Honestly, my concern is instead of focusing on the culprit in this case, that is a military officer that offered aid and comfort to a foreign person, my government is wasting time and resources harassing US citizens for expressing their first amendment rights. And I am not talking about citizens with access to a bully pulpit that can be used to cause large amounts of harm when used irresponsibly. I am taking about average private citizens. We know who is responsible for the leaks, so let's take care of that problem.
As far as due process, the problem is the prefix 'PFC'. This means that he has given up certain rights by the nature of his employment by the US taxpayer. For instance, if a person is employed by the IRS, certain simple acts that would be acceptable elsewhere can get one fired or arrested. An IRS agent, like a PFC, enters the relationship voluntarily, with eyes wide open, in exchange for compensation. Official Military websites list average base compensation at 100K a year, not including extra perks like signing bonuses, longevity bonuses, etc.
PFC Manning committed his act not as a private citizen, not even only as a person who receives payment from the public purse, but as a member of the military and therefore is under the jurisdiction of the military courts. His actions were severe enough to warrant severe actions. Sure he only released documents to a relatively benign agent, but what would stop the next PFC from releasing documents to less benign agent. Nothing if he was only given a slap on the wrist. The fact is he either implicitly or explicitly made a decision to remain in the military when he committed the act, when in fact resigning would have been as simple as making a gay soft core video. Consequences have actions, and sometimes we have to take those consequences, even when our actions were done even with the best of intentions. It may not be what some of us like, but if we live under the rule of law, even the compassionate rule fo law, sometimes things happen we do not like.
I would also like to note for those that like to wave the constitution around that the constitution gives no special standing to military, in fact to prevent military dictatorship it make the military subservient to the civil authority, in effect minimizing the need for due process in the military. This is especially true at times of ware, which arguable reflects current events. For those who are interested, look at the 5th amendment.
I want to go back to the days when we got programs out of magazines, typed them into the memory, and stored them on tape. We could open up any hardware, solder in whatever components we wanted. If we needed a driver we just looked up the codes for the UART, for instance, and wrote the damn thing. No wasted time going online to look for others had done. After all, who in their right minds would trust someone else's drivers. And we even had desktop publishing as good as anything know. Just write the printer codes into the documents and you could do all sort of fun things on the printer, even pictures. We had the right to run whatever we wanted on the computer. No one was telling us that we could do.
I hate that for a trivial amount of simplicity we have given up all our freedoms. MS telling us we can't using unauthorized copies of the software. Apple telling us we can't use unauthorized copies of media. Apple telling us that we don't have to buy the phone, but if we do these are the clearly stated rules of us. I could probably hack my PC jr with a wireless connection, hack a phone stack, and carry it around for use as a smart phone. Then I could do whatever I wanted.
Another thing may be that some of the current issues with Shuttle is that it is not quite as Human spec as thought. In practice it does not quite have a two nines reliability.
However as a heavy lifter the reliability may be fine. One or two misses out of fifty is not so bad when one is just carrying cargo. The components have the advantage is that with work, for missions such as the James Webb Telescope, the reliability can be increased to almost 1 out of hundred.
It really depends on where you are. In Texas the liberal areas, often cities, tend to me more fiscally conservative while the outlying areas tend to more conservative and likely to spend other peoples money. At least in Texas, the money is often concentrated in the city. For instance, in this fragile economy, the conservatives want to continue to build a road around the Exburbs of house. Sure this will be good and will create jobs, but spending half a billion of discretionary funds when the state deficit has been officially stated at at least 30 billion dollars seems fiscally irresponsible. Such money wasted on a road to nowhere is a conservative plan and benefits only the conservative rural area.
And of course it is the conservatives in Texas who don't want an income tax. The problem is that Texas depends on sales tax, a tax which is not collected due to everyone ordering product from out of state. Of course the conservative legislature could create a new enforcement squad to collect these out of state taxes, thus destroying legitimatize businesses, or they could acknowledge a failed taxation model. Right now the sales tax is 6.25% If this tax was eliminated and replaced by a fixed income tax, say 3-5%, local business would no longer be at a huge disadvantage to Amazon and the like, and the average person, who spends all their income on goods, many taxed, would be no worse off. Of course, because conservative are more interested in dogma rather than conservative fiscal policy, this can never happen.
Because it is security theater, not security fact. We all want to believe our kids are 100% safe, so we try to create a perception of that security through extreme acts, such as arbitrarily removing rights. About 3/4 of kids who are abused will be abused by someone they know and trust. That is why it is important for teachers, and priests, to not be known abusers. That is not necessarily enough because sexual abuse in about a quarter of the cases are evidently perpetrated by a minor. Niether of these is solved by keeping a known sex offender, most likely an adult, away from children. Therefore we can't keep them in jail, as much as many would want to. The compromise help us feel secure while not violating the constitutional right to be free from unjustified punishment is through tech such as this.
