It's interesting people take the view that in the bad old days, children weren't taught numeracy and literacy. Yet, a couple of generations back, people learned much better reading, writing, and speaking skills, as well as solid basic math skills. We are living in a post-literate age.
At last, an honest and courageous view from someone in the trenches of academia.
You could also mention the official speech codes that several major universities tried to implement, the growing anti-Semitism and laser beam focus on boycotting and divesting from Israel, the intolerance displayed by students toward anyone who doesn't fit their mold, the institutionalized leftism.
Universities have always been rather oppressive, actually, but today it seems some of them have really gone over the deep end.
And this is why the left in the US is completely being clobbered by the right. Too often insults, redefinitions and logical fallacies by the conservatives are met by "well, if I can figure out what they're really saying, we can maybe come to an agreement" by what amounts to the left. In other words, they're being nice in response to what is basically bullying.
Here's the problem: anyone who argues like the initial poster is not looking for a rational discourse, for an enlightening discussion, or even for a solution to a problem. They are merely looking to get enough people onto their side.
Definitely read up on the issue. But don't mistake the original post for an opening in a an honest discussion. It isn't.
No, it's not (why they're being clobbered), and no, they're not (being nice). There is a schism in the U.S. between a more traditionalist approach to governance (what is now labeled conservative) and a neo-statist approach (what is now labeled liberal).
The problem with the left is a lack of humility, and a sense that they know better than the rest of us what's good for us. The left's intellectual foundation is the universities where most social science profs and their students have for four decades or more been left-leaning if not Marxist. Obama represents that tradition; he comes from the ivory tower culture, he thinks of the rural whites as "clinging to their guns and religion", and he brooks no disagreement.
The conservatives take their inspiration from an earlier America when people were slightly more independent and the government was much smaller. Perhaps this is an unrealistic pipedream, but if you spend some time in the Southwest and the western states, except for the Pacific coastal region, you find a persistent culture of leave me alone and I'll leave you alone. Places like Arizona and Oklahoma and Texas (regions I'm most familiar with) are very much this way; they do have pockets of liberalism in the large cities and university towns, of course, but otherwise they are laissez faire free enterprise traditionalists.
The opening post is an expression of anger and frustration at elements of our society who want to reprogram children to be more "open" to their particular world views. Rightly or wrongly, this is what they want whether they admit it or not. Some of our greatest thinkers in decades past came off the farm, grew up going to a one room schoolhouse, spent more time out of doors than in a library, and so forth, yet this didn't seem to hold them back. They developed a uniquely American kind of independent thinking relatively free from the peer pressure of the eastern university environment.
I like Livestand. It's a richer interface than the one-dimensional approach of the classic browser news portal. I wonder if it was costing them too much money to maintain, or not enough ad revenue, or no revenue at all. That part was never clear to me; paging through the app, I don't see much in the way of ads.
I wonder what's happening to Yahoo these days; they seem not to have a clue since about 2003 or so. They were a great portal back in the '90s and I still have them bookmarked for news and weather, and my wife uses their email. They have so much potential; something isn't adding up.
Hello, yog. Yes, you implied that a filter should be put in place on lawsuits by complaining that "in America, you can sue anybody for anything".
Uh, the post above yours wasn't me. I implied nothing; I simply stated the obvious.
The problem is not that a "filter should be put in place" but rather that judges tend to take too many lawsuits seriously, and they waste the public's money by allowing them to run their course.
I don't know The Answer to over-litigation, but obviously frivolous or bogus lawsuits should be recognized as such, and dismissed. Is it the lack of intelligent judges, or the profit motive of lawyers that keeps these suits in play?
We may also need to move to a "loser pays" model which I believe is the norm in Britain, which would discourage frivolous suits albeit would also hurt legitimate cases. It's a cost-benefit balance that needs to be struck.
It just proves that in America, you can sue anybody for anything.
Nokia's defense would obviously be that market conditions changed, they could not possibly know the future, and all business decisions are inherently risky.
Also, given that Microsoft invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Nokia, their decision to go with Windows phone OS can hardly be regarded as the riskiest of choices. When one of the world's largest corporations invests in you, you are not going to go out of business the next day, or the next year.
That said, I believe Nokia would be better off turning their engineering expertise to producing some Android phones, to take advantage of the enormous app market. They are capable of making a great phone, but their operating systems have been marginalized by the success of Apple and Android. So why not go with one of the winners?
Plus I can say from personal experience that their support for developers has been shaky, what with all but dropping support for Java, then releasing the N7 and N9, then dropping them in favor of Windows Mobile. What are they going to surprise us with next month? It's safer to stick to an established and relatively stable market such as Android or IOS.
Perhaps when viewed in isolation, Drive is not that much better than DropBox, but when you add in other Google services such as music.google.com, Google wins. I have 60 gigs of music stored on music.google.com, at zero cost, and I think I can upload about 9,000 more files before I hit the free limit.
Google Picasa allows unlimited storage for images of up to 2048 x 2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes. I've only put a few things on Picasa as yet, but I suspect that almost all of my 254 gigs of images and video clips will qualify as free storage at Picasa.
And, of course, as you point out, Google Docs files don't count toward storage, so if you allow them to convert your Word/OO/Libre files over to Docs format, you're all set.
I suspect that for a lot of people, the free 5 gigs in combination with Google's Music and Picasa services will just about cover everything.
It's free, and it's Google. I would trust Google to be around for a while, to charge decent prices and provide useful tools to access the drive, and also I believe them when they say no human will see my stuff. Some other companies, such as Facebook, I don't trust nearly as much, because they seem to lack Google's commitment to be a trustworthy arbitrator of data.
