If this were not about a basic hatred for Obama and all he represents, cutting the deficiet should be simple.
Medicate Part D was never funded. That is $64B and growing, or probably close to a trillion dollars of deficiet spending over the next 10 years. Repeal it or fund it. Could save $30B in the current budget process.
The department of education has grown widely since 2000. End NCLB and other unfunded mandates that infringe on the states right to educate it's population. DOE in an advisory roll is fine and history tells us it can be funded without deficit spending. So cut it's budget, maybe $10b in the current budget process.
Department of homeland security has also always been funded by deficiet spending. Cut it. Return the decision making to the civil servants that actually work. The last thing we need is another administrative layer. If the Tea Party wants small governement, this is the place to start. If we want screeners and the like, put it under the other agencies and shift administrators from other less important projects. Saving in the current budget cycle may $10B.
That is our $50 in deficit spending. We could do $100B but that would require a cut to the military, which they have already said they can do because they admit they waste massive amounts of money, and a tax increase to cover war operations around the world. Ultimately Obama is going to have to do what Bush I did with Reagan tax cuts, which is to end the Bush II tax cuts. Can't do it untile 2012 budget cycle, but much of the projected deficit comes from them.
Project based learning is an effective way to teach students. A properly constructed project can teach students process, skills, and curriculum. It is non trivial to implement for the high level students like Wozniak, and beyond non-trivial for the average student. I can understand why Wozniak preferes this method, as it matches his learning style.
There are several issues with project based learning. First the student must have skills outside of those tested on average high school exit or college entrance exams. These skills must be explicitly taught. They can't just be held up to chance. Skills like time management, dividing a large problem into smaller problems, integration into a presentation. Most expecially the skill to keep up with work over a number of weeks, and learning that each day is the continuation of the last, not a new day with no connection to the previous day. Kids can learn appropriate level of these skills. It does take class time, and if a kid is going to graduate on time, there is not always class time available. There has to be a commitment to the project skills, even at the sacrifice of the official curriculum.Therefore project based learning is ideal for students who are going to master the basic skills quickly, and at the high school level, is not going to freak if they do not get a 5 on the AP exam.
I do believe Wozniak has a good point because in many ways project based learning, when implemented properly, will teach kids a better balance of the skills needed in work and college than other methods. But it does require a student that wants to learn. Many a student will not spend the hours on the project, rather thinking they can get everything does right before the due date. Some of this can be handled by having benchmarks, but if the benchmarks are too close together the kid might as well be doing worksheet, and if they are too far apart the kid will get off track.
At the base, however, is that we know how to educate the kids who want to be in school. Projects can help the kids who are smart but don't want to be in school. Most of these kids, like Wozniak, however, are going to do well with or without extra and expensive methods in school. What I don't know how to do, and what no one seems to want to address, is how to educate the truely reluctant learners that may be below average abilities. These are the ones that need help, but people are so interested in the profit opportunities in educating those will learn in almost any environment, that we are seeing kids who really need help being ignored. Project based learning may be one way to reach this kids, but likely at a much higher funding rate than is currently norm.
A limiting factor to using the phone as your primary computer is not necessarily processor capability, but power consumption and screen size. Even if one has a high end chipset, that chipset may not be running at the high end setting because a compromise has been made to extend battery life. Some people with android phones seem to want to do this themselves. Apple seems to under clock the iPhone processor.
Which may be where mulitcore might be good. If the OS uses a core, the 'phone' code uses a core, and then there are two cores for apps, this may facilitate running the chip at under clocked and possible more efficient rates. This is, of course, what has happened on laptop computers. My laptops run way below 3GHz, even though it looked like all computers would be running a 5 GHz back in the early 2000s. Instead life went multicore. Right now phones seems to be good with under 1GHz, so maybe more cores is way to increase perfomance while keepping power consumption down.
The hours that Kermit saved me. I was able to hook up my modem and connect to the university mainframe from many different location. I did not have to go the computer lab or be inconvenienced when it was closed on holidays or all the terminals were taken. It was one of those things that had an incalculable effect on productivity, positive that is, unlike trade wars.
I think we are becoming cynical and crass due to fact through most of history religion has been a means of subjugating peasants and accumulating power into the few. IMHO, faith is knowing that our fellow humans are basically good, creative, and helpful people. I have faith that my building, under normal conditions, will not crumble below me and kill all the residents. This is not because of lawsuits, but because I have faith that most of the population is not sociopaths, and even fewer probably exist in engineering professions. I have faith that my car will not fall apart around me, for the same reason. As in the case of the Ford Pinto, sometimes our faith is broken, but I since I have no faith that managers do not contain a small minority of sociopaths that occasionally will prevent engineers from doing their jobs of protecting the creation.
So is having faith in our fellow person bad? Certainly the so-called religious people who routinely steal for the poor so they can live in luxury believe so. They hate humanism, because humanism threatens their life of hapless luxury. And faith in the creativity and honesty of our fellow people is faith in science. Scientist may work to push a personal philosophy, but they do thins within a framework that promotes faith in the process, and allows us to admit error. The Pope, for example, is boxed in with random trivia so cannot openly promote the use of condoms. This has nothing to with faith, but hubris and ego. Science, on the other hand, is faith in humanity and process, and allows us transcend the egotistical limitations that so often cripple other 'people of faith'.
So there is no reason not to have faith in science, faith that we are here to help each other make the world heaven on earth, rather that the cynical view that each of us must individual fight and claw our way to salvation, any damage that we might forgiven because we did so in the name of profit and the almighty.
