Being poor is not having the expendable income to go out to the zoo, the museum, the arboretum or the park. An Xbox can be a christmas present. A PC is a birthday present. These do not necessarily have recurring expenses.. Phone and cable and internet for a family might be a recurring expense of a couple hundred dollars a month, and are generally something that is paid for if money is available. You can still play on your smart phone even if you do not have phone service or internet. So the things you are talking about are very occasionally splurges, not weekly expenses like food and rent and electricity and water.
I think what is sometimes thought is why do parent buy these electronics. Why don't they go to zoo instead of buying an x box. Why don't the go to the arboretum, bring some sandwiches, and have a cheap outing? Why not indeed. After all they are poor and should know the value of an education and the importance of an education and such activities. They should have the intelligence to ignore the social pressure that encourages them to buy computers and phones and ipods and spend that money on opera tickets so the kid can get some culture. After all, they are living the life created by bad planning. Rich people deserve the stuff they have, poor people are supposed to suffer.
But all this moralizing does nothing. All the study is saying is that more well off people often have a wider variety of activities for their kids. They have yards that the kids can play in. They often live in more secure settings. They can pay people to take care of and teach the kids. It is not that the kids don't have a computer, it is that they know how to use it.
Which is why I would like to see a lot more computers in schools. RIght now the computer is a toy to most kids, just a like a pencil is a toy to a kid that does not know who to write, or a hammer is a weapon to a kid who does not know how to build a structure. We need qualified teachers that can teach the computer as a tool, and qualified administrators who know what they teaching looks like and does not freak out when some off task behavior is going on. Given the prevalence of non-technical people in adminstrative positions, this is not bloody likely, but we can hope. In the mean time kids will continue to simply play games on computers, and a generation who could be really productive will be lost.
One last note on the subject of being poor. In america we have a retail economy. Retail sales not only drives the majority of the economy, but also is a major factor is the velocity of money. While more well off people will tend to sock the money away, often in off shore locations, the poor spend all of it. Therefore we can't live in a world where people with limited means horde money, or a large amount of the population does not have any income to spend. The economy would flatline. This is a big reason why being poor in america is not like being poot in other countries. We do not subsist on the occasional sale. We need constant flow of customers. This was recently shown by large firms like walmart asking the federal government to stager assistance checks, as well as the custom for low paid workers to be paid weekly.
It is also general misunderstanding of requirements. For instance, do all your software developers need a computer science degree. Would and engineering or hard science degree suffice if they can demonstrate ability to code. Do all you engineers need to be recent graduates, or would perhaps experience be beneficial? In general when I look for a job, it seems that companies are most often looking for a type instead of a skill. Which is their right. What I don't like is they claiming there is some sort of work shortage, and demanding that public funds be spent and laws be changed to help the work shortage end, while not hiring the people who have the skills. I understand that if one can get an indentured servant to work for you that is the best. But lack of indentured servant is not the same as lack of workers. Some of us simply like to be compensated and treated like a productive member of the staff.
One part of scientific literacy, which is not taught, is that a study is not a fact. Reporting results in a newspaper is not relevant. In most case one is going to look at methods to understand how something is being approached, and then take the result with a huge grain of salt. For instance, many people laugh at studies that say wine is good for you, wine is bad for you, etc. It is funny if one does not have the context of the study, or understand that science is there to explore reality, not just come up with simple facts. Some studies are flat wrong, some have subtle errors, some are valid but irrelevant. For example, if in this case science literacy was measured only by known fact and not by context, then, IMHO, the study had a huge flaw in it. In fact such a systematic error could be misinterpreted as cultural bias. Some cultures are more prone to focus on simple facts rather than explorations. Those that favor de facto facts will of course be less likely to acknowledge that human activity can influence the climate.
To expand on this, science does not have two sides. It has many researchers working to explore reality. The only question is was the study valid, or did it have materially significant systematic or large random errors that were not properly dealt with. In many cases, results are reported with no one looking at validity. In the case of climate change, we are at a point where valid studies are increasing pointing to a consensus conclusion. One defense of the popular media who wants to disprove the media is to include old or invalid studies, but science is not politics. I cannot make up facts that suite my needs. I cannot say that the sun is fission reaction. No matter how many people say so, not matter how many studies say it is the case, it is simply not what the models show.
So, again, scientific literacy is not just knowing fact from high school, or even the extremely simplified and incorrect scientific process that is often taught. It is a complex situation that is only going to change when the political powers no longer need to believe a particular point of view.
The religion fanatics don't want evolution taught because that ultimately is what causes scientific revolutions. Students being taught the very orderly and reasonable method that we get from the evidence to the theory. It is notable that after 150 years we are still discussing this as something that is optional. It is also notable that few are going to say that evolution is not a nature in process, only that humans did not involve. I think this is important to note because it shows that many religious fanatics do not actually have enough faith to cause themselves actual pain, and this is the problem. Lack of faith. Most are not going to argue that antibiotics are causing super germs to evolve, just look at the number of allegedly christian households that use hand sanitizer. In spite of this evidence and this cave to the secular world, they do not have enough faith to accept that bible is written by fallible men with original sin and has only a cursory relationship to the almighty.
If science class taught science and churches actually promoted faith and not greed,there would be no problem. For instance, look at Quantum mechanics. 50 years ago RIchard Feynman stated that no one understood quantum mechanics, and he was right. But then we were taught his form of quantum mechanics, with the equivalence of the popular forms, and the diagrams, and it was much less mysterious. On the other hand, I was not taught general relativity, so I am very suspicious of black holes and really think they were made up to give hollywood something to make movies about. Fortunately, I was taught that my place in the universe is to worship and not to try to place my arbitrary beliefs on a creation that will always, to some degree, a mystery so neither of things affect my faith.
Agreed. First some p0rn and some video games are the same thing. When I was young and took a sex education class there was one statement made against excessive alone time for teenagers. That if one was enjoying oneself, then there was going to be less incentive to find others to play with. To be clear, not everyone is sex crazy or crowd crazy. Those of us that do not like people need to be pushed a bit to leave the nest. At least before the internet and video games one often had to leave the house to interact. Now we don't. We can fulfill our need for graphic violence and graphic sex all alone.
