This may be true, but the reality is that in any environment where competition does not exist and the agents are free to set their own margins and rules, innovation is going to be slow. While computers might be able to use some form of stochastic and other analysis to predict certain parts of the game, it is unreasonable to assume that somewhere such computers are not doing exactly that and feeding information back to agents in or around the field
The only reasonable reason to not embrace technology is because using technology to improve a product requires up front investment. As mention, most pro sports do not exist in a competitive environment, so it would be silly to invest in development that does not have a guaranteed and large return. This adverse situation to innovation is further aggravated by the fact that profits from increasingly obsolete media would likely be threatened by any real use of technology. Of course the increasingly obsolete media, an industry with only slightly more competition, is equally scared of technology as sports are about the only thing that is currently viewed in real time, which makes it valuable commodity for advertisers.
Texas has been the technology center of the US for quite a long time. In the 80's, when oil prices crashed, Texas was not as devastated as some states have been when central industries went into decline. That is because oil profits, unlike finance, auto, or entertainment profits, are not simply squandered on blow, hookers, and houses. No, oil money has been invested in producing technology, art, and education that helps diversify the economy.
For instance Compaq, located outside of Houston, jump started the PC revolution by removing IBM from the equation. TI, located in Sherman between the Dallas the Oklahoma border, started off as a geophysical service on the way created the first commercial silicon transistor. Because there was no market for such a device, they also developed the first electronic calculator to show how the device could be used. Not bad for a bunch of backwards hicks.
What is interesting is that during the oil bust of the mid 80's, the cultural offering of many places in Texas remained relatively cheap. True, during the oil boom of the 70's many museums, zoos, opera, ballets, symphonies were either extremely cheap of free. Though many of the prices increased after the oil bust of the mid 80's, they still remained cheap compared to other parts of the nation thanks to the forward thinking of the endowment managers. I like to think that the Financial people in Texas are much less likely to become fooled by wall street due to the distance from the group think. Just look at easy it was for Enron to fool the people in CA into thinking that rolling blackouts were a necessity of the market. OTOH, when I was going to apply for a jpb at Enron, everyone I knew told me they were crooks and I did not want to be associated with them.
In any case, i think the Texas attitude has best been summarized in the republican debates. We don't care where you come from, or who your parents are. If you are smart, and can add to the productivity and profits in Texas, welcome, If all you want it is a free check and free care, go away. It is a brutal philosophy, but one that prevents the waste of the normal assumption of aristocratic ascension. Many conservatives think that Rick Perry's assertion that everyone in texas who can get into a university and lives and pay taxes in texas gets in state tuition is stupid, but it is not. There are many people who come to texas from all over the world and all over the nation who stay in texas and add to our profits. In state tuition is a small price to pay for those long terms benefits. Do some of use get angry that our parents have been paying taxes for all our lives to fund texas colleges, and then this immigrant from Iowa gets in state tuition after only a couple years. Does it gall an immigrant from central america that her parents have been paying sales taxes for 10 years and the nation thinks that texas should not give in state tuition? Sure, stupid places like Alabama who cares more about arbitrary beliefs than creating enough profits to feed everyone in the state do. But Texas as a whole does not. Given that there are few states in the US that values education and long term fiscal security more than arbitrary religious beliefs, it is no surprise that Texas ends up better off than most other states. Just look at how much money other states are wasting on enforcing racial segregation instead of finding the smartest people of any race to help make the state better.
Each time I have used a 3d printer there is a significant amount of waste. Furthermore, the stuff I made with high impact plastic has to be trimmed at a great cost of time and effort.
3D printing make sense in that we might need fewer spares of certain parts that can be fabricated using 3D printing, but are there enough of these parts. Also, one would never just ship on printer. One would have to ship enough material to fabricate a second printer. At the end of the day it would require significant analysis to see the if there is any net benefit.
It is hard to say that banning cell phones while driving is security theater. Security theater is something that is almost exclusively there to feel better without providing any long term protection or enough protection to counteract the genuine reduction in freedom. Banning cameras from public building is an example. in this case we have a situation where multiple issues caused a serious accident. In fact, most accidents are caused by multiple issues, one often being a distracted driver. I can say from experience that I could caused two serious accidents, one where I spun out on some clothes that fell out a car in front of me on the freeway, and one where my accelerator stuck, but because I and other drivers were paying attention the accident was avoided. Asking drivers to pay attention to driving is not security theater, it is simple logic.
That does not mean there should be a ban. I certainly believe we should punish actual crimes that hurt people, not crimes that might hurt people. So if someone drives drunk, that is not necessarily a crime, but if one causes an accident because on is impaired, from drinking, or playing with the phone, or the radio, or whatever, maybe that person's license should be suspended because they are not competent enough to drive. Sure, someone may have stopped suddenly in front of them for no apparent reason, but, hey, that is part of knowing how to drive, paying attention to unexpected events. If enough incompetent people are barred from driving, maybe we would not need so many laws that simply protect us against the incompetent.
Of course the incompetent drivers would all complain that losing a license over a single incident is unfair, which is why we have silly laws banning the use of cell phones.
We live in a great world where a third party will pay for the storage and bandwidth to have other watch my lame videos. This is great because it costs me nothing to publish my videos. There is no risk and no expense beyond the production costs which can also be negligible.
Why is this possible? Because bandwidth is cheap, because storage is cheap, and because there is little risk of legal costs. The US Government has said that as long as a service take down any content that they have been notified violates a copyright, the service is not subject to any legal action. This is good for free services such as Youtube because it eliminates the risk and allows them to accept videos without any filtering.
If one wishes, one can set up one's own video sharing service, pay for the bandwidth, and the legal liability associated with potentially violating copyright. No one is going to stop the setup of such a service, and such a service can be free to ignore takedown notices. It is simply not in the best interest of Youtube, the preeminent distributor of lame and random video, to so do.
Of course many would say why not make the copyright holders for frivolous take down notices. I would support that. But even that would require companies like Google to invest in legal action that may not generate a profit, or at least might generate a greater loss than complying with takedown notices. Also, if policing video got too expensive, then copyright holder might put real money into lobbying congress and buy even worse legislation. This is, after all, the congress that has put more earmarks that funnel tax payer money to their families and buddies than almost any other. And this after a pledge not to so do.
Except it won't. Take the keystone pipeline Eventually it will flow about half a million barrels a day. The US uses about 20 million barrels a day of fossil fuel. This would reduce our foreign dependence by roughly 2%.