They have a bunch of failed experiments--Buzz, Wave, Health, Google wifi, and probably 100 others that died in the vetting rooms at Google.
They also have some stunning successes that started out as private projects within the company--Gmail, notably.
That's not a sign of a dying company--it's a refreshing sign of a company that dares to experiment and isn't afraid to fail occasionally.
So this guy retreats back to a safe, old-school software corporation--Microsoft. 25 years ago, Microsoft must have been an exciting place to work. Today, it's stodgy, rigid, backward thinking, corporate-focused, a follower and not a leader in most areas. He'll feel right at home in his safe, easy corporate 9-5 job.
Google reminds me of the old AT&T Bell Labs organization, where you were expected to put 25-50% of your time into your own projects. It wasn't for everybody; some people need to be basically told what to do 8 hours a day, while other people could feel free to create amazing (or stupid) things, and management just knew that sooner or later something useful would result.
The real question is, how does a large corporation preserve its startup mentality. You really can't, but at least you can try to make the place fun for people who are chasing new ideas all the time. Me, I'd work for GOOG any time. It would be a blast being around so many smart people!
What about Iran's continuing threats to destroy Israel, not just the supposedly mistranslated rhetorical device "wipe from map" but also the very real and unmistakable threats to destroy the country? What about their continued stockpiling of advanced missiles in Lebanon, manned by Iranian technicians, with the sole purpose of bombing Israel from just over the border, in direct violation of the 2006 UN-mediated armistice? What about Iran's continued sponsorship of terroristic activities all over the world? The large number of American soldiers blown up by Iranian-supplied bombs and armor-piercing ordnance in Iraq?
You can cluck about peace all you want, and both a mercantile/high tech Israel and a war-weary U.S. would love it to be a peaceful world, but unfortunately the real world simply is not so, and Iran least of all. Most of the Iranian people doubtlessly want peace just as we do, but they are ruled by crazy mullahs who have an apocalyptic vision of a golden cloud over Jerusalem. They are planning to nuke Israel, and idiots in the West ignore this at their own peril. Not only would Israel undoubtedly retaliate and destroy most of Iran's cities, but the conflagration would probably spread. Tens (if not hundreds) of millions of people are going to die if we don't stop them, by sanctions or by espionage or by outright war.
My gut feeling is that while the Israelis are talking war, they are actually planning more devious steps to halt the Iran nuclear project. For one thing, they have hinted all along that they have resources deeply embedded in Iran who have been sabotaging the nuclear projects since the 1980s. This may be a kind of disinformation, but Israel has thousands of Iranian immigrants to draw on, who are fluent in Farsi and the culture.
Probably, Mossad is hoping to detonate a dirty nuke of some sort deep inside the enrichment facility that would render the place unusable, kill minimal bystanders, and set the Iranians back by several years. It would be hard to trace the cause, and Iran would be faced with either admitting it was building nukes, or else try to cover it up while trying to rebuild, a daunting prospect given the tightening noose of sanctions. This would be the most appealing outcome to the situation.
Here are a few interesting facts, easily confirmed from DOE and industry sources:
- Shale oil extraction is just now beginning; in about 10 years it will be a mature industry.
- The break-even price is $45/barrel. Some sources put it at $60.
- 1.5 trillion barrels is the standard estimate for the northwest U.S. basins which contain shale formations. Estimates of how much of this oil is actually extractable range from all of it to several hundred billion barrels, using current technologies. It's safe to assume the extraction technologies will continue to improve. But even if we assume only 20% yield, that's still equal to Saudi reserves (about 300 bbls). The U.S. consumes about 7 billion barrels a year, so this resource would supply all our petroleum about 40 years at current consumption rates.
- As an interesting side point, northern Israel has an estimated 300 billion barrels of shale. Given Israeli abilities and incentives, it would not be surprising to see them fully exploiting this resource over the next decade and possibly emerging as a major oil exporter, even as the Arab oil reserves dwindle.
- The oil derived from shale is high quality: higher in hydrogen by weight than oil derived from tar sands, rich and high temperature.
- The water used in extraction ranges from several gallons to 1 barrel per barrel of oil. There are indeed valid concerns about groundwater contamination, but so far no connection has been established.
- Another point that often gets lost is the amount of money the United States and its allies spend to protect unstable sources of oil, e.g. the 1991 Gulf War, the continuing support for regimes that sponsor terrorism and instability throughout the Muslim world, the need to police the sea lanes, etc. The U.S. alone has spent probably trillions of dollars in defense of this vital resource, not to mention the cost in human lives from various conflicts. When you factor this into the cost of a gallon of gasoline, we are actually paying a lot more than $3.70.
If I may speak for myself... I wasn't ranting, just observing analyzing. My error re Sec. Chu.
Now as for your perceptions of my sanity or lack thereof--perhaps you are the one who needs his(her?) head examined. Or at the very least, a refund on your education which obviously didn't include much emphasis on reading comprehension.
The idea of spurring development of clean alternatives such as solar-charged fuel cells and the like is very appealing, but these technologies are simply not up to speed yet and likely won't be for at least several years.
Meanwhile, U.S. firms are busily building infrastructure to extract oil and gas from shale deposits estimated to hold 1.5 trillion barrels, or about 5 times the current Saudi reserves of 300 bbls. There's an additional 60 bbls in the Gulf of Mexico and another 30 in Alaska. Fully exploiting these deposits would cause the U.S. to become an energy exporting giant in about ten years, even as the Middle East oil supplies begin to wane, leading to a dramatic shift in global geopolitical priorities.