Now, to justify that above paragraph, one has to agree being housebound abusing one's person physically and mentally is bad. I am not going to be so judgmental as to say it is wrong, but is certainly not considered typical. OTOH, just going out there a randomly hooking is not something that society wants to be typical either. So this is certainly one of those cases that has been set up and propagated by a delusional and psychologically disjointed society. We are only supposed to be controlled in what we do.
But ultimately a person who doesn't play well with others done need computers or videos games. A book can be a perfect evening companion. To say that the video games are exacerbating the situation is say that kids are bringing prospects home to play video games under the guise of bringing on more physical play. In my experience, any excuse will do between interested parties. In this case i would say the sex porn is going to do more damage because it promotes unrealistic expectation. In reality, i would say the image that come up in a safe google search for 'girls' or 'boys' is going to do more damage than any porn as if anyone actually thinks they are going to date those people, they are going to lose many prospects of people that can actually provide for an entertaining afternoon.
The Labels now have limited ability to control reality. They can no longer pay off radio and television interests to produce a hit. They can no longer put one popular song on an album, and control costs by adding 10 low quality tracks. I have seen artists without a label do this, and the results is that those people are doing much anymore. So supply is no longer limited, it is a buyers market, so it more likely artists that do novel or interesting things are going to succeed. Radio and TV still have a role to play in promoting it, but they are less likely to promote crap as consumers have other channels in which to compare. It is like movie studios putting out crap movies that are a failure by sunday morning because everyone who paid to see the movie have tweeting how much it sucked. The fans control reality
This loss of control has nothing to do with the internet, it has to do with Labels losing control of prices, i.e. the loss of the price fixing case 10 years ago, and reduction in cost of entry into the market. Fifteen years ago, bands I saw had to work hard to get the money together to press a CD. Now most of the costs is studio time and marketing, which has also fallen Labels can't keep prices high, lower cost of entry means more competition, profit per item falls.
Then, of course, if the ludicrous idea that the new system is worse than the old system because less profit is generated in the new system. No one who creates a product automatically deserves to profit. At least in the US, we are guaranteed the right to pursue profit, but no one is guaranteed profit. With both conservatives and liberal trying to prop up failed models that is hard to remember, but it is the truth. If I put out an album, there is no law that says someone has to buy it, and no law that says some one has to buy it at a price where I can make a profit. That is why Walmart exists, and why so many products are no longer made in the USA.
So the question is can creators keep up with new market realities, not does the market have an obligation to prop up legacy suppliers. If an content creator is still making a profit, then all that matters is if the content creator leaves or stays. If the content creator leaves, is there someone who will be willing to work for prevailing rewards, and if not does it matter? For instance, if the rewards for pop music were so low that no one would want to do, would society fall. Note that for jobs that are critical to society, we often prevent these workers for asking for high wages.
So while i think the paper has some interesting content, the idea that we should pass laws or change society to guarantee a profit is simply silly. We have already critically wounded our democracy by passing laws that allow copyright holders to overwhelm the rights of arbitrary citizens. Let them make a product people value instead of insisting that god have given them the right to be rich.
The irony I find is that someone has the audacity to sell the word of god. I suppose that one can say one needs to recoup cost and some recompense might be in order, but to prey on someones vanity to profit, that has always bothered me. I guess one can say most bible produces, like many bible thumpers, are not really christian, but then we are talking about hypocrisy not irony.
If it costs me $10 to make a pair of shoes, and I sell the shoes for $10, and no one buys them, then the shoes are overpriced. If I make a pair of shoes for $5, sell them for $50, and sell all my inventory, then the shoes are correctly priced.
This is what killed the dot com bubble in 2000. Every one believed that there was a magicaly market price that a service was worth, and the short for that magical price instead of the market price
Everyone is talking about google. Google, arguable, was underpriced. Google left money on the table. 7X increase in value in the first couple quarters. It would have better for Google to price high, and then let things fall. As it is Google has been an uneven investment.
The employees aways get screwed on an IPO. The small employee often get screwed on any stock arrangment. As the stock falls, the employee can still be liable for taxes, on often worthless stock.
The gamble of these early investors is that Facebook will valuate in the short term so that in the next year an early investor might make 20%. This might mean that the stock in the $50 range next summer. I don't know that anyone expects a Google performance, where an $85 per share IPO turned into $600 per share. Of course Google is worth essentially what it was worth back in 2007.
So yes it is a stock market game. The investor and founders have been paid handsomely. This serves the free market as it encourages innovation. Whatever one much say, it is preferable to have innovator rewarded, even place like facebook, to the rewarding of vulture capitalists and patent trolls. If the stock fails, the institutional investors and other sophisticated investors that control the stock will be hurt. It seems reasonable that the stock will fall, and at that time, if the P/E is good, then the small investor may get a bargain.
This is not what they are saying. It is right there in the summery. We have to learn to control ourselves. We must look at where we benefit from the situation, and where we do not. It is like drugs. A limited use of drugs can be beneficial, but using drugs as a coping mechanism, for instance taking sleeping pills instead of treating the underlying problem, quickly becomes problematic. A sane rational person does not say 'Just Say No to Drugs' because almost no one lives without the aid of drugs. But we must learn to control ourselves.
Also note that there is almost no way to be on the Net and not accidentally see some level of offensive content, like some politician saying how lazy the poor are, or some rich guy trying to say that a christian who brought the Word to thousands and served his country in the marines is evil, or some talking head saying how wonderful it is to kill other people. We have to be mature about this offensive content, but we also have to make sure that such content is not thrust upon those who do not wish to see it. Sure, we have to make such porn available to the freaks who want it, but their right to such content does not trump my right to not want to see it.
So there are costs, but also benefits. A benefit is finding a place to feed your family healthy food. No one can say that is a bad thing. Sure, we can say why not go to McDonalds, but are we not supposed to have a choice? If there is a better place to eat, should we not be encouraging tools to find such places? Likewise, no one is going to say a parent does not have the right to install filtering software on family computers. We may not agree with it, but then that is why we live in a free country. So we can make choices that other's disagree with.
Fundamentally, the whole writeup, and many of the responses, seem to indicative of an issue that I see often. For some reason some people need their values validated by the widespread adoption of those values. When we hear about a kosher app, if our personal faith is not strong enough we question if that App somehow effects our belief. Of course it does not. One's faith has noting to do with what other's believe. But when we see people get so defensive over such a thing, it makes me question what those people actually have faith in.
