbid, want to play a bit of hanky panky on the beach. For that you might not ever get out of the country.
Obviously they built this gimmick to attract the type of people who like to say they have gone to beach, but do not do any of the things that healthy people tend to do at the beach. To be fair it their country, and they have a right to set the rules, and a visitor one must abide by the rules, but golly, I don't see how refrigerated sand can compensate for the lack of touching privileges.
This is really the issue. It is like courts. We know that eyewitness accounts are quite inaccruate, for the same reasons given in this book, yet we yet we allow their use in court. It is becoming increasingly clear that fingerprints are not as 100% as lawyers might claim, yet they are still allowed.
In any real world situations we cannot expect 100% accuracy. Most of the time we are doing well if we beat 50%. If eyewitness accounts are accurate most of the time, then we need to use them and back them up with other evidence. if fingerprints can narrow the field, then we need to use them and back them up. What we see here is a range of data, and a range of methods, often work the best. Saying that one method is best, and we should ignore all others, is a data driven recipe for failure.
Homeopathy is likely mostly psycology, there are no other scientific explanation, but so what. We pay psychologists, don't we? If one has a choice between paying $100 a week to a pychologist, or keep a few $2 vials of fish derived treatment around, is one of these a absolute better choice, considering each works equally well? If one wants to pay a chiropracter what a "massage therapist" might get if one were to get a massage with benefits, is that really wrong. One might want a really good massage that fixes your back instead of the the old humpy humpy. One might not the expenditure of money but hey if can spend $200 on a haircut why not a massage that really works?
What has really gotten me is the holier than thou attitude of doctors and their representative the AMA, like they really have the patients best interest at risk. If we are to be equally objective, there is plenty of data to suggest their real purpose is to limit the number of doctors. This is the same organization that well into the mid 1900's still refused to accept black doctors. What a way to limit supply, increase costs, and limit treatment opportunities to those most in need. We have doctors being paid by the pharmaceutical companies to push drugs onto children(I guess these drug pusher, like most others, never took Hammer's plea to leave the kids alone). The we have the whole racket of cancer therapy. Most of the so-called increase in life expectancy due to treatment can be attributed to earlier detection, not better and more expensive treatments.
Yet few are going to say don't treat the cancer, or don't help the child, or doctors are self serving over paid technicians that need to be reduced to working in a cubicle. Of course not. Doctors are part of the system of medicine. But so are traditional treatments. Remember that the middle class white treatment of Cambelss Chicken Noodle Soup, sprite, and kiss from your mom will cure almost anything, probably much better than a trip to the doctor, even if it is mostly pychobable.
If there was ever a time to end the franchise, it is now. The one continuous presence was Barrett as the computer. Without her, there simply is no point to the show...
Not that there has been a point for the past several years, other than money.
MS has enough cash to charge whatever they wish for the OS. They also have enough money to buy or rework applications to fit in whatever space they wish. The key here is promise, and eventually provide, a good enough a product so as to not lose customers to existing superior technology.
Here is what MS seems to be doing. Reworking and cutting the price of XP so, combined with existing relationships, the MS based netbook is cheaper than the *nix netbook. Such a product may be more expensive than the base product, but the base product will often be pushed as underpowered.
Then, to emphasise that the user will continue to have the full power of MS behind them, something MS will claim to a loss if the user goes with *nix, MS will point to the growing online offerings. Of course many of these work in any OS, and Google Docs already does what most people want, so it will be another bit of FUD.
MS Windows 7, or whatever it will be, will likely have a variant the runs on Netbooks, as well as a variant that runs on existing PCs. If MS does not recreate the Vista zoo, and only has three or four versions that are targeted toward specific hardware varients, instead of trying to artificially inflate the price of the box products so as to drive hardware sales, they may have a good chance of winning th netbook space.
The netbook space really should belong to *nix. It is a good fit, and the randomness that exists in the PC space has not yet emerged. Unlike the last time we tried the net appliances, the world is actually pretty networked, and the online tools are of a quality to actually compete with the offline equivalents. More importantly, the damage that MS caused to the online space has been repaired.
Which is really the same issue I face with MS. Most machines I work with run in very limited mode, and the updates do not get installed auto-magically. Which means that once every week or two I have to go though and manually update the machines. Sometime, for some reason, this is not so easy. Updates do not always install nicely.
I know that for $1000 dollars to buy the fix for the other software I use, but it seems that since MS writes the OS, they could do something to trump the limitations set by software running above the OS so that critical updates would be installed no matter what. It seems to me to be a very big security issue that other processes can mess with the updates so that they will no install on shutdown. It would seem that the update files might be under more security.
If you want to fly it, you will need about a million dollars extra for each main engine. They are not included.
This is in addition to what everyone else is saying. Although the the fantasy is nice, I don't think anyone is going to have a homebrewed lauch complex any time soon.
On the other thing, I think that the moon flight was as well thought out as the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq. In probably sounded good at the frat house when everyon was wasted on trash can punch, but the next morning, no one quite knew how to handle the consequences.
