Am I the only one that just don't care about tablets? Ok, it's a cool piece of tecnology, but why all that hype around it?
Everything was calm before iPad1, now everybody needs one plus every company urges to build their own.
No you're not the only one, but in fact you're a great example of people who want the world to agree with them despite their lack of knowledge. Sorry if this assumption is wrong, but until you've tried a modern tablet and adapted it into your daily routines, you can't seriously have anything to contribute to a discussion on the topic.
Tablets, notably the iPad, have been found to be very useful. Fifteen million people didn't just throw away their money last year, not to mention millions more who are snapping up the newer model. You can dispense with the legacy user interface cruft such as mouse interaction and needlessly complicated file operations, and just focus on getting information you need, and sending it to others as you wish.
My original comment was directed at the parent comment which questioned the value of a tablet. I tried to show how I, an Apple skeptic, nonetheless found value in an iPad. I brought up that I was not in the Mac/Windows community as a way of showing my objectivity, not as an insidious way of shilling.
I'm amazed and disappointed at this stunning display of poor reading comprehension among some of the Slashdot readership. I tried to use short paragraphs and simple words to make my points easy to digest. Pearls before swine, I suppose.
As others noted above, I evaluated all the alternatives, at least to the extent that I was willing to read about them, and concluded that the iPad was the best tablet product currently available. Mind you, this was just before the Xoom was released, although I was aware of the Xoom and also the excellent Samsung Tab 10.1. I would say that Apple has successfully fended off these competitors with their iPad 2 offering, at least until they become as thin and light and can reduce their prices.
I just noticed that Apple entirely refunded my open-box return of my refurbished iPad, so I'm only out the $12 it cost to fedex it back even though they originally said they would keep 10%, or $42.90, for the restocking fee. This pleases me. Now I feel better about upgrading to the 2.
Perhaps I didn't emphasize this in my original comment (well, I did, but for the benefit of those who don't read very well), but I do fly a lot, typically about four long plane flights a month, and the iPad has changed my whole travel experience. For one thing, it's tiny in my carry-on, literally like a pad of paper, and the charger is this little USB-to-AC cube plus a USB-to-Apple cable. It's so much less weight than carrying a brick-like Dell laptop plus a two pound power supply. Then, of course, it actually is useful during flight, unlike the Dell which has about four hours of battery life on the dimmest screen setting and which has to sit half-closed on the tray if the guy in front of me reclines his seat, which inevitably they do. The one thing I miss about a real laptop is that I can play DVD movies and AVI files (although I notice there's a free AVI player available for the iPad now). Hmm; just how well does a $99 netbook play a DVD, anyway?
The other cool feature of the iPad which I didn't mention above is its instant-on capability. Actually, it's instant-unhibernate, but effectively it's like it's off when it's sleeping. You can turn the thing all the way off if you really need to, but hibernate is good enough almost all of the time. That's another reason it's superior to laptops--when you need it, it turns on within a second, similar to a Palm Pilot or a modern day iPhone/Android/Blackberry. It's there when you need it, with none of this waiting around while the OS boots, loads tons of stuff from the hard drive into RAM, runs Norton Antivirus, checks for updates to the OS, all of that crap that takes a couple of minutes minimum on a traditional machine.
Lastly, my long term plan is to upgrade to a state of the art Android Honeycomb 3.1 type of device with all the bells and whistles and my ipad 2 will go to my dear wife and/or six year old who will gladly use it without missing all the cool connectivity and openness of the alternative platforms.
Do I regret trying the iPad, and now having to wait for an iPad 2? Not one bit. I am in fact going through tablet withdrawal right now, and it's going to be a frustrating couple of weeks before the 2 becomes available. Of course, it's probably better to wait a month until the initial manufacturing glitches shake out--I've already heard about weird spots on the screen, LED leakage or some such--but I suspect they'll fix things quite a bit faster in a 2nd generation unit.
As a long time Linux programmer and user whose only Apple purchase was an 80 gig iPod a few years back, I was skeptical about the iPad, but after extensive research into the Android tablets, I finally decided to give the iPad a try. I own a Google Nexus One Android phone and was really hoping for a decent Android tablet, but they simply don't exist yet. Every single one has some sort of flaw or missing feature, although the Moto Xoom looks to be a competent offering, once it's tweaked and polished and the prices come down a bit.
I have found the iPad to be a beautifully designed, well engineered best-of-class portable computer. Its battery life is outstanding, the user interface is smooth and natural, and it is incredibly convenient.
I fly a lot, and even a small laptop is a pain to use in a cramped coach class seat, whereas the iPad in combination with a $30 leather portfolio case that lets it stand up in various configurations plus a wireless keyboard is just about ideal. It works with all my Google services--email, docs, calendar, contacts--about as well as on an Android handheld, and it does audio Skype phone calls, and the book reading software is adequate. Apple Pages is a pretty decent word processor. Eventually, my 6-year-old will inherit this unit when the really good Android tablets come out, and already she's addicted to the touch interface and the colorful paint and animation games one can download.
I returned it within 14 days because the iPad 2 had just come out, and now I have to wait like everyone else to upgrade, but I don't regret my purchase for a minute.
The touch tablet concept proved its value first with the Palm and iPod/iPhone products, and so a larger tablet was merely a logical migration, not a revolution. And yet it feels revolutionary, because suddenly I use a computer for a lot of things that I never would have done before. It fits easily and neatly on my exercise machine, for example, so I can read or watch videos while working out. It slips into a backpack or satchel very easily and is about as thick as a pad of paper, so it's almost an afterthought to bring it along to work or trips or events (but keep an eye on it!). I use it to read in bed, or watch videos late at night--also dangerous, because my eyes are getting tired from all the close-up focusing. I find myself reaching for the tablet rather than the laptop when I want to look something up, because it's simply easier and quicker, even without a mouse or full travel keyboard.
By the way, the iPad's keyboard is surprisingly not bad to touch type on in landscape mode. I write stories in my spare time, and I have found I can type almost full speed--when I miss a key, the auto-correction often fixes it, although you need to be careful because it will auto-complete to the wrong word occasionally. The thing doesn't totally keep up with my typing, actually, and I'm hoping the iPad 2's increased CPU power will remedy that.
Everyone screams about Flash missing from the iPad. I would agree that it's better to let the consumer choose, but really I have found it's a non-issue with the iPad. I have watched videos on WSJ, Yahoo, CNN, and a few other websites with no problem. The Youtube app works great, as does the Netflix app (both free). In fact, it's the best way for me to watch Netflix streaming video, since I don't own a Windows PC (hitherto, I watched Netflix in a VirtualBox Windows session but it's not ideal). On my Android phone which of course has Flash, I find it's mainly good for seeing fancy animated ads on websites.