Environmentalists like Treasury Sec. Chu obviously won't approve of this trend, but the hard reality is that fossil fuels are not going away soon, thanks to technological advances such as "fracking" (hydraulic fracturing using horizontally injected water).
I really don't think it's a good idea for the Treasurer of the U.S. to advocate high gasoline prices. For gasoline to rise above $5 may make sense from the point of view of encouraging conservation and alternative systems like hybrid electric and plug-in electric cars, but in the short term it would cause tremendous hardship to the people. As transportation costs rise, so does the cost of basic necessities such as food, clothing, and daily commutes. Airlines would suffer as well. The economy will probably sink back into recession, and you can just picture Mr. Obama calling the Secretary into his office: "What were you thinking, Steve? It's election year!"
Personally speaking, as a solar buff, I would love to see a massive conversion to cleaner and more efficient methods of transportation and heating/electricity. It would also be nice to encourage more use of bicycles (and even walking) as an alternative to the almighty automobile in the U.S. From that point of view, high gas prices are great.
But when it comes to jobs in an already shaky economy, it's going to be disastrous, and may in fact change the electoral outcome this November.
You make some good points but none of them invalidate my points.
> How the hell is this crap modded up? It doesn't just seem paranoid, it is paranoid.
Not really; it's common sense. Medical professionals in hospitals and clinics know about the risks of infection. It's a kind of dirty secret, because if the public suspected how "dirty" hospitals really are, no one in his right mind would even visit one.
> You need to get some help, dude. It's called germophobia. Do you seriously avoid going out to eat because you're that afraid of germs? Hepatitis C?! I'll bet you've got quite the social life!
I don't avoid eating out. I also don't obsess about my 7-year-old washing her hands before eating, etc. I think normal exposure to microbes is important to build up one's immune system and keep it strong.
> I'm not saying it doesn't happen and I have absolutely no numbers to back this up, but I have a feeling you're much more likely to get in a serious car accident on the way to the restaurant than you are to get hepatitis C!
Possibly true. But if you walk to the restaurant or take the bus, you are 99% more likely to pick up a nasty bug--not necessarily HepC, maybe just this year's cold virus making the rounds.
> I stopped using antibiotic soaps. I avoid them. I always check to make sure that triclosan isn't in any hand soaps I buy. I find these "hand sanitizers" popping up and the people who use them obsessively yet still seem to get sick for months on end every winter just completely absurd.
Yes, me too. I don't like "germicidal" soaps because they actually contribute to greater resistance in bacteria.
> My body is covered by billions of microbes right now, and there are probably trillions all in all swimming around inside me. I've never felt better and my complexion has never been better.
Biology 101.
> Your immune system needs to be exposed to germs. Then the next time everyone else is rushing to Walgreens in some OMG BIRD MAN BEAR PIG FLU hysteria for their good little citizen vaccine and still getting sick anyway and being miserable for weeks, then you'll be the one who for some reason only gets sick once a blue moon and maybe for 2 days tops!
Again - no disagreement. I never get flu vaccines, myself.
> Good grief. Undoing a mod to reply because your post is just sheer paranoid lunacy, and I am absolutely sick of seeing paranoid lunacy being passed off as reasonable. It's called diminishing returns and sometimes simply just not knowing why things work and turning to superstition and self-fulfilling prophecies.
Hm, seems that this poster is passionate about his case.
> I'd agree about hospitals, though, just because of the massive derp of all the hypochondriacs who run to the ER every time they've got the sniffles.
Hospitals are not just full of sick people; they're full of employees inadvertently carrying the cooties from one patient to the next. Google "doctors ties" for some scary statistics.
Wash your hands after handling meat, wash all the implements and counter tops that may come into contact with raw meat. Cook the meat well.
Be careful with restaurants; to minimize your chances of exposure, just say no to eating out unless you can't avoid it. Once in a while is OK but several times a week is a good way to pick something up, if not MRSA then hep-C or some other nasty microbe that the waiter carried to your plate from someone else's plate. If you don't see the waiters wash their hands after taking your plates away, then you can bet they didn't wash their hands after taking the previous customer's plates either. When the water boy comes over to refill your glass, hand it to him by the rim, so he's forced to pick it up by the bottom. Use a straw.
And stay out of hospitals. Those places can make you sick. MRSA is one nasty infection that you don't want to get, but there are others as well. Basically it's a rather closed environment full of sick people, and also full of well people carrying the germs from one sick person to another, and your life may depend on how well they washed and sanitized their hands before touching you.
This may seem kind of paranoid, but we live in an increasingly crowded and mobile world where a nasty little microbe in some little corner of the globe can make its way into your soup literally days or hours later.
As a kid, I loved pinball machines. It was like a coming-of-age thing to go to the game parlor full of these beeping, ringing, singing gadgets and blow 4, 5, 6 quarters on these wonderful games of skill and chance and, er, gravity.
Many kids today probably haven't had a chance to play a physical, mechanical pinball machine. It's a visceral, physical experience, different from the cute virtual pinball games available on most computers. Kind of like playing a real piano versus an electronic keyboard, only more so. There was the art of shaking the machine just enough not to get a tilt penalty. There was the knowledge of each machine's little quirks and peculiarities.
Thank you Mr. Kordek for your contributions (note that he did not "invent" pinball machines; he invented the paddles, as the article explains). You changed the world, hopefully for the better!
By the way, another interesting factoid in the article: in the late 40s, there were TWO DOZEN manufacturers of pinball machines just in the Chicago area alone. Them was the days for manufacturing in this country!