The fact is we are down to three shuttles. The fact is we are likely not going to flying if we get down to two. The fact is we have wasted the past 8 years has been wasted. We have known we need to replace shuttle for 5 years. Fact is that the shuttle itself was designed over an eight year period, with the first fully functional vehicle appearing a few years later. One can't just wake up on morning and say, ooh, I want a space program. Not any more. There is too much history. If Orion is not a point where a vehicle can be built, maybe it should be killed. What we need is a reliable heavy lifter, which we have. What we need is a reliable manned spacecraft, which we can build. What we need is a space station, which we have but let politics get in the way of. Then we can have shuttle from LEO to the moon, mars, wherever. Mopst of all, we need to look at how to do this effeceiently.
This is preferable to having the school responsible not only for what is on a laptop, but also for support of the laptop. OTOH, how many people do you know that buy a laptop after the one from work is locked down? Given the number of people caught with naughty content on thier work machine, I think the number is few. IN most cases it would be better for the kids to buy the laptop, and MS Office, maybe mathematica, and whatever else the tech classes neeed. i forsee many speding this kind of money.
The issue should really be what do we need to do with these machines to make sure taxpayer money will well spent. On a mac that means that the kid can't install a program in the app directory, and has no root privalidges at all. Most things will run from the user directory. This means that most things can be fixed by a backup of the legtimate data, zapping the user account, and then recreating the account. If money is available, a weekly check of logs with reasonable consequences can teach responsibility.
I think that we need to teach responsible use of technology. That we don't use crackberris at the dinner table. That we don't play online games until after work is done. That we don't get off in public places. You know, just regular manners.
I receive very little spam. Maybe 20%. That is hardly 97%. So where is it.
I know where it is, and why it is still a problem. It is not in my email box, or the email box of most people. It is in the spam filters of our email providers. And that is the problem. I don't see it so I don't care. Sure, it may increase my cost to get online, but by how much. DSL is dirt cheap to what I was paying 10 years ago, and at better bandwidth. So what do I care? I don't see it, the problem is solved. And I can delete the 5 messages of spam that get through.
So out of sight, out mind, right? Wrong. I also know for the average person, and for the average spammer, those five messages per person that gets through can mean huge amounts of money. Even if nothing is bought, the way that mail clients are set up and vulnerabilities in the mail and web clients can make the spammer money. For instance, most clients now render HTML and load images automatically. Apple still refuses to set an option in mail.app to turn off HTML permanently, though it does allow one to not load images. Still, most people load images, which registers as a hit on some scam web site and registers the email as valid. Rendering the HTML can allow viruses on the receivers machine. And even the semi legitimate spammer still has hope that someone will buy a product.
We won't be able to get rid of all spam, even though we can't get rid of mail scams though it is a felony. The best we can manage it. If we are to fix it more, then we have to bring the problem to the forefront by letting spam through, or some other methods.
You have a point there, and I think it is the point that so many people are missing. Some of these crimes deserve punishment because they involve parents meddling exssively in their childrens lives, often committin act that if not criminal are at least undesirable to society. As we adapt to prevalent technologies, we have to define the boundries.
So let's look at this not changing the variable of the perpetrator, mother to sibling, but technology. We could assume that the mother might use the phone, or the US postal service to impersonate a boy(difficult over phone, more likely over mail), and use these means to drive the child crazy. Normaly no one would prosecute such impersonation, but if the child committed suicide, as in this case, they might. I would agrue that we know such use of the mail and phone are not legitimate, and therefore this does not often happen. But an old crazed women, reliving her wasted life vicariously through her daughter, might not have the abstract ability to transfer the social norm of those mediums to the new medium. So the court has to set an example.
Parents will try to protect their kids, even when it is damaging to thier kids. Parents will go to school and defend thier kids even if means the kid does not recieve an education. Parents will intervene in personal relationships even it means that the kid never develops the tools to navigate social situations on thier own. We have standards and limits here, and those standards are changing. While a parent can protect a kid by taking them out of school for 'home schooling', we are saying harrasing a enemy of your kids over the internet is as wrong as doing so over the phone. I see nothing wrong with this.
Posts like this is why girls hide. The assumption that because they are a girl online, they want a man, or need a man, or are attracted to men. There is more to life than that. I know that to some, finding the hookup for the evening is all that life is about, but to some science and all that crap is interesting, and having a discussion about it without all the sex stuff, not that there is anything wrong with sex, it an interesting evening in itself. Especially when followed, intermingled, or otherwise combine with sex, with a partner of your choice, with opposite persuasion or not.
I mean really, this is a cool article about a cool finding, and look, we are already degenerating to out base selves and fighting over and defending the one girl left online. This really sucks. No wonder YouTube had to get rid of all the cool content. It was overshadowing all the intelletual stuff like open university that they wanted to promote so they could be considered ligit.
Many manufacturers do not make drivers for the Mac for the same reason that many do not make drivers for *nix. The simply do not want to have the responsibility of support.
This does not mean that no one supports mac. I use a third party wireless device for one of my old Macs. I wanted the 'n' spec, and the only way to get it was to hook up through the USB. It works well enough, not as seamless as built in Airport, but it is, obviously, faster.
And this brings up a second issue. Many things have always work out of the box with Mac simply because these things are standards compliant. For instance, PS printer, PIP cameras, and external drives, all work without drivers. It would be nice if there were a standard for wireless network devices so I would not need a special driver. But this is a difference of philosophy. On the PC side, every device was to take over your computer. In the old days, even the internet service wanted to take over you computer. So a custom device driver was written, and other malware was installed. Sometimes this provided nice integration, but most of the time it just lead to driver conflicts. I much prefer a generic abstraction layer that can accept many devices and a front end of the users choice.