It's nice that after installing some iPod compatibility software from the Ubuntu software dialog, I could plug in my iPad to my Ubuntu laptop and explore the file system. I could also run iTunes from a VirtualBox WinXP session to do fancier sync'ing.
Undoubtedly, by Christmas '11, there will be a plethora of highly competent Android tablets in the $200-$300 range that have all the features left out of the Apple products--Flash, MicroSD card expansion, USB
Honestly, Flash is nice to have but not the be-all end-all that some have made it out to be. On my Android handheld, flash is almost all advertisements. On my iPad, I've been able to stream Netflix, Yahoo clips, YouTube, and WSJ videos with no problem. Somehow they've worked around the no-Flash limitation.
As a side note, I love my new iPad but some spouse or daughter is going to inherit it as soon as one of these awesome Honeycomb tablets comes down to my price range. iPad is great, but a bit too closed for my tastes. I'll just have to suffer a few months longer...
Can't you just say you lied on your Facebook page?
That's what I was thinking. Since when can a court hold you to whatever statements they find on the internet that are supposedly attributable to you? It's what you say, there under oath at a hearing or on the witness stand, that should count as the truth.
There are plenty of instances of people hijacking accounts and putting up bogus postings. For all anyone knows, some enemy could have created a whole website about you and filled it with hate speech supposedly written by you, but there's absolutely no way to prove it's yours short of a credit card in your name being used to pay for the thing (and even those can be stolen).
Courts and lawyers are always looking for the low hanging fruit. They'll subpoena every letter you ever wrote, every email you ever sent, and force you to bare your entire life to the court just to force you to plea bargain or compromise your principles in some other way.
Safest thing is, be careful what you post online and make sure it really reflects your core beliefs. Avoid attacking any individual (except for public figures) by name. And be prepared to fight fire with fire. If someone is going after your assets in some case, and is trying to establish nefarious motives on your part, go after theirs and attempt to prove they have a personal stake in your destruction. Subpoena everything they've ever written or done. If you have the money, you can play the same game.
ConnectBot on a Google Nexus One. It just works. You can configure the display to 40x23 or 42x24 or whatever font fits best on screen versus your desired font size. The trackball acts as a control key and alt key: one press = CTRL, double press = ALT. (a must for Emacs and vi users)
My only complaint is that it doesn't remember passwords the way AndFTP does (another excellent tool, by the way). I'd like to not have to type in the darned password every time, but oh well, it's a lot better than no ssh.
It's also kinda neat that you can view the scrollback simply by dragging the screen back. Why don't all computers work that way?
Last, and best of all, it's a free app. I haven't tried the other ssh clients out there, honestly, but since this one works, I haven't felt the need.
Why would someone even ask this question, let alone get it headlined on Slashdot?
Like it or not, computers are an integral part of higher education in the U.S. and can't be removed. Lecture notes and other materials are routinely provided online, most communications are via email or via campus-wide chatboards, and grades are supplied via online systems.
To cut off students from all these resources during lecture may have certain merit from the point of view of a vain or self-important professor who believes all eyes should be on him, but for maximizing efficiency of learning, students today have to have their laptops.
For one thing, most young people can barely write without a keyboard. I do like to take notes on paper, but typing is so much faster that there's no comparison. For a fast typist, it's the difference between getting almost all of the information down and getting maybe 60% or 70% of the information down. There are certain advantages to writing, like drawing arrows, figures, etc. Heck, you really need both. But the keyboard rules.
There are students who learn better at their own pace, who get little out of the lectures, but who need to be in the lecture hall in case sneaky professors provide information verbally that is not written down in the lecture notes. Such students can read, study other material, and half-listen. I've done it myself. It's perhaps not ideal, but it's a way to get through a course.
Another point to consider is that even if they managed to ban laptop use in lecture halls on some luddite campus, the students will still have smartphones which are functionally similar. Do we also ban use of iPhones and Android phones? Force the students to keep them out of sight? What about students with iPad and Kindle type computers which literally slide into a notebook and are barely visible?
What about students with hearing impediments or other physical problems that rely on computers to get them through a lecture?
Who says it's a trivial amount of money? $74 for one song is a lot of money. If a school teaches its children, say, about twenty songs a year, this starts to be serious money.
The net effect is that schools will tend to avoid modern songs and stick with traditional repertoire. In a country as old as Germany, that should be no problem. They have hundreds if not thousands of trad songs. So the music from the past 70 years or so will get passed over. Big deal. The net effect will be that fewer children will learn the modern songs, and thus the song writers will become less well known. Too bad for them.
The article said one was a sys admin who apparently had access to the ATM's, and another was a former IT director, but still you'd think there'd be some security to prevent some crooked employee from just emptying out an ATM whenever he felt like it.
Scary how easy it was to compromise an entire city like that. I think I'll stop using ATMs for a while and switch back to bank tellers. Then again, humans are pretty easy to infect, too, using this virus called "money" that makes them do diabolical things.
When MacAfee comes out with a human honesty scanner, that'll help a lot.
This seems like an act of desperation. Is Apple that insecure that it can't allow a stupid app like this onto its platform? What, are people going to read about Android and immediately dump their iPhones? If the iPhone is that good, Apple has nothing to worry about. If it's not competitive with Android handsets, then Apple should fix the deficiencies.
So far the main problem with iPhone is how closed and censored the app store is, from the point of view of an Android phone user anyway.
Suppose someone really has no other skills? There are millions of people--custodians, dishwashers, landscapers--who pretty much can do the one thing. I mean, maybe they can learn other skills, but this is what they ARE DOING. So "mcJob" is a way of saying these people are incapable of doing anything other than boring, demeaning, low paying work.
It used to be that Americans, unique in the Western world, respected the common working man and an honest day's work for a day's pay. Then Communism came along and stole our thunder, and somehow the American Left has come to look down on such jobs as exploitation work. People who take such jobs are expected to hold their noses.
There's nothing wrong with encouraging everyone to aspire to better paying work, for example to move up the chain of management at a MacDonald's which is quite available for a hard worker with a go-getter attitude.
But there's everything wrong with teaching entire generations of young people that certain classes of work are beneath respect. And make no mistake--people who are taught this lesson also look down on those who take such jobs.
We Americans have lost the old work ethic that made us a great country, exploitation or no. Tying this back into the story, we also have lost all shame at being irresponsible. My grandfather who lived from 1900 to the early 1990s boasted how he closed down his business decades ago with zero debts; he did not declare bankruptcy. That used to be a point of pride. Now everyone talks with a straight face about how to get out of their mortgage and stick it to the bank because "they misled us" and so forth.
To the lady on Facebook--don't buy a car if you don't have the month-to-month income to pay for it. Long term, we all end up paying for your mistake one way or the other.