Of course abuse is, in principle, no more or less horrific than stabbing or shooting. While the later is unlikely to walk the street again, I suspect the former will be out in 10 years, free to attempt to murder another child.
We get a new iPhone every summer. Who in their right mind who has waited all these years to get an iPhone, or has a current iPhone, is going to plunk down money for a phone that will be old tech in 4 months.
The possible bit of good news from this conference is that tethering might be included in a data plan, or a lower price than ATT. This might force ATT to lower the tethering price, offer an unlimited voice plan.
What we don't know is how Verizon network will handle the data. T-Mobile has cut usage, and Verizon is starting with firm data limits, something that older iPhone owners do not have to deal with. When Verizon starts rolling out 4G, and let iPhone users on it, this may be even more of an issue. If they are promoting the phone as a Wi Fi hotspot, then it is certain that many peopel will use it as such.
I don't know if the iPhone will gain market share, but it will provide a relatively objective comparison. The iPhone will be Verizon shops along with OHA phones, and the consumer will be able to choose based on value. When this happens we will see what promotions will be required to encourage the OHA sales, such as the Droid buy one get one free.
The best scifi, like the best literature, deals with relationships. The best scifi, look at Heinlein, Pohl, Robinson, Le Guinn, Norton, Asimov. All these focus on how emerging technologies will impact our relationship with each other and the world t large. For example, as technology allows us to communicate and trasport ourselves more quickly, what will this do for us. For drama the effects are often negative, but then it is not about the effects themselves. It is about have the courage to think about the impact of the technology. I am convinced that speculative fiction is not popular because most people do not like to thing about these immediate consequences, based in reality. Most like to posit a fanciful hypothesis with no basis in observation, write a book about it, and call it philosophy. Or simply gossip about the fictional neighbors are doing.
So our 12 billion in bailout money goes to invest a company that maybe makes a few million dollars of profit on at a least half a billion dollars in revenue. Combined with Groupon, can we say bubble? Can we say it is easy to flush money down the toilet when it is the taxpayers? Can we remember how signed TARP and the bank bailout, thereby giving all the taxpayer money to the banks and investment firms and raising the deficit to astronomical percentages of GDP. And we want to continue to give these crooks a free hand at destroying the middle class?
Small limits, like 200 MB are a scam. Large limits are somewhat defensible. If I had say 5 GB of data a month on a cell plan, that would not be do bad.
There is a difference between an ISP, in which the last mile data is over copper and fiber, and the cell plan, where the last mile data is over air. If data is carried over copper or fiber, then more cable may be laid to increase band width, or the ISP may buy access to this bandwidth. Since the ISP can generally charge more than these resources cost, there is little reason to limit bandwidth, as those that use little bandwidth will subsidize the cost of the that use a lot. Two people, one who check email and sufs the web, the other constantly downloading content, kind of cancels out. Both pay the same amount, the former pays the bill for the later, that is kind of the scam.
Over the air resources are more limited, which is why the public owns the airwaves, and in the US the FCC regulates their use. Cable can't be laid to increase the bandwidth, and more advance solutions are expensive. Each person who pays should have the same access rights to the air waves. If one person wants to download movies 24 hours a day, say hundreds of GB a month, that may mean that I do not a quick connection to check my email. While I do not mind subsidizing someone else's need for constant p0rn, I do mind when I cannot do what I need to do.
A long time ago when we did not have the land based bandwidth we do now a similar restriction was in place. Casual users of the then new internet were asks not heavy use of it during the day. I am not kidding. Resources were tight, many severs had other uses during the day, so most of us played at night. It was not a big deal. We just lived with it until the infrastructure got build out.
Not a cloud issue. A freebie issue. It is expected that free services will lack funds for redundancy and customer service. I have been storing data on "the cloud: for 10 years, and it has proven a very useful tool.
So how does his compare to wha t iPhoto does? Are the techs basically the same? Does Apple have a patent on what iPhoto does.
It seems to me that this tech has reached a commodity level, and unless MS is doing something very different, this is just seems like a gimmick to sue others out of business.
What I think would be useful is to allow users to choose their favorite celebrity and match user photos that are close. I know many people who will go out with anyone that looks like Antonio Banderas.
The scientific method derives from Galileo. He constructed apparatus and made observations that any trained academician and craftsperson of his day could have made, but they did not because it was not the custom. He built inclined planes, lenses, and recorded what he say. From this he made models that included predictions. Over time those predictions were verified by other such as Newton, and the models became more mathematically complex. The math used is rigorous.
Now science uses different math, and the results are expressed differently, even probabilistically. But in real science those probabilities are not what most think as probability. In a scanning tunneling microscope, for instance, works by the probability that a particle can jump an air gap. Though this is probabilistic, It is well understood so allows us to map atoms. There is minimal uncertainty in the outcome of the experiment.