I would argue if foreign dependence on oil is the issue, there are better ways to do this, most notably increased efficiency. After all if the best way to balance our budget is cut the wasted spending, the best way to cut our energy deficit is wasteful spending . For instance, it is said passenge automobile consume around 1/3 or more of petroleum. Therefore if all automobiles fuel efficiency were increased by 5 to 10%, and driving did not increase, we would achieve the same results. This is the same for CFL. It is really a national security issues. I don't know if conservatives are very poor or live in poor areas with no Ikea nearby, but $4 for three CFL seems a low price to pay to not fund the terrorist with petrol money.
So from what I can tell these were radical extremist who apparently refused to give back six cows. They were heavily armed, but no mention of anyone with anything that was not legal. The police came to remove 6 cows that had apparently wandered onto these peoples property. The police refused to leave the property and the residents prepared to defend themselves. I do not know the laws of this location in terms of trespassing livestock, but I do not think that predator drones are part of the recovery process.
So the police reacted to the recovery of these six pieces of livestock by calling a predator drone from customs and immigration. Since this was neither a federal customs or immigration issue, I do not know why the drone was there. There were American Citizens on American Soil, not apparently engaged in interstate commerce of import/export, yet drones that have no been authorized for local use were used. This was like when Texas conservative misappropriated federal resources to hound legislators that were boycotting the session. These are your federal tax dollars being misused by local cops to harass citizens.
Now I probably do not agree with what these people are doing, but in america we have to deal with people we do not agree with. We can't just ignore the constitution and 200 years of laws and court ruling and go onto other people private property and intimidate them. On thing with which I disagree with this radicals is that guns are going to protect anyone from government excesses. Clearly this is another case where that is proven wrong. The toys that the NRA allows the citizens of the US to have can do nothing. The NRA is a front for the part of the government that wants to control the population, giving people a sense of security by allowing cap guns, but insuring that anything that could actually be used to defend property remains out of bounds, both by removing materials and processes. The only time the NRA is going to help is if one wants to commit suicide by cop.
We should all be worried that predator drones are being used by rogue cops for purposes that have not been approved by our representatives. This was a case of mickey mouse crime with mickey mouse radicals being escalated to scare the populous into use not so mickey mouse defenses.
Given that so much of the first and second doctor were basically kids serials with low production value, I am not as occupied with these episodes as I once was. I own and watch many of these early episodes, and pretty much agree there is a good reason why most of the doctor reruns shy from these early episodes. While there are a few that are remarkable, most seem to suffer from the 'have to get an episode out not matter how lame' syndrome. It is instructive to look at how many episodes were shot for those early series as how many are shot now.
On exception is Marco Polo, which appears to be high budget show for the series. If that were found it would be a wonderful and exciting day for fans of the Doctor.
This is not death, which would increase unemployment and lose the only jobs program acceptable to you average conservative nut. Rather is will make it ineffective while keeping high paying jobs for useless bureaucrats.
How is it ineffective? If we do not screen everyone equally, then screening is useless. If we say that a baby here, or an old women there, or a military family is not to be screened based only on the fact that they are these people, we might as well blow up the planes ourselves. If I know babies are not searched, or old women, then that is where the explosives will be placed. And one cannot forget that an active military person has been known to be a terrorist, not to mention that such document can be forged. Security is zero.
If we are to have real security we have to train the TSA agents as police, not make them less authorize. They have to be able to profile based on actions, not race, age, or gender. As it is we are having the worst and most wasteful parts of the plan saved while reducing the practically nonexistent benefits to all but non existant.
The question is not if one can get an older version of the OS installed if you wish. The question is why one cannot get a phone with the current version of the OS. Yes, as WIndows XP is the stable version of MS Windows some people choose to buy Windows XP. However, even if they do, they can if fact get the latest SP of XP for any computer that ships with XP. And Dell does sell most if not all computers running Windows 7.
The problem with Android are three fold. One is that Android and the hardware is rapidly evolving so it is likely difficult to match the two quickly. Second there is no monetary incentive for the cell phone makers or the mobile companies to update the phones. The cell phone companies want to sell phones and the mobile companies want to sell contracts, so no one benefits from updating the phone. It does not move product. Third most cell phone companies probably do not have the kind of expertise and workflow to make such versioning efficient. They have not had to do this in the past. Upgrading a phone in the past has meant buying a new one. Since they are not making any money off it, why invest in the process?
The problem with android tablets is how to get the volume to make a profit. The iPad sets the high price of a table due to the fact that the industry has spent years positioning apple as the premium retailers with markup of 50-500%. it is therefore expected that anyone else should be able to make a tablet for at least 25% less, if not 80% less as in the case of computer. We are always told that dell can make a better computer than apple for half as much.
So the fact most tablets are on the order of magnitude of a basic iPad, around the $400 mark, makes people think that tablets are too expensive. Of course Google is not providing the support that MS does, so the manufacturers have to shoulder all costs, which of course results in a more expensive product.
I think the strategy that will work is the Amazon strategy. Use the Android base, customize it into t a differentiated unique product, attach it to a service. The Android fanbois won't like it, but they aren't going to provide a mass market anyway. They were the one's cheering when HP had to sell it's table at a rock bottom price. Selling low does not move an industry forward. Selling good products at affordable prices does. This is why people buy Xbox, iPhone, and Deskjets. Not because they are cheap, but because they are good.
Re:Horse and buggy companies didn't make it either
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The Rise and Fall of Kodak
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I am not sure about the expectation that a corporation should exist forever, or that shrinkage and eventual folding is bad. Really it is this idea that a firm should be forever, and all the effort to make it happen, that creates inefficiencies in the free market.
Kodak provided a good product, and it innovated both in the pro and consumer market. The stuff it did really brought photography to the masses, and high end photography to the pros. The cameras allowed us to take pictures. The film allowed us to accurately reproduce those pictures. The technology was not trivial.
The think is that it is simply not cost effective to do a good job printing pictures that can just be reprinted. Archival for the family is no longer an issue. So the quality that Kodak represented is no longer needed. Which means lower markup and therefore an inability to pay for the bloated management that all corporation build up over time. This is why we need firms to go under, fire all the management, and sell all the assets. It frees up managers that are good to start more efficient ventures, and allows inefficient managers to no longer be a drag on the system. With the current idea that corporations are imortal, we have manager vampires feeding off the workers and consumers without providing any real value.
So is there a lesson here. Yes, to the inefficient manager, be ready to be thrown out into the street. Which won't happen, as there will always be banks and courts that perpetuate the efficiency of aristocratic class. Kodak can go. They represent and inefficient past. Not buggy inefficient, but perhaps heating stove inefficient.