OK. If you use an iOS device all your app comes through the Apple App store. So there is no change there. On Mac OS, 10.8 no one really knows what this OS is going to do. iCloud is fluid. For instance, MobileMe is shutting down in less than 45 days. I have not moved yet. Apple has however setup my mail so that I can use the mobileme interface. This was not something that was supposed to happen, but it did.
The point is that on Mac Apple is clearly going to pushing developers to use the App store, which is what is happening right now. The benefit to users is that the App will appear on all registered computers. The problem is that it is a walled garden. WIll developers have to use the API to store documents on iCloud? WHo knows? WHat I do know is that if it provides integration between iOS and Mac devices, there wil be little complaints.
What I also believe is that users are not going to be using the documents part of iCloud very much. It will quickly require payments to apple as the data grows. The real part of iCloud that streangths the garden wall is that content bought from apple is stored for free.
It is not idiotic, it is a rational calculation about what is going to make the most money in the long run. Take Texas. The long run money is on energy. It provides high wages for reletively unskilled work. The wages are high enough that when calculating salaries, national companies and the US government will use adjustment equal to places like Boston even though the cost of living is significantly lower(a weeek groceries can be gotten for $100, houses are $200K). Therefore an oil spill that temporarily kills the shrimp industry and tourism is not met with talk of less drilling, but government payments to those industries. It just makes more sense.
OTOH Florida, which mostly exists to serve retired old people and house amusement parks, and other tourism, has a much more complex calculus. They need cheap energy to support their enterprises, families need cheap transportation, people on fixed income can't afford to have gas prices doubling, but they also need to make sure the beaches are pristine as possible to get the tourists. So when an oil spill in Texas is going to effect them, they get really snitty, even though without the drilling, or without other as cheap transportion models, their industry would be SOL.
So the question is will Vermont gain more profit fracking or not fracking. Vermont clearly thinks it's bread is buttered on the side of the rustic and quaint village destination. They have laws on how things are to be built, and what types of businesses are allowed. For instance there are only four walmarts in vermont. There are that many within 5 minutes drive of where I live. So this is just another means for Vermont to maintain what has and continues to be a successful livelihood. Saying this idiotic is like saying Walmart wanting to expand in Vermont is idiotic. It is simply a matter of priorities. Clearly Vermont does not think that fracking, or the possible energy prices, is going to do anything to help it's overall profits.
It seems that all of this stuff goes back to the granddaddy "The Mythical Man Month", which just gets magnified when outsiders are included in the equation.
I recently worked on a project. Was basically given two month and a small sum of cash. It should have been a simple thing to do except for several severe mistakes.
1) The deliverables were doubled a week after I was introduced to the project.
2) The layout of the deliverables were significantly changed after I had completed a layout, three weeks after the project started.
3) New requirements were added as the in house staff thought of them, with no regard to balancing completing the project and usefulness.
This experience is not unique. 20 years ago I was working on project where custom control software had to be written. It was based specialized computing equipment needed to meet the demands of the equipment to be controlled. By the time everything was over, the hardware had to be replaced and everything rewritten because of arbitrary changes to what was wanted.
So here is the takeaway. Outside developers will do exactly what you say to do. Outside developers paid by the hour will welcome spur of the moment changes and loose specifications. Outside develops who are paid by the project may deliver the minimum that the specs allow.Realize that developing the scope of the project is going to take much more time and though than just developing an idea on your own. A single person has to be able to structure the process and the components, and state in clear ways what is necessary. There may even be unit and integration testing to make sure the code meets specification. All this has to be done in house. It might be easier to write the code yourself.
As far as libraries, I have worked with dummy libraries in the past. These are libraries that just return a few standard values, or do simpler processes, so that the higher level code can be written and tested with simple expected behavior. A trivial example would be a function that delivers a URL from the user to a web server. The real function will do all sorts of validity checks to make sure the URL is well formed and not malicious. The dummy function might just deliver several random URLs for testing. This might mean that more integration testing has to be done in house, but the libraries will be secure.
Again, the question is will the overhead of additional planning and communication(2^N) be greater than the work done by additional employee?
There are two reasons I use google services. One is to create an alias for a particular focus of online activity. The other is to set up services I need for work, also under a specific alias. Niether of these depend on my real identity since both function better with an outward facing identity that topic related. I am not dependent on Google services, but my life would me much harder if I did not have access to them.
So imagine my surprise when Google started suspending account that were not related to a real person. Though I did set up a Google+ account, I have been too worried about losing my Google Docs accounts to actually do anything on Google+. It seems from online posting that one Google gets on your case you are screwed.
This is one of the things I was thinking about. Originally with Android, Google said they were going to just have OEMs build a phone, and they were not going to do it. This evidently did not work, so Google built the phone they said they never would. But Google does not have any customer service, and we have reports of people who have had a problem with their Google account, even one they paid for, getting very bad customer service, so why would I buy a product that no one is going to support. The mobile phone companies aren't going to support a contract free phone bought from someone else. So then they came up with idea of the special child, a OEM would would get special advanced Android code, while all the peasants had to wait. If you were a good peasant, you could get the code next time, but only if you were really good and did what Google wanted.
So know they are back the original strategy. The phone part might work, because Android does have market share, and probably less support is needed so they can handle many firms putting out a new phone at once, but what about the tablet? As the parent said, Google still has no support structure. The tablet model is a month to month data package, but carriers are in with Apple because the tablet is tied to a carrier. I would think that Google is not going to be intimate with carriers, and is going to put out either a WiFi only tablet, or one that can operate with a number of carriers. How this will end is probably how the original Nexus ended.
Gnuplot saved my ass back in the mid 90's when I was a lab assistant. I had a remote fast machine that ran my code for analysis, but no real way to quickly get the hundreds of time lapsed graphs. Then I found Gnuplot and presto. The job was done. A plotter(real old fashioned kind) hooked to my slow Mac and the world was a good place. Certainly any smart phone is faster than a 1990 Mac, and I can imagine beng in the field needing to do a quick plot.
Whether this is right or wrong, this is how it is has been done with OS software. With MS you get an OEM or an upgrade or retail version of MS Windows. The OEM version is sold with many conditions. The upgrade comes with conditions. The full priced retail version is more flexible, but it's use, like how many virtual images you can use, can depend on the version.