McJob? No such thing. Work is work, and nonwork is nonwork. I absolutely agree about your advice to pay one's bills and avoid the embarrassment of bill collection. But let's not put down people who do menial work. There but for the grace of God go I. I am fortunate to have a good education and the opportunities to sit on my butt at a desk all day, getting fat and a bad heart and building a nice retirement account. They (people working the grill or the counter) are fortunate to be moving around, interfacing with people, and bringing home a paycheck (and maybe getting free food).
The issue isn't so much whether law enforcement can scrutinize your web access, but rather that the information could leak out. A distressing amount of private information seems to be kept on laptops that keep getting stolen out of cars.
Requiring ISP's to keep this data is also iffy. ISP's don't want to be in the business of spying on their subscribers. There's no profit in it, it only angers the customers, and potentially the ISP could be drawn into a legal tangle if it potentially knows that someone is doing illegal stuff like, say, downloading and emailing nuclear bomb schematics to someone in North Korea or Iran.
Anyway it sounds like the government is leaving enough wiggle room to discard the policy if it generates too much controversy.
Manufacturing companies discovered that long ago. Build a big plant in Outer Nowhere (but near an Interstate), become the biggest employer in town, and hire a captive labor force. The employees have nowhere else to go, and you can pay minimum wage and really screw them over. Plus, many small towns will give companies huge tax breaks and otherwise suck up.
You make that sound like it's a bad thing. The alternative is to build a big plant in China (but near an airport/seaport), become an industrial employer, and hire a migrant labor force. You can pay $0.50/hour and really screw them over. Plus, many countries like China will give companies huge tax breaks and otherwise suck up.
So take your pick--jobs stay in the U.S., or jobs go overseas. All this talk about "living wage", "decent jobs", and so forth that has permeated our national discussion of economic growth is a bunch of idealistic rhetoric that has no basis in reality.
Companies will always pay the very least possible wages for maximum work. Employees will of course seek the highest wages and benefits for minimum effort. They meet somewhere in the middle.
The one factor that companies generally can't alter is taxation and regulation. They can sometimes get an abatement from a community hungry for jobs, but local and state governments are famous for reneging on such agreements a year or two later when a new party comes into power and it's too late for the company to uproot and move elsewhere.
Regarding the IT job sector, gradually we are moving toward a much more decentralized system where much of the non-hardware work can be done remotely. Whether it's done by someone working the night shift in Mumbai or a local person 5 miles away is largely a question of money these days.
Wages in IT are definitely depressed compared to 10-15 years ago. That's how it goes. Some other field will become lucrative even as IT becomes commoditized. I don't know what, maybe mobile apps consulting or multimedia installation.
For example, lots of schools are putting in these giant touchscreens, really cool educational devices which undoubtedly come with IT problems to solve. Also, schools are buying iPads. There's plenty of upside left for those who are creative and on the ball.
Good luck to everybody; it's definitely a tough market these days.
Obama recently cancelled a big chunk of Nasa's human space exploration program. Does that make you happier?
The space program, like most big budget government programs, is by definition a lobby-driven money sink and always has been. However, it has accomplished some great things nonetheless.
What's more, how is it somehow OK to budget a trillion or two we don't have for corporate bailouts and healthcare entitlement pork, yet we can't afford $5B/year to keep Constellation going?
No, but "we" might make serious long posts about the iPhone's effect on Western civilization and its possible contribution to our civilization's collapse, or some such tangential yet important topic. What's wrong with expanding on a theme? After all, if it were such a crime, you would never have heard Beethoven or Mozart compose any variations.
Who cares about mod points? I like to look at the big picture, and to me the main point of these continuing problems for Google in China is that China is shooting itself in the foot. What a pity that you can't or won't discuss the issues at hand and prefer to merely mock others who do. It's also a pity that some moderators actually found your rant funny while dismissing my ideas as off topic. Slashdot as a forum to discuss anything but the latest chips and copyright wars continues to fall flat.
You clearly didn't read the links in the summary, which in itself provides little information. There's confusion and inconsistency in Google's.cn sites. Some users, especially in Beijing, have reported outages, and others have not. The bottom line is that some unknown factors or persons are causing performance and uptime problems with Google properties within the China firewall. You can choose to define it as a "hiccup" but that's a bit of a leap at this point. If you have information to share, I'd like to see it.
They are trying to modernize their country and become the premier superpower of the 21st century, and yet they are practicing a 1930s-style fascistic repression of free speech which undermines their scientific and economic development.
Only through free exchange of ideas can a society advance and adapt to changing technology and economic conditions. As long as the PRC government maintains even a partial hold on freedom of speech, suppressing those who call out government corruption and inefficiencies, the people will be unable to experience a sense of advancement of their condition. They'll feel stuck.
Even worse, the jingoistic nationalism which pervades any discussion of international events--the official media's constant portrayal of the Western powers led by the USA as the evil imperialists of the 19th Century, for example, the demonization of anyone who questions the official version of events, the bused-in protest marchers such as the ones who trashed the US Embassy after the Belgrade bombing--these all make China look less stable and give foreign politicians more fodder to oppose China.
Ultimately, any politician in the U.S. who runs on a pro-China platform is going to take a hit in the polls. China today is viewed as a scary, slightly evil place that exports toys with lead, poisonous milk, heparin, and toothpaste, and carcinogenic drywall. It's also viewed as an exploitative sweatshop where the workers are screwed even by the most progressive companies such as Apple. The Tiananmen Massacre (or "incident" as the PRC prefers to call it) is still fresh in the minds of some Americans, though many others have forgotten it in their zeal to buy the cheapest products on the shelf at Walmart.
Google is viewed in the U.S. as a good company that has taken a principled stand on the China censorship issue. Pretty much anything China does today to limit Google's freedom of action is going to be viewed in a negative light by the American public.
There's also the scholarly communication issue. Academics and scientists in China have reported that they rely largely on Google, and they would have trouble doing their work without it. How can China advance technically if they limit the communication and research resources of their top scholars and scientists? It's a fundamental dilemma that the Chinese will need to solve one way or the other. Freedom versus stability. Information wants to be free, and ultimately the Chinese will have to allow more freedom. Whether Google is there is a political decision that has economic implications. The U.S. should be paying close attention to this issue, given our huge trade deficit with China and their almost free ride to prosperity that they have been given on the backs of millions of laid off American manufacturing employees.
If everyone is paid less than their worth, then everyone ought to be paid more. But there's no extra money just lying around, so how exactly can this happen?
Now, unions. Oooh, there's a nice meaty subject. Unions wring extra bucks out of the employer for the union members, but at the expense of everybody else. The products the company produces rise in price to pay for it. Thus, the consumer ends up paying for the union's extra bucks. This is especially true in an industry that is completely unionized, such that there is no alternative for any company but to hire union workers, e.g. the (former) Big Three auto makers. For decades, the American consumer basically subsidized the high union salaries and generous benefits via a several-thousand-dollar surcharge on each car. And today, the American taxpayer is subsidizing the union pension and health obligations of GM and Chrysler in the form of a multi-billion dollar bail-out. Now what does any of this have to do with paying each person what they're worth?