Design and development is hard. In the late 19th century much of the world believed that science had discovered everything that could be discovered. Early cars were build not unlike horse drawn carriages, it took a generation for cars to come into their own, then in the US they stagnated to the point that 50 years later the US auto industry was all but kaput, and if the free market would have been allowed to play out it would have been. Osbourne put a computer in a portable case, and Compaq did not simply copy them, but re-imaged the product.
The facts of the current phone situation is that MS did not make the mistake it made 20 years ago by simply coping Apple and then crying like a little baby to get away with it. They do not simply make random changes and create a Zune. It does not work in a mature company or industry. MS cannot just get manufacturers to accept very low profits while they have high profits. This is why MS has success with the Xbox, which it manufactures itself, but not with the phone which they have had to pay for. This is interesting because unlike many phone people, MS is doing original things with Windows phone.
Which is to say it is much easier to complain that other's don't share rather than actually come up with an original idea. That is why we mostly hear complaints, and seldom have a new product like a dyson air multiplier
My opinion is that what CarrierIQ is doing, with the traditional cell phone setup in the US, is not out of bounds. Cell companies generally own the phone. Even after the contract expires, and the phone is paid for, the monthly rate does not decrease. The part of the monthly rate that pays for the subsidized phone continues to be paid by the user. In fact this indicates that the cell phones companies are renting the phones, not selling them, and at some point, now after two years, the phone has depreciated enough to be of not value.
So the mobile firms in the us basically own the phone, the network, the data. It is unreasonable to assume they do not monitor everything about the phone. This would not be such a big deal because all cellular data is transmitted over private networks, and there has traditionally been limits on what the mobile companies can use the data for.
Of course non of this true anymore. The user has the ability to modify the handsets which can potentially expose flaws in any monotering the cell companies do. Thought the handsets are still, in essence, owned by the mobile companies, they do not have the same control. It is possible that private personal data will be transmitted through public networks and this is where the danger happens. The US phones companies do have the control they once did, and i think this tracking is a response to this. But they are going to have to get used to less control.
To me what is more interesting here is what is happening with the engines and how OSS is forcing innovation. I have used browsers based on the Gecko engine for many years. Lately the browsers based on this engine has become less reliable, but that did not mean that I went to the proprietary Presto engine, even though it is no longer the garbage scow that it was before Mozilla forced MS to provide users with a decent MS Windows browser. No, I am using the Webkit engine more in the guise of Chrome and Safari. of course these two browsers, like IE, are targeted to promoting commercial concerns rather than providing the user with maximum configuration options(for instance my browser comes with flashblock built in, chrome blocking of third party cookies is hidden under a vague button in the preferences) so my primary is still Gecko based though it is not ideal.
I am not sure if composting should be made mandatory, any more than recycling is, but perhaps cities should charge real costs for trash. Cities budgets are very tight right now, and trash pickup may be one way to deal with this. For instance, there could be two sizes for trash receptacles. Those who want the higher size could be charged an additional fee.
Cities and states could also promote policies that encourage people to mulch and compost. For instance, many homeowners mow the lawn, throw the clippings away, and then buy fertilizer to restore the nutrients lost when the clipping are thrown away. If cities and states taxed fertilizer highly, and did not tax mulching mowers, then perhaps we would have less money wasted on putting clipping in the landfill. Have no doubt. Those fiscally liberal people who throw away lawn clipping and then waste money on fertilizer are forcing all of us to pay much higher taxes.
The city or county could also rent wood chippers at cost, or have a central facility that make the service available for free and sell the wood chips to the community at a nominal charge.
here is the situation in my city. We have recycling places scatter conveniently around the city. They are always busy. There should also be composting locations around the city. To me it is more a matter of providing access and incentives. Educating people that they way we have done things for a generation or two is not the way that we have done things forever. Mulching, recycling, hanging clothes to dry, cooking a meal, does not mean one is poor or stupid. It merely indicates one is responsible.
I think fundamentally a product costs money and if the product does not generate revenue, or, in Apple's case, sell computers, then the product serves no purpose no matter how many people like it.
Look at the initial flagship products, MacWrite and MacDraw. This was a good widely used product. However, two years after the Mac came out the software was spun off to Claris and was allowed to languish there for ten years. They had some products, but in the end all that was left was Filemaker. Why did Apple do this? Was it a conspiracy. Probably.
Then there is the question of how hard it would be to convert hypercard to the Mac OS X, and how it would fit into the XCode development culture. Hypercard was not the only development platform to fall, and given the superior power of *nix, less flexible scripting was not all that interesting. I worked with GUI scripting in Mac OS from the beginning, and hypercard. The advantage is a fast learning curve. The disadvantage is the lack of advanced features. In the world of modern computer Hypercard is kind of dinosaur, like cyberdog.
The only problem with the/. moderator system is that a politically radical individual can occasionally moderate a decent comment down which can greatly reduce the possibility of a comment being moderated up. The meta-moderation in theory solves this issue, and in fact may have greatly reduced the impact, but the system requires a large number of people honestly meta-moderating. In the current incarnation, meta-moderation has become complex to use. Im particular, it is more difficult to gain a sense of context with is really critical for honest meta-moderation.
In the scheme of things, I think most comments that are highly moderated do have an honest point of view and are useful/insightful/funny, etc. Are there many other good comments that are not highly moderated, Sure, but that is the way the ball bounces. Complaining that life is not fair and your comment was not highly moderated is like complaining you did not get the Wii at Walmart on Thanksgiving day. Someone else just wanted it a bit more, and in the grand scheme of things it really does not matter.
So, why is it important to google to change this system that has problems but allows the maximum amount of populous input. Because what is on Google does matter. Advertisers pay google to make sure their content is there, and less powerful content is not. There is a level of populous input, in that people who have web pages, even the common folk, can have input into rankings. But given the number of link farms that dominate popular searches, or ringtone frams that dominate lyric searches, of the ability of a retailer to gain a #1 position by higher a metrics service, it is clear that google still is about who pays and who does not.
So by making a moderation system based on few aristocrats who then grant the tokens of royalty to persons who will do their bidding guarantees that those who pay will have power, while those who don't, even with a superior product, are kept at bay.
It is well known that cancer tends to kill patients. As far as I know even treatments prescribed by you MD does assert to cure cancer, but is only measured in 5 year survival rates, and if a treatment can get an extra few people out of a hundred to live past five years it is considered a success. There may be some trickery here because people who aggressive treat cancer might also be the ones that tend to go to doctors earlier than those who would tend to not use aggressive treatments. In any case, it is clear that many drug therapies do have medical benifit and in many cases the life savings that are expended to gain the years is worth while.