I would also challenge anyone to find a person that does not have faith in science. Be it a person who uses a light switch, or shovel, or walks down a sidewalk, or builds a barn. Any human who has observed the world to create a tool or a process, any human who has come to the realization that we get along better when we treat others as we would have them treat us, or we may do as we wish as long we do no harm to other, used the scientific method and has faith in the process. What people do not have is enough faith to let go of their own hubris and ego. and realize that they cannot control the almighty with trivia or arbitrary rules, or, even, enslavement of the flock with fraudulent rituals and process.
What I see is that parents are not really willing to impose consequences. The example given, where the child is told to play in a different manner, is not really relevant to school, where the choice is between work and play. A more common problem I see is where the child is given a phone for 'safety', but then when the child abuses the phone it is not taken away. I am not in a position to critizize, but it seems to me that if, for example, a child is failing, and the online record shows that several texts are sent during class, this might indicate that the child is failing because they are playing rather than because the teacher is not doing their job. Yet parents are afraid to let kids go to school without a phone, preferring that the kids remain uneducated.
The D's tried to build a responsible budget. A budget requires two things: Income and expenditure. From 1990-200 these two things were relatively balanced. Bush, Sr rejected the devastating parts of Reagan's tax cuts allowing Clinton and the republican congress to develop an economic plan that lead to a period of prosperity and growth. However, Bush/Cheney implemented even more devastating tax cuts with massive increase in the budget. NCLB cost untold additional billions in local taxes, and expanded the department education to the bloated level it is now, with a budget, at time, double what it was under Clinton. The unfunded war effort, which could have been paid for with increase gas taxes or reduction in other military spending, remains 100% deficit funded. Department of homeland security, which again expanded government, just like department of education, eats an additional 50 Billion a year, or half a trillion since it's inception as a jobs program for the otherwise unemployable. And let's talk about social programs. Medicare part D, which allows pharmcos to charge excessive prices for drugs because who cares when the government pays, costs 40 billion a year, or half a trillion over 10 years. As we say, a half trillion here, a half triliion there, and pretty soon we are talking about big money.
So what is the solution to the runaway budget and big government. A simpler tax system in which the rich pay a little more, the middle class pays a little less, and even the poor pay a little more. A country can't run when half of it's wealth is concentrated in a small minority of the people, especially when the minority refuses to capitalize. Microcredit is not efficient, we need real banks. Cut the size of government. Bring DOE back levels when it advised local education, not mandated what states were allowed to do, in clear violation of the constitution. Get rid of Homeland Security. The US is not a socialist country, and should not have socialist institutions. Cut military spending. If the military admits to wasting $178 billion, cut 300 billion. These things in itself will reduce the size of government and save at least $500 billion, 5X the amount that the coward tea party says they want. Cowards because they will cut Obama programs, not Bush programs.
As an additional measure, one that with small tax increases and a some other cuts can save us a trillion dollars a year in federal budget, cut the funding to states. Limit additional funding to 5% of revenue from the state. There is no reason why states like ID, MT, ND, SD and Alaska should be allowed to rob the federal purse while honest states like NY, TX, and CA suffer. If a state can't live within it's means, then let the local population solve that problem. It should not be up to the federal government to support incompetent local government.
Of course since this has nothing to do with responsible government, and everything to do with panicking white people realizing they are losing their gravy train, none of these things are going to happen. All we will hear about is how great Bonercare is going to be, and how awful affordable health care is, and at the end of the day we will have 30 billion cut from the budget not by any real change, but by accounting tricks.
It is one these cases where firms are always tried to minimize cost, and workers pretty much are willing to work for whatever they can get. IT has been suffering form some time of an influx of people who are just trying to make a little money. Such people are often not looking to maintain the value of the profession, but simply trying to make a quick buck.
So, yes, there is cost saving to the firm, and this is a good argument to keep the salary the same, a second issue is involved. If one does not to be physically present to do a job, then why the firm need to employ local staff? In other, at the point of 100% telecommuting, your salary is no longer based on local norms, but on the lowest rates available to firm in whatever large geographical region they find acceptable. This might mean instead of San Francisco rates, one might be competing with people in Arizona where unemployment is 20%. The firm might contract two people to do one job, but still pay less.
So the answer is that I would not want to telecommute 100% of the time. I might want flexible office hours supplemented by out-of office hours, and in a new job that perhaps would justify a less than steller salary, but not a reduction at a current job. Ideally such a job would have a set of required tasks, and the completion of the tasks, not hours, would be driving force.
For many students, the cost and availability of the software is an issue. MS makes the software available very cheap to education to combat piracy. After the cost of the machine, Apple products are all but free. For certain programs, there are equivalent free alternatives. Typically such alternatives do not exist for Adobe products.
Therefore I would argue that Adobe is the last major software house that depends on piracy to promote products. Companies do not really have the time and money to train users. Consumers do not always have time to pay for training. Schools are not going to invest in the software. So we are back to the piracy method to create a market for the legal software.
First, there is no reason why one cannot program an iPad. It costs $100. Freetards will complain, but there it is. I don't see how Apple can stop us from setting up Git with a whole slew of apps that we can personally share and compile and load on our personal machines. That this isn't happening is more an indication that people are more pissed off that they cannot download free cool apps than they are about not being able to code those cool apps. I happen to know kids that are programming because the iPhone has peaked their interest. They jailbreak the phone and program. Because they are doing something vaguely illegal, it makes it more exiting.
The Osbourne 1 was a cool machines, but mostly I saw it used for writing and the like. It was an affordable machine that seemed more 'bushiness like' than the Apple ][, which, frankly, did more than the Osbourne. Applesoft Basic allowed us to do way more cool stuff than the Osborne machine, and in many ways was more portable.