Well, actually, you have 3 options: 1. ask for more money and quit if you do not get it 2. quit 3. stay
You agreed to provide your highly skilled labor for a certain price. If you decide you are worth more than you are getting, you are free to search for employment elsewhere. You can even start your own stock trading company... if you think you can hack it.
The people being paid millions of dollars are deemed to be worth the money, obviously, or else their employers wouldn't be in business for long. The programmers may feel they should be paid more equitably, but there's no such thing as "equitable" in the real world. It's a simple equation--I get 9 marbles, you get one. I get $999,000 per day, you get $1000 per day. Don't like it? Feel free to look around, or start a competing company.
There are undoubtedly people in the world who are grossly overpaid, or got their jobs because of their looks rather than their skills, or sit around and do nothing while a cash cow feeds their bank accounts. There are undoubtedly others who could be making a great deal more than they do. That's life.
Throughout history, there have been attempts to rectify these kinds of imbalances through rebellions, insurrections, revolutions, labor movements, and (more recently) laws. Yet, the fundamental rules still apply, because they basically work.
Someone who answers the phone at a financial company is going to be paid according to how easily they can be replaced. After they have been there a while, and know everyone's names, and know how to operate the equipment, they're going to make 20% more than when they started, but they'll still be making around $30K or $40K plus benefits.
Someone who conducts million dollar trades at that same company, who literally takes the company's fate in his hands every time he conducts such a trade, is going to be paid commensurately. Very few people are that good. The good ones know they're good, and can command high salaries, bonuses, and commissions. That's the way the system works. Put that receptionist in that job and who knows, he or she may get lucky and make a few good trades, but more likely they'll botch the job and lose the company millions of dollars.
The programmers, if they're that smart, might consider getting an MBA and learning how to trade derivatives or whatever. They might end up in a higher paying job. Or, they could drop out and start their own businesses, perhaps a consulting business to their former employers, or else a cleaning business or an ice cream truck or anything they can think of. Eventually, they'll be either broke, moderately OK, well off, or rich, depending variously on how hard they work, how good they are, and how lucky they are.
This is sort of like the early days of MS-DOS, back when everyone trusted everything they downloaded.
Although Android apps do run in a security "sandbox" whereby they can't access the user space of other apps (see http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/security/security.html for more information), they can and do access the general configuration information of the phone such as personal data, phone calls, and SIM information, and some apps obviously need to use the phone's dialup or networking capabilities.
At install time, the user is shown a list of resources the app will access, but since most apps need at least some resources on the device to be useful, we are all in the habit of just clicking past this screen and installing, and then hoping the app is not malevolent in some way.
I think there needs to be some sort of sandbox where apps can reside prior to full release into the wild. Probably, most users won't understand how to use such a feature, but knowledgeable users would make use of it, and ultimately it would help promulgate security concepts into the general consciousness. Power users who write reviews and prominent blog pieces on Android will be able to help guide the masses to safer use of apps.
I recently sat on a plane next to a man with an iPad. Although I expressed great interest in the gadget, and called it "Cool!", he did not offer to loan it to me to play with, and indeed spent the entire flight playing games, reading a digital book, and watching videos on the thing.
Selfish jerk.
I consoled myself by watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on my Nexus One android phone and then working on a document, and finally playing many games of sudoku.
After thousands of years of basically putting up with bullying as a natural phenomenon of growing up, the American education establishment has discovered that bullying is bad for kids and is actively pushing to prevent it. Google "anti-bullying" and you get dozens of links to anti-bullying programs, slogans, academics doing studies on bullying (one guy from Yale announced that victims of bullying are at higher risk of thinking about or attempting suicide).
Parents who grew up in the 1960s or 1970s are now pretty much in control in most school districts, and now they are bringing their politically correct methods to deal with bullying.
I was victimized a lot as a kid, though I don't remember ever contemplating suicide; I did a lot of fantasizing about skewering my tormentors in various nasty ways, however. Then I went and took karate when I was about 13, at an old fashioned school where the Japanese sensei would wander around the class with a long stick and whack us when we didn't do things right. And lo and behold, the bullying stopped. All it took was for me to suddenly become more self-confident and unafraid of the bullies, and they sensed it as a dog senses you are not afraid, and they went off in search of easier prey.
Would I have been better off if the teachers had intervened, instead of me going off and handling it myself? Of course not! What utter nonsense. I learned how to deal with life, and that lesson has stayed with me ever since.
I think schools should maintain vigilance for kids at risk of suicide, of course, and probably more studies need to be done to find the causes of suicide. It's easy to claim that bullying causes suicides just because there's a statistical correlation, but proving causation is quite another thing. A child who has suicidal tendencies from day one may need something more than just protection from suicide, and in fact maybe learning to deal with bullies would be quite therapeutic. For example, send them to martial arts training. I think all girls should take martial arts anyway, learn to protect themselves on the cruel streets of American cities. Martial arts is great for kids anyway; it teaches self-discipline, confidence, sportsmanship, honor, all that good stuff that they don't seem to really teach in the schools or in the home either.
It's not pork; it's R&D that's every bit as valid as anything else the Federal government spends money on, if not more so.
It keeps thousands of aerospace engineers, scientists, and technicians productively employed.
It restores funding to a project that is well underway and is built on known, working technology (Apollo).
It gives us an American manned launch capability in the near future, versus the complete unknown of relying on the private sector.
It's a tiny investment; Nasa needs about $6 billion a year to keep Constellation going. It's literally a drop in the bucket compared to many other appropriations.
The country needs a manned space program. Say what you will about the Shuttle and other manned spacecraft, they have been an inspiration to generations of young Americans to pursue science and engineering careers. While our private sector engineering jobs have dwindled along with our domestic industrial production, aerospace remains a promising field. Jet aircraft are just about the only big ticket industrial item America still exports, and aerospace technology from Nasa bleeds over to the jet transportation field all the time.
Now consider what else the Feds spend our money on:
$700+ billion economic stimulus - truly, this is almost all pork and includes various "jobs training programs", money for local construction projects, items like that which are traditionally considered bacon. Individually, these projects may have merit, but why should the federal government be funding them with a huge a deficit?
$600+ billion for defense. Surely, 1% of this budget could be redirected to Nasa with no damage to our national security.
$125+ billion per year for new healthcare obligations. That's roughly twenty times the sum Nasa needs, and it won't even cover all the uninsured. It basically is a payoff to medical providers to take care of the indigent or working poor who can't or won't provide for their own healthcare funding.
We could easily cut a trillion or so dollars from our national budget and not even notice the difference. Maybe 25% of Pentagon funding, and a bunch of entitlements, and the economy would actually benefit from the expanded availability of lending capital.