Let me just say this. For years men were put through agony to 'cure' prostrate cancer until common sense was able to overcome the drug dealer industrial complex and men were told the truth, that prostate cancer was slow growing enough that in men the benefit of treating the cancer was primarily to enrich the drug and insurance companies, while causing unneceasry pain and risk to the male involved.
For years women were told to undergo painful mammograms every year after 40. Now it is every year or two, and for women at low risk the consensus seems to be after 50. Again, there is profit to many people to maximize the diagnosis and testing. False negatives are 20%, which means the cancer is not found, as well as false positives which require painful procedures and over diagnosis. Scientific studies indicate that little loss of effectiveness will occur if mamaograms are started at 50 for low risk groups, yet the loss of money to the insurance companies and drug cartels are so great the science it overwhelmed by the march to profits.
Then we have Avastin, a drug that actually can kill the patient without provided any proven benefit for those diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. Are the doctors following the science? There is evidence to suggest that it will still be prescribed even though the patient might have an heart attack, but at least if that happens before the patient dies of breast cancer it will not effect the five year survival rate. In fact, Roche is so determined to keep the profits of this killer drug rolling that it is said that they are part of a lobby to get congress to limit the FDA ability to protect US patients from killer drugs such as these. For $100,000 a year paid by scared patients who are looking for any hope, even a drug that will kill them, it is a good bussines model.
I am all for fast track and therapies that can help cancer patients. I can tolerate treatments such as mammograms and quack therapies that are costl but do not real harm and may make the patient happy. What I can't deal with are therapies that are known to kill the patient but are still allowed on the market.
First, to answer the question more directly, i.e. price performance, there are several issues. A better lens is not neccesarily going to be a better picture at this level, as discussed below. I grew up taking picutres on box cameras using cheap plastic lenses. They still look good. Paying for more pixels is not always going to be a good value. More pixel with worse software is going to result in a worse pictuture. Pay for optical zoom, light balancing, low light performance. For action shots pictures per second is well worth paying for, as well as the number of consecutive photos that one can take. This later is a critical number, and may depend on the speed of the memory card.
For most people a standalone camera in an unnecessary anacronism like a land line phone, a separate amplifier for you stereo, or an mechanical hard disk. For certain applications these things are useful, but to be honest even the iPhone sucky camera can do what most point and shoots can do. As the question indicated that this was not for hobby or professional, which means that we are not taking about shooting RAW and tweaking each photo, the we are talking about a point and shoot. And a camera phone is becoming a quite acceptable point and shoot.
Here is the thing about the modern digital point and shoot, as opposed to the film point and shoot. The key is the software and the sensor. In a point and shoot the sensor is tiny so they fact that one has an unideal lens does not matter. The picture the sensor is going to generate is crap . The sensors in most point and shoots in 35 square mm, which is not 35 mm which has twenty times the area. This means the light it can pick up is minuscule, andt the number of pixels that can be packed into the sensor without degradation is also minuscule. Most point and shots already pack pixels into the sensor at a density that defies reason, so that is not even an issue any more.
So we are left with software. The software is what converts the picture into something that will please the non-pro consumer. the software is the key. And this is what mostly differentiates one point and shoot from the other. How the software takes the noisy crap generated by the sensor into a picture. Whether tha picture is pleasing is a very personal choice.
So here is what I suggest. Go to the store and try the cameras. See which one's have controls you like. The way camera's operate can be quite different, so it is important to see what you like. Bring some memory cards. Take some pictures of the friend and family. Take the cards home and do whatever you will do want to do with them. See which camera is best for you.
Let take another example. If I piss and dedicate in my yard, even though it is my propety, people will get really upset. Therefore the government has put into place a requirement for indoor plumbing and specific sanitary facilities. Even if one lives on a large piece of land, certain structures are necessary that are significantly more complicated than an outhouse. These structures add signifcant cost to the construction of a dwelling, yet I do not see the so-called conservatives fighting these unreasonable mandates on what people can and cannot do on their own property. Somehow vaccinating kids so that we do not have a plague is bad but preventing people from aquiring affordable housing to prevent the plague is good.
The real problem here is that opinion is valued higher than verifiable fact. We have Obama birth certificate and statements from many people proving to a reasonable doubt that he was born in America. However, Rush Limbaugh , who was stopped by homeland security returning from a stag party in a country known for underage sex trafficking, on the potentially felony charge of carring a prescription drug, in this case Viagra, has not been widely critized or even charged with bieng a drug dealer of child molester. After all, why would one go to sex trafficking capital of the world instead of las vegas unles one wanted to have sex with young boys and girls. And why does one need Viagra when one left one's wife at home. And why would the US government let a known drug abuser go without penalty when entering the country with illegal drugs. You think you average person could get away with that? You see, opinion versus analysis of the factual paper trail.
The summery also did not mention that the jist of the article was that new energy sources are not going to solve the problem. That requires increased efficiency. This is what many people have saying for at least 40 years, and was the basis for Carter's energy policy. Efficiency is sound, but requires people to make what are often perceived as sacrifices. Cars that lok different, lighting sources that have higher front end costs, threats to the cash flow of aristocratic people who require enormous amounts of cash to survive. Some of the sacrifices are real, but it is always a mistake to minimize the effects of are not real. Right now there are poeple horrified that some firms, in operating within the parameters of the free market, are slaughter turkeys so they can be sold to those faithful to islam. Does not change the turkey, does not really cost more, but the perceived sacrifice on the patriotic amercan christian is not to be discounted.
Beyond this much of what the article states is either obvious to anyone who has thought for a minute about these energy sources, same for all energy sources, or bordering on scare mongering. Take the water thing for instance. Solar cells do not have to use water and most other power sources use water as well. Most of these are going to contaminate the water to a greater degree than geo or solar. In terms of metal, all power plants require great deals of metal, which are mined to great detriment of the environment. We don't really know how much rare earth metals are available, and the current scarcity is really a result of lack of demand. In terms of mining, I suppose a case can be made that mining rare earth metals in california to better than flowing up mountains in west virginia. if we consider biomass, switchgrass is probably close to the ideal because it grows where we do not grow crops, on the vast prairie wasteland.
In any case, I would agree that energy conservation is superior to building new power plants. I might even agree that replacing current power plants with solar or wind might not be the best idea. However, that is conventional thinking. There is some unconventional ideas that suggest we might have more point generation of energy. Solar, fuel cells, and geothermal will do this. It will not provide 24 hr guaranteed energy, nor will it maintain the power grid and the profits of firms that manage those lines. Therefore, like efficiency, more localized power is going to be a political decision.