In terms of transportable machines, the company went bankrupt because it did so little. Besides the Mac being a much more portable and powerful machine 4 years after the Osburne 1 was introduced, there were also other competitors on it's tail. The Tandy 200 certainly had all the critical features, costs less, and was way more portable. I got huge amounts on work done on that machine.
In terms of inexpensive on the go programming, the casio/sharp/tandy pocket computers were the way to go. They had a rudimentary basic language. I recall writing an program to solve matrixes, compute simple physics equations and the like. Of course now if a program is not a game the it isn't programming, but back then we were happy if a we could program a computer to do our homework.
Obviously life can't be reduced to a single number. There was an example given of an english department where the average salary for a particular year was $100,000. It turned out that one of the graduates was a draft for the NFL. Fortunately, life is more complex than an average.
For instance, if we allow, even encourage, abortions of unhealthy fetuses we save the entire medical cost of the care of the mother and the potential ensuing cost of care of the child if the fetus is brought to term. But that is not the way we generally approach health care. This argument would also be an excellent argument against the mandate of seat belts.
On a fiscal note,getting back to false averages, this study says nothing about who pays for health care. If we had a social contract in which we all put money in the pot and then rationed health care based on need, this would not be a question. But, to a significant extent, people don't want to pay for other peoples health care. They want others to pay for theirs. So what does this study mean in terms fo this. To know what these number mean we have to look when many of these people tend to die. If a smoker or obese person is more likely to to die early, say 40's, then they will not be alive during what is typically the high earning time of their lives. While if a healthy person is more likely to continue to earn through this period, then they are more likely to pay for their health care. The is no subsidization of health costs if a person is not paying taxes or health insurance. Even if per year costs are less, and these numbers indicate that a healthy person costs $1000 more a year than a obese person or smoker, without looking at average inputs the numbers are meaningless.
The public face of a library, the face that gives it value to the average taxpayer, is the lending of videos, music, and books. OTOH, the mision of a library is education and highly trained librarians is what makes that happen. The librarian acquires resources, answers questions, and points patrons to where they can get information. For instance, I know many a sucessful business person who main resource is the local library. They got an effective BBA for nothing other than time spent reading in the library.
So getting rid of books will cause a PR problem, but as long as the resources are available the actual mission wil not be jeopardized. Of course a wholesale overnight removal of books will not indicated, but we must realize that the acquisition, storage, circulation, and destruction of books is hugely expensive. There are many advantages to a digital distribution scheme. Books can be automactically checked back in, and checked out, to patrons. No more waiting for a book to be returned, no more having to deal with library fines. A replacement charge for a book can easily be $50. No such charge for e-books. They are deleted automatically when the lending period ends, no physical return. Many people have e-readers, probably way over 1 in 10 americans have one. If libraries move in, a cheap e-paper reader can be sold by the library for $50.
At first I would think the very expensive technical books and subject specific books would be digital only, as well as journals. Kids books, popular magazines, and the like would stay in the stacks. Even this would save huge amounts of money in acquisition and circulation. This is something that has to happen, and most will embrace it in the end.
Not really. Teens and young adults tend to spend the most money on music. They are building their collection. These, as whole, are not people who tend to have huge sums of money. An album might be a significant part of an allowance or minimum wage paycheck. Most people in this group are going to have a significant decision in terms of opportunity costs. For many years the argument fell to the the purchase of a recording. There was perceived value in it. There was cool cover art to look at while the record played. You could invite people over to listen. You could trade tapes for other albums. The motion of the rotating vinyl was fun to watch. I would even say that playing a record until it wore out was something we did. There would be a greatest hit album that where we could buy all the songs again. Gladness.
CDs was a different animal, as the price was out of the ballpark for many. I can say from experience it was necessary to go into debt to buy that stuff. But prices came down, and it did become affordable. But there was no physical connection with the product. The cover art was small and uninteresting. There were more liner notes, but who is going to read? Unlike a tape or vinyl, and the physicality was hidden in a mysterious machine. I believe that the marketing, and cost, of CDs began to lose a generation of music listeners as the music industry became entrenched in maximizing revenues rather than creating desirable product. In fact, I think there was only perhaps 2 or three generations, at least in america, that really found value in recorded music at the level needed to support the huge and wasteful music industry infrastructure.
So we are seeing that music is not really affordable, at least to the target 13-25 demographic that is going to buy music. For one thing, the music player is not as cheap as it used to be. There was a time when a $20 tape deck was all one needed. Now it is a $200 MP3 player. That is a lot of albums. It may be unfair, but that $200 going to apple is $200 not going to music labels. The labels try to use this by saying how much it would cost to fill an iPod with music, and promote the value of CD player and CDs, but they lost that fight. Most kids equal music with an iPod, and now that they can fill it for free, just like we used to get the majority of our music from copied tapes. so really, the question is how much money is available for music purchases if we are buying a new iPod every year, and what is the value in that must when we have Yahoo and the like giving us the hits on demand. I think the market place is saying that the music, in the current environment, is not affordable and the music labels have to restructure their expense profile to meet current needs. Some labels are doing this. Lupe Fiasco's current recording is $5. Princes last recording was $10 cd only, only with two bonus CDs. Other are still hanging onto $20 cds.
Android is becoming closed because Google want to make sure it continues to serve the Google doctrine, that is the ability to run Google branded content and present said Google branded content continuously to users.