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Am I the only one that just don't care about tablets? Ok, it's a cool piece of tecnology, but why all that hype around it?
Everything was calm before iPad1, now everybody needs one plus every company urges to build their own.
No you're not the only one, but in fact you're a great example of people who want the world to agree with them despite their lack of knowledge. Sorry if this assumption is wrong, but until you've tried a modern tablet and adapted it into your daily routines, you can't seriously have anything to contribute to a discussion on the topic.
Tablets, notably the iPad, have been found to be very useful. Fifteen million people didn't just throw away their money last year, not to mention millions more who are snapping up the newer model. You can dispense with the legacy user interface cruft such as mouse interaction and needlessly complicated file operations, and just focus on getting information you need, and sending it to others as you wish.
My original comment was directed at the parent comment which questioned the value of a tablet. I tried to show how I, an Apple skeptic, nonetheless found value in an iPad. I brought up that I was not in the Mac/Windows community as a way of showing my objectivity, not as an insidious way of shilling.
I'm amazed and disappointed at this stunning display of poor reading comprehension among some of the Slashdot readership. I tried to use short paragraphs and simple words to make my points easy to digest. Pearls before swine, I suppose.
As others noted above, I evaluated all the alternatives, at least to the extent that I was willing to read about them, and concluded that the iPad was the best tablet product currently available. Mind you, this was just before the Xoom was released, although I was aware of the Xoom and also the excellent Samsung Tab 10.1. I would say that Apple has successfully fended off these competitors with their iPad 2 offering, at least until they become as thin and light and can reduce their prices.
I just noticed that Apple entirely refunded my open-box return of my refurbished iPad, so I'm only out the $12 it cost to fedex it back even though they originally said they would keep 10%, or $42.90, for the restocking fee. This pleases me. Now I feel better about upgrading to the 2.
Perhaps I didn't emphasize this in my original comment (well, I did, but for the benefit of those who don't read very well), but I do fly a lot, typically about four long plane flights a month, and the iPad has changed my whole travel experience. For one thing, it's tiny in my carry-on, literally like a pad of paper, and the charger is this little USB-to-AC cube plus a USB-to-Apple cable. It's so much less weight than carrying a brick-like Dell laptop plus a two pound power supply. Then, of course, it actually is useful during flight, unlike the Dell which has about four hours of battery life on the dimmest screen setting and which has to sit half-closed on the tray if the guy in front of me reclines his seat, which inevitably they do. The one thing I miss about a real laptop is that I can play DVD movies and AVI files (although I notice there's a free AVI player available for the iPad now). Hmm; just how well does a $99 netbook play a DVD, anyway?
The other cool feature of the iPad which I didn't mention above is its instant-on capability. Actually, it's instant-unhibernate, but effectively it's like it's off when it's sleeping. You can turn the thing all the way off if you really need to, but hibernate is good enough almost all of the time. That's another reason it's superior to laptops--when you need it, it turns on within a second, similar to a Palm Pilot or a modern day iPhone/Android/Blackberry. It's there when you need it, with none of this waiting around while the OS boots, loads tons of stuff from the hard drive into RAM, runs Norton Antivirus, checks for updates to the OS, all of that crap that takes a couple of minutes minimum on a traditional machine.
Lastly, my long term plan is to upgrade to a state of the art Android Honeycomb 3.1 type of device with all the bells and whistles and my ipad 2 will go to my dear wife and/or six year old who will gladly use it without missing all the cool connectivity and openness of the alternative platforms.
Do I regret trying the iPad, and now having to wait for an iPad 2? Not one bit. I am in fact going through tablet withdrawal right now, and it's going to be a frustrating couple of weeks before the 2 becomes available. Of course, it's probably better to wait a month until the initial manufacturing glitches shake out--I've already heard about weird spots on the screen, LED leakage or some such--but I suspect they'll fix things quite a bit faster in a 2nd generation unit.
As a long time Linux programmer and user whose only Apple purchase was an 80 gig iPod a few years back, I was skeptical about the iPad, but after extensive research into the Android tablets, I finally decided to give the iPad a try. I own a Google Nexus One Android phone and was really hoping for a decent Android tablet, but they simply don't exist yet. Every single one has some sort of flaw or missing feature, although the Moto Xoom looks to be a competent offering, once it's tweaked and polished and the prices come down a bit.
I have found the iPad to be a beautifully designed, well engineered best-of-class portable computer. Its battery life is outstanding, the user interface is smooth and natural, and it is incredibly convenient.
I fly a lot, and even a small laptop is a pain to use in a cramped coach class seat, whereas the iPad in combination with a $30 leather portfolio case that lets it stand up in various configurations plus a wireless keyboard is just about ideal. It works with all my Google services--email, docs, calendar, contacts--about as well as on an Android handheld, and it does audio Skype phone calls, and the book reading software is adequate. Apple Pages is a pretty decent word processor. Eventually, my 6-year-old will inherit this unit when the really good Android tablets come out, and already she's addicted to the touch interface and the colorful paint and animation games one can download.
I returned it within 14 days because the iPad 2 had just come out, and now I have to wait like everyone else to upgrade, but I don't regret my purchase for a minute.
The touch tablet concept proved its value first with the Palm and iPod/iPhone products, and so a larger tablet was merely a logical migration, not a revolution. And yet it feels revolutionary, because suddenly I use a computer for a lot of things that I never would have done before. It fits easily and neatly on my exercise machine, for example, so I can read or watch videos while working out. It slips into a backpack or satchel very easily and is about as thick as a pad of paper, so it's almost an afterthought to bring it along to work or trips or events (but keep an eye on it!). I use it to read in bed, or watch videos late at night--also dangerous, because my eyes are getting tired from all the close-up focusing. I find myself reaching for the tablet rather than the laptop when I want to look something up, because it's simply easier and quicker, even without a mouse or full travel keyboard.
By the way, the iPad's keyboard is surprisingly not bad to touch type on in landscape mode. I write stories in my spare time, and I have found I can type almost full speed--when I miss a key, the auto-correction often fixes it, although you need to be careful because it will auto-complete to the wrong word occasionally. The thing doesn't totally keep up with my typing, actually, and I'm hoping the iPad 2's increased CPU power will remedy that.
Everyone screams about Flash missing from the iPad. I would agree that it's better to let the consumer choose, but really I have found it's a non-issue with the iPad. I have watched videos on WSJ, Yahoo, CNN, and a few other websites with no problem. The Youtube app works great, as does the Netflix app (both free). In fact, it's the best way for me to watch Netflix streaming video, since I don't own a Windows PC (hitherto, I watched Netflix in a VirtualBox Windows session but it's not ideal). On my Android phone which of course has Flash, I find it's mainly good for seeing fancy animated ads on websites.
It's nice that after installing some iPod compatibility software from the Ubuntu software dialog, I could plug in my iPad to my Ubuntu laptop and explore the file system. I could also run iTunes from a VirtualBox WinXP session to do fancier sync'ing.