The research talked about in the article may or may not be science. First, anything having to do with human systems is going to be based on statistics. We cannot isolate human systems in a lab. The statistics used is very hard. From discussions with people in the field, I believe it is every bit as hard as the math used for quantum mechanics. The difference is that much of the math is codified in computer applications and researchers do not necessarily understand everything the computer is doing. In effect, everyone is used the same model to build results, but may not know if the model is valid. It is like using a constant acceleration model for which a case where there is a jerk. The results will be not quite right. However, if everyone uses the faulty model, the results will be reproducible.
Second, the article talks about the drug dealers. The drug dealers are like the catholic church of Galileo's time. The purpose is not to do science, but to keep power and sell product. Science serves a process to develop product and minimize legal liability, not explore the nature of the universe. As such, calling what any pharmaceutical does as the 'scientific method' is at best misguided.
The scientific method works. The scientific method may not be comopletey applicable to fields of studies that try to find things that often, but not, always, work in a particular. The scientific method is also not resistant to group illusion. This was the basis of 'The Structure of Scientific Revolution'. The issue here, if there is one, is the lack of education about the scientific method that tends to make people give individual results more credence than is rational, or that is some sort of magic.
MS had no problems providing restrictions on the use of Outlook to Downloading pictures, files, executables. They could easily do the same for IE. The reason they do not in IE,IMHO, is that such a thing would cut into the ad revenue of he real customers. It is the same reason flash does not have a setting to disable autoplay. It is like MS taking forever to provide popup blocking.
While so many cons are focused on the second amendment, they are letting the fourth go away. Cars are personal effects and therefore when we are in them we should not be subject to any searches without probable cause. I do not understand why people who seem to be able read and interpret the second amendment cannot do the same with the fourth. Is is because they do not actually read anything, but only know what they are told by third parties? I would hate to think that is true.
Things like DUI checkpoints are sheer laziness and serve no purpose but to terrorize the populous. Drunk driving, like so many other things, need to be punished based on harm done, not on the presumption that harm might be done. If someone is driving recklessly,pull them over and, if they are in no condition to drive, take them away. I think we would have much happier roads if drivers could be removed based on the real dangers of reckless driving rather than the presumed dangers of being under the influence.
The SCOTUS has ruled that cars that are not accesible to suspects need warrants. Many conservatives still believe in the bill of rights. Unfortunately some fake conservatives, like the one's now ruling Texas, seem to want to ignore those that prevent them from building a bloated and unnecessarily intrusive central government.
Agreed. The US now has a completely volunteer military force. Everyone in the military is well compensated for they do. High school graduates get more than minimum wage plus health benefits that would be unheard of in a civilian job. It is the duty of anyone, just like on any other job, to understand the requirements and consequences. There is really no excuse in today's military for anyone to not follow orders. If they do they are just stealing tax payer money.
That said it is incumbent on every human to "not just follow orders". If something is immoral in one's opinion, then something has to be done. What is done is up to each person, and the consequences one is willing to endure. At the time when this happened, he could have just had a homosexual relationship if he no longer wanted to follow orders. I have no understanding of what this guy did given the consequences that are necessary for his action. Because the situation involves national secrets, I can't see how the US can let him go. He, after all, is not the POTUS or one of the agents who can get away with treason. This is just not one of the things one does in a time of war.
a powerful chip for mobile devices that can support both typical functions (like e-mail and Web browsing) as well as advanced graphics — all while preserving battery life.
This seems like ad copy meant to promote a technology that may or may not be successful. The mobile devices that have use the chip, the Kin and Zune, are not widely successful. The tablet that has used this chip, the Folio 100, has evidently been pulled from shelves and has required a firmware update to be minimally function. This is surprising as the chip uses the SOC model that all other tablets use. And there does not seem any cost saving for use the chip and Android, as the prices seems the same as an iPad.
I am looking forward to the tablets, as a $300 tablet will revolutionize the way we interact, but I do not see such devices yet, and this chip does not seem to move the market forward in any meaningful way, other than in the area of meaningless jargon.
In fact all sides are complaining about some fantasy. The right lives in an 18 century fantasy world created by Adam Smith. Workers create product, consumers buy product, all in a free controlled by no one, not even managers. In this 18th century models, firms do not exist governments do not exist, labor unions do no exist, because the works and consumers magically communicate. It is a magically delicious idea. Combine this with the extremely narcissistic idea that 'pursuit of profit' is equivalent to 'fundamental entitlement to profit'. In fact the free market does not exist and has never existed anywhere
Arguable the left lives in the 19th century ideals of Marxism, which is a reaction to the cruelties of the free market. In this fantasy there exists fair minded men who can control the markets to insure that everyone can get what they need to live. The government can innovate to provide increasing levels of confort, or least maintain a standard of living for an increasing population. Of course no such fair men, or women, exist. Those in control will always keep a bit for themselves at the expense of the governed.
