I actually was at a presentation this week concerning this subject. This technology is beign used a more school, at many level. I know teachers in Middle, High, and College, even grad schools that use these boards. Some don't even write on the board, buy on the computer. The nice thin here is that the teacher can save lectures, so student can review(although isn't that the reaon for notes?), and, as you mention, the teacher is more likely to include detailed steps.
I also use computer tutorials in teaching, where the kid runs through some practice problems with adaptive feedback contolling the structure of the problems. I feel these can be superior to teacher lead drill because the student cannot put an incorrect answer in placed, and must show correct work. Also the computer seems to motivate the student to do at least some work. Though some students will just put randmon things in until the computer gives a hint that is nearly the answer, this is not different from teacher lead instruction.
To get back to presenting. The biggist issue is the knowledge and ability of the teacher to present. Certain tools allow the teacher to present more effeciently, but if the knowledge is not there, the tools are not going to help so much. For istance, one of the most interesting things I have seen recently is a tree that allows one to illustrate how to construct simple proofs. This tree allows the class to explore the nature of proofs by following dead end paths as well as a path that will lead to the correct solutions. It also allows multiple solutions. Now, advance technology woulg help present this, but the basic concent is technology nuetral. One could teach this with with stones on a sandy beach.
After all, the lackeys in DC have spent a lot of time bullying scientist to change their finding on the environment. A week does not go by when we find that once again, a report has been altered for political purposes.
This does not even take into account those that are paid to do 'creation science'
The thing about science, and this is something that our president and the these guys with the so-called 'masters' in BA do not understand, is that science is a observational. When we crunch the numbers, we are looking for a way to represent the world and predict what our actions might have on it, not a way to lie to the public. The intent is to better the world, not get enough money so that we acquire another mistress, while having enough left over to keep the wife busy at charity events, not to mention the payoff for the sexual assault lawsuit brought against our sons, and of course the continuing funding of terrorism through the drug deals of our daughters.
I believe science is beyond many people understanding because they cannot comprehend that one might want to look for the truth rather than construct the truth that would maximize personal power. It probably never occurs to them that result are based on painstakingly collected evidence, and not on the personal preference of the researchers. These morons probably think that all they are doing is compensating for personal bias, as no one is really as selfless as to do something purely to make the world a better place.
I am a person who thinks technology will be the death of us. OTOH, I would rather choose my death that have it chosen for me.
There are two big problems with nano-tech. First, it is too broad of a term, therefore not really useful. Second, the things it deal with are novel materials, not only in the fact that they have novel properties and risks, but those risks may change with the size of the material, and risks based on size is not something we currently have a lot experience regulating.
That said I am kind of unhappy with the fact that many companies are trying to manufacture products under the radar. We really don't know what the risk of these materials are, but we know, from current research, and past experience, that there will probably be risks. OTOH, we know that the benefits will likely at least equal the risks, and as long as we don't go hogwild everything will be ok. The issue is likely to be whether these companies are studying and managing the risks, or whether they expect future generations to pay for the inevitable cleanup.
We can take GM as a way not to do it. The assertion that GM is safe was never reasonable. The assertion that GM products would not significantly cross pollinate other products was never reasonable, and any argument that depended on the assumption was necessarily invalid. The modification to make sure the plant would not reproduce was a good thing, but we all know that genes mutate and therefore was not a silver bullet, and not without its own risk. There were and are very good uses for GM products, but the GM people really deserved the grief because they were pompous bastards.
If Nano follows the same pompous 'we are saving the world and deserved to be worshiped, not protested' bullshit, then Nano also deserves the pain. Look at it this way. Airbags probably save lives, but they probably cause injury, and occasional death. It was the marketing of the life saving properties without full disclosure of the risks that lead to problems.
The nano in pants, sun screen, and whatever else, needs to be disclosed an treated as a net benefit, not a god given gift to humanity. Who know what the long term production problems or exposure problems are going to be. I mean, are these products suitable for parents, whose baby's are going to chew on the fabric, and injest the materials and residual chemicals? This follows the same line that tuna is fine for the general public, but probably not for pregnant or nurseing women.
Re:What happens with deceased people's code?
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Drafting GPL3
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Well, if your granny was as famous as sonny, and cracked her head on tree, you could fork the code, and then go crying to congress about all the OSS stealing food out of your children mouths. That, and suitable bribes, er, donations, and they would then make a law allowing forked projects to go closed source, extend the copyright protection period another 1000 years, and allow you to sue everyone who ever used the code.
After all, anyone who has even a single success should be able to leverage that success into a empire that will support their parasites into perpetuity.
But seriously. I wonder why, when most are now going to be able to run the latest softwaree technolgy on Mac OS first, anyone would wait for MS to reverse engineer and clone.
Not really. It is going to hurt the advertisers that depend on that particular demographic for income. As much as we wish to insult these people, which make up a significant percentage of the country, and who spend most of the money on goods and services, corporate Amercian would be up sht creek with a sht paddle, as the boys would say.
Not to sound too crazy, but TV is the primary means that corporate American and the government has to communicate with the people at the lower 50% of the money chain. When these people stop watching TV, it will mean the end of the America we know.
And not only that, it is a quite common image, used quite often in pop TV. For example, South Park used it in 'Probably'. I think many other shows have had very direct homages.
Right now the Apple market share is small. The people who buy mac machines now are the ones who will continue to. Apple makes a pretty penny off this.
We can assume for the sake of argument that the number of mac machines sold will remain somewhat constant, aside from the increase due to the natural growth of the market. The rest of the folks will buy commodity hardware and may or may not buy Mac OS to install. The question is, will this be bad.