Apple only sells what is essentially an upgrade version of the software, and only sells what could be called the OEM version bundled with Apple Computers. Therefore, given the customs of the PC market, what Apple is doing is reasonable. Now, we can ask if Apple can be compelled to sell and OEM of a full retail version of the software.
We can also ask if the courts should strike down the validity of the EULA that limits the use of software. The gut reaction is yes, the EULA should be made void and we should be able to use the Apple or MS OS in any way we wish. A possible side effect, the increase in price of computers because MS will have to charge a flat rate for MS WIndows, might even be desirable for some people. But overall I think that consumers like buying MS based computer for under $500, like being able to upgrade the Mac OS for small sums,
My take on Psystar has always been this. If they were a serious company, that is meant to sell good inexpensive computers, they would have taken a *nix, used the subsystems available from Apple, combined it with custom code, and sold a unique product. Instead they just took what was around, haphazardly combined it into a box, and sold it as a computer. Not really adding value to anyone.
And I am not defending Apple. I think it would be better if software were sold with less restrictions. Just saying that restrictions on software has been the state fo the market for a while.
My first thought was to set up an iPad perhaps with some speakers. I have done Skype on iPad and it works really well. If you have an HDMI TV, the iPad could be hooked to the TV, with iPad set up for outgoing video, and all the interaction could be on the TV. That way the baby can drool on the screen as much as it wants.
To understand the problem with Ron Paul one has to understand the specifics of US political system and the region that Ron Paul represents. Ron Paul represents a deeply socially conservative area that depends on government subsidies for most industries, as well as many residents who depend on government checks to raise families. This leads to a case where there is a need for government money but a deep distrust of a secular government that is perceived to be anti-christian because it tends to not regulate people personal lives. OTOH, because government does regulate the oil industry, which keeps the lower income population of his district safe, there is an anger for upper income people who are not able to make as much profit. The lower income people also blame the government when they lose jobs and do not have the wherewithal to create their own job.
Even for American politics this cognitive dissidence is to much to ignore. So for the most part he is ignored. One can't have a government that regulates the bedroom but not the boardroom, that provides handouts to the needy and corporations, but does not tax.
And this dissidence is even in his current strategy. To understand this you have to understand how the president is elected. It is not by the people. It is by the electoral college. The members of the electoral college are selected by the voting population of each state. The number of electors that each state contributes to the electoral college is proportional to the population of the state, so that state with larger population contribute more electors. This is why a Democrat president wins with relatively few states, and why Republicans typically have to have a large number of states to win.
Here is the key thing to know. Even though a voter votes for a candidate, that vote is, constitutionally meaningless. The voter is in fact voting for a group of electors. Constitutionally, those electors can vote for whatever person they wish. Though this applies to the electing of a president, it is the process that is also used in the primary. So though a person may think they are chusing Romney, the elector has a constitutional right to vote for Rush Limbaugh. Constitionally the vote of an individual means nothing. It is only custom that pushes an Elector to vote for the person he or she said the would.
So this is the constitutional game Ron Paul is playing. On one hand, as a libertarian, it might be thought the he would uphold the tradition of the elector voting for the person that the voters choose. It is not up to an individual to decide what is best for the masses. On the other hand any influence he has in Florida is going to depend on delegates defecting from the candidate that won the primary, in essence playing the role of an aristocrat that knows better then the people what is goodly. This is absolutely allowed.
Sometimes this strategy makes sense. In 2008 the race between Clinton and Obama was very close. The possibility of delegates switching candidates made the tension in the race real. In this case Paul is just playing the King that cannot accept he has lost control over His People. The delta is going to be at least 600 hundred delegates. While Democrats hope and pray that he will win, as it will provide an entertaining and unstressful race, the math is not there. Like Perry, Paul can raise a lot of money because Texas has a lot of money and a lot of people who are more than willing to trade money for power, nationally it is simply not going to happen.
In the real estate market, and the energy market, such investments are risky. It is hard to say how much value is actually going to be placed on a building. Many, who do not understand the free market, say the value is based on input costs, but of course this is a naive point fo view.
Take the building Enron build around 2000. It costs some 200 million dollars. Some of this was likely government money direct or indirect. Enron was given a monopoly on some energy trading, and back in 2002 Fox reported that Enron received at least a billion in government loans.
In any case by the time it was finished, Enron was gone and this government financed build was unoccupied and sold off for 100 million, presumable to pay creditors that were not the taxpayers or the consumers defrauded by the sociopaths that worked for and ran the company.
The building remained empty for a few years. It remains a blight on the real estate market in downtown houston as Chevron, the company that occupies it, simply moved from one building to another.
Which is to say this is a non story as firms fail all the time, most large firms depend on government money, and buildings get build whether we need space or not.
I myself am waiting for Apple to produce the ASHDTV. Anyone can produce an HDTV. I am waiting Apple to integrate second amendment rights into this first amendment device.
We will see. The iPhone was initially an web based machine. Much of what has happened since was due to demand of developers. Remember that with the classic mac, Apple ignored developers, and history has shown what happened. WIth the Intel Mac and iOS, Apple has been much more responsive to developers.
The write once run anywhere model is compelling. For suitably powerful machines, Java already provides some level of functionality. HTML 5, which to be fair did not exist when iPhone first came out, looks like it will provide that functionality across all platforms.
I think, however, that the success is going to depend on how developers approach HTML5. Recall that HTML gave developers a chance to write context based web pages to present content to wide range of audiences on a wide range of platforms. One reason Amazon, for example, is successful is because it leveraged this ability. But many others were not willing to let go of presentation. Without CSS those who wanted a consistent application front end turned to MS and IE, which resulted in a fragmented web and MS lockin. This fragmentation and lockin, again, was the choice of developers.
Two things might make this work for mobile devices. One is a small front end custom written for a device that abstracts the web content into an App. This seems like a small thing, but the issue to me when the iPhone first came out was the need to load safari, go to a web page, and have the whole browser structure taking up real estate and resources instead of have a custom view. Second is the ability to run offline. The need to be always connected is a major disadvantage for web apps on mobile devices. Take something like the Kindle Fire. It is not always connected. If one is going to have an app that run on anything anywhere, it can't always require a connection.
Just to add a data point, I and many other bitched widely when Apple updates would automatically reinstall and activate Flash. There was no way to get away from flash. Apple depending on it for it's advertising, so that was all there was to it. Of course such comments are moderated down as such comments are meaningful, as opposed to comments that just randomly complain how unfair the world is.