With carrier level innovation, the real and present danger is that carrier will include equal or superior applications, will not liscense equal or inferior application from Google, and the Google brand will suffer. We see this best with Honeycomb. This is a new platform which could provide a rich development environment for developers everywhere, but Google is so scared that someone might create a better base that does not run Google, they keep it closed.
Of course innovations do not come sequentially, but in cluster as technology matures. In this case we have an evolution and application of the WIMP interface as hardware get cheaper and the software techniques develop. So in 1982 this terminal application is developed. In 1983 Apple introduces the Lisa, a personal computer with multitasking, protected memeory and GUI interface. In 1984 came the Mac, which simplified the OS, just like MS Dos, to the needs of the emerging PC user. Then Amiga came in 1985 which introduced a more sophisticated OS to a hybrid CL/WIMP interface.
However, all of these made compromises due to cost of hardware needed to run the GUI. The challenge was the graphics co-processor that would let the traditional tasks run at an acceptable speed. This was no more obvious than the pre-3.11 MS WIndows, which neither had the native GUI nor the assumption of suitable hardware. It is interesting to note that PC that made fewer compromises, the NeXT and IRIX, were available in the 1986-1987 time frame,
Pretty much. And one of the stupid things Catholicism promotes is the idea of Satan. Honestly, one cannot be a satanist unless one is a christian, because Christianity makes it's hallmark the separates the continuity of good and evil into a polarity that is then split into autonomous creations.
Honestly, there is no reason for a scapegoat unless one is going to continuously blame others for your problems. Rational people understand that is necessary to take some control over their own lives. They can't just sit back and wait for a deity to provide for them. They can't just blame the satanist when things are not working out.
If there is anythings that makes christianity in general, and catholicism in particular, a joke to some many people is the externalization of blame. If satanism a problem, then clean up your own backyard. We can start with the focusing of the teaching of the christ in christianity and his directive to be better people, rather than to use any means necessary to force others to behave in ways that we agree. Of course christianity is not unique in it's use of force to promote religion, but it is, IMHO, uniquely positions to promote self discipline over blame.
Jailbroken iPhons, which is no hard to do can load anything. Apple cannot remove anything from your phone without your knowledge, so even banned apps stay on. This is not true with google. Previous versions of iPhone do run the latest iOS. Something not true of Android(yes my 3GS has the latest iOS). The OS is no held from certain users because they did not buy from the right OEM. Apple is not going to sue users because they bough phones from OEM without proper liscense. Apple may have silly rules, but at least the rules are initially sated. One rule is Apple decides what goes in the App store. Google has no such rule, except when it does.
As we are seeing, the openness has an upside and downside. The ability customize locally means ha i will run on various hardware, which means a phone can be made to meet a price point.OTOH,as google is discovering, this leads to products that the platform look low end.
The success will have to be looked at long term. Will OEM stick with Android if they are not allowed to equally compete. WIll they tolerate Google choosing one favorite a season. WIll they risk getting sued by Google for misbehaving. The history, with MS and the PC, indicates they will. And they will sell lots of phone. But it will not be profitable to the OEM, and they phones will continue to not be designed for the end user.
"We want to assure you that the only information that was obtained were names and email addresses."
They are not saying that the only information taken was names and emails. They want to say that such is the case. From what I can tell about notification laws, this is to comply with the law. They have notified customers that their personal data has been stolen. They have not said that the personal information was limited to names and email addresses. A reasonable person may interpret it that way, but if in a week they say purchasing details were also stolen, no one is going to be able to fault them in any meaningful way. Krogers has complied with the law. If people interpret this compliance to be beyond the scope of the compliance, then that is a personal problem.
I don't know where I read it, but it said it best. Americans are optimistic and they want the rich to get special privileges because many people think they will be rich one day. The corollary to this explains why so many conservatives support massive gambling. Many believe this is the path to wealth. For instance, George Bush as governor of Texas promoted the expansion of the lotter to vending machines, the same type of vending machine that had been outlawed for cigarettes because they allowed children to buy tabacco.
The Tea Party, many of the not so wealthy, has seen their perks cut as the nation has to split fewer resources among more people. The Tea Party, allegedly funding bu the very wealthy, tends to focus on the more people as the issue, and say that if one is not american one does not have basic civil rights to food, clothing education. The sad thing here is that many of the Tea Party people claim to be christians, but seem to see American citizenship as a higher calling than their christian faith. In any case, they blame all these other people, the blacks having massive number of babies, the immigrants, for all their problems. The fact that they are not competent enough to create enough economic value to earn sufficient money never enters the equation. Ironically, perhaps, they blame the government for not creating a society where they can succeed. Of course they would say that the problem is the government regulation, but may also believe in the federal government creating laws on marriage that infringe on state rights, so it is hard to say whether they believe regulation is a problem or not.
What I find funniest is that this guy seems to relate the amount of money he makes to the number of kids he has. Like in a free market society one deserves more money just because one has more kids. That is not what Reagan said when he denounced the welfare queens. It seem that welfare queens are bad, but legislative kings on the effective federal dole are to worshipped.
From my understanding, new content is downloaded to the users local machine and the Cloud player, creating two distinct copies that are played from two distinct locations for a single purchase. The streaming kind of looks like Apple iTunes home sharing, so Amazon may have a leg to stand on there.
Amazon is clearly engaging in a staring contest with the music labels, just as it did with publishers. Amazon, I think, is counting on the fact they are the only real alternative to iTunes, and if the labels do sue them in oblivion for sharing music in this way, then Amazon will simply be forced to stop selling digita music. Such an event will mean that music labels will be in much worse position when negotiating terms with Apple.