MS gain much success due to the fact that one could get the OS, and quite a bit of software, for little or no cost. MS benifitted from this by gaining marketsha, and thereby validity which lead to large corporate sales.
We know froom iTunes that Apple,and other projects, that Apple feels the need to have DRM, but does not take it too seriously. We can assume the same will be true for the OS. If a consumer does not buy the OS, but does pay $99 for.mac, is that bad. If a user switches from MS to Apple, even if apple recieves no money, might that be a net benifit to Apple?
I am not convinced that Apple is going to push the DRM to extremes. I am somewhat convinced that part the Apple grand plan is have people install pirated copies of Mac OS X on thier current computers in hopes they will switch from MS to Apple, and start buying Mac compatible software, thus futher eroding MS market share. I am not totaly unconvinced that Apple ultimately want to have people running Mac OS so they will use iTunes, and not WMP, and thus thwarts MS attempt to monopolize the growing music market.
To answer your question, Apple produced better hardware under some metric, and people who want it will contine to buy it. Those who don't want it, will have pirated or bought copies of Mac OS X on unathorized hardware, and though Apple will have to complain, anyone who is not running MS Windows will be a win for Apple. They will get corporate customers out of the deal.
The problem is what you consider 'real skills' In a certain sense, you could just give a kid lists of expressions, such as 23X4, to solve, or lists or figures to identify. it would not be necessary to give them any room to show work, as if they really had the skills, namely doing math in their head, they will just be able to write down the answer.
But this is called regurgitation, and it is a very low level of thinking. It is the level of thinking that keeps the American Industrial complex just keep on doing what it is doing until the foreign competition bankrupts it, at which points it goes to Washington and begs for money.
Increasing what the schools are trying to teach are problems solving techniques and critical thinking. It is hard because most students would rather just write answers down to a hundred questions that to have to use tools to solve problems. For instance, it is important in math for the student to have the tool of pencil and paper so they may underline the important words in a question, draw pictures, map the solution, and check the answer. These tools allow the questions to be on higher order than the 2+2.
Likewise, the calculator is a tool that allows us to raise the bar. The calculator might allow the student to independently develop ideas through a discovery activity. All the calculator does, like pencil and paper, is amplify the students ability. If the student misuses the calculator, more than likely he or she would just use the pencil to copy answers, so little is lost. Likewise misdirected teaching is probably not significantly changed. Teachers who did not appropriately utilize the tools of the last century are probably not going to utilize the tools of this century.
Look at it this way. How many programmers under 30 learned to code on vi or ed. How many of these programmers in fact learned on an IDE where they did not need to worry about editing commands, or linking dependencies, or manually checking types. Does the use of these tools necessarily mean that the younger generation are inherently worse programmers. When I was 12, i learned to program on a teletype, and in high school, computer time was so sparse you coded everyhting before hand on fortran coding sheets. Does that automatically make me a better coder than the kids who didn't? I mean I can write code, from my head, that works, and i don't need a compiler hand holding me from error to error. I can put print statements in and debug in my head. OTOH, these skills are not so valuable now.
What people forget was there were not standard systems until after the mac was released. All there was was the IBM proprietary PC, that Compaq reversed engineered, and that began the process of the standards in PC. In fact the compaq was as proprietary as the IBM and the Apple, and remianed so for years. The compaq was 1983, the mac was 1985, and both were priced high. The systems, unless you built it up yourself, and wrote the OS, was proprietary.
The SCSI was no more or less standard than the IDE. And when IDE became fast enoug, Apple used it. In fact Apple used it some consumer machines before the perfomacne was acceptable.. Likewise for the 68000. Yes the Intel chip was what everyone used, because everyone was following the recently proprietary standard of IBM. The Intel chip was good, but had some drawbacks that the 68000 series did not have, mostly wasting cycles and memory access.
The silliest thing is the drive. Complainng that Mac used 3.5" disks is like complaining that mac came with DVD-R/CD-R/W long before these were standard on most PCs. Sure if you're stuck in the stone ages, the lack of 3.5" disk drive is a problem, but otherwise you get with the times and buy a USB Drive.
The truth is that it is PC has been very reluctant to meet new standards and innovate. If it weren't for the mac, the x86 would still be stuck in the dark ages of collossal ineffeciency. Users would be paying $20 for a 5.25 drive that they never use. And would be downloading video over USB at a 1/3 the speed of firewire, and further wasting CPU time managing the USB.
One may not like apple, but Apple is why we have the modern PC. Competition is good. The lack of it is whey we are the laughing stock of the world why it comes to DSL.
The x86 has taken over the world, at least on the GPC side. One reason for this is that the CISC and RISC distinction are no longer so clear. My understanding is that the most interesting features have been integrated into the x86. Therefore, the battle has been already won by the RISC side. OTOH, one of the major advantages of RISC, that it saves clock cycles, is no longer important, as the x86 has such insanely high frequencies that it has cycles to waste. The downside is that wasted cycles is also heat.
The superiority of the IBM product for graphics is proven by the fact that it is used in every new games console. The problem is that not everyone needs that power, and perhaps the trade offs do not make sense. We do not know what the future holds, or if Apple is going to continue the supplier for high end graphics. Perhaps they will have three levels of product. Consumer, prof, and workstation. Two years is a lot of time, and maybe IBM will still supply chips for high end desktop macs.
Well, if open source is going to do well, we are going to learn to mesh open systems with closed systems. Anything else will lead to the monoculture that is currently giving us so much grief.