If you see other people shoplifting, then you should shoplift, too. Why? Because it's all a game to them, and that's all it should be to you.
If you see other people falsifying their CV to get their jobs, then you should falsify your CV, too. Why? Because it's all a game to them, and that's all it should be to you.
If you see other people cheating on their spouse, then you should cheat on your spouse, too. Why? Because it's all a game to them, and that's all it should be to you.
There's this little thing called morality--a sense of doing what's right and avoiding doing what's wrong--that is severely lacking in our modern society. There's something we used to call a sense of honor--a feeling that we shouldn't allow two kids to beat up one kid in the school yard, or a larger kid pick on a smaller kid.
Although we (in the U.S.A.) have never had a purely fair and just society, nonetheless there used to be more of a sense of honor and good behavior and fair play that formed a basis for the trust that is prerequisite to every relationship--business or personal. Men used to shake hands on a deal, and were expected to stick to their word, or else take the consequences.
Today, people want to get away with instant gratification with no consequences. Hence, enjoy living in your own house, then just abandon the contract when you're tired of it or can't afford it anymore, and blame the whole thing on the lenders who "misled" you or "have no loyalty" or whatever. Just as people who shoplift justify it because "they rip you off anyway" or whatever.
This is purely decadence and dishonesty, not some kind of greater moral behavior, so don't go pretending you're good and ethical while you steal from your neighbor.
And what goes around, comes around--the entire country is going bankrupt, thanks to this kind of attitude.
Some day, photovoltaic panels will be dirt cheap and will be perfect for these rural villages, but right now they're too expensive even for most Americans.
When I was a teenager, I build a solar stove out of cardboard, plywood, and aluminum foil, based on a design in a book I read. I probably could have made it totally out of cardboard; I wasn't much of an engineer/architect:)
Anyway, the thing worked amazingly well. I demonstrated frying a hamburger (not something you would want to show the Hindu villagers, by the way) and my family was blown away. However, it had three disadvantages. First, it was extremely bright. To stand more or less in front of it to turn the food was a blinding experience.
Second, you needed a black-bottomed pan, which we didn't have, so I painted an aluminum pie pan black on the bottom.
Third, like the article says, it only works in full sunlight. You don't really want to cook the meat and veggies at 3pm, you want to get them started around 5:30 or 6 in most households. It's likely that the villagers are working in the fields or small workshops all day and don't get around to supper until 7pm or later.
At least, it should be quite possible with a reflector cooker to make large pots of rice during the day, which they probably do anyway since it takes relatively long. Solar reflector cookers are perfect for that application because rice mostly wants to simmer at a lower temperature.
Rural Indian villagers probably would prefer to bake flatbreads (nan, puri, etc.), which can be made in a pan or perhaps a clay cooker. As krlynch points out, these foods were prepared long before modern appliances came about.
Making rice seems like a good application for a solar cooker, too. After bringing it to an initial boil, you want the rice to just simmer for a while, perfect for the relatively low temp solar gizmos. And they probably do want to cook rice during the day, late afternoon at best, since it takes so long. Meat and veggies, maybe not so much.
They said that the GWT team is working on dart, which doesn't seem like a contradiction or a condemnation of GWT (although it might take time away from improving GWT). But since GWT's been around since at least 2008, there's starting to be some aftermarket widgets and improvements floating around out there.
I'm using GWT now and I find it to be a vast improvement over perl/CGI/javascript which is how I prototyped a recent Ajax app. The perl version is fast and simple, to be sure, but I'm in a Java shop, so GWT is a better fit, and deploys nicely to Weblogic as well.
Macs aren't immune. Getting users to install malware is easy, but why bother. Windows is easier and more wisely deployed.
You mean, less wisely?
How does it compare to Chrome?
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Firefox 10 Released
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I still care about Firefox--it was the first real challenger to Internet Explorer since Netscape was dethroned, and it's such a nice browser... but Chrome just feels faster and more modern.
I guess considering that Google funds the Mozilla Foundation, the two browsers are not exactly competitors, and yet they are. Well, if Firefox slimmed down enough, I might switch back, since browsers are so functionally interchangeable these days, but for now I'm happy where I am. Sorry, Firefox team!
You pretty much summed it up. I fear that Facebook is a one-trick pony. "And now, for our next act... uh... hm... where's that card..." What more can they realistically do, other than poach internet services from competitors like Google?
Facebook messaging is encroaching on email turf, but I doubt it will ever replace an independent email service; no one trusts them, and it's unrealistic to force all your email recipients to join Facebook; this was AOL's downfall as well.
The comparisons with AOL are accurate and portend future trouble for Facebook. The broader, out-of-control Internet has a way of bypassing closed systems with ever more flexible and innovative alternatives.
Sooner or later, someone will think of something even easier and more convenient to use than FB, and FB will begin to lose its relevance. I have no idea what; it could be some sort of mobile-to-mobile chat and messaging paradigm that bypasses the website-based interfaces like FB's, or maybe a return to basics because of social network fatigue.
Personally, I've grown tired of FB after using it somewhat extensively for a year or two. It's been a great way to get back in touch with old classmates and the like, but the novelty's worn off and I now find it tiresome to sit down at a computer, bring up facebook.com, and read some oh-so-clever status messages from people who should be working or reading or (God forbid) exercising:)
Slashdot Mirror
It's interesting people take the view that in the bad old days, children weren't taught numeracy and literacy. Yet, a couple of generations back, people learned much better reading, writing, and speaking skills, as well as solid basic math skills. We are living in a post-literate age.
At last, an honest and courageous view from someone in the trenches of academia.