Music labels are quickly causing a situation where kids are used to either getting music streams on demand to their players, or downloading free copies of the latest hits. Unlike previous generation, kids are not getting acclimated to paying for albums of even singles. Apple and Amazon are doing a great service to the music labels by creating a profitable market for recorded music.
One hundred years ago., the recorded music industry all but destroyed the printed sheet music industry. If the music labels are not careful, on demand digital music may destroy the music labels within the next generation.
I think what we want is best efficiency we can get What that means is that we get the best value from power consumed. For example, we can get much better fuel economy from driving slower, 70 mph might consume quite a bit more fuel as 50 mph, but that does not always mean we want the double nickel limit. We might want to trade fuel for time. Likewise we might get 10 extra minutes of life by using IE, but what does it matter if we get the exact same or less work done?
Also, this reminds me of the days when MS would not release the full interrupts for MS DOS.It appeared to many of us that they kept the fast system calls hidden so they always had the fasest product. The way the report is worded, it seems the speed comes from MS Windows 7, which is designed to work well with IE, and perhaps does not play well with others.
Perhaps if one is worried about power and conservation, one should ge a MacBook, with adapters from 45 to 85 watts, much less than the average pc.
A company is always going to reflect the norms of the employees and the management. In a small firm, one person can do control much of what happens and promote a personal norm. In larger firms, managers that are there to maximize income, not promote founder's norms, will take over. The founder could solve this by disciplining such managers, but that would often involve a loss of income and company growth. In any case Google is a public company, so is beholden to the public owners, not individual risky whims which lead to innovations, but sometimes at the cost fo the company, which is acceptable for small firms, but we in the US have the misconception that large firms must exist into perpetuity.
Government certainly stifles innovation by allowing corporations that remove responsibility from the individual. The corporation, as a legal entity, allows people to act in various criminal manners without the otherwise accepted consequences. We could solve many problems, like unions, contaminated land, and unsafe water, if we honor the original formulation of the free market. However, your average conservative likes to make other people responsible for his or her failures, while creating a structure where profit is guaranteed, so there is little hope of this happening.
In the case of the old ATT, various structural and patent issues kept it as a monopoly. In the 70's MCI started to compete, and due to government intervention in forms of regulatory ruling and favorable court hearing for lawsuits, MCI was able to compete, and innovate
The big issue for the average consumer was price of communication and availability of equipment. ATT charged huge rates to rent telephones, and charged huge tariffs to make calls. Calling the next city could cost more than across the country. Of course once we got to put our equipment on the line that meant we could use modems, and no sane person pays a penny for local long distance on a land line when we have unlimited long distance on the cell phone.
We have some of these issues today, and T-Mobile acquisition is not going to change anything. Mostly in the US we can only use the products sold by the mobile carrier. That means I cannot hook up a third part broadband router and use my so-called unlimited mobile broadband as I wish. The cost of text message, which is analogous to the local long distance, does not seem to getting any cheaper. At the basis, cell phone companies seem to be surviving on the notion that pretty much all service is crap, so a customer lost today will probably come back when the contract runs out.
On thing that many people do not take into account is that mobile telephone competes with the physical line. One can have one, the other or both. If the mobile phone provides superior service, then more money is spent there, if not, then not. This is different from other utilities where there is often no other option.
So I sign in with my Amazon ID, then have to go through a CAPTCHA to accept the terms of license.
I hope this is a one time thing, and not a device to prevent people from automatically uploading content or others writing an app to interface with the player.
I have never seen such a thing required after already having a relationship with a firm.
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Medicate Part D was never funded. That is $64B and growing, or probably close to a trillion dollars of deficiet spending over the next 10 years. Repeal it or fund it. Could save $30B in the current budget process.
The department of education has grown widely since 2000. End NCLB and other unfunded mandates that infringe on the states right to educate it's population. DOE in an advisory roll is fine and history tells us it can be funded without deficit spending. So cut it's budget, maybe $10b in the current budget process.
Department of homeland security has also always been funded by deficiet spending. Cut it. Return the decision making to the civil servants that actually work. The last thing we need is another administrative layer. If the Tea Party wants small governement, this is the place to start. If we want screeners and the like, put it under the other agencies and shift administrators from other less important projects. Saving in the current budget cycle may $10B.
That is our $50 in deficit spending. We could do $100B but that would require a cut to the military, which they have already said they can do because they admit they waste massive amounts of money, and a tax increase to cover war operations around the world. Ultimately Obama is going to have to do what Bush I did with Reagan tax cuts, which is to end the Bush II tax cuts. Can't do it untile 2012 budget cycle, but much of the projected deficit comes from them.
There are several issues with project based learning. First the student must have skills outside of those tested on average high school exit or college entrance exams. These skills must be explicitly taught. They can't just be held up to chance. Skills like time management, dividing a large problem into smaller problems, integration into a presentation. Most expecially the skill to keep up with work over a number of weeks, and learning that each day is the continuation of the last, not a new day with no connection to the previous day. Kids can learn appropriate level of these skills. It does take class time, and if a kid is going to graduate on time, there is not always class time available. There has to be a commitment to the project skills, even at the sacrifice of the official curriculum.Therefore project based learning is ideal for students who are going to master the basic skills quickly, and at the high school level, is not going to freak if they do not get a 5 on the AP exam.
I do believe Wozniak has a good point because in many ways project based learning, when implemented properly, will teach kids a better balance of the skills needed in work and college than other methods. But it does require a student that wants to learn. Many a student will not spend the hours on the project, rather thinking they can get everything does right before the due date. Some of this can be handled by having benchmarks, but if the benchmarks are too close together the kid might as well be doing worksheet, and if they are too far apart the kid will get off track.