Apple makes it work, mostly. My hope is that Novell wil make it work, and we will have easy to use wrapper around Linux. This might make the combined market share of BSD and Linux based systems enough to make developers stop designing for MS only, expecially in web pages. It might also make schools start teacher computer basics again, and not just MS Windows.
As far as getting in the machine. It depends how adverturous you are. I have been able to add stuff to every desktop mac I have own. It is not easy, the result may not be pretty, but the didicated hacker can do it. Of course, most hackers just want the easy, predefined, problems, so they can call themselves hackers without actually doing any work.
But your post did remind me of cars. I remember being able to crawl around in the engine compartment of my fathers truck. The parts were easy to get ot, and easy to replace. Even my 80's Hondas were pretty easy to fix. But the cars today, they are tight. But cars today are also CE, and tend to run better, so they do not need to be fixed as often. Some people like solving the same problem, and others like to find new problems.
I know this is a joke, but incompentant planning is not the fault of the forests. A quick search shows a great deal of edible plants and trees, or at least fruit, in the northern maine area. And the moose calls northern maine home. I think this is just another case of an arrogant traveler refusing to learn the local customs. We come, we terrorize, we kill, and then import all our food and culture, and call the native uncivilized, even though they manage to not starve in a bountiful paradise.
Ok, there are two issues with clocks. The first is the length of certain interval of time, the other is exactly how we communicate that it is a certain time of day.
Atomic clocks were primarily developed to deal with former, measuring the passage of time. This turns out to be a very important and difficult problem in all fields of science and engineering. The reason is that any error is measureing the passing of time will be amplified and make all other things very wrong.
So, after using the sun, water, gears, and springs, someone finally figured out that if certain atoms were excited, they would vibrate very regularly. By counting the vibrations, we could measure the passage of time.
Now, we don't measure time in vibrations of an atom. We measure the passage of time in seconds. So how long is a second? The hand waving definition is the second is 1/60 of a hour, and the hour is 1/24 of a day, so we count the vibrations over a day, then divide by 24, and divide again by 60, that is the vibrations in a second. Of course we have to decide how to measure a day without using a clock! This can be done, and after much argument, the scientist just give up and agree on thier best guess. The key thing is that everyone agrees on how many vibrations are in a second, so we are now able to say difinitively that something takes a second, or 10 seonds, or 100 seconds, or 1.2352 seconds.
So, the measurement of the passing of time is important to science, and even important to the making sure that you don't spend an extra second in class or at work, but what does this have to do with your question, which is getting to work or class on time.
Well, ultimately that is just a decision we make. There are standard clocks that measure time in universal time(UT), which used to called greenwich mean time(GMT). This time is adjusted geographically so that 8:00 am does occur in the middle of the night in the US. And that is they key. We set the time so that 8:00 am is in the morning, and 8:00 pm is always when most good children are in bed.
How we set time, so to speak, was done by looking a the sun and the moon. You can in fact look up the data for sunrise and sunset in your area and set your clocks by this phenomemom. This is the same thing we do with calendars and seasons. Much is set around the longest and shortest days of the year. For instance, the day in which there is an equal amount of sunlight and darkness is called the equinox, and this day that occurs in the northern hemisphere, when the amount of daylight is icreasing, is curently called March 20 or 21, and is the first day of spring.
It is interesting that that while we have had accurate clocks for a long time, that is we can accurately measure a second, syncronization has a been a problem. For years we have radio signals to synchronize enabled clocks, but now with the internet we can all be on the same time. Although for some reason some clocks are still set a few minutes off in either direction.
I wish people would find risks. It is true that N Korea pobably has the ICBM to reach the west coast, and probably the east coast. It is also true that if we intercepted a missle, during boost phase or on reetry, the East coast is likely to get hammered anyway.
But is it likely? It seems to me that the nuclear treaties allow for retaliation, and the US has enough nukes to level N Korea. And given that the US has been making noises about ignoring those treaties, and retaliating for non-nuclear strikes, I don't see what
We don't go after N Korea because the N Koreans are in fact credible enemies. Unlike Iraq that had nothing that we did give them during the Iran-Iraq war, N Korea probably has stuff.
It is interested how the argument changes. At first Bush said we had to get Saddam out because he had WMD. Now that we know that the CIA and the Republicans once agina lied, as they did during Nixon and Reagan, the story is that he was going to get them.
N Korea has been taunting the US during most of the Bush II presidency. And while we seem to have no problem going in and killing old men and children, and torturing civilians, and peeing on the Koran, the truth is we have no stomach for a real battle. I mean one helicopter shot down has kept us out of anarchist country for years.
And it would be a good idea to stay out of trouble for a few years. Given our violations of international law over the past few years, it would be extremely dangerous for us to get into a real war. Now that the world knows we will torture, and we will leave wounded enemy soldiers ont he ground, and we will shoot defenseless wounded soldiers, our soldiers are going to be in more danger than in a very long while. The enemy is going it going to know the choices are kill, be killed, or be tortured. There is no hope anymore of sitting out the war in cozy American prison camp.
I seldom get into these GPL battle, but this is exactly why no sane firm wishes to use GPL software, at least for now, unless there is a tremendous competitive advantage.
Firms rely on predicatability to build model that can be used to generate profit. So, even if IBM or SUN, or MS or whoever charges an large sum of money for thier product, as long as the monies and products are predictable and can be built into the model, all is well. The same goes for regulations. If the regulations are clear and evenly applied, then they can be dealt with.
In this environment the GPL is a big unknown. Is the writer of the code really going to let it be used for internal use only? Is some wacko going to start changing the rules when the product becomes succesful, saying that it is no longer ok just to release the code or changes as written, but the changes must be reformatted to meet some arbitrary standards?