You could also mention the official speech codes that several major universities tried to implement, the growing anti-Semitism and laser beam focus on boycotting and divesting from Israel, the intolerance displayed by students toward anyone who doesn't fit their mold, the institutionalized leftism.
Universities have always been rather oppressive, actually, but today it seems some of them have really gone over the deep end.
And this is why the left in the US is completely being clobbered by the right. Too often insults, redefinitions and logical fallacies by the conservatives are met by "well, if I can figure out what they're really saying, we can maybe come to an agreement" by what amounts to the left. In other words, they're being nice in response to what is basically bullying.
Here's the problem: anyone who argues like the initial poster is not looking for a rational discourse, for an enlightening discussion, or even for a solution to a problem. They are merely looking to get enough people onto their side.
Definitely read up on the issue. But don't mistake the original post for an opening in a an honest discussion. It isn't.
No, it's not (why they're being clobbered), and no, they're not (being nice). There is a schism in the U.S. between a more traditionalist approach to governance (what is now labeled conservative) and a neo-statist approach (what is now labeled liberal).
The problem with the left is a lack of humility, and a sense that they know better than the rest of us what's good for us. The left's intellectual foundation is the universities where most social science profs and their students have for four decades or more been left-leaning if not Marxist. Obama represents that tradition; he comes from the ivory tower culture, he thinks of the rural whites as "clinging to their guns and religion", and he brooks no disagreement.
The conservatives take their inspiration from an earlier America when people were slightly more independent and the government was much smaller. Perhaps this is an unrealistic pipedream, but if you spend some time in the Southwest and the western states, except for the Pacific coastal region, you find a persistent culture of leave me alone and I'll leave you alone. Places like Arizona and Oklahoma and Texas (regions I'm most familiar with) are very much this way; they do have pockets of liberalism in the large cities and university towns, of course, but otherwise they are laissez faire free enterprise traditionalists.
The opening post is an expression of anger and frustration at elements of our society who want to reprogram children to be more "open" to their particular world views. Rightly or wrongly, this is what they want whether they admit it or not. Some of our greatest thinkers in decades past came off the farm, grew up going to a one room schoolhouse, spent more time out of doors than in a library, and so forth, yet this didn't seem to hold them back. They developed a uniquely American kind of independent thinking relatively free from the peer pressure of the eastern university environment.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
That explains your "Score:5, Informative". Good old Slashdot. I wonder why I even visit here anymore.
I like Livestand. It's a richer interface than the one-dimensional approach of the classic browser news portal. I wonder if it was costing them too much money to maintain, or not enough ad revenue, or no revenue at all. That part was never clear to me; paging through the app, I don't see much in the way of ads.
I wonder what's happening to Yahoo these days; they seem not to have a clue since about 2003 or so. They were a great portal back in the '90s and I still have them bookmarked for news and weather, and my wife uses their email. They have so much potential; something isn't adding up.
Hello, yog. Yes, you implied that a filter should be put in place on lawsuits by complaining that "in America, you can sue anybody for anything".
Uh, the post above yours wasn't me. I implied nothing; I simply stated the obvious.
The problem is not that a "filter should be put in place" but rather that judges tend to take too many lawsuits seriously, and they waste the public's money by allowing them to run their course.
I don't know The Answer to over-litigation, but obviously frivolous or bogus lawsuits should be recognized as such, and dismissed. Is it the lack of intelligent judges, or the profit motive of lawyers that keeps these suits in play?
We may also need to move to a "loser pays" model which I believe is the norm in Britain, which would discourage frivolous suits albeit would also hurt legitimate cases. It's a cost-benefit balance that needs to be struck.
It just proves that in America, you can sue anybody for anything.
Nokia's defense would obviously be that market conditions changed, they could not possibly know the future, and all business decisions are inherently risky.
Also, given that Microsoft invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Nokia, their decision to go with Windows phone OS can hardly be regarded as the riskiest of choices. When one of the world's largest corporations invests in you, you are not going to go out of business the next day, or the next year.
That said, I believe Nokia would be better off turning their engineering expertise to producing some Android phones, to take advantage of the enormous app market. They are capable of making a great phone, but their operating systems have been marginalized by the success of Apple and Android. So why not go with one of the winners?
Plus I can say from personal experience that their support for developers has been shaky, what with all but dropping support for Java, then releasing the N7 and N9, then dropping them in favor of Windows Mobile. What are they going to surprise us with next month? It's safer to stick to an established and relatively stable market such as Android or IOS.
Perhaps when viewed in isolation, Drive is not that much better than DropBox, but when you add in other Google services such as music.google.com, Google wins. I have 60 gigs of music stored on music.google.com, at zero cost, and I think I can upload about 9,000 more files before I hit the free limit.
Google Picasa allows unlimited storage for images of up to 2048 x 2048 pixels and videos up to 15 minutes. I've only put a few things on Picasa as yet, but I suspect that almost all of my 254 gigs of images and video clips will qualify as free storage at Picasa.
And, of course, as you point out, Google Docs files don't count toward storage, so if you allow them to convert your Word/OO/Libre files over to Docs format, you're all set.
I suspect that for a lot of people, the free 5 gigs in combination with Google's Music and Picasa services will just about cover everything.
It's free, and it's Google. I would trust Google to be around for a while, to charge decent prices and provide useful tools to access the drive, and also I believe them when they say no human will see my stuff. Some other companies, such as Facebook, I don't trust nearly as much, because they seem to lack Google's commitment to be a trustworthy arbitrator of data.