Spreadsheets are good way to get a feel for statistics. The problem is, and why so many dislike the spreadsheet as mathematical tool, they are also a good way of getting answers with no understanding of why they answers are right. Ont thing that one can do, and one thing my profs did, was make me write about the process of how I got the answers, and how the methods that software used, in addition to reporting the actual results.
What this did was to insure that I was using the spreadsheet as a tool, no a crutch. Therefore, when my data sets were no longer suited to a spreadsheet, I was able to move to other tools. This happened pretty quickly as I moved to real world science data sets, as most spreadsheets are not science oriented. OTOH, I have run into few business data sets that were not appropriate for spreadsheets.
In terms of cost, as long as MS can provide kickbacks, or as long as MS has the scale, whatever one wants to believe, MS will cheaper. For instance, the Dell has a $25 discount on the MS machine, but not the *nix machine
What they are probably talking about is overall functionality. While XP is very good, it is dated. We are not talking about Vista here, and I doubt that MS Windows 7 will run on these machines. However, because the OEM is free to play with the *nix, they can pick and choose as necessary so the netbook can have a modern OS, that can run the current apps, without having the limitations causing by trying to run an OS designed for a more powerful machines. Even though MS is frantically trying to fit XP into a smaller footprint, their success migth be limited.
This is a generally insoluble. Nearly anything that is kept over a period of time will degrade, often to the point of effective destruction. The only way to stop this process to constantly monitor and minimize or repair the damage. On macroscopic physical objects this may not be so bad. The damage to a painting, the loss of frames in a movie, the fading of text in a printed document, all can be filled in by the human viewer. But what we are dealing with here is coded media, often compressed into a small space and requiring machines to decompress, decode, translate, and represent in a human readable form.
My basic premise is that most things are not useful for the long term. For instance, I don't have my Fortran code from 1980, my Apple programs from 1985. WHat I do have has been physically shifted from one media to another to insure that I can still have access to them in I need them. For instance, the hundreds of CDs I have now will likely be thrown away, and I will only take the time to transfer a fraction of the information. Some of it may be transfered to paper form, some to whatever electronic storage form is popular in 10 years.
To summarize the long term archive problem has never been solved completely, and maybe that is good because if it were would be drowning under a flood of old junk. Entropy prevents this. Those thing we want to keep must be maintained, or at least, periodically updated. It is possible that someone has a great novel on punch cards, but getting it to human readable form would be a great issue if the storage format was never updated.
What is truly sad about this is the public perception that teachers and the teacher unions are disrupting eduction. As is clearly shown here, the disruptive comes from persons who beleive they are so smart that they are not forced to be a teacher, and therefore qualified to tell the teacher what to do.
First, here is a fact. Teaching a job, just like those who sit in office doing nothing more than type code on keyboard. I mean, how hard can it be type random gibberish in a keyboard? Anyone can do it, !. So the teachers first goal is keep the class moving so objectives can be taught, assessed, rethought, and year end tests passed. Do teachers do this to maximize bonuses. Duh, are we idiots, of course. Why are the automakers begging for money right now, to kep 8 figure salaries. Why do we code for any semi-legitimate business, to make the money.
Second, the tools teachers use are the tools teachers use. How many geeks know how to use every OS, every IDE. How many developers know how to write software without an IDE, or can code direct in assembly. Does that make the developers idiots. I might say so, but not really as I have a inch of compassion and am not an arrogant bastard. No one is going to go into an office, give the staff new software to use, and expect management not to react. See point one. Teacher are there to teach content, not be experts at things not even experts agree on. Many serious consider Free OS invalid. In is an opinion. Considering it otherwise refers back to the arrogant bastard.
Third, a classroom is necessarily a controlled environment. While it would be nice to allow kids to do whatever they want, it is not feasible. In most schools, computers are not set up as a redundant array of disposable devices, and if a computer is broken, that generally means several students are denied an education for at least a little while. While teaching *nix is a lofty goal, i wonder if the organization would be there to fix the machines before the next class came in, or if they would just say, hey it is not my problem, and i don't care if some kids loses an education.
This is a classic example of why people hate *nix. Here is a guy who is trying to help the cause, but instead has shown how clueless the cause is. Unlike Dell Foundation, who provides money to teachers to help thing, this guy just seems to attack teachers with no understanding of the context. Even now, there is no acknowledgment of the damage that has been done to the students.
Help students by becoming teachers or mentors, not by attacking them. After all, teachers don't go into your lame ass web development operation and tell you to use real tools.
These are the two that are the biggest problem due to power off, and power management, one the OS level, should handle this. I have all my machines automatically shut after a few hours in inactivity. But most virus checkers only have time of day settings, and there are no hooks from automatic shutdown to these important services that need to be run every day. Sure you can push an update, but that requires the machine be in sleep or hibernate, not shutdown. For small number of machines, this can be done manually once a week, but this is something that needs to be built into future OS if the OS is going to have weekly updates that require a restart.
Then there is the issue of starting up for the day. Shutdown can happen automatically, but startup should be initiated by the user. Sometimes it does take several minutes to connect to online volumes or for MS to do whatever it does. I have seen a couple machines take a very long time to boot. Again, I think hibernate is a good compromise, but there must be hooks in the system to allow virus updates and other patches.