But energy production is not a local problem, it a global problem, and this is where the article becomes irresponsible. In countries that are not fully industrialized, there is not a simple trade off between increased efficiency and power plants. Increased industrialization is going to require higher levels of energy output. If those plants are based on fossil fuels, all of us are going to suffer. OTOH, if china, who has lots of rare earth metals available, as well as land, uses wind we all will benifit in terms of cleaner air, cheaper oil, and utimately better and cheaper wind turbines that the US can then install when our plants expire.
In the neighboring state of New Mexico there is The National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in Albequerque and the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos. Both have significant historical artifacts on the development and application of nuclear technology. The National Museum has rebuilt aircraft and launch vehicles in an large open air display area. You can get up close and personal. The drive from Santa Fe to the Bradbury museum in spectacular and a science trip in itself. Both, of course, are set up for families and have a lot of kid stuff, but both also have a exhibitions that are in depth for adults.
If you are into paleontology or geology you might want to look at the Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu, New Mexico. There are many exposed strata in the area, and Ghost Ranch has a small museum and tour of the ranch, which, not surprisingly, is largely focused not on science but on the art of Georgia O'keeffe.
And don't forget Spaceport America. I have not been, but they evendtly have weekend tours for a not so nominal fee.\
Also, if you are going by the Gulf Coast, don't forget Johnson Space center. The visitor center is kind of lame, to be kind, but the tour is good. Make sure to get off the bus and see the rocket.
And, of course, unlike arizona, you can travel without papers and not be subject to random police inspections. Ha Ha. It is a joke.
Honestly textbooks are going to be a thing of the past. Everyone expects an integrated, multimedia, integrated experience and textbooks simply do not fulfill this role. I see this already in elementary schools where much of student work is online. At the early years, there is still work on paper, as students are learning to write, but the assignment, ancillary content like the silly songs used to help kids become familiar with content, etc, are there.
What I see in many current products is a lack of organization, a lack of student friendly setup, or a lack a obsessive focus on proprietary content. Here is what the internet is good for. Supplying content. Here is where a firm can profit. Organizing and presenting content. I have seen on example where this is actually done reasonable well. I have seen it done badly in many other cases. Simply placing every link found in google in a database organized by subject is not how this should be done. Believe me I have seen products that do this. What nature has done may or may not be well done. It does not really seem to be that innovative. I have seen other products that follow the same line.
One thing that works well for me in organizing content is Moodle. Like the Nature book it is organized into units. There is not built in mechanism to force students to follow a certain path, but content can be presented and valid assessment created. This is technology that exists the can free students from reading 1000 pages out of context, paying huge bills for books, and taking tests where the purpose is often minimizing cheating rather than testing skills. The question is how much will students pay for a moodle setup. Probably not enough to be worth setting it up.
On an aside, what is up with testing on the computer. Why do we still have tests that are mostly multiple choice? It is possible to have math questions with randomly generated numbers and calculated question. It is possible to have scripts and regex expression to check short answers automatically. There are tool bars that let students enter algebraic expressions. Computer have been around for nearly two generations, yet will still teach basically as we did 30 years ago. With books and scantron machines. It is crazy. There is no well paying job where one gets paid for filling bubbles. Learning is no longer simply reading a book for facts. Increasingly what we learn is process, how to interact with a computer so the results are what is expected. It is much more complex, experiential, dare I say hands on.
I have lived in the city have been crossing streets alone since I was a child and the only time I got hit by a car was when I was young and did not look both ways because I was crossing at a lighted crosswalk. I had the right of way, a car run the red light. I learned my lesson. Most instances I see is because on of the agents is not paying attention. For instance I say a bicyclist get run over when he entered an intersection as a truck was turning right. The bike did not notice the truck turning right, the truck did not see the bike inthe rearview mirror. Lack of attention.
Of course blaming cars for not making noise is silly. Cars have been getting quieter. This is one necessary condition for increasing fuel economy, Engine noise is energy, wasted energy. Wasted energy that represents wasted fuel. A completely quiet engine is something we should strive for. Walking in traffic, like driving, is a skill. There are consequences for being unskilled. This is true in all of life. I am more concerned of the drunk teenagers driving their parents SUV who kill a family of four.
The only thing I would like to see on electric cars, maybe all cars, is the beeper that activates when a car backs up. I have been in situations in parking lots where I could not see a car backing up, and could not here the car, and almost got into an accident.
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The only reasonable reason to not embrace technology is because using technology to improve a product requires up front investment. As mention, most pro sports do not exist in a competitive environment, so it would be silly to invest in development that does not have a guaranteed and large return. This adverse situation to innovation is further aggravated by the fact that profits from increasingly obsolete media would likely be threatened by any real use of technology. Of course the increasingly obsolete media, an industry with only slightly more competition, is equally scared of technology as sports are about the only thing that is currently viewed in real time, which makes it valuable commodity for advertisers.
For instance Compaq, located outside of Houston, jump started the PC revolution by removing IBM from the equation. TI, located in Sherman between the Dallas the Oklahoma border, started off as a geophysical service on the way created the first commercial silicon transistor. Because there was no market for such a device, they also developed the first electronic calculator to show how the device could be used. Not bad for a bunch of backwards hicks.
What is interesting is that during the oil bust of the mid 80's, the cultural offering of many places in Texas remained relatively cheap. True, during the oil boom of the 70's many museums, zoos, opera, ballets, symphonies were either extremely cheap of free. Though many of the prices increased after the oil bust of the mid 80's, they still remained cheap compared to other parts of the nation thanks to the forward thinking of the endowment managers. I like to think that the Financial people in Texas are much less likely to become fooled by wall street due to the distance from the group think. Just look at easy it was for Enron to fool the people in CA into thinking that rolling blackouts were a necessity of the market. OTOH, when I was going to apply for a jpb at Enron, everyone I knew told me they were crooks and I did not want to be associated with them.
In any case, i think the Texas attitude has best been summarized in the republican debates. We don't care where you come from, or who your parents are. If you are smart, and can add to the productivity and profits in Texas, welcome, If all you want it is a free check and free care, go away. It is a brutal philosophy, but one that prevents the waste of the normal assumption of aristocratic ascension. Many conservatives think that Rick Perry's assertion that everyone in texas who can get into a university and lives and pay taxes in texas gets in state tuition is stupid, but it is not. There are many people who come to texas from all over the world and all over the nation who stay in texas and add to our profits. In state tuition is a small price to pay for those long terms benefits. Do some of use get angry that our parents have been paying taxes for all our lives to fund texas colleges, and then this immigrant from Iowa gets in state tuition after only a couple years. Does it gall an immigrant from central america that her parents have been paying sales taxes for 10 years and the nation thinks that texas should not give in state tuition? Sure, stupid places like Alabama who cares more about arbitrary beliefs than creating enough profits to feed everyone in the state do. But Texas as a whole does not. Given that there are few states in the US that values education and long term fiscal security more than arbitrary religious beliefs, it is no surprise that Texas ends up better off than most other states. Just look at how much money other states are wasting on enforcing racial segregation instead of finding the smartest people of any race to help make the state better.