I hate to say it, but if we want firms to base products on OSS, so we at least have a more or less compatible and known base, we have to let not attack those firms when they are doing exactly that. As the article stated, half the changes fit right in. The others had to be rewritten, but it is often easier to rewrite than start with a blank sheet of paper. So Apple did transfer back significant good to the community.
There are blatant violaters out there that need to be stopped. There may even be some blatant violations at Apple. But I don't see that arguing over how code is released, unless it violates a specific item in the GPL, really helps anything.
This to me is the key point. 20 or 30 years ago we believed many things. We believed that if we put adequate sensors in enough places around the earth, we could perfectly predict weather. We believed that the universe was expanding or contracting at a constant rate, and would not accelerate. We believed that if we had a genertic sequence, we would be able to make an exact duplicate of the organism.
As always in science, the universe mocks our simplifications. We have a gene map, and we discover, IIRC, that relitive angles seem to make a difference. As the parent mentioned, the enviroment can cause major changes in physiology, not always random.
In fact the cloning end is simply the hook to get people interested in these popular aritcles. It seems to me the real interesting thing is that we can clean up a sample enough to say with some certainty that the sequence is of the specified animal. Then it gets interesting.
As we collect more samples, and complete more sequences, we can look at the relationships in the patterns og the genetics at a particular time, and investigate how the genetics changed over time. Would there be better proof that birds are dinosaurs than to map the transition of the genes between the two species? If we can map the genes to certain expressed characteristics, we can have another way to estimate what the world was like at certain times. So, why did dinosaurs mutate to birds?
Furthermore we could have a better estimate of the rate genes mutate. We can look if that rate is constant, and if not what affects the rate. This would allow us to make better guesses of when certain families of a species diverged or combined. This would allow us to make better guesses of where human originated, and when homo sapiens sapiens came into existance. And it would provide further data the exact path to humanity, or, to put in more common terms, at what point the common ancestor diverged into what would become pan and homo, if they did in fact at all.
Like so many things in science, we need the clone distractions to keep the average person from falling asleep, but the reality is really so much more exciting.
The only way I can see this happening is if IBM is really messing up the way that Motorola did a few years ago. It is getting to the point where the only commodity chip is an Intel/AMD set. Apple had to do some major design work to get the G5 to work.
OTOH an x86 chip is not much better. The cheapness of x86 portables come from the cheap parts, and often slow bus, not the cheap processor. They tend to run hot and suck power. And my GHZ Compaq runs at glacial speed compared to my Powerbook of the same vintage. Even on a fresh unifected install.
But I think the end analysis has to look at three things. First, I can't imagine that Apple would use Intel. They do not have the 64 bit chip. So if the do go x86, I would look at AMD, or even a transmeta type chip. Second, Apple may be moving because they can't get good product due to IBM concentrating on consoles. Would life be any better in the x86 world? Could Apple ever hope to get a chip suited to it's needs?
Third, and probably most crucial, a one year time line to transition is way too fast. Even though Darwin and quicktime work on an x86, they still need to get Quartz and Cocoa running, although they may have already done this. Not to mention the applications that run on top of it in Objective C.
So I will wait and see. Perhaps we will see snow in the Texas Summer.
I am wondering what google is up to. Data mining isn't so bad. Gmail is not so bad, if a person wishes to use it. However, I am thinking that another non invasive search engine might be in order. I wonder if such a engine would be profitable.
My biggest current concern is that google seems to be linking with the top result and trying to set a cookie for that site.
For instance, a search for crate and barrel will try to set a cookie for crateandbarrel.com, from the google homepage, which i naturally refuse.
Now, I cannot imagine why google would want to do this. It is not good for the company, as I might have allowed the cookie to be set on thier page, but not from google. Now, if i want to order from them i will have to reactivate the cookie. This means I am more likely to go a site that I already have a relationship with, rather than going through the trouble to changing a cookie status.
In this case google is doing evil. I mean a cookie is like establishing a relationship. I might not have benn looking for the store, but rather pictures of these objects, for instance. Yet I am now forced into a relationship. It is like getting telemarking from someone simply beacause you passed by one of thier agents in the mall.
I also think there is an issue of the iPod as an aggressively designed and promoted product. The marketing people clearly made promises that the engineers could not keep. For example, my iPod mini, in the way I used it, quickly decayed to about 3 hourse of usable time.
The problem was that the way I used my iPod, with the backlight sometime on, looking for tracks that I wanted, and generally fiddling with the unit, is far different than what Apple advertises, which is simply turning it on and listening to whatever comes up for 5 or 8 hours. It is the same with portable computers.
It is the same with cars. it is not so much a matter of maintaince, as fuel effeciency. What saves the cars is there is a standard, and as long the lies follow the rules, everyone is happy. However, the truck manufacturers that make automobiles that are rated at 16 miles a gallon but get 9, are upset at the hybrid cars, that are rated at 60 mpg and get 35.
So I would say that Apple did not have the legal history to make the marketing people stay in line, and the consumer does not have enough of a history to know the exact extent the marketers are lying. i don't believe any level of language would have saved Apple this time, but now that the court case has happened, language can be added to standardize the lies.
It seems to me that the reason this is shocking to some is that most people have little experience outside of mass market sales, where one pays the asking price, or waits for a sale.
In reality it costs a fair bit of money to acquire a new customer, and discounts just add to that cost. Therefore, a sales department might be reluctant to give new customers deep discounts, as that creates less profit and creates a customer that will just continously want more discounts, and perhaps generate no profit. OTOH, a steady customer is worth discounts, if those discounts are neccesary.