If we are honest, the fantasy of the controlled market is the basis for all firms, a concept not fully contemplated by Smith. Marxism lives in every multinational corporation. The myth of the free market is used by these Marxist firms to expand Marxism into the general market place through the destruction of the free market, which, according to smith, neither requires firms nor governmenets.
So yes, network neutrality is not what many people think. It does allow the marxist corporations to extend those ideas into the free market. But not having network neutrality is even worse as it allows inefficient firms to prosper by providing avenues to profit outside of the open marketplace. If comcast, to take an example of a firm that cannot survive in an open market and does not respond to consumer needs, is allowed to block video packets, they will be allowed to make a profit that is not based on the free market, but based on the controlled economy of cable television. They will be allowed to exist even though they provide an inefficient product. The one useful ideal of the free market, that firms be allowed to fail, is the one ideal that the right does not seem to want to validate. It is ok to let a child starve, but god help us if a firm does not report it's entitled quarterly profit.
Almost all energy sources are subsidized in the US. Petroleum and gas cost a fraction of what it does in other countries because of subsidies. Some say it is arbitrary taxes, but it isn't. Look at the damage the BP oil spill caused. Those cost will not be completely be paid by BP. Individuals and the government will cover much of the costs.
The same is true for mountaintop mining. The issue right now is how much are the operations going to have to pay for cleanup. The operators think they can pollute until there is visible damage to health, other think they should pay to restore the environment to pristine condition. I don't know which is best, but if they are allowed to conduct business in such a way that later on tax payers are going to have to fix things, as is the case with the superfund sites, that is a subsidy. They are asking others to shoulder some of the cost of production. You local restaurant has to cover huge sewer taxes, but mountain top mining does not?
In the case of ethanol, ethanol itself is really not hugely subsidized. It is the corn. The US runs on a corn economy, so economies of scale make it lucrative to maximize the uses for corn. Unfortunately corn is about the worst thing to make ethanol out of. All it does is replace a largely foreign non-renewable resource with a local more renewable resource, which is good. The bad part is does not really save energy, it encourages us to base our energy needs on fossil fuel, and it burns food as fuel. These are bad thing long therm, though quite acceptable in the short term. If e used ethanol as a short term measure, and built cars that could run on a higher percentage of ethanol, then that would fine. But we don't. And not because of the ethanol subsidy. Because of the petro and corn subsidy.
Since the subsidies are not going to go away, the answer to subsidize other energy resources. Tax breaks for putting solar cells on houses and building. Give away land needed for wind farms. Many windy places are desolate expanses of otherwise useless land. Make use of it. Let business take any electric car off thier taxes the same way they would a Hummer. Make conservation a issue. The farmers and solar and wind people need subsidies because the petrochem people sucking tax payers out of at least a trillion of dollars a years and then taunting the country with the cheapness of the product, which isn't cheap, just subsidized by taxes.
One reason that it is a way to provide scholarships to people who want to go to college but don't have personal funds or an academic record that will win scholarships. This system does work and I know many professionals with advanced degrees who went to college using this method.
Of course, some people are not using sports in this way. College is being used as a method to train athletes for professional life. This in itself is not bad, if the student is paying his or her own way. But a scholarship should entail a common set of scholarly requirements, especially if the university receives public funds. One would not thing the a person who majored in art or philosophy would be kept under a university grant if they could not pass the basic writing class, or would have armies of free tutors at their disposal. I know at the high school level highly paid fully qualified teachers do nothing all day but keep track of athletes grade, pressuring other teachers, while ordinary students have to make it on their own.
So there is nothing wrong with athletics at colleges. There is nothing wrong with a playoff system. This guy with the patent is just trying to get a cut of the pie just like the NCAA, the cable and networks, and all the other middle men that profit off something that is supposed to be educational.
Computer Science, IMHO, is knowing how to use the computer to solve problems using the modern process we call science, and outshoots of the process.
To learn such a process, we must first learn the mechanics. So in Physics we spend a lot of time learning the mechanics of calculus, for example, and how to apply those skills in a way that defensible results are achieved. The results are not that important, but rather the practice of the process. This is also true in any engineering. Results are well known and can be discovered in any textbook. The work goes into learning the tools and how to use them, the process.
So what computer science is depends on where the students starts. It would be nice if we could demand that all students know how to type, do algebra, process, and have a generalized view of office applications. That way we could just sit them down and teach them a couple languages and let them write programs. This is not the case, which is why we have teachers.