Undoubtedly, by Christmas '11, there will be a plethora of highly competent Android tablets in the $200-$300 range that have all the features left out of the Apple products--Flash, MicroSD card expansion, USB
Honestly, Flash is nice to have but not the be-all end-all that some have made it out to be. On my Android handheld, flash is almost all advertisements. On my iPad, I've been able to stream Netflix, Yahoo clips, YouTube, and WSJ videos with no problem. Somehow they've worked around the no-Flash limitation.
As a side note, I love my new iPad but some spouse or daughter is going to inherit it as soon as one of these awesome Honeycomb tablets comes down to my price range. iPad is great, but a bit too closed for my tastes. I'll just have to suffer a few months longer...
Can't you just say you lied on your Facebook page?
That's what I was thinking. Since when can a court hold you to whatever statements they find on the internet that are supposedly attributable to you? It's what you say, there under oath at a hearing or on the witness stand, that should count as the truth.
There are plenty of instances of people hijacking accounts and putting up bogus postings. For all anyone knows, some enemy could have created a whole website about you and filled it with hate speech supposedly written by you, but there's absolutely no way to prove it's yours short of a credit card in your name being used to pay for the thing (and even those can be stolen).
Courts and lawyers are always looking for the low hanging fruit. They'll subpoena every letter you ever wrote, every email you ever sent, and force you to bare your entire life to the court just to force you to plea bargain or compromise your principles in some other way.
Safest thing is, be careful what you post online and make sure it really reflects your core beliefs. Avoid attacking any individual (except for public figures) by name. And be prepared to fight fire with fire. If someone is going after your assets in some case, and is trying to establish nefarious motives on your part, go after theirs and attempt to prove they have a personal stake in your destruction. Subpoena everything they've ever written or done. If you have the money, you can play the same game.
ConnectBot on a Google Nexus One. It just works. You can configure the display to 40x23 or 42x24 or whatever font fits best on screen versus your desired font size. The trackball acts as a control key and alt key: one press = CTRL, double press = ALT. (a must for Emacs and vi users)
My only complaint is that it doesn't remember passwords the way AndFTP does (another excellent tool, by the way). I'd like to not have to type in the darned password every time, but oh well, it's a lot better than no ssh.
It's also kinda neat that you can view the scrollback simply by dragging the screen back. Why don't all computers work that way?
Last, and best of all, it's a free app. I haven't tried the other ssh clients out there, honestly, but since this one works, I haven't felt the need.
Why would someone even ask this question, let alone get it headlined on Slashdot?
Like it or not, computers are an integral part of higher education in the U.S. and can't be removed. Lecture notes and other materials are routinely provided online, most communications are via email or via campus-wide chatboards, and grades are supplied via online systems.
To cut off students from all these resources during lecture may have certain merit from the point of view of a vain or self-important professor who believes all eyes should be on him, but for maximizing efficiency of learning, students today have to have their laptops.
For one thing, most young people can barely write without a keyboard. I do like to take notes on paper, but typing is so much faster that there's no comparison. For a fast typist, it's the difference between getting almost all of the information down and getting maybe 60% or 70% of the information down. There are certain advantages to writing, like drawing arrows, figures, etc. Heck, you really need both. But the keyboard rules.
There are students who learn better at their own pace, who get little out of the lectures, but who need to be in the lecture hall in case sneaky professors provide information verbally that is not written down in the lecture notes. Such students can read, study other material, and half-listen. I've done it myself. It's perhaps not ideal, but it's a way to get through a course.
Another point to consider is that even if they managed to ban laptop use in lecture halls on some luddite campus, the students will still have smartphones which are functionally similar. Do we also ban use of iPhones and Android phones? Force the students to keep them out of sight? What about students with iPad and Kindle type computers which literally slide into a notebook and are barely visible?
What about students with hearing impediments or other physical problems that rely on computers to get them through a lecture?
Thanks for playing. Next.
Who says it's a trivial amount of money? $74 for one song is a lot of money. If a school teaches its children, say, about twenty songs a year, this starts to be serious money.
The net effect is that schools will tend to avoid modern songs and stick with traditional repertoire. In a country as old as Germany, that should be no problem. They have hundreds if not thousands of trad songs. So the music from the past 70 years or so will get passed over. Big deal. The net effect will be that fewer children will learn the modern songs, and thus the song writers will become less well known. Too bad for them.
The article said one was a sys admin who apparently had access to the ATM's, and another was a former IT director, but still you'd think there'd be some security to prevent some crooked employee from just emptying out an ATM whenever he felt like it.
Scary how easy it was to compromise an entire city like that. I think I'll stop using ATMs for a while and switch back to bank tellers. Then again, humans are pretty easy to infect, too, using this virus called "money" that makes them do diabolical things.
When MacAfee comes out with a human honesty scanner, that'll help a lot.
This seems like an act of desperation. Is Apple that insecure that it can't allow a stupid app like this onto its platform? What, are people going to read about Android and immediately dump their iPhones? If the iPhone is that good, Apple has nothing to worry about. If it's not competitive with Android handsets, then Apple should fix the deficiencies.
So far the main problem with iPhone is how closed and censored the app store is, from the point of view of an Android phone user anyway.
Suppose someone really has no other skills? There are millions of people--custodians, dishwashers, landscapers--who pretty much can do the one thing. I mean, maybe they can learn other skills, but this is what they ARE DOING. So "mcJob" is a way of saying these people are incapable of doing anything other than boring, demeaning, low paying work.
It used to be that Americans, unique in the Western world, respected the common working man and an honest day's work for a day's pay. Then Communism came along and stole our thunder, and somehow the American Left has come to look down on such jobs as exploitation work. People who take such jobs are expected to hold their noses.
There's nothing wrong with encouraging everyone to aspire to better paying work, for example to move up the chain of management at a MacDonald's which is quite available for a hard worker with a go-getter attitude.
But there's everything wrong with teaching entire generations of young people that certain classes of work are beneath respect. And make no mistake--people who are taught this lesson also look down on those who take such jobs.
We Americans have lost the old work ethic that made us a great country, exploitation or no. Tying this back into the story, we also have lost all shame at being irresponsible. My grandfather who lived from 1900 to the early 1990s boasted how he closed down his business decades ago with zero debts; he did not declare bankruptcy. That used to be a point of pride. Now everyone talks with a straight face about how to get out of their mortgage and stick it to the bank because "they misled us" and so forth.
To the lady on Facebook--don't buy a car if you don't have the month-to-month income to pay for it. Long term, we all end up paying for your mistake one way or the other.