The brand shopper is the same thing, and most people are familiar with this. Each person may pay a different amount for the similair product due to coupons and sales and variation of pricing between brands. Some people will buy whatever brand for which a coupon is available, or whatever brand is on sale. Others will stick with a brand. The fact is one pays a different price for the essentially the same product. Even small geographic differences affeect price.
What i think is happening is computer logic allows the volume retail chain to apply the principles of lower volume sales chains.
I do however think these variations are going to be small because any online retailer who charges too much is going to risk losing customers in the extremely fluid internet market. A firm like Amazon, who goes through a great deal of trouble to make it easy for customers to stay, is not going be seen as the highest price retailer on the planet. Likewise, since it offers good service and selection, it is not neccesary for it to be lowest.
As always it is important to consider if the advertised product and service is a value. For instance, it is quite common that the bigger container of product is actually slightly more expensive. For example, 8 ounces of something might cost $.99 and 16 ounces might cost $1.99.,
I started off on a paper moniter in middle school. Back when keyboards were huge, one learned ed, and nothing else, and ascii graphics were considered cool.
I tell you what, the crt moniter in high school were much nicer. And we had vi to boot. Although the refresh was not much faster than the paper. And I did not feel as powerful as in front of the teletype. That just made you feel like a buck rogers or something.
I must admit i switched to LCD a few years ago. If I was still doing major programming, and could not afford a big LCD, I would go back to a CRT. Or maybe if I did a lot of video. But for writing and reading, it sure beats the old green things. And i have grown accostomed to not have my space dominated by huge appliances.
This is sort of true. When one thinks that different theaters charge different amounts, that a dollar is not uniformly valuable across the US, and therefore, unless the density of sales across the US on films are nearly equal, gross revenue may not be useful factor. OTOH, ticket sales is also not useful, as it is hard to say exactly how much 10 million tickets are, and how that relates to a 100 million dollar movie.
But most movie listing adjust gross revenue for inflation. In todays money, GWTW is the top, then star wars, then Sound of music, with Spider Man 2 making more money than passion, and in the same range as animal house. But again, as capitalists, we should be more interested in profit, or even percentage profit, than gross revenue. After all, what good is 200 million if it cost 250 to make?
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I also use computer tutorials in teaching, where the kid runs through some practice problems with adaptive feedback contolling the structure of the problems. I feel these can be superior to teacher lead drill because the student cannot put an incorrect answer in placed, and must show correct work. Also the computer seems to motivate the student to do at least some work. Though some students will just put randmon things in until the computer gives a hint that is nearly the answer, this is not different from teacher lead instruction.
To get back to presenting. The biggist issue is the knowledge and ability of the teacher to present. Certain tools allow the teacher to present more effeciently, but if the knowledge is not there, the tools are not going to help so much. For istance, one of the most interesting things I have seen recently is a tree that allows one to illustrate how to construct simple proofs. This tree allows the class to explore the nature of proofs by following dead end paths as well as a path that will lead to the correct solutions. It also allows multiple solutions. Now, advance technology woulg help present this, but the basic concent is technology nuetral. One could teach this with with stones on a sandy beach.
This does not even take into account those that are paid to do 'creation science'
The thing about science, and this is something that our president and the these guys with the so-called 'masters' in BA do not understand, is that science is a observational. When we crunch the numbers, we are looking for a way to represent the world and predict what our actions might have on it, not a way to lie to the public. The intent is to better the world, not get enough money so that we acquire another mistress, while having enough left over to keep the wife busy at charity events, not to mention the payoff for the sexual assault lawsuit brought against our sons, and of course the continuing funding of terrorism through the drug deals of our daughters.
I believe science is beyond many people understanding because they cannot comprehend that one might want to look for the truth rather than construct the truth that would maximize personal power. It probably never occurs to them that result are based on painstakingly collected evidence, and not on the personal preference of the researchers. These morons probably think that all they are doing is compensating for personal bias, as no one is really as selfless as to do something purely to make the world a better place.
There are two big problems with nano-tech. First, it is too broad of a term, therefore not really useful. Second, the things it deal with are novel materials, not only in the fact that they have novel properties and risks, but those risks may change with the size of the material, and risks based on size is not something we currently have a lot experience regulating.
That said I am kind of unhappy with the fact that many companies are trying to manufacture products under the radar. We really don't know what the risk of these materials are, but we know, from current research, and past experience, that there will probably be risks. OTOH, we know that the benefits will likely at least equal the risks, and as long as we don't go hogwild everything will be ok. The issue is likely to be whether these companies are studying and managing the risks, or whether they expect future generations to pay for the inevitable cleanup.
We can take GM as a way not to do it. The assertion that GM is safe was never reasonable. The assertion that GM products would not significantly cross pollinate other products was never reasonable, and any argument that depended on the assumption was necessarily invalid. The modification to make sure the plant would not reproduce was a good thing, but we all know that genes mutate and therefore was not a silver bullet, and not without its own risk. There were and are very good uses for GM products, but the GM people really deserved the grief because they were pompous bastards.
If Nano follows the same pompous 'we are saving the world and deserved to be worshiped, not protested' bullshit, then Nano also deserves the pain. Look at it this way. Airbags probably save lives, but they probably cause injury, and occasional death. It was the marketing of the life saving properties without full disclosure of the risks that lead to problems.
The nano in pants, sun screen, and whatever else, needs to be disclosed an treated as a net benefit, not a god given gift to humanity. Who know what the long term production problems or exposure problems are going to be. I mean, are these products suitable for parents, whose baby's are going to chew on the fabric, and injest the materials and residual chemicals? This follows the same line that tuna is fine for the general public, but probably not for pregnant or nurseing women.