Most students have to be taught things like typing. Most students have taught that office apps are abstract concepts, and MS Office, OpenOffice and Google Docs are essentially the same beast. Such teaching requires instructors that understand that these are the same beast
Most students at 13 or even 18 do not necessarily understand why a swap function has to be written in a certain way, even if they know how to write it. The abstract concept of variables might not exist in their mind. Taking about the IT might help them. Most students do not understand that the idea of algorithm, and many never will completely understand this. Simply teaching this abstract concept would be as much good as handing someone a saw and telling them to build a house. Without knowledge of structure, the wood cut to a proper leangth does little good.
My issue is that so many programs focus on the vagaries of language or the use of a complier. Yes, these are the type of lower learning objectives that can be trivially assessed, but these are not tells us a person can program.
OTOH, if a student came to college having written a few programs, even in something as useless as Java, able to compile, able to be confortable with the computer, able to type, then that student would have a pretty good chance of success. We can't knock basic skills.
In fact the last site se up, Amercianspeakout, or some such name, had many good ideas like this. Cut defense, cut church tax deduction, etc. But, as is likely to happen now, the sie was jus a publiciy sunt and non of the ideas, as far as I can tell, were used.
In fac we have a effectively controlled conservative congress tha squandered the best way to cut deficiet spending, perhaps by half, by letting temporary tax cuts expire and ending long term unemployment. So, because we want o save Walmar more than do create good jobs(NSF grants) we let the debt increase another 1.6 billion over 2 years. Good for us.
Remember when MS would always complain that their software would run better if only every updated. All viruses were the responsibility of the user who not install patches quickly enough. This was especially true for users that refused to upgrade IE. Of course we all wrote websites for specific versions of IE, so it was pretty impossible to upgrade until the web apps were rewrote web apps. Of course this does not hold a candle to the assertion that everyone was required upgrade fees to insure safety.
So Google is not quite as bad as MS, but complaining that a reviewer used an old version is a tried and true attempt at diverting attention for genuine deficits in the product.
Amazon is a corporation that wants to make money. It has to be mainstream. The wikileaks thing can probably be attributed to the paranoid fox news crowd which called their representatives. These people vote on fear, so stoking fear is how the representatives keep their seats.
Amazon is aimed at the mainstream. Most people are not going to stop buying stuff because they will not host wikileaks or sell certain books. First, there are other places for wikileaks to be hosted. Second, it is unclear whether Amazon has a responsibility to host books an indefinite period of time. If Amazon goes bust, will they have to refund all the money for every e-book they sold? I am not saying what Amazon did is right, just that we all pay our money and take our chances, no matter who the seller or what the content. If I buy a book and it rains on the way our of the store, and the book is ruined, then that is it.
If we don't like what amazon does, we can set up out own services. No one is stopping anyone from writing an e-reader for the computers, for iPad, for Android, etc, and then writing books and giving them away. Doctorow does this. Short of doing something other complaining, live with the compromises.
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As far as due process, the problem is the prefix 'PFC'. This means that he has given up certain rights by the nature of his employment by the US taxpayer. For instance, if a person is employed by the IRS, certain simple acts that would be acceptable elsewhere can get one fired or arrested. An IRS agent, like a PFC, enters the relationship voluntarily, with eyes wide open, in exchange for compensation. Official Military websites list average base compensation at 100K a year, not including extra perks like signing bonuses, longevity bonuses, etc.
PFC Manning committed his act not as a private citizen, not even only as a person who receives payment from the public purse, but as a member of the military and therefore is under the jurisdiction of the military courts. His actions were severe enough to warrant severe actions. Sure he only released documents to a relatively benign agent, but what would stop the next PFC from releasing documents to less benign agent. Nothing if he was only given a slap on the wrist. The fact is he either implicitly or explicitly made a decision to remain in the military when he committed the act, when in fact resigning would have been as simple as making a gay soft core video. Consequences have actions, and sometimes we have to take those consequences, even when our actions were done even with the best of intentions. It may not be what some of us like, but if we live under the rule of law, even the compassionate rule fo law, sometimes things happen we do not like.
I would also like to note for those that like to wave the constitution around that the constitution gives no special standing to military, in fact to prevent military dictatorship it make the military subservient to the civil authority, in effect minimizing the need for due process in the military. This is especially true at times of ware, which arguable reflects current events. For those who are interested, look at the 5th amendment.
I hate that for a trivial amount of simplicity we have given up all our freedoms. MS telling us we can't using unauthorized copies of the software. Apple telling us we can't use unauthorized copies of media. Apple telling us that we don't have to buy the phone, but if we do these are the clearly stated rules of us. I could probably hack my PC jr with a wireless connection, hack a phone stack, and carry it around for use as a smart phone. Then I could do whatever I wanted.
However as a heavy lifter the reliability may be fine. One or two misses out of fifty is not so bad when one is just carrying cargo. The components have the advantage is that with work, for missions such as the James Webb Telescope, the reliability can be increased to almost 1 out of hundred.