They have a bunch of failed experiments--Buzz, Wave, Health, Google wifi, and probably 100 others that died in the vetting rooms at Google.
They also have some stunning successes that started out as private projects within the company--Gmail, notably.
That's not a sign of a dying company--it's a refreshing sign of a company that dares to experiment and isn't afraid to fail occasionally.
So this guy retreats back to a safe, old-school software corporation--Microsoft. 25 years ago, Microsoft must have been an exciting place to work. Today, it's stodgy, rigid, backward thinking, corporate-focused, a follower and not a leader in most areas. He'll feel right at home in his safe, easy corporate 9-5 job.
Google reminds me of the old AT&T Bell Labs organization, where you were expected to put 25-50% of your time into your own projects. It wasn't for everybody; some people need to be basically told what to do 8 hours a day, while other people could feel free to create amazing (or stupid) things, and management just knew that sooner or later something useful would result.
The real question is, how does a large corporation preserve its startup mentality. You really can't, but at least you can try to make the place fun for people who are chasing new ideas all the time. Me, I'd work for GOOG any time. It would be a blast being around so many smart people!
What about Iran's continuing threats to destroy Israel, not just the supposedly mistranslated rhetorical device "wipe from map" but also the very real and unmistakable threats to destroy the country? What about their continued stockpiling of advanced missiles in Lebanon, manned by Iranian technicians, with the sole purpose of bombing Israel from just over the border, in direct violation of the 2006 UN-mediated armistice? What about Iran's continued sponsorship of terroristic activities all over the world? The large number of American soldiers blown up by Iranian-supplied bombs and armor-piercing ordnance in Iraq?
You can cluck about peace all you want, and both a mercantile/high tech Israel and a war-weary U.S. would love it to be a peaceful world, but unfortunately the real world simply is not so, and Iran least of all. Most of the Iranian people doubtlessly want peace just as we do, but they are ruled by crazy mullahs who have an apocalyptic vision of a golden cloud over Jerusalem. They are planning to nuke Israel, and idiots in the West ignore this at their own peril. Not only would Israel undoubtedly retaliate and destroy most of Iran's cities, but the conflagration would probably spread. Tens (if not hundreds) of millions of people are going to die if we don't stop them, by sanctions or by espionage or by outright war.
My gut feeling is that while the Israelis are talking war, they are actually planning more devious steps to halt the Iran nuclear project. For one thing, they have hinted all along that they have resources deeply embedded in Iran who have been sabotaging the nuclear projects since the 1980s. This may be a kind of disinformation, but Israel has thousands of Iranian immigrants to draw on, who are fluent in Farsi and the culture.
Probably, Mossad is hoping to detonate a dirty nuke of some sort deep inside the enrichment facility that would render the place unusable, kill minimal bystanders, and set the Iranians back by several years. It would be hard to trace the cause, and Iran would be faced with either admitting it was building nukes, or else try to cover it up while trying to rebuild, a daunting prospect given the tightening noose of sanctions. This would be the most appealing outcome to the situation.
You should do more research before accusing others of posting incorrect facts.
Here's an example of a well written, current analysis:
http://fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/publications/Pubs-NPR/40010-373.pdf
Here are a few interesting facts, easily confirmed from DOE and industry sources:
- Shale oil extraction is just now beginning; in about 10 years it will be a mature industry.
- The break-even price is $45/barrel. Some sources put it at $60.
- 1.5 trillion barrels is the standard estimate for the northwest U.S. basins which contain shale formations. Estimates of how much of this oil is actually extractable range from all of it to several hundred billion barrels, using current technologies. It's safe to assume the extraction technologies will continue to improve. But even if we assume only 20% yield, that's still equal to Saudi reserves (about 300 bbls). The U.S. consumes about 7 billion barrels a year, so this resource would supply all our petroleum about 40 years at current consumption rates.
- As an interesting side point, northern Israel has an estimated 300 billion barrels of shale. Given Israeli abilities and incentives, it would not be surprising to see them fully exploiting this resource over the next decade and possibly emerging as a major oil exporter, even as the Arab oil reserves dwindle.
- The oil derived from shale is high quality: higher in hydrogen by weight than oil derived from tar sands, rich and high temperature.
- The water used in extraction ranges from several gallons to 1 barrel per barrel of oil. There are indeed valid concerns about groundwater contamination, but so far no connection has been established.
- Another point that often gets lost is the amount of money the United States and its allies spend to protect unstable sources of oil, e.g. the 1991 Gulf War, the continuing support for regimes that sponsor terrorism and instability throughout the Muslim world, the need to police the sea lanes, etc. The U.S. alone has spent probably trillions of dollars in defense of this vital resource, not to mention the cost in human lives from various conflicts. When you factor this into the cost of a gallon of gasoline, we are actually paying a lot more than $3.70.
If I may speak for myself... I wasn't ranting, just observing analyzing. My error re Sec. Chu.
Now as for your perceptions of my sanity or lack thereof--perhaps you are the one who needs his(her?) head examined. Or at the very least, a refund on your education which obviously didn't include much emphasis on reading comprehension.
The idea of spurring development of clean alternatives such as solar-charged fuel cells and the like is very appealing, but these technologies are simply not up to speed yet and likely won't be for at least several years.
Meanwhile, U.S. firms are busily building infrastructure to extract oil and gas from shale deposits estimated to hold 1.5 trillion barrels, or about 5 times the current Saudi reserves of 300 bbls. There's an additional 60 bbls in the Gulf of Mexico and another 30 in Alaska. Fully exploiting these deposits would cause the U.S. to become an energy exporting giant in about ten years, even as the Middle East oil supplies begin to wane, leading to a dramatic shift in global geopolitical priorities.