After all, anyone who has even a single success should be able to leverage that success into a empire that will support their parasites into perpetuity.
Appletalk -> Windows 3.11 'networking'
Mac OS X -> Windows XP
Quicktime -> WMP
Itunes (shipping) -> MSN Music (200x)
Mac OS X + Spotlight(shipping) -> Longhorn(20xx)
Mac OS + Intel -> no more need for MS
But seriously. I wonder why, when most are now going to be able to run the latest softwaree technolgy on Mac OS first, anyone would wait for MS to reverse engineer and clone.
Oh, wait, people still drive Hundais, don't they.
Not to sound too crazy, but TV is the primary means that corporate American and the government has to communicate with the people at the lower 50% of the money chain. When these people stop watching TV, it will mean the end of the America we know.
And not only that, it is a quite common image, used quite often in pop TV. For example, South Park used it in 'Probably'. I think many other shows have had very direct homages.
We can assume for the sake of argument that the number of mac machines sold will remain somewhat constant, aside from the increase due to the natural growth of the market. The rest of the folks will buy commodity hardware and may or may not buy Mac OS to install. The question is, will this be bad.
MS gain much success due to the fact that one could get the OS, and quite a bit of software, for little or no cost. MS benifitted from this by gaining marketsha, and thereby validity which lead to large corporate sales.
We know froom iTunes that Apple,and other projects, that Apple feels the need to have DRM, but does not take it too seriously. We can assume the same will be true for the OS. If a consumer does not buy the OS, but does pay $99 for .mac, is that bad. If a user switches from MS to Apple, even if apple recieves no money, might that be a net benifit to Apple?
I am not convinced that Apple is going to push the DRM to extremes. I am somewhat convinced that part the Apple grand plan is have people install pirated copies of Mac OS X on thier current computers in hopes they will switch from MS to Apple, and start buying Mac compatible software, thus futher eroding MS market share. I am not totaly unconvinced that Apple ultimately want to have people running Mac OS so they will use iTunes, and not WMP, and thus thwarts MS attempt to monopolize the growing music market.
To answer your question, Apple produced better hardware under some metric, and people who want it will contine to buy it. Those who don't want it, will have pirated or bought copies of Mac OS X on unathorized hardware, and though Apple will have to complain, anyone who is not running MS Windows will be a win for Apple. They will get corporate customers out of the deal.
But this is called regurgitation, and it is a very low level of thinking. It is the level of thinking that keeps the American Industrial complex just keep on doing what it is doing until the foreign competition bankrupts it, at which points it goes to Washington and begs for money.
Increasing what the schools are trying to teach are problems solving techniques and critical thinking. It is hard because most students would rather just write answers down to a hundred questions that to have to use tools to solve problems. For instance, it is important in math for the student to have the tool of pencil and paper so they may underline the important words in a question, draw pictures, map the solution, and check the answer. These tools allow the questions to be on higher order than the 2+2.
Likewise, the calculator is a tool that allows us to raise the bar. The calculator might allow the student to independently develop ideas through a discovery activity. All the calculator does, like pencil and paper, is amplify the students ability. If the student misuses the calculator, more than likely he or she would just use the pencil to copy answers, so little is lost. Likewise misdirected teaching is probably not significantly changed. Teachers who did not appropriately utilize the tools of the last century are probably not going to utilize the tools of this century.
Look at it this way. How many programmers under 30 learned to code on vi or ed. How many of these programmers in fact learned on an IDE where they did not need to worry about editing commands, or linking dependencies, or manually checking types. Does the use of these tools necessarily mean that the younger generation are inherently worse programmers. When I was 12, i learned to program on a teletype, and in high school, computer time was so sparse you coded everyhting before hand on fortran coding sheets. Does that automatically make me a better coder than the kids who didn't? I mean I can write code, from my head, that works, and i don't need a compiler hand holding me from error to error. I can put print statements in and debug in my head. OTOH, these skills are not so valuable now.
The SCSI was no more or less standard than the IDE. And when IDE became fast enoug, Apple used it. In fact Apple used it some consumer machines before the perfomacne was acceptable.. Likewise for the 68000. Yes the Intel chip was what everyone used, because everyone was following the recently proprietary standard of IBM. The Intel chip was good, but had some drawbacks that the 68000 series did not have, mostly wasting cycles and memory access.
The silliest thing is the drive. Complainng that Mac used 3.5" disks is like complaining that mac came with DVD-R/CD-R/W long before these were standard on most PCs. Sure if you're stuck in the stone ages, the lack of 3.5" disk drive is a problem, but otherwise you get with the times and buy a USB Drive.
The truth is that it is PC has been very reluctant to meet new standards and innovate. If it weren't for the mac, the x86 would still be stuck in the dark ages of collossal ineffeciency. Users would be paying $20 for a 5.25 drive that they never use. And would be downloading video over USB at a 1/3 the speed of firewire, and further wasting CPU time managing the USB.
One may not like apple, but Apple is why we have the modern PC. Competition is good. The lack of it is whey we are the laughing stock of the world why it comes to DSL.
The superiority of the IBM product for graphics is proven by the fact that it is used in every new games console. The problem is that not everyone needs that power, and perhaps the trade offs do not make sense. We do not know what the future holds, or if Apple is going to continue the supplier for high end graphics. Perhaps they will have three levels of product. Consumer, prof, and workstation. Two years is a lot of time, and maybe IBM will still supply chips for high end desktop macs.
Apple makes it work, mostly. My hope is that Novell wil make it work, and we will have easy to use wrapper around Linux. This might make the combined market share of BSD and Linux based systems enough to make developers stop designing for MS only, expecially in web pages. It might also make schools start teacher computer basics again, and not just MS Windows.