All this means that all applications must be closed in case a automatic update occurs, something I almost never do on my machines. I put them to sleep, but my apps are open. On my MS Windows machine, this every once in while means I have to start all over again loading apps.
An early, incomplete, OS is faster than a production ready OS. I can imagine that certain things that might slow an OS down are present in a production build that may not be present in a beta. Sure, the opposite is true, but there is no way of saying that the later outweighs the former.
Two years ago, much the same was being said about Vista. It was powerful, it was redesigned with wonderful new features. About the only hones thing that was said about Vista was that it would not work with much of the hardware that currently in use. This is why people stayed with XP. MS claims that it has many more device drivers, and if the shipping OS is faster, that will help also. But given history, I must wait to see the proof in the pudding.
In any case, I would much rather see MS support standards, rather than micromanage hardware. I mean, is it not a bit ridiculous that I have to download a new driver package everytime I use a different USB drive?
Much of this depends on the initial premise. For example, if women are expendable child bearers, then abortions are never necessary. If a women is raped, or if she is going to die, then that is not a big deal. Likewise, if all information must be controlled, then anonymity of any kind is bad, as it allows dissemination of information without the ability to retaliate.
OTOH, if birth control is widely available, pre natal care is available to all comers, and food, shelter, and education is given to all children, without question or exception, then one can imagine a world in which every child would be wanted. Likewise, if maximum information and open debate were seen as a asset, and everyone was encouraged to have their say, all everyone was honestly listened to, and no one would retaliate based on personal superstitions, then one could imagine a world in which everyone could be open and honest with their opinions.
In the real world, though, significant militant groups enjoy killing people who disagree with their superstitions. For example, groups have felt the right to kill people who believe differently from them, following a tradition that killed the man that believed that the heart pumped the blood. Clearly when the righteous feel the right to kill based on beliefs, anonymity is necessary.
But I will be a rebel and say that even in a perfect world where all superstition was gone, both anonymity and abortion would still have a place. No matter how careful and care full we are, there will still be that one case where a family might have to choose between the mother and unborn child.
It seems to me, that in america at least, we are moving into a very Aristocrat era, where people are not allowed the opportunity to pursue happiness, but rather are given it because because by some metric we think they deserve it. I believe this comes about because certain parties have convinced that the american is a right, and every person, no matter how incompetent, inefficient, or otherwise unproductive deserves a 2000 square foot house, a 600 cubic foot automobile, and a flat screen TV in every room. I believe nothing could be further from the ideals written into the justification for the colonies to rebel against England, and for at least some future Americans to become traitors against their monarch. The whole idea was to allow people, or rather men, the opportunity to succeed without having to compete against established firms that produced nothing.
No one wants an American car. Few people are willing to pay plastics discs of music. Why are we wasting our time trying to save these failed business plans. The executives are clearly not able to turn a profit. Why do we think the are entitled to their income.
I know that everyone says they are too big fail, and what about the jobs. Well, I still believe in America. I believe that they failure represents an opportunity, not a termination. If these companies are no longer wasting resources, well those resources will be available to other more innovative firms.
As far as the job losses, and 'main street' argument. How many houses have been saved since the bankers stole $400 billion from the american taxpayer. And how many jobs did Chrysler say there were going to cut as soon as their handout is given? Here is a thing to think about. One trillion dollars pays for almost 150,000 so-called welfare recipients. People who have and raise families, pay rent, spend all the benefits at the grocery store for food and necessities. they don't buy jets, figure how to screw a person coming in for a loan, or go crying to washington for a bailout. Here is one thing I think we can all agree on. A person pulling in $7000 a year is much more likely to go out and look for a job, or create a job, than a person pulling in 40K a year making cars no one wants.
I started learning about that age on a teletype. It really didn't stick until I got into a formal class in high school and learned Fortran. The key, to me, is exposure and exploration. For instance, in a pre engineering class, the 11-14 year olds are taught the tools and how they can be used to create. The older students are then given specific tasks with deadlines, deliverables, and consequences.
Therefore I would suggest an exploration type of experience, especially for the pre teens. I also would not focus on giving the latest tools, as it will be 10 years before most of them are out in the market, and tools will change. One nice application is the Alice software from Carnegie Mellon, along with story telling Alice for the small kids. It is free and teaches many of the concepts of OO and procedural languages. What is bad is there is no real curriculum for it, IMHO, targeted to under 16 set. OTOH, it does teach many good concepts, and does engage kids.
For a more traditional approach here would be my objectives. Note that the language and tools are unitmportant. What I think is important is to encourage abstract thinking. Number one: algorithms and procedures. These are important in math and science, yet most students cannot write a good algorithm. They leave large gaps. If a student can write an algorithm to count, or sort, or whatever, and code it, your science teachers will worship you.
Number two: variables. Many kids can never understand variables. What are they, how are they used, why do they change over time(they vary, duh). By focusing on variables, constants, and parameters, the kids will gain an important problem solving tool. You math teachers will worship you.
Number three: Form and syntax. Make them use a language to code! It teaches that almost is not good enough. Everything has to be perfect. This is why Fortran is so wonderful. It forces the student to focus on the details and the overall process. This is like writing an essay. You have an overall goal and parts that must be equally organized. Now the english people are on board.
Lastly, my pet peeve, i=j; j=i is not a swap operations. Any kid that can understand this is ready for any math or science high school class. In fact this is the first thing I would do. Write a swap function. Watch it fail. Let them fix it. See the joy when understanding comes through.