Environmentalists like Treasury Sec. Chu obviously won't approve of this trend, but the hard reality is that fossil fuels are not going away soon, thanks to technological advances such as "fracking" (hydraulic fracturing using horizontally injected water).
I really don't think it's a good idea for the Treasurer of the U.S. to advocate high gasoline prices. For gasoline to rise above $5 may make sense from the point of view of encouraging conservation and alternative systems like hybrid electric and plug-in electric cars, but in the short term it would cause tremendous hardship to the people. As transportation costs rise, so does the cost of basic necessities such as food, clothing, and daily commutes. Airlines would suffer as well. The economy will probably sink back into recession, and you can just picture Mr. Obama calling the Secretary into his office: "What were you thinking, Steve? It's election year!"
Personally speaking, as a solar buff, I would love to see a massive conversion to cleaner and more efficient methods of transportation and heating/electricity. It would also be nice to encourage more use of bicycles (and even walking) as an alternative to the almighty automobile in the U.S. From that point of view, high gas prices are great.
But when it comes to jobs in an already shaky economy, it's going to be disastrous, and may in fact change the electoral outcome this November.
You make some good points but none of them invalidate my points.
> How the hell is this crap modded up? It doesn't just seem paranoid, it is paranoid.
Not really; it's common sense. Medical professionals in hospitals and clinics know about the risks of infection. It's a kind of dirty secret, because if the public suspected how "dirty" hospitals really are, no one in his right mind would even visit one.
> You need to get some help, dude. It's called germophobia. Do you seriously avoid going out to eat because you're that afraid of germs? Hepatitis C?! I'll bet you've got quite the social life!
I don't avoid eating out. I also don't obsess about my 7-year-old washing her hands before eating, etc. I think normal exposure to microbes is important to build up one's immune system and keep it strong.
> I'm not saying it doesn't happen and I have absolutely no numbers to back this up, but I have a feeling you're much more likely to get in a serious car accident on the way to the restaurant than you are to get hepatitis C!
Possibly true. But if you walk to the restaurant or take the bus, you are 99% more likely to pick up a nasty bug--not necessarily HepC, maybe just this year's cold virus making the rounds.
> I stopped using antibiotic soaps. I avoid them. I always check to make sure that triclosan isn't in any hand soaps I buy. I find these "hand sanitizers" popping up and the people who use them obsessively yet still seem to get sick for months on end every winter just completely absurd.
Yes, me too. I don't like "germicidal" soaps because they actually contribute to greater resistance in bacteria.
> My body is covered by billions of microbes right now, and there are probably trillions all in all swimming around inside me. I've never felt better and my complexion has never been better.
Biology 101.
> Your immune system needs to be exposed to germs. Then the next time everyone else is rushing to Walgreens in some OMG BIRD MAN BEAR PIG FLU hysteria for their good little citizen vaccine and still getting sick anyway and being miserable for weeks, then you'll be the one who for some reason only gets sick once a blue moon and maybe for 2 days tops!
Again - no disagreement. I never get flu vaccines, myself.
> Good grief. Undoing a mod to reply because your post is just sheer paranoid lunacy, and I am absolutely sick of seeing paranoid lunacy being passed off as reasonable. It's called diminishing returns and sometimes simply just not knowing why things work and turning to superstition and self-fulfilling prophecies.
Hm, seems that this poster is passionate about his case.
> I'd agree about hospitals, though, just because of the massive derp of all the hypochondriacs who run to the ER every time they've got the sniffles.
Hospitals are not just full of sick people; they're full of employees inadvertently carrying the cooties from one patient to the next. Google "doctors ties" for some scary statistics.
> Cheers
Cheers!
Wash your hands after handling meat, wash all the implements and counter tops that may come into contact with raw meat. Cook the meat well.
Be careful with restaurants; to minimize your chances of exposure, just say no to eating out unless you can't avoid it. Once in a while is OK but several times a week is a good way to pick something up, if not MRSA then hep-C or some other nasty microbe that the waiter carried to your plate from someone else's plate. If you don't see the waiters wash their hands after taking your plates away, then you can bet they didn't wash their hands after taking the previous customer's plates either. When the water boy comes over to refill your glass, hand it to him by the rim, so he's forced to pick it up by the bottom. Use a straw.
And stay out of hospitals. Those places can make you sick. MRSA is one nasty infection that you don't want to get, but there are others as well. Basically it's a rather closed environment full of sick people, and also full of well people carrying the germs from one sick person to another, and your life may depend on how well they washed and sanitized their hands before touching you.
This may seem kind of paranoid, but we live in an increasingly crowded and mobile world where a nasty little microbe in some little corner of the globe can make its way into your soup literally days or hours later.
As a kid, I loved pinball machines. It was like a coming-of-age thing to go to the game parlor full of these beeping, ringing, singing gadgets and blow 4, 5, 6 quarters on these wonderful games of skill and chance and, er, gravity.
Many kids today probably haven't had a chance to play a physical, mechanical pinball machine. It's a visceral, physical experience, different from the cute virtual pinball games available on most computers. Kind of like playing a real piano versus an electronic keyboard, only more so. There was the art of shaking the machine just enough not to get a tilt penalty. There was the knowledge of each machine's little quirks and peculiarities.
Thank you Mr. Kordek for your contributions (note that he did not "invent" pinball machines; he invented the paddles, as the article explains). You changed the world, hopefully for the better!
By the way, another interesting factoid in the article: in the late 40s, there were TWO DOZEN manufacturers of pinball machines just in the Chicago area alone. Them was the days for manufacturing in this country!