McJob? No such thing. Work is work, and nonwork is nonwork. I absolutely agree about your advice to pay one's bills and avoid the embarrassment of bill collection. But let's not put down people who do menial work. There but for the grace of God go I. I am fortunate to have a good education and the opportunities to sit on my butt at a desk all day, getting fat and a bad heart and building a nice retirement account. They (people working the grill or the counter) are fortunate to be moving around, interfacing with people, and bringing home a paycheck (and maybe getting free food).
The issue isn't so much whether law enforcement can scrutinize your web access, but rather that the information could leak out. A distressing amount of private information seems to be kept on laptops that keep getting stolen out of cars.
Requiring ISP's to keep this data is also iffy. ISP's don't want to be in the business of spying on their subscribers. There's no profit in it, it only angers the customers, and potentially the ISP could be drawn into a legal tangle if it potentially knows that someone is doing illegal stuff like, say, downloading and emailing nuclear bomb schematics to someone in North Korea or Iran.
Anyway it sounds like the government is leaving enough wiggle room to discard the policy if it generates too much controversy.
Manufacturing companies discovered that long ago. Build a big plant in Outer Nowhere (but near an Interstate), become the biggest employer in town, and hire a captive labor force. The employees have nowhere else to go, and you can pay minimum wage and really screw them over. Plus, many small towns will give companies huge tax breaks and otherwise suck up.
You make that sound like it's a bad thing. The alternative is to build a big plant in China (but near an airport/seaport), become an industrial employer, and hire a migrant labor force. You can pay $0.50/hour and really screw them over. Plus, many countries like China will give companies huge tax breaks and otherwise suck up.
So take your pick--jobs stay in the U.S., or jobs go overseas. All this talk about "living wage", "decent jobs", and so forth that has permeated our national discussion of economic growth is a bunch of idealistic rhetoric that has no basis in reality.
Companies will always pay the very least possible wages for maximum work. Employees will of course seek the highest wages and benefits for minimum effort. They meet somewhere in the middle.
The one factor that companies generally can't alter is taxation and regulation. They can sometimes get an abatement from a community hungry for jobs, but local and state governments are famous for reneging on such agreements a year or two later when a new party comes into power and it's too late for the company to uproot and move elsewhere.
Regarding the IT job sector, gradually we are moving toward a much more decentralized system where much of the non-hardware work can be done remotely. Whether it's done by someone working the night shift in Mumbai or a local person 5 miles away is largely a question of money these days.
Wages in IT are definitely depressed compared to 10-15 years ago. That's how it goes. Some other field will become lucrative even as IT becomes commoditized. I don't know what, maybe mobile apps consulting or multimedia installation.
For example, lots of schools are putting in these giant touchscreens, really cool educational devices which undoubtedly come with IT problems to solve. Also, schools are buying iPads. There's plenty of upside left for those who are creative and on the ball.
Good luck to everybody; it's definitely a tough market these days.
"US just has a money sink..."
Obama recently cancelled a big chunk of Nasa's human space exploration program. Does that make you happier?
The space program, like most big budget government programs, is by definition a lobby-driven money sink and always has been. However, it has accomplished some great things nonetheless.
What's more, how is it somehow OK to budget a trillion or two we don't have for corporate bailouts and healthcare entitlement pork, yet we can't afford $5B/year to keep Constellation going?
No, but "we" might make serious long posts about the iPhone's effect on Western civilization and its possible contribution to our civilization's collapse, or some such tangential yet important topic. What's wrong with expanding on a theme? After all, if it were such a crime, you would never have heard Beethoven or Mozart compose any variations.
Who cares about mod points? I like to look at the big picture, and to me the main point of these continuing problems for Google in China is that China is shooting itself in the foot. What a pity that you can't or won't discuss the issues at hand and prefer to merely mock others who do. It's also a pity that some moderators actually found your rant funny while dismissing my ideas as off topic. Slashdot as a forum to discuss anything but the latest chips and copyright wars continues to fall flat.
You clearly didn't read the links in the summary, which in itself provides little information. There's confusion and inconsistency in Google's .cn sites. Some users, especially in Beijing, have reported outages, and others have not. The bottom line is that some unknown factors or persons are causing performance and uptime problems with Google properties within the China firewall. You can choose to define it as a "hiccup" but that's a bit of a leap at this point. If you have information to share, I'd like to see it.
They are trying to modernize their country and become the premier superpower of the 21st century, and yet they are practicing a 1930s-style fascistic repression of free speech which undermines their scientific and economic development.
Only through free exchange of ideas can a society advance and adapt to changing technology and economic conditions. As long as the PRC government maintains even a partial hold on freedom of speech, suppressing those who call out government corruption and inefficiencies, the people will be unable to experience a sense of advancement of their condition. They'll feel stuck.
Even worse, the jingoistic nationalism which pervades any discussion of international events--the official media's constant portrayal of the Western powers led by the USA as the evil imperialists of the 19th Century, for example, the demonization of anyone who questions the official version of events, the bused-in protest marchers such as the ones who trashed the US Embassy after the Belgrade bombing--these all make China look less stable and give foreign politicians more fodder to oppose China.
Ultimately, any politician in the U.S. who runs on a pro-China platform is going to take a hit in the polls. China today is viewed as a scary, slightly evil place that exports toys with lead, poisonous milk, heparin, and toothpaste, and carcinogenic drywall. It's also viewed as an exploitative sweatshop where the workers are screwed even by the most progressive companies such as Apple. The Tiananmen Massacre (or "incident" as the PRC prefers to call it) is still fresh in the minds of some Americans, though many others have forgotten it in their zeal to buy the cheapest products on the shelf at Walmart.
Google is viewed in the U.S. as a good company that has taken a principled stand on the China censorship issue. Pretty much anything China does today to limit Google's freedom of action is going to be viewed in a negative light by the American public.
There's also the scholarly communication issue. Academics and scientists in China have reported that they rely largely on Google, and they would have trouble doing their work without it. How can China advance technically if they limit the communication and research resources of their top scholars and scientists? It's a fundamental dilemma that the Chinese will need to solve one way or the other. Freedom versus stability. Information wants to be free, and ultimately the Chinese will have to allow more freedom. Whether Google is there is a political decision that has economic implications. The U.S. should be paying close attention to this issue, given our huge trade deficit with China and their almost free ride to prosperity that they have been given on the backs of millions of laid off American manufacturing employees.
If everyone is paid less than their worth, then everyone ought to be paid more. But there's no extra money just lying around, so how exactly can this happen?
Now, unions. Oooh, there's a nice meaty subject. Unions wring extra bucks out of the employer for the union members, but at the expense of everybody else. The products the company produces rise in price to pay for it. Thus, the consumer ends up paying for the union's extra bucks. This is especially true in an industry that is completely unionized, such that there is no alternative for any company but to hire union workers, e.g. the (former) Big Three auto makers. For decades, the American consumer basically subsidized the high union salaries and generous benefits via a several-thousand-dollar surcharge on each car. And today, the American taxpayer is subsidizing the union pension and health obligations of GM and Chrysler in the form of a multi-billion dollar bail-out. Now what does any of this have to do with paying each person what they're worth?