And of course it is the conservatives in Texas who don't want an income tax. The problem is that Texas depends on sales tax, a tax which is not collected due to everyone ordering product from out of state. Of course the conservative legislature could create a new enforcement squad to collect these out of state taxes, thus destroying legitimatize businesses, or they could acknowledge a failed taxation model. Right now the sales tax is 6.25% If this tax was eliminated and replaced by a fixed income tax, say 3-5%, local business would no longer be at a huge disadvantage to Amazon and the like, and the average person, who spends all their income on goods, many taxed, would be no worse off. Of course, because conservative are more interested in dogma rather than conservative fiscal policy, this can never happen.
Of course abuse is, in principle, no more or less horrific than stabbing or shooting. While the later is unlikely to walk the street again, I suspect the former will be out in 10 years, free to attempt to murder another child.
We get a new iPhone every summer. Who in their right mind who has waited all these years to get an iPhone, or has a current iPhone, is going to plunk down money for a phone that will be old tech in 4 months.
The possible bit of good news from this conference is that tethering might be included in a data plan, or a lower price than ATT. This might force ATT to lower the tethering price, offer an unlimited voice plan.
What we don't know is how Verizon network will handle the data. T-Mobile has cut usage, and Verizon is starting with firm data limits, something that older iPhone owners do not have to deal with. When Verizon starts rolling out 4G, and let iPhone users on it, this may be even more of an issue. If they are promoting the phone as a Wi Fi hotspot, then it is certain that many peopel will use it as such.
I don't know if the iPhone will gain market share, but it will provide a relatively objective comparison. The iPhone will be Verizon shops along with OHA phones, and the consumer will be able to choose based on value. When this happens we will see what promotions will be required to encourage the OHA sales, such as the Droid buy one get one free.
The best scifi, like the best literature, deals with relationships. The best scifi, look at Heinlein, Pohl, Robinson, Le Guinn, Norton, Asimov. All these focus on how emerging technologies will impact our relationship with each other and the world t large. For example, as technology allows us to communicate and trasport ourselves more quickly, what will this do for us. For drama the effects are often negative, but then it is not about the effects themselves. It is about have the courage to think about the impact of the technology. I am convinced that speculative fiction is not popular because most people do not like to thing about these immediate consequences, based in reality. Most like to posit a fanciful hypothesis with no basis in observation, write a book about it, and call it philosophy. Or simply gossip about the fictional neighbors are doing.
So our 12 billion in bailout money goes to invest a company that maybe makes a few million dollars of profit on at a least half a billion dollars in revenue. Combined with Groupon, can we say bubble? Can we say it is easy to flush money down the toilet when it is the taxpayers? Can we remember how signed TARP and the bank bailout, thereby giving all the taxpayer money to the banks and investment firms and raising the deficit to astronomical percentages of GDP. And we want to continue to give these crooks a free hand at destroying the middle class?
There is a difference between an ISP, in which the last mile data is over copper and fiber, and the cell plan, where the last mile data is over air. If data is carried over copper or fiber, then more cable may be laid to increase band width, or the ISP may buy access to this bandwidth. Since the ISP can generally charge more than these resources cost, there is little reason to limit bandwidth, as those that use little bandwidth will subsidize the cost of the that use a lot. Two people, one who check email and sufs the web, the other constantly downloading content, kind of cancels out. Both pay the same amount, the former pays the bill for the later, that is kind of the scam.
Over the air resources are more limited, which is why the public owns the airwaves, and in the US the FCC regulates their use. Cable can't be laid to increase the bandwidth, and more advance solutions are expensive. Each person who pays should have the same access rights to the air waves. If one person wants to download movies 24 hours a day, say hundreds of GB a month, that may mean that I do not a quick connection to check my email. While I do not mind subsidizing someone else's need for constant p0rn, I do mind when I cannot do what I need to do.
A long time ago when we did not have the land based bandwidth we do now a similar restriction was in place. Casual users of the then new internet were asks not heavy use of it during the day. I am not kidding. Resources were tight, many severs had other uses during the day, so most of us played at night. It was not a big deal. We just lived with it until the infrastructure got build out.
Not a cloud issue. A freebie issue. It is expected that free services will lack funds for redundancy and customer service. I have been storing data on "the cloud: for 10 years, and it has proven a very useful tool.
It seems to me that this tech has reached a commodity level, and unless MS is doing something very different, this is just seems like a gimmick to sue others out of business.
What I think would be useful is to allow users to choose their favorite celebrity and match user photos that are close. I know many people who will go out with anyone that looks like Antonio Banderas.
Now science uses different math, and the results are expressed differently, even probabilistically. But in real science those probabilities are not what most think as probability. In a scanning tunneling microscope, for instance, works by the probability that a particle can jump an air gap. Though this is probabilistic, It is well understood so allows us to map atoms. There is minimal uncertainty in the outcome of the experiment.