At the base, however, is that we know how to educate the kids who want to be in school. Projects can help the kids who are smart but don't want to be in school. Most of these kids, like Wozniak, however, are going to do well with or without extra and expensive methods in school. What I don't know how to do, and what no one seems to want to address, is how to educate the truely reluctant learners that may be below average abilities. These are the ones that need help, but people are so interested in the profit opportunities in educating those will learn in almost any environment, that we are seeing kids who really need help being ignored. Project based learning may be one way to reach this kids, but likely at a much higher funding rate than is currently norm.
Which may be where mulitcore might be good. If the OS uses a core, the 'phone' code uses a core, and then there are two cores for apps, this may facilitate running the chip at under clocked and possible more efficient rates. This is, of course, what has happened on laptop computers. My laptops run way below 3GHz, even though it looked like all computers would be running a 5 GHz back in the early 2000s. Instead life went multicore. Right now phones seems to be good with under 1GHz, so maybe more cores is way to increase perfomance while keepping power consumption down.
The hours that Kermit saved me. I was able to hook up my modem and connect to the university mainframe from many different location. I did not have to go the computer lab or be inconvenienced when it was closed on holidays or all the terminals were taken. It was one of those things that had an incalculable effect on productivity, positive that is, unlike trade wars.
So is having faith in our fellow person bad? Certainly the so-called religious people who routinely steal for the poor so they can live in luxury believe so. They hate humanism, because humanism threatens their life of hapless luxury. And faith in the creativity and honesty of our fellow people is faith in science. Scientist may work to push a personal philosophy, but they do thins within a framework that promotes faith in the process, and allows us to admit error. The Pope, for example, is boxed in with random trivia so cannot openly promote the use of condoms. This has nothing to with faith, but hubris and ego. Science, on the other hand, is faith in humanity and process, and allows us transcend the egotistical limitations that so often cripple other 'people of faith'.
So there is no reason not to have faith in science, faith that we are here to help each other make the world heaven on earth, rather that the cynical view that each of us must individual fight and claw our way to salvation, any damage that we might forgiven because we did so in the name of profit and the almighty.
I would also challenge anyone to find a person that does not have faith in science. Be it a person who uses a light switch, or shovel, or walks down a sidewalk, or builds a barn. Any human who has observed the world to create a tool or a process, any human who has come to the realization that we get along better when we treat others as we would have them treat us, or we may do as we wish as long we do no harm to other, used the scientific method and has faith in the process. What people do not have is enough faith to let go of their own hubris and ego. and realize that they cannot control the almighty with trivia or arbitrary rules, or, even, enslavement of the flock with fraudulent rituals and process.
What I see is that parents are not really willing to impose consequences. The example given, where the child is told to play in a different manner, is not really relevant to school, where the choice is between work and play. A more common problem I see is where the child is given a phone for 'safety', but then when the child abuses the phone it is not taken away. I am not in a position to critizize, but it seems to me that if, for example, a child is failing, and the online record shows that several texts are sent during class, this might indicate that the child is failing because they are playing rather than because the teacher is not doing their job. Yet parents are afraid to let kids go to school without a phone, preferring that the kids remain uneducated.
So what is the solution to the runaway budget and big government. A simpler tax system in which the rich pay a little more, the middle class pays a little less, and even the poor pay a little more. A country can't run when half of it's wealth is concentrated in a small minority of the people, especially when the minority refuses to capitalize. Microcredit is not efficient, we need real banks. Cut the size of government. Bring DOE back levels when it advised local education, not mandated what states were allowed to do, in clear violation of the constitution. Get rid of Homeland Security. The US is not a socialist country, and should not have socialist institutions. Cut military spending. If the military admits to wasting $178 billion, cut 300 billion. These things in itself will reduce the size of government and save at least $500 billion, 5X the amount that the coward tea party says they want. Cowards because they will cut Obama programs, not Bush programs.
As an additional measure, one that with small tax increases and a some other cuts can save us a trillion dollars a year in federal budget, cut the funding to states. Limit additional funding to 5% of revenue from the state. There is no reason why states like ID, MT, ND, SD and Alaska should be allowed to rob the federal purse while honest states like NY, TX, and CA suffer. If a state can't live within it's means, then let the local population solve that problem. It should not be up to the federal government to support incompetent local government.
Of course since this has nothing to do with responsible government, and everything to do with panicking white people realizing they are losing their gravy train, none of these things are going to happen. All we will hear about is how great Bonercare is going to be, and how awful affordable health care is, and at the end of the day we will have 30 billion cut from the budget not by any real change, but by accounting tricks.
So, yes, there is cost saving to the firm, and this is a good argument to keep the salary the same, a second issue is involved. If one does not to be physically present to do a job, then why the firm need to employ local staff? In other, at the point of 100% telecommuting, your salary is no longer based on local norms, but on the lowest rates available to firm in whatever large geographical region they find acceptable. This might mean instead of San Francisco rates, one might be competing with people in Arizona where unemployment is 20%. The firm might contract two people to do one job, but still pay less.
So the answer is that I would not want to telecommute 100% of the time. I might want flexible office hours supplemented by out-of office hours, and in a new job that perhaps would justify a less than steller salary, but not a reduction at a current job. Ideally such a job would have a set of required tasks, and the completion of the tasks, not hours, would be driving force.
Therefore I would argue that Adobe is the last major software house that depends on piracy to promote products. Companies do not really have the time and money to train users. Consumers do not always have time to pay for training. Schools are not going to invest in the software. So we are back to the piracy method to create a market for the legal software.