None of this needs to complex or over the kids head, and they can take as long as they like to learn the concepts. Those who race ahead can solve typical problems like stacks, efficient sorting, and the like. One thing I see missing is the lack of teaching of basics, stuff that is now buried deep in the library. When one starts programing in college, sure it is hard to do all this, but when is programing at 12, there is time.
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In these cases, I don't see that it has anything to do with perceived value to the consumer. It has mostly to do with the profits perceived by the operators, owners, and employees. For instance the internet companies of 90's were infected with people who just wanted to get rich quick. Developers who wanted to code a little and play a lot. Sales people to paid based not on revenues genuinely created, but a fictitious revenue that they got to name. this does not include managers and owners who expected payouts way out of line with actual generated revenue. These companies are gone, mostly because they were not headed by old families with cronies in Washington.
Fast forward today. In the US we have many good and profitable companies being destroyed by persons who are only concerned about the immediate income, not the long term financial security. Screw the company if I can make enough in the next five years to retire. Get rich quick. For instance the car execs are complaining about the amount of money they have to pay the workers. The workers may be over paid. But here is the catch. Workers for the japanese auto makers earn in the mid 5 figures, workers in the US automaker earn in the high 5 figures. There is a difference. OTOH, execs in the japanese automakers tend to earn 7 figures while an amercan exec ternds to earn in the 8-9 figure range. It is a matter of the expectations of profits.
Then I hear the nonsense that I dont' want to work because I would have to pay too much in taxes. This is the nonsense that leads to people being on welfare. I don't want to work for $7 an hour because I would have to pay taxes on it, so I will just live on my $150 dollars of benefits. When I did consulting, I had no problem with taxes because I was paid enough. Even now I would have no problem taking a pay check for $250K and paying whatever Obama wants my to pay on it, because in the end at that level I can afford an account and still come up multiples of what I pull in know.
So, newspapers, at lest in america, will disappear only because of the laziness of the american entrepreneur. Otherwise they will transformed by people who wnat to earn a living, and not just such at the government coffers.
So tome this a complicated case. Here is guy with a private business, who in this time of successful deregulation and religious tolerance maybe should be allowed to do what the executives feels is necessary for the bottom line. OTOH, they are an american company, and american federal laws says you cannot discriminate against people based on religion, and I think most people would consider such action discrimination. I certainly would consider it discrimination if I had to listen to, for instance, OSteen tell me to pray before I went to buy a cell phone, or pray that the client would accept my deceptive offer, even if I did get paid for such mad ravings.
In the end, if this guy wants the freedom to discriminate, perhaps he should open a church instead of a bussiness. Given the profit that some churches brings in, he could still sell his software.
First, I heard nothing about these 'months of not filing lawsuits' until now. Clearly we have seen lawsuits filed in the several months. I think we saw one on this site filed against some helpless person. Anyone who reports that such a statement is true is either incompetent or trying to mislead the public. Since Wired and the WSJ has both been complicit in many of the scams that has hurt the US economy over the past 10 years, I suspect the later.
Second, the letter from the RIAA says they will now focus on convincing ISPs to cut off access to people who they feel violate the copyright of members IP, and overtime will escalate to lawsuits. So it is reasonable that they will still file lawsuits, and nothing in the letter says that they will stop filing lawsuits period.
To win against the aristocrats who wish to feed off the public tit while the many go without food and medical care we cannot sink down to the level of the aristocrats. They make the rules, and they have much more experience winning the PR game. We cannot counter Britneys Spear lack of a Lear Jet with some greasy teens inability to afford her music, yet be socially required to own it. Obviously the WSJ wants to help their own.
Ten years ago many web servers were hand coded in relatively low level complied languages. Even though hardware had become cheaper, and the day of the RAID rack of PCs were coming on us, to get real performance one had to have software developers, not just web developers.
Of course cheap powerful hardware has made that all a thing of the past. There is no reason for an average software developer to have anything but a passing familiarity with assembly. There is no reason for a web developer to know anything other than interpreted scripting languages. Hardware is, and always has been, cheaper than people. That is why robots build cars. That is why ISM sold a but load of typewriters. That is why the jacquard loom was such a kick but piece of machinery.
The only question is how much cheaper is hardware, and when does it make sense to a replace a human wiht a machine, or maybe a piece of software. This is not always clear. There are still reletively develop places in the world where it is cheaper to pay someone to wash you clothes by hand than buy and maintain a washing machine.
In the past year they have arrested tourist for having a bit of cannabis on the shoe. They apparently also reserve the right to arrest people for carrying poppy seeds.. You can also apparently get four years for codeine, and other drugs one might have for urgent a valid medical needs.
And lets not forget what happens to you, if you, god forbid, want to play a bit of hanky panky on the beach. For that you might not ever get out of the country.
Obviously they built this gimmick to attract the type of people who like to say they have gone to beach, but do not do any of the things that healthy people tend to do at the beach. To be fair it their country, and they have a right to set the rules, and a visitor one must abide by the rules, but golly, I don't see how refrigerated sand can compensate for the lack of touching privileges.
In any real world situations we cannot expect 100% accuracy. Most of the time we are doing well if we beat 50%. If eyewitness accounts are accurate most of the time, then we need to use them and back them up with other evidence. if fingerprints can narrow the field, then we need to use them and back them up. What we see here is a range of data, and a range of methods, often work the best. Saying that one method is best, and we should ignore all others, is a data driven recipe for failure.