As far as getting in the machine. It depends how adverturous you are. I have been able to add stuff to every desktop mac I have own. It is not easy, the result may not be pretty, but the didicated hacker can do it. Of course, most hackers just want the easy, predefined, problems, so they can call themselves hackers without actually doing any work.
But your post did remind me of cars. I remember being able to crawl around in the engine compartment of my fathers truck. The parts were easy to get ot, and easy to replace. Even my 80's Hondas were pretty easy to fix. But the cars today, they are tight. But cars today are also CE, and tend to run better, so they do not need to be fixed as often. Some people like solving the same problem, and others like to find new problems.
I know this is a joke, but incompentant planning is not the fault of the forests. A quick search shows a great deal of edible plants and trees, or at least fruit, in the northern maine area. And the moose calls northern maine home. I think this is just another case of an arrogant traveler refusing to learn the local customs. We come, we terrorize, we kill, and then import all our food and culture, and call the native uncivilized, even though they manage to not starve in a bountiful paradise.
Atomic clocks were primarily developed to deal with former, measuring the passage of time. This turns out to be a very important and difficult problem in all fields of science and engineering. The reason is that any error is measureing the passing of time will be amplified and make all other things very wrong.
So, after using the sun, water, gears, and springs, someone finally figured out that if certain atoms were excited, they would vibrate very regularly. By counting the vibrations, we could measure the passage of time.
Now, we don't measure time in vibrations of an atom. We measure the passage of time in seconds. So how long is a second? The hand waving definition is the second is 1/60 of a hour, and the hour is 1/24 of a day, so we count the vibrations over a day, then divide by 24, and divide again by 60, that is the vibrations in a second. Of course we have to decide how to measure a day without using a clock! This can be done, and after much argument, the scientist just give up and agree on thier best guess. The key thing is that everyone agrees on how many vibrations are in a second, so we are now able to say difinitively that something takes a second, or 10 seonds, or 100 seconds, or 1.2352 seconds.
So, the measurement of the passing of time is important to science, and even important to the making sure that you don't spend an extra second in class or at work, but what does this have to do with your question, which is getting to work or class on time.
Well, ultimately that is just a decision we make. There are standard clocks that measure time in universal time(UT), which used to called greenwich mean time(GMT). This time is adjusted geographically so that 8:00 am does occur in the middle of the night in the US. And that is they key. We set the time so that 8:00 am is in the morning, and 8:00 pm is always when most good children are in bed.
How we set time, so to speak, was done by looking a the sun and the moon. You can in fact look up the data for sunrise and sunset in your area and set your clocks by this phenomemom. This is the same thing we do with calendars and seasons. Much is set around the longest and shortest days of the year. For instance, the day in which there is an equal amount of sunlight and darkness is called the equinox, and this day that occurs in the northern hemisphere, when the amount of daylight is icreasing, is curently called March 20 or 21, and is the first day of spring.
It is interesting that that while we have had accurate clocks for a long time, that is we can accurately measure a second, syncronization has a been a problem. For years we have radio signals to synchronize enabled clocks, but now with the internet we can all be on the same time. Although for some reason some clocks are still set a few minutes off in either direction.
But is it likely? It seems to me that the nuclear treaties allow for retaliation, and the US has enough nukes to level N Korea. And given that the US has been making noises about ignoring those treaties, and retaliating for non-nuclear strikes, I don't see what
It is interested how the argument changes. At first Bush said we had to get Saddam out because he had WMD. Now that we know that the CIA and the Republicans once agina lied, as they did during Nixon and Reagan, the story is that he was going to get them.
N Korea has been taunting the US during most of the Bush II presidency. And while we seem to have no problem going in and killing old men and children, and torturing civilians, and peeing on the Koran, the truth is we have no stomach for a real battle. I mean one helicopter shot down has kept us out of anarchist country for years.
And it would be a good idea to stay out of trouble for a few years. Given our violations of international law over the past few years, it would be extremely dangerous for us to get into a real war. Now that the world knows we will torture, and we will leave wounded enemy soldiers ont he ground, and we will shoot defenseless wounded soldiers, our soldiers are going to be in more danger than in a very long while. The enemy is going it going to know the choices are kill, be killed, or be tortured. There is no hope anymore of sitting out the war in cozy American prison camp.
Firms rely on predicatability to build model that can be used to generate profit. So, even if IBM or SUN, or MS or whoever charges an large sum of money for thier product, as long as the monies and products are predictable and can be built into the model, all is well. The same goes for regulations. If the regulations are clear and evenly applied, then they can be dealt with.
In this environment the GPL is a big unknown. Is the writer of the code really going to let it be used for internal use only? Is some wacko going to start changing the rules when the product becomes succesful, saying that it is no longer ok just to release the code or changes as written, but the changes must be reformatted to meet some arbitrary standards?
I hate to say it, but if we want firms to base products on OSS, so we at least have a more or less compatible and known base, we have to let not attack those firms when they are doing exactly that. As the article stated, half the changes fit right in. The others had to be rewritten, but it is often easier to rewrite than start with a blank sheet of paper. So Apple did transfer back significant good to the community.
There are blatant violaters out there that need to be stopped. There may even be some blatant violations at Apple. But I don't see that arguing over how code is released, unless it violates a specific item in the GPL, really helps anything.
As always in science, the universe mocks our simplifications. We have a gene map, and we discover, IIRC, that relitive angles seem to make a difference. As the parent mentioned, the enviroment can cause major changes in physiology, not always random.