The research talked about in the article may or may not be science. First, anything having to do with human systems is going to be based on statistics. We cannot isolate human systems in a lab. The statistics used is very hard. From discussions with people in the field, I believe it is every bit as hard as the math used for quantum mechanics. The difference is that much of the math is codified in computer applications and researchers do not necessarily understand everything the computer is doing. In effect, everyone is used the same model to build results, but may not know if the model is valid. It is like using a constant acceleration model for which a case where there is a jerk. The results will be not quite right. However, if everyone uses the faulty model, the results will be reproducible.
Second, the article talks about the drug dealers. The drug dealers are like the catholic church of Galileo's time. The purpose is not to do science, but to keep power and sell product. Science serves a process to develop product and minimize legal liability, not explore the nature of the universe. As such, calling what any pharmaceutical does as the 'scientific method' is at best misguided.
The scientific method works. The scientific method may not be comopletey applicable to fields of studies that try to find things that often, but not, always, work in a particular. The scientific method is also not resistant to group illusion. This was the basis of 'The Structure of Scientific Revolution'. The issue here, if there is one, is the lack of education about the scientific method that tends to make people give individual results more credence than is rational, or that is some sort of magic.
MS had no problems providing restrictions on the use of Outlook to Downloading pictures, files, executables. They could easily do the same for IE. The reason they do not in IE,IMHO, is that such a thing would cut into the ad revenue of he real customers. It is the same reason flash does not have a setting to disable autoplay. It is like MS taking forever to provide popup blocking.
Things like DUI checkpoints are sheer laziness and serve no purpose but to terrorize the populous. Drunk driving, like so many other things, need to be punished based on harm done, not on the presumption that harm might be done. If someone is driving recklessly,pull them over and, if they are in no condition to drive, take them away. I think we would have much happier roads if drivers could be removed based on the real dangers of reckless driving rather than the presumed dangers of being under the influence.
The SCOTUS has ruled that cars that are not accesible to suspects need warrants. Many conservatives still believe in the bill of rights. Unfortunately some fake conservatives, like the one's now ruling Texas, seem to want to ignore those that prevent them from building a bloated and unnecessarily intrusive central government.
That said it is incumbent on every human to "not just follow orders". If something is immoral in one's opinion, then something has to be done. What is done is up to each person, and the consequences one is willing to endure. At the time when this happened, he could have just had a homosexual relationship if he no longer wanted to follow orders. I have no understanding of what this guy did given the consequences that are necessary for his action. Because the situation involves national secrets, I can't see how the US can let him go. He, after all, is not the POTUS or one of the agents who can get away with treason. This is just not one of the things one does in a time of war.
This seems like ad copy meant to promote a technology that may or may not be successful. The mobile devices that have use the chip, the Kin and Zune, are not widely successful. The tablet that has used this chip, the Folio 100, has evidently been pulled from shelves and has required a firmware update to be minimally function. This is surprising as the chip uses the SOC model that all other tablets use. And there does not seem any cost saving for use the chip and Android, as the prices seems the same as an iPad.
I am looking forward to the tablets, as a $300 tablet will revolutionize the way we interact, but I do not see such devices yet, and this chip does not seem to move the market forward in any meaningful way, other than in the area of meaningless jargon.
Arguable the left lives in the 19th century ideals of Marxism, which is a reaction to the cruelties of the free market. In this fantasy there exists fair minded men who can control the markets to insure that everyone can get what they need to live. The government can innovate to provide increasing levels of confort, or least maintain a standard of living for an increasing population. Of course no such fair men, or women, exist. Those in control will always keep a bit for themselves at the expense of the governed.
If we are honest, the fantasy of the controlled market is the basis for all firms, a concept not fully contemplated by Smith. Marxism lives in every multinational corporation. The myth of the free market is used by these Marxist firms to expand Marxism into the general market place through the destruction of the free market, which, according to smith, neither requires firms nor governmenets.
So yes, network neutrality is not what many people think. It does allow the marxist corporations to extend those ideas into the free market. But not having network neutrality is even worse as it allows inefficient firms to prosper by providing avenues to profit outside of the open marketplace. If comcast, to take an example of a firm that cannot survive in an open market and does not respond to consumer needs, is allowed to block video packets, they will be allowed to make a profit that is not based on the free market, but based on the controlled economy of cable television. They will be allowed to exist even though they provide an inefficient product. The one useful ideal of the free market, that firms be allowed to fail, is the one ideal that the right does not seem to want to validate. It is ok to let a child starve, but god help us if a firm does not report it's entitled quarterly profit.
The same is true for mountaintop mining. The issue right now is how much are the operations going to have to pay for cleanup. The operators think they can pollute until there is visible damage to health, other think they should pay to restore the environment to pristine condition. I don't know which is best, but if they are allowed to conduct business in such a way that later on tax payers are going to have to fix things, as is the case with the superfund sites, that is a subsidy. They are asking others to shoulder some of the cost of production. You local restaurant has to cover huge sewer taxes, but mountain top mining does not?