Homeopathy is likely mostly psycology, there are no other scientific explanation, but so what. We pay psychologists, don't we? If one has a choice between paying $100 a week to a pychologist, or keep a few $2 vials of fish derived treatment around, is one of these a absolute better choice, considering each works equally well? If one wants to pay a chiropracter what a "massage therapist" might get if one were to get a massage with benefits, is that really wrong. One might want a really good massage that fixes your back instead of the the old humpy humpy. One might not the expenditure of money but hey if can spend $200 on a haircut why not a massage that really works?
What has really gotten me is the holier than thou attitude of doctors and their representative the AMA, like they really have the patients best interest at risk. If we are to be equally objective, there is plenty of data to suggest their real purpose is to limit the number of doctors. This is the same organization that well into the mid 1900's still refused to accept black doctors. What a way to limit supply, increase costs, and limit treatment opportunities to those most in need. We have doctors being paid by the pharmaceutical companies to push drugs onto children(I guess these drug pusher, like most others, never took Hammer's plea to leave the kids alone). The we have the whole racket of cancer therapy. Most of the so-called increase in life expectancy due to treatment can be attributed to earlier detection, not better and more expensive treatments.
Yet few are going to say don't treat the cancer, or don't help the child, or doctors are self serving over paid technicians that need to be reduced to working in a cubicle. Of course not. Doctors are part of the system of medicine. But so are traditional treatments. Remember that the middle class white treatment of Cambelss Chicken Noodle Soup, sprite, and kiss from your mom will cure almost anything, probably much better than a trip to the doctor, even if it is mostly pychobable.
Not that there has been a point for the past several years, other than money.
Here is what MS seems to be doing. Reworking and cutting the price of XP so, combined with existing relationships, the MS based netbook is cheaper than the *nix netbook. Such a product may be more expensive than the base product, but the base product will often be pushed as underpowered.
Then, to emphasise that the user will continue to have the full power of MS behind them, something MS will claim to a loss if the user goes with *nix, MS will point to the growing online offerings. Of course many of these work in any OS, and Google Docs already does what most people want, so it will be another bit of FUD.
MS Windows 7, or whatever it will be, will likely have a variant the runs on Netbooks, as well as a variant that runs on existing PCs. If MS does not recreate the Vista zoo, and only has three or four versions that are targeted toward specific hardware varients, instead of trying to artificially inflate the price of the box products so as to drive hardware sales, they may have a good chance of winning th netbook space.
The netbook space really should belong to *nix. It is a good fit, and the randomness that exists in the PC space has not yet emerged. Unlike the last time we tried the net appliances, the world is actually pretty networked, and the online tools are of a quality to actually compete with the offline equivalents. More importantly, the damage that MS caused to the online space has been repaired.
I know that for $1000 dollars to buy the fix for the other software I use, but it seems that since MS writes the OS, they could do something to trump the limitations set by software running above the OS so that critical updates would be installed no matter what. It seems to me to be a very big security issue that other processes can mess with the updates so that they will no install on shutdown. It would seem that the update files might be under more security.
This is in addition to what everyone else is saying. Although the the fantasy is nice, I don't think anyone is going to have a homebrewed lauch complex any time soon.
On the other thing, I think that the moon flight was as well thought out as the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq. In probably sounded good at the frat house when everyon was wasted on trash can punch, but the next morning, no one quite knew how to handle the consequences.
The fact is we are down to three shuttles. The fact is we are likely not going to flying if we get down to two. The fact is we have wasted the past 8 years has been wasted. We have known we need to replace shuttle for 5 years. Fact is that the shuttle itself was designed over an eight year period, with the first fully functional vehicle appearing a few years later. One can't just wake up on morning and say, ooh, I want a space program. Not any more. There is too much history. If Orion is not a point where a vehicle can be built, maybe it should be killed. What we need is a reliable heavy lifter, which we have. What we need is a reliable manned spacecraft, which we can build. What we need is a space station, which we have but let politics get in the way of. Then we can have shuttle from LEO to the moon, mars, wherever. Mopst of all, we need to look at how to do this effeceiently.
The issue should really be what do we need to do with these machines to make sure taxpayer money will well spent. On a mac that means that the kid can't install a program in the app directory, and has no root privalidges at all. Most things will run from the user directory. This means that most things can be fixed by a backup of the legtimate data, zapping the user account, and then recreating the account. If money is available, a weekly check of logs with reasonable consequences can teach responsibility.
I think that we need to teach responsible use of technology. That we don't use crackberris at the dinner table. That we don't play online games until after work is done. That we don't get off in public places. You know, just regular manners.
I know where it is, and why it is still a problem. It is not in my email box, or the email box of most people. It is in the spam filters of our email providers. And that is the problem. I don't see it so I don't care. Sure, it may increase my cost to get online, but by how much. DSL is dirt cheap to what I was paying 10 years ago, and at better bandwidth. So what do I care? I don't see it, the problem is solved. And I can delete the 5 messages of spam that get through.