Now Apple, and the rest of the world, is not so dependent so much on Flash, due partly to the iPad, so they can disable it. Flash is mostly for p0rn and ads, so people who want will reenable it, people who don't can enjoy a less brutal online experience. I think it is a wonderful turnaround. It might make Safari useful again
As far as this being an Apple thing, I think not. Microsoft tried to compete with Flash, but Silverlight is really a one trick pony. Flash is useful in so many other ways, but the way it is normally used is as an evil trojan pony. So I see even MS moving to more open standards based internet experience as seen in MS IE9. Flash is seen as security risk. Flash is seen as a impediment to productivity. Flash is seen as inefficient. The result is the presence in the marketplace is going to be reduced.
There are two things going on here. One is the free market. One benefit of the free market is that we are free from government control industry. Industry is free to produce what consumers want without regard to absolute safety or suitability for the intended consumption. So, we have cigarettes that probably end some life very prematurely in horrific ways, McDonalds that probably serve foods that will in some cases prematurely end lives in prematurely in horrific ways, and containers made with BPA, that may prematurely end lives in horrific ways. I think all these fears have so basis in legitimacy, and these fears have lead to great innovations. Cigarette companies are diversifying and have t find creative ways to market the wares. McDonalds is putting apples in the Happy Meal. And containers are increasingly being made without BPA. Sure, the manufacturers are unhappy because they have to invest in R&D. Some are unhappy, like the pink slime people, because the entire industry is going away for probably no good reason. But hey, that is the free market. Government cannot legislate that something is safe even if science says it probably is so. Ultimately the free consumer has that say so. And with the dramatic reduction of consumers ont he public payroll over the past few years, we are even less likely to have government say what we can and cannot buy.
Then there is science. If we are looking scientifically there is LD50 which is half of some other illegal drugs. One can argue a pack a day gives you excess the lethal dose in a week, so how much is accrued over a lifetime. On could theoretically figure out a non lethal dose over a lifetime, which would presumably be less than a pack of day.
Some scientists will just say that nutrition is simply vitamins, minerals, protein, and calories in versus calories expended. Therefore a healthy person can have McDonalds as a primary source of nutrition is calories are controlled and suitable activities are engaged. It is the same thing with BPA. Probably not a problem, so lets just monitor. This is the rational discussion.
Anyone who believes that humans are rational agents are pseudoscientists of the economic or psychological form. While I encourage everyone to use precise language and accurate statements, this is going to do nothing for to the base rationality of the human mind. Using chemical names, and LD50, and maximum allowable dosages, is not make people believe that things are dangerous are safe. I am not going to voluntarily drink from the bayou even though it is probably safe.
Of course when industry wins due to fear, we do not see these articles. Americans take tons of vitamins every year that are not necessary. Their production and sales is seriously harming our environment, and it is just peed out. Where are the articles saying that we just eat vegetables? Bottled water is also destroying the environment. Where is the article deriding our culture of bottle drink instead of just tap water? No, chemicals are good, and anything said against them is luddite. If we were "chemophobic" we would be taking much few vitamins, and drinking much less bottle water a flavor carbonated beverages.
One thing I am sure that some might talk about is vaccines. They have a chemical that is probably safe in the doses provided, but some think it is not. So there is damage due to so-called Chemophobia. This is fact not true. The issue here is the government protecting drug manufacturers based on questionable "medical research" in such a way that innovation does not have to occur to meet consumer demand. In some way this protection is justifiable, but in terms of vaccine there should have been a more immediate response to placate the populous, as was done with BPA.
Your beliefs do not depend on others agreeing with you. Repeat that 100 times.
I need something that works. I know Libreoffice works now, but in the past basic functionality has been subservient to features. It doesn't matter if you disagree. This is my experience. At some point if OO.org stops doing what I need it do, then I will try Libreoffice.
MS functionality is very important to those that have depended MS for their livelihood. This is beyond just a workflow to the point where the MS lords give then a reason to live. I do not have this need. I need to read basic MS files, but I left the word processor years ago due to the technical nature of my writing. I can see Libreoffice as the alternative for people who do not want for MS products, but really that is not my need.
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I think what is sometimes thought is why do parent buy these electronics. Why don't they go to zoo instead of buying an x box. Why don't the go to the arboretum, bring some sandwiches, and have a cheap outing? Why not indeed. After all they are poor and should know the value of an education and the importance of an education and such activities. They should have the intelligence to ignore the social pressure that encourages them to buy computers and phones and ipods and spend that money on opera tickets so the kid can get some culture. After all, they are living the life created by bad planning. Rich people deserve the stuff they have, poor people are supposed to suffer.
But all this moralizing does nothing. All the study is saying is that more well off people often have a wider variety of activities for their kids. They have yards that the kids can play in. They often live in more secure settings. They can pay people to take care of and teach the kids. It is not that the kids don't have a computer, it is that they know how to use it.
Which is why I would like to see a lot more computers in schools. RIght now the computer is a toy to most kids, just a like a pencil is a toy to a kid that does not know who to write, or a hammer is a weapon to a kid who does not know how to build a structure. We need qualified teachers that can teach the computer as a tool, and qualified administrators who know what they teaching looks like and does not freak out when some off task behavior is going on. Given the prevalence of non-technical people in adminstrative positions, this is not bloody likely, but we can hope. In the mean time kids will continue to simply play games on computers, and a generation who could be really productive will be lost.
One last note on the subject of being poor. In america we have a retail economy. Retail sales not only drives the majority of the economy, but also is a major factor is the velocity of money. While more well off people will tend to sock the money away, often in off shore locations, the poor spend all of it. Therefore we can't live in a world where people with limited means horde money, or a large amount of the population does not have any income to spend. The economy would flatline. This is a big reason why being poor in america is not like being poot in other countries. We do not subsist on the occasional sale. We need constant flow of customers. This was recently shown by large firms like walmart asking the federal government to stager assistance checks, as well as the custom for low paid workers to be paid weekly.