The Osbourne 1 was a cool machines, but mostly I saw it used for writing and the like. It was an affordable machine that seemed more 'bushiness like' than the Apple ][, which, frankly, did more than the Osbourne. Applesoft Basic allowed us to do way more cool stuff than the Osborne machine, and in many ways was more portable.
In terms of transportable machines, the company went bankrupt because it did so little. Besides the Mac being a much more portable and powerful machine 4 years after the Osburne 1 was introduced, there were also other competitors on it's tail. The Tandy 200 certainly had all the critical features, costs less, and was way more portable. I got huge amounts on work done on that machine.
In terms of inexpensive on the go programming, the casio/sharp/tandy pocket computers were the way to go. They had a rudimentary basic language. I recall writing an program to solve matrixes, compute simple physics equations and the like. Of course now if a program is not a game the it isn't programming, but back then we were happy if a we could program a computer to do our homework.
For instance, if we allow, even encourage, abortions of unhealthy fetuses we save the entire medical cost of the care of the mother and the potential ensuing cost of care of the child if the fetus is brought to term. But that is not the way we generally approach health care. This argument would also be an excellent argument against the mandate of seat belts.
On a fiscal note,getting back to false averages, this study says nothing about who pays for health care. If we had a social contract in which we all put money in the pot and then rationed health care based on need, this would not be a question. But, to a significant extent, people don't want to pay for other peoples health care. They want others to pay for theirs. So what does this study mean in terms fo this. To know what these number mean we have to look when many of these people tend to die. If a smoker or obese person is more likely to to die early, say 40's, then they will not be alive during what is typically the high earning time of their lives. While if a healthy person is more likely to continue to earn through this period, then they are more likely to pay for their health care. The is no subsidization of health costs if a person is not paying taxes or health insurance. Even if per year costs are less, and these numbers indicate that a healthy person costs $1000 more a year than a obese person or smoker, without looking at average inputs the numbers are meaningless.
So getting rid of books will cause a PR problem, but as long as the resources are available the actual mission wil not be jeopardized. Of course a wholesale overnight removal of books will not indicated, but we must realize that the acquisition, storage, circulation, and destruction of books is hugely expensive. There are many advantages to a digital distribution scheme. Books can be automactically checked back in, and checked out, to patrons. No more waiting for a book to be returned, no more having to deal with library fines. A replacement charge for a book can easily be $50. No such charge for e-books. They are deleted automatically when the lending period ends, no physical return. Many people have e-readers, probably way over 1 in 10 americans have one. If libraries move in, a cheap e-paper reader can be sold by the library for $50.
At first I would think the very expensive technical books and subject specific books would be digital only, as well as journals. Kids books, popular magazines, and the like would stay in the stacks. Even this would save huge amounts of money in acquisition and circulation. This is something that has to happen, and most will embrace it in the end.
CDs was a different animal, as the price was out of the ballpark for many. I can say from experience it was necessary to go into debt to buy that stuff. But prices came down, and it did become affordable. But there was no physical connection with the product. The cover art was small and uninteresting. There were more liner notes, but who is going to read? Unlike a tape or vinyl, and the physicality was hidden in a mysterious machine. I believe that the marketing, and cost, of CDs began to lose a generation of music listeners as the music industry became entrenched in maximizing revenues rather than creating desirable product. In fact, I think there was only perhaps 2 or three generations, at least in america, that really found value in recorded music at the level needed to support the huge and wasteful music industry infrastructure.
So we are seeing that music is not really affordable, at least to the target 13-25 demographic that is going to buy music. For one thing, the music player is not as cheap as it used to be. There was a time when a $20 tape deck was all one needed. Now it is a $200 MP3 player. That is a lot of albums. It may be unfair, but that $200 going to apple is $200 not going to music labels. The labels try to use this by saying how much it would cost to fill an iPod with music, and promote the value of CD player and CDs, but they lost that fight. Most kids equal music with an iPod, and now that they can fill it for free, just like we used to get the majority of our music from copied tapes. so really, the question is how much money is available for music purchases if we are buying a new iPod every year, and what is the value in that must when we have Yahoo and the like giving us the hits on demand. I think the market place is saying that the music, in the current environment, is not affordable and the music labels have to restructure their expense profile to meet current needs. Some labels are doing this. Lupe Fiasco's current recording is $5. Princes last recording was $10 cd only, only with two bonus CDs. Other are still hanging onto $20 cds.
With carrier level innovation, the real and present danger is that carrier will include equal or superior applications, will not liscense equal or inferior application from Google, and the Google brand will suffer. We see this best with Honeycomb. This is a new platform which could provide a rich development environment for developers everywhere, but Google is so scared that someone might create a better base that does not run Google, they keep it closed.
However, all of these made compromises due to cost of hardware needed to run the GUI. The challenge was the graphics co-processor that would let the traditional tasks run at an acceptable speed. This was no more obvious than the pre-3.11 MS WIndows, which neither had the native GUI nor the assumption of suitable hardware. It is interesting to note that PC that made fewer compromises, the NeXT and IRIX, were available in the 1986-1987 time frame,
Honestly, there is no reason for a scapegoat unless one is going to continuously blame others for your problems. Rational people understand that is necessary to take some control over their own lives. They can't just sit back and wait for a deity to provide for them. They can't just blame the satanist when things are not working out.
If there is anythings that makes christianity in general, and catholicism in particular, a joke to some many people is the externalization of blame. If satanism a problem, then clean up your own backyard. We can start with the focusing of the teaching of the christ in christianity and his directive to be better people, rather than to use any means necessary to force others to behave in ways that we agree. Of course christianity is not unique in it's use of force to promote religion, but it is, IMHO, uniquely positions to promote self discipline over blame.