3D printing make sense in that we might need fewer spares of certain parts that can be fabricated using 3D printing, but are there enough of these parts. Also, one would never just ship on printer. One would have to ship enough material to fabricate a second printer. At the end of the day it would require significant analysis to see the if there is any net benefit.
That does not mean there should be a ban. I certainly believe we should punish actual crimes that hurt people, not crimes that might hurt people. So if someone drives drunk, that is not necessarily a crime, but if one causes an accident because on is impaired, from drinking, or playing with the phone, or the radio, or whatever, maybe that person's license should be suspended because they are not competent enough to drive. Sure, someone may have stopped suddenly in front of them for no apparent reason, but, hey, that is part of knowing how to drive, paying attention to unexpected events. If enough incompetent people are barred from driving, maybe we would not need so many laws that simply protect us against the incompetent.
Of course the incompetent drivers would all complain that losing a license over a single incident is unfair, which is why we have silly laws banning the use of cell phones.
Why is this possible? Because bandwidth is cheap, because storage is cheap, and because there is little risk of legal costs. The US Government has said that as long as a service take down any content that they have been notified violates a copyright, the service is not subject to any legal action. This is good for free services such as Youtube because it eliminates the risk and allows them to accept videos without any filtering.
If one wishes, one can set up one's own video sharing service, pay for the bandwidth, and the legal liability associated with potentially violating copyright. No one is going to stop the setup of such a service, and such a service can be free to ignore takedown notices. It is simply not in the best interest of Youtube, the preeminent distributor of lame and random video, to so do.
Of course many would say why not make the copyright holders for frivolous take down notices. I would support that. But even that would require companies like Google to invest in legal action that may not generate a profit, or at least might generate a greater loss than complying with takedown notices. Also, if policing video got too expensive, then copyright holder might put real money into lobbying congress and buy even worse legislation. This is, after all, the congress that has put more earmarks that funnel tax payer money to their families and buddies than almost any other. And this after a pledge not to so do.
I would argue if foreign dependence on oil is the issue, there are better ways to do this, most notably increased efficiency. After all if the best way to balance our budget is cut the wasted spending, the best way to cut our energy deficit is wasteful spending . For instance, it is said passenge automobile consume around 1/3 or more of petroleum. Therefore if all automobiles fuel efficiency were increased by 5 to 10%, and driving did not increase, we would achieve the same results. This is the same for CFL. It is really a national security issues. I don't know if conservatives are very poor or live in poor areas with no Ikea nearby, but $4 for three CFL seems a low price to pay to not fund the terrorist with petrol money.
So the police reacted to the recovery of these six pieces of livestock by calling a predator drone from customs and immigration. Since this was neither a federal customs or immigration issue, I do not know why the drone was there. There were American Citizens on American Soil, not apparently engaged in interstate commerce of import/export, yet drones that have no been authorized for local use were used. This was like when Texas conservative misappropriated federal resources to hound legislators that were boycotting the session. These are your federal tax dollars being misused by local cops to harass citizens.
Now I probably do not agree with what these people are doing, but in america we have to deal with people we do not agree with. We can't just ignore the constitution and 200 years of laws and court ruling and go onto other people private property and intimidate them. On thing with which I disagree with this radicals is that guns are going to protect anyone from government excesses. Clearly this is another case where that is proven wrong. The toys that the NRA allows the citizens of the US to have can do nothing. The NRA is a front for the part of the government that wants to control the population, giving people a sense of security by allowing cap guns, but insuring that anything that could actually be used to defend property remains out of bounds, both by removing materials and processes. The only time the NRA is going to help is if one wants to commit suicide by cop.
We should all be worried that predator drones are being used by rogue cops for purposes that have not been approved by our representatives. This was a case of mickey mouse crime with mickey mouse radicals being escalated to scare the populous into use not so mickey mouse defenses.
On exception is Marco Polo, which appears to be high budget show for the series. If that were found it would be a wonderful and exciting day for fans of the Doctor.
How is it ineffective? If we do not screen everyone equally, then screening is useless. If we say that a baby here, or an old women there, or a military family is not to be screened based only on the fact that they are these people, we might as well blow up the planes ourselves. If I know babies are not searched, or old women, then that is where the explosives will be placed. And one cannot forget that an active military person has been known to be a terrorist, not to mention that such document can be forged. Security is zero.
If we are to have real security we have to train the TSA agents as police, not make them less authorize. They have to be able to profile based on actions, not race, age, or gender. As it is we are having the worst and most wasteful parts of the plan saved while reducing the practically nonexistent benefits to all but non existant.
The problem with Android are three fold. One is that Android and the hardware is rapidly evolving so it is likely difficult to match the two quickly. Second there is no monetary incentive for the cell phone makers or the mobile companies to update the phones. The cell phone companies want to sell phones and the mobile companies want to sell contracts, so no one benefits from updating the phone. It does not move product. Third most cell phone companies probably do not have the kind of expertise and workflow to make such versioning efficient. They have not had to do this in the past. Upgrading a phone in the past has meant buying a new one. Since they are not making any money off it, why invest in the process?
So the fact most tablets are on the order of magnitude of a basic iPad, around the $400 mark, makes people think that tablets are too expensive. Of course Google is not providing the support that MS does, so the manufacturers have to shoulder all costs, which of course results in a more expensive product.
I think the strategy that will work is the Amazon strategy. Use the Android base, customize it into t a differentiated unique product, attach it to a service. The Android fanbois won't like it, but they aren't going to provide a mass market anyway. They were the one's cheering when HP had to sell it's table at a rock bottom price. Selling low does not move an industry forward. Selling good products at affordable prices does. This is why people buy Xbox, iPhone, and Deskjets. Not because they are cheap, but because they are good.
Kodak provided a good product, and it innovated both in the pro and consumer market. The stuff it did really brought photography to the masses, and high end photography to the pros. The cameras allowed us to take pictures. The film allowed us to accurately reproduce those pictures. The technology was not trivial.