It is also general misunderstanding of requirements. For instance, do all your software developers need a computer science degree. Would and engineering or hard science degree suffice if they can demonstrate ability to code. Do all you engineers need to be recent graduates, or would perhaps experience be beneficial? In general when I look for a job, it seems that companies are most often looking for a type instead of a skill. Which is their right. What I don't like is they claiming there is some sort of work shortage, and demanding that public funds be spent and laws be changed to help the work shortage end, while not hiring the people who have the skills. I understand that if one can get an indentured servant to work for you that is the best. But lack of indentured servant is not the same as lack of workers. Some of us simply like to be compensated and treated like a productive member of the staff.
To expand on this, science does not have two sides. It has many researchers working to explore reality. The only question is was the study valid, or did it have materially significant systematic or large random errors that were not properly dealt with. In many cases, results are reported with no one looking at validity. In the case of climate change, we are at a point where valid studies are increasing pointing to a consensus conclusion. One defense of the popular media who wants to disprove the media is to include old or invalid studies, but science is not politics. I cannot make up facts that suite my needs. I cannot say that the sun is fission reaction. No matter how many people say so, not matter how many studies say it is the case, it is simply not what the models show.
So, again, scientific literacy is not just knowing fact from high school, or even the extremely simplified and incorrect scientific process that is often taught. It is a complex situation that is only going to change when the political powers no longer need to believe a particular point of view.
If science class taught science and churches actually promoted faith and not greed,there would be no problem. For instance, look at Quantum mechanics. 50 years ago RIchard Feynman stated that no one understood quantum mechanics, and he was right. But then we were taught his form of quantum mechanics, with the equivalence of the popular forms, and the diagrams, and it was much less mysterious. On the other hand, I was not taught general relativity, so I am very suspicious of black holes and really think they were made up to give hollywood something to make movies about. Fortunately, I was taught that my place in the universe is to worship and not to try to place my arbitrary beliefs on a creation that will always, to some degree, a mystery so neither of things affect my faith.
Now, to justify that above paragraph, one has to agree being housebound abusing one's person physically and mentally is bad. I am not going to be so judgmental as to say it is wrong, but is certainly not considered typical. OTOH, just going out there a randomly hooking is not something that society wants to be typical either. So this is certainly one of those cases that has been set up and propagated by a delusional and psychologically disjointed society. We are only supposed to be controlled in what we do.
But ultimately a person who doesn't play well with others done need computers or videos games. A book can be a perfect evening companion. To say that the video games are exacerbating the situation is say that kids are bringing prospects home to play video games under the guise of bringing on more physical play. In my experience, any excuse will do between interested parties. In this case i would say the sex porn is going to do more damage because it promotes unrealistic expectation. In reality, i would say the image that come up in a safe google search for 'girls' or 'boys' is going to do more damage than any porn as if anyone actually thinks they are going to date those people, they are going to lose many prospects of people that can actually provide for an entertaining afternoon.
This loss of control has nothing to do with the internet, it has to do with Labels losing control of prices, i.e. the loss of the price fixing case 10 years ago, and reduction in cost of entry into the market. Fifteen years ago, bands I saw had to work hard to get the money together to press a CD. Now most of the costs is studio time and marketing, which has also fallen Labels can't keep prices high, lower cost of entry means more competition, profit per item falls.
Then, of course, if the ludicrous idea that the new system is worse than the old system because less profit is generated in the new system. No one who creates a product automatically deserves to profit. At least in the US, we are guaranteed the right to pursue profit, but no one is guaranteed profit. With both conservatives and liberal trying to prop up failed models that is hard to remember, but it is the truth. If I put out an album, there is no law that says someone has to buy it, and no law that says some one has to buy it at a price where I can make a profit. That is why Walmart exists, and why so many products are no longer made in the USA.
So the question is can creators keep up with new market realities, not does the market have an obligation to prop up legacy suppliers. If an content creator is still making a profit, then all that matters is if the content creator leaves or stays. If the content creator leaves, is there someone who will be willing to work for prevailing rewards, and if not does it matter? For instance, if the rewards for pop music were so low that no one would want to do, would society fall. Note that for jobs that are critical to society, we often prevent these workers for asking for high wages.
So while i think the paper has some interesting content, the idea that we should pass laws or change society to guarantee a profit is simply silly. We have already critically wounded our democracy by passing laws that allow copyright holders to overwhelm the rights of arbitrary citizens. Let them make a product people value instead of insisting that god have given them the right to be rich.
The irony I find is that someone has the audacity to sell the word of god. I suppose that one can say one needs to recoup cost and some recompense might be in order, but to prey on someones vanity to profit, that has always bothered me. I guess one can say most bible produces, like many bible thumpers, are not really christian, but then we are talking about hypocrisy not irony.
This is what killed the dot com bubble in 2000. Every one believed that there was a magicaly market price that a service was worth, and the short for that magical price instead of the market price
Everyone is talking about google. Google, arguable, was underpriced. Google left money on the table. 7X increase in value in the first couple quarters. It would have better for Google to price high, and then let things fall. As it is Google has been an uneven investment.
The employees aways get screwed on an IPO. The small employee often get screwed on any stock arrangment. As the stock falls, the employee can still be liable for taxes, on often worthless stock.
So yes it is a stock market game. The investor and founders have been paid handsomely. This serves the free market as it encourages innovation. Whatever one much say, it is preferable to have innovator rewarded, even place like facebook, to the rewarding of vulture capitalists and patent trolls. If the stock fails, the institutional investors and other sophisticated investors that control the stock will be hurt. It seems reasonable that the stock will fall, and at that time, if the P/E is good, then the small investor may get a bargain.
Also note that there is almost no way to be on the Net and not accidentally see some level of offensive content, like some politician saying how lazy the poor are, or some rich guy trying to say that a christian who brought the Word to thousands and served his country in the marines is evil, or some talking head saying how wonderful it is to kill other people. We have to be mature about this offensive content, but we also have to make sure that such content is not thrust upon those who do not wish to see it. Sure, we have to make such porn available to the freaks who want it, but their right to such content does not trump my right to not want to see it.
So there are costs, but also benefits. A benefit is finding a place to feed your family healthy food. No one can say that is a bad thing. Sure, we can say why not go to McDonalds, but are we not supposed to have a choice? If there is a better place to eat, should we not be encouraging tools to find such places? Likewise, no one is going to say a parent does not have the right to install filtering software on family computers. We may not agree with it, but then that is why we live in a free country. So we can make choices that other's disagree with.