In the case of ethanol, ethanol itself is really not hugely subsidized. It is the corn. The US runs on a corn economy, so economies of scale make it lucrative to maximize the uses for corn. Unfortunately corn is about the worst thing to make ethanol out of. All it does is replace a largely foreign non-renewable resource with a local more renewable resource, which is good. The bad part is does not really save energy, it encourages us to base our energy needs on fossil fuel, and it burns food as fuel. These are bad thing long therm, though quite acceptable in the short term. If e used ethanol as a short term measure, and built cars that could run on a higher percentage of ethanol, then that would fine. But we don't. And not because of the ethanol subsidy. Because of the petro and corn subsidy.
Since the subsidies are not going to go away, the answer to subsidize other energy resources. Tax breaks for putting solar cells on houses and building. Give away land needed for wind farms. Many windy places are desolate expanses of otherwise useless land. Make use of it. Let business take any electric car off thier taxes the same way they would a Hummer. Make conservation a issue. The farmers and solar and wind people need subsidies because the petrochem people sucking tax payers out of at least a trillion of dollars a years and then taunting the country with the cheapness of the product, which isn't cheap, just subsidized by taxes.
Of course, some people are not using sports in this way. College is being used as a method to train athletes for professional life. This in itself is not bad, if the student is paying his or her own way. But a scholarship should entail a common set of scholarly requirements, especially if the university receives public funds. One would not thing the a person who majored in art or philosophy would be kept under a university grant if they could not pass the basic writing class, or would have armies of free tutors at their disposal. I know at the high school level highly paid fully qualified teachers do nothing all day but keep track of athletes grade, pressuring other teachers, while ordinary students have to make it on their own.
So there is nothing wrong with athletics at colleges. There is nothing wrong with a playoff system. This guy with the patent is just trying to get a cut of the pie just like the NCAA, the cable and networks, and all the other middle men that profit off something that is supposed to be educational.
To learn such a process, we must first learn the mechanics. So in Physics we spend a lot of time learning the mechanics of calculus, for example, and how to apply those skills in a way that defensible results are achieved. The results are not that important, but rather the practice of the process. This is also true in any engineering. Results are well known and can be discovered in any textbook. The work goes into learning the tools and how to use them, the process.
So what computer science is depends on where the students starts. It would be nice if we could demand that all students know how to type, do algebra, process, and have a generalized view of office applications. That way we could just sit them down and teach them a couple languages and let them write programs. This is not the case, which is why we have teachers.
Most students have to be taught things like typing. Most students have taught that office apps are abstract concepts, and MS Office, OpenOffice and Google Docs are essentially the same beast. Such teaching requires instructors that understand that these are the same beast
Most students at 13 or even 18 do not necessarily understand why a swap function has to be written in a certain way, even if they know how to write it. The abstract concept of variables might not exist in their mind. Taking about the IT might help them. Most students do not understand that the idea of algorithm, and many never will completely understand this. Simply teaching this abstract concept would be as much good as handing someone a saw and telling them to build a house. Without knowledge of structure, the wood cut to a proper leangth does little good.
My issue is that so many programs focus on the vagaries of language or the use of a complier. Yes, these are the type of lower learning objectives that can be trivially assessed, but these are not tells us a person can program.
OTOH, if a student came to college having written a few programs, even in something as useless as Java, able to compile, able to be confortable with the computer, able to type, then that student would have a pretty good chance of success. We can't knock basic skills.
In fac we have a effectively controlled conservative congress tha squandered the best way to cut deficiet spending, perhaps by half, by letting temporary tax cuts expire and ending long term unemployment. So, because we want o save Walmar more than do create good jobs(NSF grants) we let the debt increase another 1.6 billion over 2 years. Good for us.
Is it any wonder that no one uses open source? You do what you can, then people still complain.
So Google is not quite as bad as MS, but complaining that a reviewer used an old version is a tried and true attempt at diverting attention for genuine deficits in the product.
Amazon is aimed at the mainstream. Most people are not going to stop buying stuff because they will not host wikileaks or sell certain books. First, there are other places for wikileaks to be hosted. Second, it is unclear whether Amazon has a responsibility to host books an indefinite period of time. If Amazon goes bust, will they have to refund all the money for every e-book they sold? I am not saying what Amazon did is right, just that we all pay our money and take our chances, no matter who the seller or what the content. If I buy a book and it rains on the way our of the store, and the book is ruined, then that is it.
If we don't like what amazon does, we can set up out own services. No one is stopping anyone from writing an e-reader for the computers, for iPad, for Android, etc, and then writing books and giving them away. Doctorow does this. Short of doing something other complaining, live with the compromises.