The think is that it is simply not cost effective to do a good job printing pictures that can just be reprinted. Archival for the family is no longer an issue. So the quality that Kodak represented is no longer needed. Which means lower markup and therefore an inability to pay for the bloated management that all corporation build up over time. This is why we need firms to go under, fire all the management, and sell all the assets. It frees up managers that are good to start more efficient ventures, and allows inefficient managers to no longer be a drag on the system. With the current idea that corporations are imortal, we have manager vampires feeding off the workers and consumers without providing any real value.
So is there a lesson here. Yes, to the inefficient manager, be ready to be thrown out into the street. Which won't happen, as there will always be banks and courts that perpetuate the efficiency of aristocratic class. Kodak can go. They represent and inefficient past. Not buggy inefficient, but perhaps heating stove inefficient.
The facts of the current phone situation is that MS did not make the mistake it made 20 years ago by simply coping Apple and then crying like a little baby to get away with it. They do not simply make random changes and create a Zune. It does not work in a mature company or industry. MS cannot just get manufacturers to accept very low profits while they have high profits. This is why MS has success with the Xbox, which it manufactures itself, but not with the phone which they have had to pay for. This is interesting because unlike many phone people, MS is doing original things with Windows phone.
Which is to say it is much easier to complain that other's don't share rather than actually come up with an original idea. That is why we mostly hear complaints, and seldom have a new product like a dyson air multiplier
So the mobile firms in the us basically own the phone, the network, the data. It is unreasonable to assume they do not monitor everything about the phone. This would not be such a big deal because all cellular data is transmitted over private networks, and there has traditionally been limits on what the mobile companies can use the data for.
Of course non of this true anymore. The user has the ability to modify the handsets which can potentially expose flaws in any monotering the cell companies do. Thought the handsets are still, in essence, owned by the mobile companies, they do not have the same control. It is possible that private personal data will be transmitted through public networks and this is where the danger happens. The US phones companies do have the control they once did, and i think this tracking is a response to this. But they are going to have to get used to less control.
To me what is more interesting here is what is happening with the engines and how OSS is forcing innovation. I have used browsers based on the Gecko engine for many years. Lately the browsers based on this engine has become less reliable, but that did not mean that I went to the proprietary Presto engine, even though it is no longer the garbage scow that it was before Mozilla forced MS to provide users with a decent MS Windows browser. No, I am using the Webkit engine more in the guise of Chrome and Safari. of course these two browsers, like IE, are targeted to promoting commercial concerns rather than providing the user with maximum configuration options(for instance my browser comes with flashblock built in, chrome blocking of third party cookies is hidden under a vague button in the preferences) so my primary is still Gecko based though it is not ideal.
Cities and states could also promote policies that encourage people to mulch and compost. For instance, many homeowners mow the lawn, throw the clippings away, and then buy fertilizer to restore the nutrients lost when the clipping are thrown away. If cities and states taxed fertilizer highly, and did not tax mulching mowers, then perhaps we would have less money wasted on putting clipping in the landfill. Have no doubt. Those fiscally liberal people who throw away lawn clipping and then waste money on fertilizer are forcing all of us to pay much higher taxes.
The city or county could also rent wood chippers at cost, or have a central facility that make the service available for free and sell the wood chips to the community at a nominal charge.
here is the situation in my city. We have recycling places scatter conveniently around the city. They are always busy. There should also be composting locations around the city. To me it is more a matter of providing access and incentives. Educating people that they way we have done things for a generation or two is not the way that we have done things forever. Mulching, recycling, hanging clothes to dry, cooking a meal, does not mean one is poor or stupid. It merely indicates one is responsible.
Look at the initial flagship products, MacWrite and MacDraw. This was a good widely used product. However, two years after the Mac came out the software was spun off to Claris and was allowed to languish there for ten years. They had some products, but in the end all that was left was Filemaker. Why did Apple do this? Was it a conspiracy. Probably.
Then there is the question of how hard it would be to convert hypercard to the Mac OS X, and how it would fit into the XCode development culture. Hypercard was not the only development platform to fall, and given the superior power of *nix, less flexible scripting was not all that interesting. I worked with GUI scripting in Mac OS from the beginning, and hypercard. The advantage is a fast learning curve. The disadvantage is the lack of advanced features. In the world of modern computer Hypercard is kind of dinosaur, like cyberdog.
In the scheme of things, I think most comments that are highly moderated do have an honest point of view and are useful/insightful/funny, etc. Are there many other good comments that are not highly moderated, Sure, but that is the way the ball bounces. Complaining that life is not fair and your comment was not highly moderated is like complaining you did not get the Wii at Walmart on Thanksgiving day. Someone else just wanted it a bit more, and in the grand scheme of things it really does not matter.
So, why is it important to google to change this system that has problems but allows the maximum amount of populous input. Because what is on Google does matter. Advertisers pay google to make sure their content is there, and less powerful content is not. There is a level of populous input, in that people who have web pages, even the common folk, can have input into rankings. But given the number of link farms that dominate popular searches, or ringtone frams that dominate lyric searches, of the ability of a retailer to gain a #1 position by higher a metrics service, it is clear that google still is about who pays and who does not.
So by making a moderation system based on few aristocrats who then grant the tokens of royalty to persons who will do their bidding guarantees that those who pay will have power, while those who don't, even with a superior product, are kept at bay.
Let me just say this. For years men were put through agony to 'cure' prostrate cancer until common sense was able to overcome the drug dealer industrial complex and men were told the truth, that prostate cancer was slow growing enough that in men the benefit of treating the cancer was primarily to enrich the drug and insurance companies, while causing unneceasry pain and risk to the male involved.
For years women were told to undergo painful mammograms every year after 40. Now it is every year or two, and for women at low risk the consensus seems to be after 50. Again, there is profit to many people to maximize the diagnosis and testing. False negatives are 20%, which means the cancer is not found, as well as false positives which require painful procedures and over diagnosis. Scientific studies indicate that little loss of effectiveness will occur if mamaograms are started at 50 for low risk groups, yet the loss of money to the insurance companies and drug cartels are so great the science it overwhelmed by the march to profits.
Then we have Avastin, a drug that actually can kill the patient without provided any proven benefit for those diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. Are the doctors following the science? There is evidence to suggest that it will still be prescribed even though the patient might have an heart attack, but at least if that happens before the patient dies of breast cancer it will not effect the five year survival rate. In fact, Roche is so determined to keep the profits of this killer drug rolling that it is said that they are part of a lobby to get congress to limit the FDA ability to protect US patients from killer drugs such as these. For $100,000 a year paid by scared patients who are looking for any hope, even a drug that will kill them, it is a good bussines model.