Fundamentally, the whole writeup, and many of the responses, seem to indicative of an issue that I see often. For some reason some people need their values validated by the widespread adoption of those values. When we hear about a kosher app, if our personal faith is not strong enough we question if that App somehow effects our belief. Of course it does not. One's faith has noting to do with what other's believe. But when we see people get so defensive over such a thing, it makes me question what those people actually have faith in.
The point is that on Mac Apple is clearly going to pushing developers to use the App store, which is what is happening right now. The benefit to users is that the App will appear on all registered computers. The problem is that it is a walled garden. WIll developers have to use the API to store documents on iCloud? WHo knows? WHat I do know is that if it provides integration between iOS and Mac devices, there wil be little complaints.
What I also believe is that users are not going to be using the documents part of iCloud very much. It will quickly require payments to apple as the data grows. The real part of iCloud that streangths the garden wall is that content bought from apple is stored for free.
OTOH Florida, which mostly exists to serve retired old people and house amusement parks, and other tourism, has a much more complex calculus. They need cheap energy to support their enterprises, families need cheap transportation, people on fixed income can't afford to have gas prices doubling, but they also need to make sure the beaches are pristine as possible to get the tourists. So when an oil spill in Texas is going to effect them, they get really snitty, even though without the drilling, or without other as cheap transportion models, their industry would be SOL.
So the question is will Vermont gain more profit fracking or not fracking. Vermont clearly thinks it's bread is buttered on the side of the rustic and quaint village destination. They have laws on how things are to be built, and what types of businesses are allowed. For instance there are only four walmarts in vermont. There are that many within 5 minutes drive of where I live. So this is just another means for Vermont to maintain what has and continues to be a successful livelihood. Saying this idiotic is like saying Walmart wanting to expand in Vermont is idiotic. It is simply a matter of priorities. Clearly Vermont does not think that fracking, or the possible energy prices, is going to do anything to help it's overall profits.
I recently worked on a project. Was basically given two month and a small sum of cash. It should have been a simple thing to do except for several severe mistakes.
1) The deliverables were doubled a week after I was introduced to the project. 2) The layout of the deliverables were significantly changed after I had completed a layout, three weeks after the project started. 3) New requirements were added as the in house staff thought of them, with no regard to balancing completing the project and usefulness.
This experience is not unique. 20 years ago I was working on project where custom control software had to be written. It was based specialized computing equipment needed to meet the demands of the equipment to be controlled. By the time everything was over, the hardware had to be replaced and everything rewritten because of arbitrary changes to what was wanted.
So here is the takeaway. Outside developers will do exactly what you say to do. Outside developers paid by the hour will welcome spur of the moment changes and loose specifications. Outside develops who are paid by the project may deliver the minimum that the specs allow.Realize that developing the scope of the project is going to take much more time and though than just developing an idea on your own. A single person has to be able to structure the process and the components, and state in clear ways what is necessary. There may even be unit and integration testing to make sure the code meets specification. All this has to be done in house. It might be easier to write the code yourself.
As far as libraries, I have worked with dummy libraries in the past. These are libraries that just return a few standard values, or do simpler processes, so that the higher level code can be written and tested with simple expected behavior. A trivial example would be a function that delivers a URL from the user to a web server. The real function will do all sorts of validity checks to make sure the URL is well formed and not malicious. The dummy function might just deliver several random URLs for testing. This might mean that more integration testing has to be done in house, but the libraries will be secure.
Again, the question is will the overhead of additional planning and communication(2^N) be greater than the work done by additional employee?
So imagine my surprise when Google started suspending account that were not related to a real person. Though I did set up a Google+ account, I have been too worried about losing my Google Docs accounts to actually do anything on Google+. It seems from online posting that one Google gets on your case you are screwed.
So know they are back the original strategy. The phone part might work, because Android does have market share, and probably less support is needed so they can handle many firms putting out a new phone at once, but what about the tablet? As the parent said, Google still has no support structure. The tablet model is a month to month data package, but carriers are in with Apple because the tablet is tied to a carrier. I would think that Google is not going to be intimate with carriers, and is going to put out either a WiFi only tablet, or one that can operate with a number of carriers. How this will end is probably how the original Nexus ended.
Gnuplot saved my ass back in the mid 90's when I was a lab assistant. I had a remote fast machine that ran my code for analysis, but no real way to quickly get the hundreds of time lapsed graphs. Then I found Gnuplot and presto. The job was done. A plotter(real old fashioned kind) hooked to my slow Mac and the world was a good place. Certainly any smart phone is faster than a 1990 Mac, and I can imagine beng in the field needing to do a quick plot.
Apple only sells what is essentially an upgrade version of the software, and only sells what could be called the OEM version bundled with Apple Computers. Therefore, given the customs of the PC market, what Apple is doing is reasonable. Now, we can ask if Apple can be compelled to sell and OEM of a full retail version of the software.
We can also ask if the courts should strike down the validity of the EULA that limits the use of software. The gut reaction is yes, the EULA should be made void and we should be able to use the Apple or MS OS in any way we wish. A possible side effect, the increase in price of computers because MS will have to charge a flat rate for MS WIndows, might even be desirable for some people. But overall I think that consumers like buying MS based computer for under $500, like being able to upgrade the Mac OS for small sums,
My take on Psystar has always been this. If they were a serious company, that is meant to sell good inexpensive computers, they would have taken a *nix, used the subsystems available from Apple, combined it with custom code, and sold a unique product. Instead they just took what was around, haphazardly combined it into a box, and sold it as a computer. Not really adding value to anyone.
And I am not defending Apple. I think it would be better if software were sold with less restrictions. Just saying that restrictions on software has been the state fo the market for a while.
My first thought was to set up an iPad perhaps with some speakers. I have done Skype on iPad and it works really well. If you have an HDMI TV, the iPad could be hooked to the TV, with iPad set up for outgoing video, and all the interaction could be on the TV. That way the baby can drool on the screen as much as it wants.
Even for American politics this cognitive dissidence is to much to ignore. So for the most part he is ignored. One can't have a government that regulates the bedroom but not the boardroom, that provides handouts to the needy and corporations, but does not tax.
And this dissidence is even in his current strategy. To understand this you have to understand how the president is elected. It is not by the people. It is by the electoral college. The members of the electoral college are selected by the voting population of each state. The number of electors that each state contributes to the electoral college is proportional to the population of the state, so that state with larger population contribute more electors. This is why a Democrat president wins with relatively few states, and why Republicans typically have to have a large number of states to win.