If you see other people shoplifting, then you should shoplift, too. Why? Because it's all a game to them, and that's all it should be to you.
If you see other people falsifying their CV to get their jobs, then you should falsify your CV, too. Why? Because it's all a game to them, and that's all it should be to you.
If you see other people cheating on their spouse, then you should cheat on your spouse, too. Why? Because it's all a game to them, and that's all it should be to you.
There's this little thing called morality--a sense of doing what's right and avoiding doing what's wrong--that is severely lacking in our modern society. There's something we used to call a sense of honor--a feeling that we shouldn't allow two kids to beat up one kid in the school yard, or a larger kid pick on a smaller kid.
Although we (in the U.S.A.) have never had a purely fair and just society, nonetheless there used to be more of a sense of honor and good behavior and fair play that formed a basis for the trust that is prerequisite to every relationship--business or personal. Men used to shake hands on a deal, and were expected to stick to their word, or else take the consequences.
Today, people want to get away with instant gratification with no consequences. Hence, enjoy living in your own house, then just abandon the contract when you're tired of it or can't afford it anymore, and blame the whole thing on the lenders who "misled" you or "have no loyalty" or whatever. Just as people who shoplift justify it because "they rip you off anyway" or whatever.
This is purely decadence and dishonesty, not some kind of greater moral behavior, so don't go pretending you're good and ethical while you steal from your neighbor.
And what goes around, comes around--the entire country is going bankrupt, thanks to this kind of attitude.
Some day, photovoltaic panels will be dirt cheap and will be perfect for these rural villages, but right now they're too expensive even for most Americans.
When I was a teenager, I build a solar stove out of cardboard, plywood, and aluminum foil, based on a design in a book I read. I probably could have made it totally out of cardboard; I wasn't much of an engineer/architect :)
Anyway, the thing worked amazingly well. I demonstrated frying a hamburger (not something you would want to show the Hindu villagers, by the way) and my family was blown away. However, it had three disadvantages. First, it was extremely bright. To stand more or less in front of it to turn the food was a blinding experience.
Second, you needed a black-bottomed pan, which we didn't have, so I painted an aluminum pie pan black on the bottom.
Third, like the article says, it only works in full sunlight. You don't really want to cook the meat and veggies at 3pm, you want to get them started around 5:30 or 6 in most households. It's likely that the villagers are working in the fields or small workshops all day and don't get around to supper until 7pm or later.
At least, it should be quite possible with a reflector cooker to make large pots of rice during the day, which they probably do anyway since it takes relatively long. Solar reflector cookers are perfect for that application because rice mostly wants to simmer at a lower temperature.
Rural Indian villagers probably would prefer to bake flatbreads (nan, puri, etc.), which can be made in a pan or perhaps a clay cooker. As krlynch points out, these foods were prepared long before modern appliances came about. Making rice seems like a good application for a solar cooker, too. After bringing it to an initial boil, you want the rice to just simmer for a while, perfect for the relatively low temp solar gizmos. And they probably do want to cook rice during the day, late afternoon at best, since it takes so long. Meat and veggies, maybe not so much.
Fortunately, GWT will be around for a while, and is not competing in some way with dart, which is intended to be a javascript replacement.
http://googlewebtoolkit.blogspot.com/2011/11/gwt-and-dart.html
They said that the GWT team is working on dart, which doesn't seem like a contradiction or a condemnation of GWT (although it might take time away from improving GWT). But since GWT's been around since at least 2008, there's starting to be some aftermarket widgets and improvements floating around out there.
I'm using GWT now and I find it to be a vast improvement over perl/CGI/javascript which is how I prototyped a recent Ajax app. The perl version is fast and simple, to be sure, but I'm in a Java shop, so GWT is a better fit, and deploys nicely to Weblogic as well.
Chrome also has a pretty good javascript console. I don't know how it compares to FF's, but for me it was a lifesaver.
Macs aren't immune. Getting users to install malware is easy, but why bother. Windows is easier and more wisely deployed.
You mean, less wisely?
I still care about Firefox--it was the first real challenger to Internet Explorer since Netscape was dethroned, and it's such a nice browser... but Chrome just feels faster and more modern.
I guess considering that Google funds the Mozilla Foundation, the two browsers are not exactly competitors, and yet they are. Well, if Firefox slimmed down enough, I might switch back, since browsers are so functionally interchangeable these days, but for now I'm happy where I am. Sorry, Firefox team!
You pretty much summed it up. I fear that Facebook is a one-trick pony. "And now, for our next act... uh... hm... where's that card..." What more can they realistically do, other than poach internet services from competitors like Google?
Facebook messaging is encroaching on email turf, but I doubt it will ever replace an independent email service; no one trusts them, and it's unrealistic to force all your email recipients to join Facebook; this was AOL's downfall as well.
The comparisons with AOL are accurate and portend future trouble for Facebook. The broader, out-of-control Internet has a way of bypassing closed systems with ever more flexible and innovative alternatives.
Sooner or later, someone will think of something even easier and more convenient to use than FB, and FB will begin to lose its relevance. I have no idea what; it could be some sort of mobile-to-mobile chat and messaging paradigm that bypasses the website-based interfaces like FB's, or maybe a return to basics because of social network fatigue.
Personally, I've grown tired of FB after using it somewhat extensively for a year or two. It's been a great way to get back in touch with old classmates and the like, but the novelty's worn off and I now find it tiresome to sit down at a computer, bring up facebook.com, and read some oh-so-clever status messages from people who should be working or reading or (God forbid) exercising :)