Jailbroken iPhons, which is no hard to do can load anything. Apple cannot remove anything from your phone without your knowledge, so even banned apps stay on. This is not true with google. Previous versions of iPhone do run the latest iOS. Something not true of Android(yes my 3GS has the latest iOS). The OS is no held from certain users because they did not buy from the right OEM. Apple is not going to sue users because they bough phones from OEM without proper liscense. Apple may have silly rules, but at least the rules are initially sated. One rule is Apple decides what goes in the App store. Google has no such rule, except when it does.
The success will have to be looked at long term. Will OEM stick with Android if they are not allowed to equally compete. WIll they tolerate Google choosing one favorite a season. WIll they risk getting sued by Google for misbehaving. The history, with MS and the PC, indicates they will. And they will sell lots of phone. But it will not be profitable to the OEM, and they phones will continue to not be designed for the end user.
They are not saying that the only information taken was names and emails. They want to say that such is the case. From what I can tell about notification laws, this is to comply with the law. They have notified customers that their personal data has been stolen. They have not said that the personal information was limited to names and email addresses. A reasonable person may interpret it that way, but if in a week they say purchasing details were also stolen, no one is going to be able to fault them in any meaningful way. Krogers has complied with the law. If people interpret this compliance to be beyond the scope of the compliance, then that is a personal problem.
The Tea Party, many of the not so wealthy, has seen their perks cut as the nation has to split fewer resources among more people. The Tea Party, allegedly funding bu the very wealthy, tends to focus on the more people as the issue, and say that if one is not american one does not have basic civil rights to food, clothing education. The sad thing here is that many of the Tea Party people claim to be christians, but seem to see American citizenship as a higher calling than their christian faith. In any case, they blame all these other people, the blacks having massive number of babies, the immigrants, for all their problems. The fact that they are not competent enough to create enough economic value to earn sufficient money never enters the equation. Ironically, perhaps, they blame the government for not creating a society where they can succeed. Of course they would say that the problem is the government regulation, but may also believe in the federal government creating laws on marriage that infringe on state rights, so it is hard to say whether they believe regulation is a problem or not.
What I find funniest is that this guy seems to relate the amount of money he makes to the number of kids he has. Like in a free market society one deserves more money just because one has more kids. That is not what Reagan said when he denounced the welfare queens. It seem that welfare queens are bad, but legislative kings on the effective federal dole are to worshipped.
Amazon is clearly engaging in a staring contest with the music labels, just as it did with publishers. Amazon, I think, is counting on the fact they are the only real alternative to iTunes, and if the labels do sue them in oblivion for sharing music in this way, then Amazon will simply be forced to stop selling digita music. Such an event will mean that music labels will be in much worse position when negotiating terms with Apple.
Music labels are quickly causing a situation where kids are used to either getting music streams on demand to their players, or downloading free copies of the latest hits. Unlike previous generation, kids are not getting acclimated to paying for albums of even singles. Apple and Amazon are doing a great service to the music labels by creating a profitable market for recorded music.
One hundred years ago., the recorded music industry all but destroyed the printed sheet music industry. If the music labels are not careful, on demand digital music may destroy the music labels within the next generation.
Also, this reminds me of the days when MS would not release the full interrupts for MS DOS.It appeared to many of us that they kept the fast system calls hidden so they always had the fasest product. The way the report is worded, it seems the speed comes from MS Windows 7, which is designed to work well with IE, and perhaps does not play well with others.
Perhaps if one is worried about power and conservation, one should ge a MacBook, with adapters from 45 to 85 watts, much less than the average pc.
A company is always going to reflect the norms of the employees and the management. In a small firm, one person can do control much of what happens and promote a personal norm. In larger firms, managers that are there to maximize income, not promote founder's norms, will take over. The founder could solve this by disciplining such managers, but that would often involve a loss of income and company growth. In any case Google is a public company, so is beholden to the public owners, not individual risky whims which lead to innovations, but sometimes at the cost fo the company, which is acceptable for small firms, but we in the US have the misconception that large firms must exist into perpetuity.
In the case of the old ATT, various structural and patent issues kept it as a monopoly. In the 70's MCI started to compete, and due to government intervention in forms of regulatory ruling and favorable court hearing for lawsuits, MCI was able to compete, and innovate
The big issue for the average consumer was price of communication and availability of equipment. ATT charged huge rates to rent telephones, and charged huge tariffs to make calls. Calling the next city could cost more than across the country. Of course once we got to put our equipment on the line that meant we could use modems, and no sane person pays a penny for local long distance on a land line when we have unlimited long distance on the cell phone.
We have some of these issues today, and T-Mobile acquisition is not going to change anything. Mostly in the US we can only use the products sold by the mobile carrier. That means I cannot hook up a third part broadband router and use my so-called unlimited mobile broadband as I wish. The cost of text message, which is analogous to the local long distance, does not seem to getting any cheaper. At the basis, cell phone companies seem to be surviving on the notion that pretty much all service is crap, so a customer lost today will probably come back when the contract runs out.
On thing that many people do not take into account is that mobile telephone competes with the physical line. One can have one, the other or both. If the mobile phone provides superior service, then more money is spent there, if not, then not. This is different from other utilities where there is often no other option.
I hope this is a one time thing, and not a device to prevent people from automatically uploading content or others writing an app to interface with the player.
I have never seen such a thing required after already having a relationship with a firm.