Here is the key thing to know. Even though a voter votes for a candidate, that vote is, constitutionally meaningless. The voter is in fact voting for a group of electors. Constitutionally, those electors can vote for whatever person they wish. Though this applies to the electing of a president, it is the process that is also used in the primary. So though a person may think they are chusing Romney, the elector has a constitutional right to vote for Rush Limbaugh. Constitionally the vote of an individual means nothing. It is only custom that pushes an Elector to vote for the person he or she said the would.
So this is the constitutional game Ron Paul is playing. On one hand, as a libertarian, it might be thought the he would uphold the tradition of the elector voting for the person that the voters choose. It is not up to an individual to decide what is best for the masses. On the other hand any influence he has in Florida is going to depend on delegates defecting from the candidate that won the primary, in essence playing the role of an aristocrat that knows better then the people what is goodly. This is absolutely allowed.
Sometimes this strategy makes sense. In 2008 the race between Clinton and Obama was very close. The possibility of delegates switching candidates made the tension in the race real. In this case Paul is just playing the King that cannot accept he has lost control over His People. The delta is going to be at least 600 hundred delegates. While Democrats hope and pray that he will win, as it will provide an entertaining and unstressful race, the math is not there. Like Perry, Paul can raise a lot of money because Texas has a lot of money and a lot of people who are more than willing to trade money for power, nationally it is simply not going to happen.
Take the building Enron build around 2000. It costs some 200 million dollars. Some of this was likely government money direct or indirect. Enron was given a monopoly on some energy trading, and back in 2002 Fox reported that Enron received at least a billion in government loans.
In any case by the time it was finished, Enron was gone and this government financed build was unoccupied and sold off for 100 million, presumable to pay creditors that were not the taxpayers or the consumers defrauded by the sociopaths that worked for and ran the company.
The building remained empty for a few years. It remains a blight on the real estate market in downtown houston as Chevron, the company that occupies it, simply moved from one building to another.
Which is to say this is a non story as firms fail all the time, most large firms depend on government money, and buildings get build whether we need space or not.
I myself am waiting for Apple to produce the ASHDTV. Anyone can produce an HDTV. I am waiting Apple to integrate second amendment rights into this first amendment device.
The write once run anywhere model is compelling. For suitably powerful machines, Java already provides some level of functionality. HTML 5, which to be fair did not exist when iPhone first came out, looks like it will provide that functionality across all platforms.
I think, however, that the success is going to depend on how developers approach HTML5. Recall that HTML gave developers a chance to write context based web pages to present content to wide range of audiences on a wide range of platforms. One reason Amazon, for example, is successful is because it leveraged this ability. But many others were not willing to let go of presentation. Without CSS those who wanted a consistent application front end turned to MS and IE, which resulted in a fragmented web and MS lockin. This fragmentation and lockin, again, was the choice of developers.
Two things might make this work for mobile devices. One is a small front end custom written for a device that abstracts the web content into an App. This seems like a small thing, but the issue to me when the iPhone first came out was the need to load safari, go to a web page, and have the whole browser structure taking up real estate and resources instead of have a custom view. Second is the ability to run offline. The need to be always connected is a major disadvantage for web apps on mobile devices. Take something like the Kindle Fire. It is not always connected. If one is going to have an app that run on anything anywhere, it can't always require a connection.
Now Apple, and the rest of the world, is not so dependent so much on Flash, due partly to the iPad, so they can disable it. Flash is mostly for p0rn and ads, so people who want will reenable it, people who don't can enjoy a less brutal online experience. I think it is a wonderful turnaround. It might make Safari useful again
As far as this being an Apple thing, I think not. Microsoft tried to compete with Flash, but Silverlight is really a one trick pony. Flash is useful in so many other ways, but the way it is normally used is as an evil trojan pony. So I see even MS moving to more open standards based internet experience as seen in MS IE9. Flash is seen as security risk. Flash is seen as a impediment to productivity. Flash is seen as inefficient. The result is the presence in the marketplace is going to be reduced.
Then there is science. If we are looking scientifically there is LD50 which is half of some other illegal drugs. One can argue a pack a day gives you excess the lethal dose in a week, so how much is accrued over a lifetime. On could theoretically figure out a non lethal dose over a lifetime, which would presumably be less than a pack of day.
Some scientists will just say that nutrition is simply vitamins, minerals, protein, and calories in versus calories expended. Therefore a healthy person can have McDonalds as a primary source of nutrition is calories are controlled and suitable activities are engaged. It is the same thing with BPA. Probably not a problem, so lets just monitor. This is the rational discussion.
Anyone who believes that humans are rational agents are pseudoscientists of the economic or psychological form. While I encourage everyone to use precise language and accurate statements, this is going to do nothing for to the base rationality of the human mind. Using chemical names, and LD50, and maximum allowable dosages, is not make people believe that things are dangerous are safe. I am not going to voluntarily drink from the bayou even though it is probably safe.
Of course when industry wins due to fear, we do not see these articles. Americans take tons of vitamins every year that are not necessary. Their production and sales is seriously harming our environment, and it is just peed out. Where are the articles saying that we just eat vegetables? Bottled water is also destroying the environment. Where is the article deriding our culture of bottle drink instead of just tap water? No, chemicals are good, and anything said against them is luddite. If we were "chemophobic" we would be taking much few vitamins, and drinking much less bottle water a flavor carbonated beverages.
One thing I am sure that some might talk about is vaccines. They have a chemical that is probably safe in the doses provided, but some think it is not. So there is damage due to so-called Chemophobia. This is fact not true. The issue here is the government protecting drug manufacturers based on questionable "medical research" in such a way that innovation does not have to occur to meet consumer demand. In some way this protection is justifiable, but in terms of vaccine there should have been a more immediate response to placate the populous, as was done with BPA.
I need something that works. I know Libreoffice works now, but in the past basic functionality has been subservient to features. It doesn't matter if you disagree. This is my experience. At some point if OO.org stops doing what I need it do, then I will try Libreoffice.
MS functionality is very important to those that have depended MS for their livelihood. This is beyond just a workflow to the point where the MS lords give then a reason to live. I do not have this need. I need to read basic MS files, but I left the word processor years ago due to the technical nature of my writing. I can see Libreoffice as the alternative for people who do not want for MS products, but really that is not my need.