Well, actually, you have 3 options:
1. ask for more money and quit if you do not get it
2. quit
3. stay
You agreed to provide your highly skilled labor for a certain price. If you decide you are worth more than you are getting, you are free to search for employment elsewhere. You can even start your own stock trading company... if you think you can hack it.
The people being paid millions of dollars are deemed to be worth the money, obviously, or else their employers wouldn't be in business for long. The programmers may feel they should be paid more equitably, but there's no such thing as "equitable" in the real world. It's a simple equation--I get 9 marbles, you get one. I get $999,000 per day, you get $1000 per day. Don't like it? Feel free to look around, or start a competing company.
There are undoubtedly people in the world who are grossly overpaid, or got their jobs because of their looks rather than their skills, or sit around and do nothing while a cash cow feeds their bank accounts. There are undoubtedly others who could be making a great deal more than they do. That's life.
Throughout history, there have been attempts to rectify these kinds of imbalances through rebellions, insurrections, revolutions, labor movements, and (more recently) laws. Yet, the fundamental rules still apply, because they basically work.
Someone who answers the phone at a financial company is going to be paid according to how easily they can be replaced. After they have been there a while, and know everyone's names, and know how to operate the equipment, they're going to make 20% more than when they started, but they'll still be making around $30K or $40K plus benefits.
Someone who conducts million dollar trades at that same company, who literally takes the company's fate in his hands every time he conducts such a trade, is going to be paid commensurately. Very few people are that good. The good ones know they're good, and can command high salaries, bonuses, and commissions. That's the way the system works. Put that receptionist in that job and who knows, he or she may get lucky and make a few good trades, but more likely they'll botch the job and lose the company millions of dollars.
The programmers, if they're that smart, might consider getting an MBA and learning how to trade derivatives or whatever. They might end up in a higher paying job. Or, they could drop out and start their own businesses, perhaps a consulting business to their former employers, or else a cleaning business or an ice cream truck or anything they can think of. Eventually, they'll be either broke, moderately OK, well off, or rich, depending variously on how hard they work, how good they are, and how lucky they are.
Welcome to the real world!
This is sort of like the early days of MS-DOS, back when everyone trusted everything they downloaded.
Although Android apps do run in a security "sandbox" whereby they can't access the user space of other apps (see http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/security/security.html for more information), they can and do access the general configuration information of the phone such as personal data, phone calls, and SIM information, and some apps obviously need to use the phone's dialup or networking capabilities.
At install time, the user is shown a list of resources the app will access, but since most apps need at least some resources on the device to be useful, we are all in the habit of just clicking past this screen and installing, and then hoping the app is not malevolent in some way.
I think there needs to be some sort of sandbox where apps can reside prior to full release into the wild. Probably, most users won't understand how to use such a feature, but knowledgeable users would make use of it, and ultimately it would help promulgate security concepts into the general consciousness. Power users who write reviews and prominent blog pieces on Android will be able to help guide the masses to safer use of apps.
I recently sat on a plane next to a man with an iPad. Although I expressed great interest in the gadget, and called it "Cool!", he did not offer to loan it to me to play with, and indeed spent the entire flight playing games, reading a digital book, and watching videos on the thing.
Selfish jerk.
I consoled myself by watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on my Nexus One android phone and then working on a document, and finally playing many games of sudoku.
After thousands of years of basically putting up with bullying as a natural phenomenon of growing up, the American education establishment has discovered that bullying is bad for kids and is actively pushing to prevent it. Google "anti-bullying" and you get dozens of links to anti-bullying programs, slogans, academics doing studies on bullying (one guy from Yale announced that victims of bullying are at higher risk of thinking about or attempting suicide).
Parents who grew up in the 1960s or 1970s are now pretty much in control in most school districts, and now they are bringing their politically correct methods to deal with bullying.
I was victimized a lot as a kid, though I don't remember ever contemplating suicide; I did a lot of fantasizing about skewering my tormentors in various nasty ways, however. Then I went and took karate when I was about 13, at an old fashioned school where the Japanese sensei would wander around the class with a long stick and whack us when we didn't do things right. And lo and behold, the bullying stopped. All it took was for me to suddenly become more self-confident and unafraid of the bullies, and they sensed it as a dog senses you are not afraid, and they went off in search of easier prey.
Would I have been better off if the teachers had intervened, instead of me going off and handling it myself? Of course not! What utter nonsense. I learned how to deal with life, and that lesson has stayed with me ever since.
I think schools should maintain vigilance for kids at risk of suicide, of course, and probably more studies need to be done to find the causes of suicide. It's easy to claim that bullying causes suicides just because there's a statistical correlation, but proving causation is quite another thing. A child who has suicidal tendencies from day one may need something more than just protection from suicide, and in fact maybe learning to deal with bullies would be quite therapeutic. For example, send them to martial arts training. I think all girls should take martial arts anyway, learn to protect themselves on the cruel streets of American cities. Martial arts is great for kids anyway; it teaches self-discipline, confidence, sportsmanship, honor, all that good stuff that they don't seem to really teach in the schools or in the home either.
It's not pork; it's R&D that's every bit as valid as anything else the Federal government spends money on, if not more so.
It keeps thousands of aerospace engineers, scientists, and technicians productively employed.
It restores funding to a project that is well underway and is built on known, working technology (Apollo).
It gives us an American manned launch capability in the near future, versus the complete unknown of relying on the private sector.
It's a tiny investment; Nasa needs about $6 billion a year to keep Constellation going. It's literally a drop in the bucket compared to many other appropriations.
The country needs a manned space program. Say what you will about the Shuttle and other manned spacecraft, they have been an inspiration to generations of young Americans to pursue science and engineering careers. While our private sector engineering jobs have dwindled along with our domestic industrial production, aerospace remains a promising field. Jet aircraft are just about the only big ticket industrial item America still exports, and aerospace technology from Nasa bleeds over to the jet transportation field all the time.
Now consider what else the Feds spend our money on:
$700+ billion economic stimulus - truly, this is almost all pork and includes various "jobs training programs", money for local construction projects, items like that which are traditionally considered bacon. Individually, these projects may have merit, but why should the federal government be funding them with a huge a deficit?
$600+ billion for defense. Surely, 1% of this budget could be redirected to Nasa with no damage to our national security.
$125+ billion per year for new healthcare obligations. That's roughly twenty times the sum Nasa needs, and it won't even cover all the uninsured. It basically is a payoff to medical providers to take care of the indigent or working poor who can't or won't provide for their own healthcare funding.
We could easily cut a trillion or so dollars from our national budget and not even notice the difference. Maybe 25% of Pentagon funding, and a bunch of entitlements, and the economy would actually benefit from the expanded availability of lending capital.