So out of sight, out mind, right? Wrong. I also know for the average person, and for the average spammer, those five messages per person that gets through can mean huge amounts of money. Even if nothing is bought, the way that mail clients are set up and vulnerabilities in the mail and web clients can make the spammer money. For instance, most clients now render HTML and load images automatically. Apple still refuses to set an option in mail.app to turn off HTML permanently, though it does allow one to not load images. Still, most people load images, which registers as a hit on some scam web site and registers the email as valid. Rendering the HTML can allow viruses on the receivers machine. And even the semi legitimate spammer still has hope that someone will buy a product.
We won't be able to get rid of all spam, even though we can't get rid of mail scams though it is a felony. The best we can manage it. If we are to fix it more, then we have to bring the problem to the forefront by letting spam through, or some other methods.
So let's look at this not changing the variable of the perpetrator, mother to sibling, but technology. We could assume that the mother might use the phone, or the US postal service to impersonate a boy(difficult over phone, more likely over mail), and use these means to drive the child crazy. Normaly no one would prosecute such impersonation, but if the child committed suicide, as in this case, they might. I would agrue that we know such use of the mail and phone are not legitimate, and therefore this does not often happen. But an old crazed women, reliving her wasted life vicariously through her daughter, might not have the abstract ability to transfer the social norm of those mediums to the new medium. So the court has to set an example.
Parents will try to protect their kids, even when it is damaging to thier kids. Parents will go to school and defend thier kids even if means the kid does not recieve an education. Parents will intervene in personal relationships even it means that the kid never develops the tools to navigate social situations on thier own. We have standards and limits here, and those standards are changing. While a parent can protect a kid by taking them out of school for 'home schooling', we are saying harrasing a enemy of your kids over the internet is as wrong as doing so over the phone. I see nothing wrong with this.
I mean really, this is a cool article about a cool finding, and look, we are already degenerating to out base selves and fighting over and defending the one girl left online. This really sucks. No wonder YouTube had to get rid of all the cool content. It was overshadowing all the intelletual stuff like open university that they wanted to promote so they could be considered ligit.
This does not mean that no one supports mac. I use a third party wireless device for one of my old Macs. I wanted the 'n' spec, and the only way to get it was to hook up through the USB. It works well enough, not as seamless as built in Airport, but it is, obviously, faster.
And this brings up a second issue. Many things have always work out of the box with Mac simply because these things are standards compliant. For instance, PS printer, PIP cameras, and external drives, all work without drivers. It would be nice if there were a standard for wireless network devices so I would not need a special driver. But this is a difference of philosophy. On the PC side, every device was to take over your computer. In the old days, even the internet service wanted to take over you computer. So a custom device driver was written, and other malware was installed. Sometimes this provided nice integration, but most of the time it just lead to driver conflicts. I much prefer a generic abstraction layer that can accept many devices and a front end of the users choice.
What this did was to insure that I was using the spreadsheet as a tool, no a crutch. Therefore, when my data sets were no longer suited to a spreadsheet, I was able to move to other tools. This happened pretty quickly as I moved to real world science data sets, as most spreadsheets are not science oriented. OTOH, I have run into few business data sets that were not appropriate for spreadsheets.
What they are probably talking about is overall functionality. While XP is very good, it is dated. We are not talking about Vista here, and I doubt that MS Windows 7 will run on these machines. However, because the OEM is free to play with the *nix, they can pick and choose as necessary so the netbook can have a modern OS, that can run the current apps, without having the limitations causing by trying to run an OS designed for a more powerful machines. Even though MS is frantically trying to fit XP into a smaller footprint, their success migth be limited.
I would be more interested in Bristol's wedding date. I could sell that to magazine for a million dollars.
My basic premise is that most things are not useful for the long term. For instance, I don't have my Fortran code from 1980, my Apple programs from 1985. WHat I do have has been physically shifted from one media to another to insure that I can still have access to them in I need them. For instance, the hundreds of CDs I have now will likely be thrown away, and I will only take the time to transfer a fraction of the information. Some of it may be transfered to paper form, some to whatever electronic storage form is popular in 10 years.
To summarize the long term archive problem has never been solved completely, and maybe that is good because if it were would be drowning under a flood of old junk. Entropy prevents this. Those thing we want to keep must be maintained, or at least, periodically updated. It is possible that someone has a great novel on punch cards, but getting it to human readable form would be a great issue if the storage format was never updated.
First, here is a fact. Teaching a job, just like those who sit in office doing nothing more than type code on keyboard. I mean, how hard can it be type random gibberish in a keyboard? Anyone can do it, !. So the teachers first goal is keep the class moving so objectives can be taught, assessed, rethought, and year end tests passed. Do teachers do this to maximize bonuses. Duh, are we idiots, of course. Why are the automakers begging for money right now, to kep 8 figure salaries. Why do we code for any semi-legitimate business, to make the money.
Second, the tools teachers use are the tools teachers use. How many geeks know how to use every OS, every IDE. How many developers know how to write software without an IDE, or can code direct in assembly. Does that make the developers idiots. I might say so, but not really as I have a inch of compassion and am not an arrogant bastard. No one is going to go into an office, give the staff new software to use, and expect management not to react. See point one. Teacher are there to teach content, not be experts at things not even experts agree on. Many serious consider Free OS invalid. In is an opinion. Considering it otherwise refers back to the arrogant bastard.
Third, a classroom is necessarily a controlled environment. While it would be nice to allow kids to do whatever they want, it is not feasible. In most schools, computers are not set up as a redundant array of disposable devices, and if a computer is broken, that generally means several students are denied an education for at least a little while. While teaching *nix is a lofty goal, i wonder if the organization would be there to fix the machines before the next class came in, or if they would just say, hey it is not my problem, and i don't care if some kids loses an education.