In fact the cloning end is simply the hook to get people interested in these popular aritcles. It seems to me the real interesting thing is that we can clean up a sample enough to say with some certainty that the sequence is of the specified animal. Then it gets interesting.
As we collect more samples, and complete more sequences, we can look at the relationships in the patterns og the genetics at a particular time, and investigate how the genetics changed over time. Would there be better proof that birds are dinosaurs than to map the transition of the genes between the two species? If we can map the genes to certain expressed characteristics, we can have another way to estimate what the world was like at certain times. So, why did dinosaurs mutate to birds?
Furthermore we could have a better estimate of the rate genes mutate. We can look if that rate is constant, and if not what affects the rate. This would allow us to make better guesses of when certain families of a species diverged or combined. This would allow us to make better guesses of where human originated, and when homo sapiens sapiens came into existance. And it would provide further data the exact path to humanity, or, to put in more common terms, at what point the common ancestor diverged into what would become pan and homo, if they did in fact at all.
Like so many things in science, we need the clone distractions to keep the average person from falling asleep, but the reality is really so much more exciting.
OTOH an x86 chip is not much better. The cheapness of x86 portables come from the cheap parts, and often slow bus, not the cheap processor. They tend to run hot and suck power. And my GHZ Compaq runs at glacial speed compared to my Powerbook of the same vintage. Even on a fresh unifected install.
But I think the end analysis has to look at three things. First, I can't imagine that Apple would use Intel. They do not have the 64 bit chip. So if the do go x86, I would look at AMD, or even a transmeta type chip. Second, Apple may be moving because they can't get good product due to IBM concentrating on consoles. Would life be any better in the x86 world? Could Apple ever hope to get a chip suited to it's needs?
Third, and probably most crucial, a one year time line to transition is way too fast. Even though Darwin and quicktime work on an x86, they still need to get Quartz and Cocoa running, although they may have already done this. Not to mention the applications that run on top of it in Objective C.
So I will wait and see. Perhaps we will see snow in the Texas Summer.
My biggest current concern is that google seems to be linking with the top result and trying to set a cookie for that site.
For instance, a search for crate and barrel will try to set a cookie for crateandbarrel.com, from the google homepage, which i naturally refuse.
Now, I cannot imagine why google would want to do this. It is not good for the company, as I might have allowed the cookie to be set on thier page, but not from google. Now, if i want to order from them i will have to reactivate the cookie. This means I am more likely to go a site that I already have a relationship with, rather than going through the trouble to changing a cookie status.
In this case google is doing evil. I mean a cookie is like establishing a relationship. I might not have benn looking for the store, but rather pictures of these objects, for instance. Yet I am now forced into a relationship. It is like getting telemarking from someone simply beacause you passed by one of thier agents in the mall.
The problem was that the way I used my iPod, with the backlight sometime on, looking for tracks that I wanted, and generally fiddling with the unit, is far different than what Apple advertises, which is simply turning it on and listening to whatever comes up for 5 or 8 hours. It is the same with portable computers.
It is the same with cars. it is not so much a matter of maintaince, as fuel effeciency. What saves the cars is there is a standard, and as long the lies follow the rules, everyone is happy. However, the truck manufacturers that make automobiles that are rated at 16 miles a gallon but get 9, are upset at the hybrid cars, that are rated at 60 mpg and get 35.
So I would say that Apple did not have the legal history to make the marketing people stay in line, and the consumer does not have enough of a history to know the exact extent the marketers are lying. i don't believe any level of language would have saved Apple this time, but now that the court case has happened, language can be added to standardize the lies.
In reality it costs a fair bit of money to acquire a new customer, and discounts just add to that cost. Therefore, a sales department might be reluctant to give new customers deep discounts, as that creates less profit and creates a customer that will just continously want more discounts, and perhaps generate no profit. OTOH, a steady customer is worth discounts, if those discounts are neccesary.
The brand shopper is the same thing, and most people are familiar with this. Each person may pay a different amount for the similair product due to coupons and sales and variation of pricing between brands. Some people will buy whatever brand for which a coupon is available, or whatever brand is on sale. Others will stick with a brand. The fact is one pays a different price for the essentially the same product. Even small geographic differences affeect price.
What i think is happening is computer logic allows the volume retail chain to apply the principles of lower volume sales chains.
I do however think these variations are going to be small because any online retailer who charges too much is going to risk losing customers in the extremely fluid internet market. A firm like Amazon, who goes through a great deal of trouble to make it easy for customers to stay, is not going be seen as the highest price retailer on the planet. Likewise, since it offers good service and selection, it is not neccesary for it to be lowest.
As always it is important to consider if the advertised product and service is a value. For instance, it is quite common that the bigger container of product is actually slightly more expensive. For example, 8 ounces of something might cost $.99 and 16 ounces might cost $1.99.,
I tell you what, the crt moniter in high school were much nicer. And we had vi to boot. Although the refresh was not much faster than the paper. And I did not feel as powerful as in front of the teletype. That just made you feel like a buck rogers or something.
I must admit i switched to LCD a few years ago. If I was still doing major programming, and could not afford a big LCD, I would go back to a CRT. Or maybe if I did a lot of video. But for writing and reading, it sure beats the old green things. And i have grown accostomed to not have my space dominated by huge appliances.
Which is why adults still demand NT, or, if not that, emacs, gcc, and db.
But most movie listing adjust gross revenue for inflation. In todays money, GWTW is the top, then star wars, then Sound of music, with Spider Man 2 making more money than passion, and in the same range as animal house. But again, as capitalists, we should be more interested in profit, or even percentage profit, than gross revenue. After all, what good is 200 million if it cost 250 to make?