I am all for fast track and therapies that can help cancer patients. I can tolerate treatments such as mammograms and quack therapies that are costl but do not real harm and may make the patient happy. What I can't deal with are therapies that are known to kill the patient but are still allowed on the market.
For most people a standalone camera in an unnecessary anacronism like a land line phone, a separate amplifier for you stereo, or an mechanical hard disk. For certain applications these things are useful, but to be honest even the iPhone sucky camera can do what most point and shoots can do. As the question indicated that this was not for hobby or professional, which means that we are not taking about shooting RAW and tweaking each photo, the we are talking about a point and shoot. And a camera phone is becoming a quite acceptable point and shoot.
Here is the thing about the modern digital point and shoot, as opposed to the film point and shoot. The key is the software and the sensor. In a point and shoot the sensor is tiny so they fact that one has an unideal lens does not matter. The picture the sensor is going to generate is crap . The sensors in most point and shoots in 35 square mm, which is not 35 mm which has twenty times the area. This means the light it can pick up is minuscule, andt the number of pixels that can be packed into the sensor without degradation is also minuscule. Most point and shots already pack pixels into the sensor at a density that defies reason, so that is not even an issue any more.
So we are left with software. The software is what converts the picture into something that will please the non-pro consumer. the software is the key. And this is what mostly differentiates one point and shoot from the other. How the software takes the noisy crap generated by the sensor into a picture. Whether tha picture is pleasing is a very personal choice.
So here is what I suggest. Go to the store and try the cameras. See which one's have controls you like. The way camera's operate can be quite different, so it is important to see what you like. Bring some memory cards. Take some pictures of the friend and family. Take the cards home and do whatever you will do want to do with them. See which camera is best for you.
The real problem here is that opinion is valued higher than verifiable fact. We have Obama birth certificate and statements from many people proving to a reasonable doubt that he was born in America. However, Rush Limbaugh , who was stopped by homeland security returning from a stag party in a country known for underage sex trafficking, on the potentially felony charge of carring a prescription drug, in this case Viagra, has not been widely critized or even charged with bieng a drug dealer of child molester. After all, why would one go to sex trafficking capital of the world instead of las vegas unles one wanted to have sex with young boys and girls. And why does one need Viagra when one left one's wife at home. And why would the US government let a known drug abuser go without penalty when entering the country with illegal drugs. You think you average person could get away with that? You see, opinion versus analysis of the factual paper trail.
Beyond this much of what the article states is either obvious to anyone who has thought for a minute about these energy sources, same for all energy sources, or bordering on scare mongering. Take the water thing for instance. Solar cells do not have to use water and most other power sources use water as well. Most of these are going to contaminate the water to a greater degree than geo or solar. In terms of metal, all power plants require great deals of metal, which are mined to great detriment of the environment. We don't really know how much rare earth metals are available, and the current scarcity is really a result of lack of demand. In terms of mining, I suppose a case can be made that mining rare earth metals in california to better than flowing up mountains in west virginia. if we consider biomass, switchgrass is probably close to the ideal because it grows where we do not grow crops, on the vast prairie wasteland.
In any case, I would agree that energy conservation is superior to building new power plants. I might even agree that replacing current power plants with solar or wind might not be the best idea. However, that is conventional thinking. There is some unconventional ideas that suggest we might have more point generation of energy. Solar, fuel cells, and geothermal will do this. It will not provide 24 hr guaranteed energy, nor will it maintain the power grid and the profits of firms that manage those lines. Therefore, like efficiency, more localized power is going to be a political decision.
But energy production is not a local problem, it a global problem, and this is where the article becomes irresponsible. In countries that are not fully industrialized, there is not a simple trade off between increased efficiency and power plants. Increased industrialization is going to require higher levels of energy output. If those plants are based on fossil fuels, all of us are going to suffer. OTOH, if china, who has lots of rare earth metals available, as well as land, uses wind we all will benifit in terms of cleaner air, cheaper oil, and utimately better and cheaper wind turbines that the US can then install when our plants expire.
If you are into paleontology or geology you might want to look at the Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu, New Mexico. There are many exposed strata in the area, and Ghost Ranch has a small museum and tour of the ranch, which, not surprisingly, is largely focused not on science but on the art of Georgia O'keeffe.
And don't forget Spaceport America. I have not been, but they evendtly have weekend tours for a not so nominal fee.\
Also, if you are going by the Gulf Coast, don't forget Johnson Space center. The visitor center is kind of lame, to be kind, but the tour is good. Make sure to get off the bus and see the rocket.
And, of course, unlike arizona, you can travel without papers and not be subject to random police inspections. Ha Ha. It is a joke.
What I see in many current products is a lack of organization, a lack of student friendly setup, or a lack a obsessive focus on proprietary content. Here is what the internet is good for. Supplying content. Here is where a firm can profit. Organizing and presenting content. I have seen on example where this is actually done reasonable well. I have seen it done badly in many other cases. Simply placing every link found in google in a database organized by subject is not how this should be done. Believe me I have seen products that do this. What nature has done may or may not be well done. It does not really seem to be that innovative. I have seen other products that follow the same line.
One thing that works well for me in organizing content is Moodle. Like the Nature book it is organized into units. There is not built in mechanism to force students to follow a certain path, but content can be presented and valid assessment created. This is technology that exists the can free students from reading 1000 pages out of context, paying huge bills for books, and taking tests where the purpose is often minimizing cheating rather than testing skills. The question is how much will students pay for a moodle setup. Probably not enough to be worth setting it up.
On an aside, what is up with testing on the computer. Why do we still have tests that are mostly multiple choice? It is possible to have math questions with randomly generated numbers and calculated question. It is possible to have scripts and regex expression to check short answers automatically. There are tool bars that let students enter algebraic expressions. Computer have been around for nearly two generations, yet will still teach basically as we did 30 years ago. With books and scantron machines. It is crazy. There is no well paying job where one gets paid for filling bubbles. Learning is no longer simply reading a book for facts. Increasingly what we learn is process, how to interact with a computer so the results are what is expected. It is much more complex, experiential, dare I say hands on.
Of course blaming cars for not making noise is silly. Cars have been getting quieter. This is one necessary condition for increasing fuel economy, Engine noise is energy, wasted energy. Wasted energy that represents wasted fuel. A completely quiet engine is something we should strive for. Walking in traffic, like driving, is a skill. There are consequences for being unskilled. This is true in all of life. I am more concerned of the drunk teenagers driving their parents SUV who kill a family of four.
The only thing I would like to see on electric cars, maybe all cars, is the beeper that activates when a car backs up. I have been in situations in parking lots where I could not see a car backing up, and could not here the car, and almost got into an accident.