This is a classic example of why people hate *nix. Here is a guy who is trying to help the cause, but instead has shown how clueless the cause is. Unlike Dell Foundation, who provides money to teachers to help thing, this guy just seems to attack teachers with no understanding of the context. Even now, there is no acknowledgment of the damage that has been done to the students.
Help students by becoming teachers or mentors, not by attacking them. After all, teachers don't go into your lame ass web development operation and tell you to use real tools.
Then there is the issue of starting up for the day. Shutdown can happen automatically, but startup should be initiated by the user. Sometimes it does take several minutes to connect to online volumes or for MS to do whatever it does. I have seen a couple machines take a very long time to boot. Again, I think hibernate is a good compromise, but there must be hooks in the system to allow virus updates and other patches.
All this means that all applications must be closed in case a automatic update occurs, something I almost never do on my machines. I put them to sleep, but my apps are open. On my MS Windows machine, this every once in while means I have to start all over again loading apps.
Two years ago, much the same was being said about Vista. It was powerful, it was redesigned with wonderful new features. About the only hones thing that was said about Vista was that it would not work with much of the hardware that currently in use. This is why people stayed with XP. MS claims that it has many more device drivers, and if the shipping OS is faster, that will help also. But given history, I must wait to see the proof in the pudding.
In any case, I would much rather see MS support standards, rather than micromanage hardware. I mean, is it not a bit ridiculous that I have to download a new driver package everytime I use a different USB drive?
OTOH, if birth control is widely available, pre natal care is available to all comers, and food, shelter, and education is given to all children, without question or exception, then one can imagine a world in which every child would be wanted. Likewise, if maximum information and open debate were seen as a asset, and everyone was encouraged to have their say, all everyone was honestly listened to, and no one would retaliate based on personal superstitions, then one could imagine a world in which everyone could be open and honest with their opinions.
In the real world, though, significant militant groups enjoy killing people who disagree with their superstitions. For example, groups have felt the right to kill people who believe differently from them, following a tradition that killed the man that believed that the heart pumped the blood. Clearly when the righteous feel the right to kill based on beliefs, anonymity is necessary.
But I will be a rebel and say that even in a perfect world where all superstition was gone, both anonymity and abortion would still have a place. No matter how careful and care full we are, there will still be that one case where a family might have to choose between the mother and unborn child.
No one wants an American car. Few people are willing to pay plastics discs of music. Why are we wasting our time trying to save these failed business plans. The executives are clearly not able to turn a profit. Why do we think the are entitled to their income.
I know that everyone says they are too big fail, and what about the jobs. Well, I still believe in America. I believe that they failure represents an opportunity, not a termination. If these companies are no longer wasting resources, well those resources will be available to other more innovative firms.
As far as the job losses, and 'main street' argument. How many houses have been saved since the bankers stole $400 billion from the american taxpayer. And how many jobs did Chrysler say there were going to cut as soon as their handout is given? Here is a thing to think about. One trillion dollars pays for almost 150,000 so-called welfare recipients. People who have and raise families, pay rent, spend all the benefits at the grocery store for food and necessities. they don't buy jets, figure how to screw a person coming in for a loan, or go crying to washington for a bailout. Here is one thing I think we can all agree on. A person pulling in $7000 a year is much more likely to go out and look for a job, or create a job, than a person pulling in 40K a year making cars no one wants.
Therefore I would suggest an exploration type of experience, especially for the pre teens. I also would not focus on giving the latest tools, as it will be 10 years before most of them are out in the market, and tools will change. One nice application is the Alice software from Carnegie Mellon, along with story telling Alice for the small kids. It is free and teaches many of the concepts of OO and procedural languages. What is bad is there is no real curriculum for it, IMHO, targeted to under 16 set. OTOH, it does teach many good concepts, and does engage kids.
For a more traditional approach here would be my objectives. Note that the language and tools are unitmportant. What I think is important is to encourage abstract thinking. Number one: algorithms and procedures. These are important in math and science, yet most students cannot write a good algorithm. They leave large gaps. If a student can write an algorithm to count, or sort, or whatever, and code it, your science teachers will worship you.
Number two: variables. Many kids can never understand variables. What are they, how are they used, why do they change over time(they vary, duh). By focusing on variables, constants, and parameters, the kids will gain an important problem solving tool. You math teachers will worship you.
Number three: Form and syntax. Make them use a language to code! It teaches that almost is not good enough. Everything has to be perfect. This is why Fortran is so wonderful. It forces the student to focus on the details and the overall process. This is like writing an essay. You have an overall goal and parts that must be equally organized. Now the english people are on board.
Lastly, my pet peeve, i=j; j=i is not a swap operations. Any kid that can understand this is ready for any math or science high school class. In fact this is the first thing I would do. Write a swap function. Watch it fail. Let them fix it. See the joy when understanding comes through.
None of this needs to complex or over the kids head, and they can take as long as they like to learn the concepts. Those who race ahead can solve typical problems like stacks, efficient sorting, and the like. One thing I see missing is the lack of teaching of basics, stuff that is now buried deep in the library. When one starts programing in college, sure it is hard to do all this, but when is programing at 12, there is time.