Very nicely put arkanes. Unfortunately Gates' shallow understanding of these topics don't seem to curb his spouting off. Choosing to contribute to the common good, whether by writing software or by working as a Red Cross volunteer, is a noble act. I tire of people that think everything has to have a profit motive behind it.
One of the characteristics of a mature profession is pro bono work. Whether contributors to the open source movement do it out of concern for their fellow humans, a personal need to give back or as an ego trip is of no consequence. Service in support of the greater good is a noble act whether its money, time or brain power. Some might argue that the counter-balance to market-based capitalism is compassion.
Even with tax credits, the crossover point for purchasing a hybrid electric car is years in the future. You can't really make an economic argument for buying one in the short term. If you think of it as a donation to the future development of cheaper car models down the road or a contribution to the environment, bully for you.
It seems to me that a hybrid electric or pure electric car is not the only choice. Honda's Civic HX coupe gets nearly as good mileage without the extra complication. It uses a lean burn engine and a more expensive catalyst to make up the increase in emissions. More energy efficient and low emission choices can be seen at http://www.greenercars.com or http://www.fueleconomy.gov.
I've driven the first generation Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid. Of the two, I preferred the Honda Civic's driving characteristics. It's also very nicely appointed, were the early Prius was fairly spartan in features. The new Prius has a larger motor which allows it to run on electric more and gets better mileage and is quicker.
If you're brave and/or have great weather, many smaller displacement motorcycles beat out cars for mileage. The need for rain gear and a certain amount of aggression makes these a tough choice for many.
Finally, if you can arrange to live in one of the few pedestrian/bicycle friendly towns you might be able to avoid the whole issue. Carsharing, www.flexcar.com, is available in many such cities.
Good luck with your decision!
Planetary geology should be the first test
on
Defining "Planet"
·
· Score: 1
I widely held theory is that material surrounding the star sorts by mass with denser materials being closer to the star. These clouds of material condense into planets. You'd expect that metallic planets would be closest to the star, rocky ones next and icy ones (gas giants) last. At least in our solar system, we have bands of broken up rocky bodies (the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter) and icy bodies (the Kuiper belt between Neptune and the Oort cloud).
Large bodies that fall into the correct sorting areas would seem to be planets original to the star. Pluto, as a rocky body way out past the gas giants is probably not an original planet, but could be considered a captured planet for any number of reasons. It has its own, admittedly large, moon. It has a reasonably isolated orbit (which is way I'm reluctant to think of Ceres as a planet anymore than I think of the members of Saturns rings as moons). And yes, tradition.
The pinnacle of programmer's calculators for many is the HP16C: http://www.hpmuseum.org/16.jpg. RPN may dissuade many, but it isn't a general purpose calculator. Instead it provides access to all the normal radix conversions, dedicated A-F keys, shift, rotate, etc. These are bullet proof and are probably available used in good condition.
If I remember correctly, a GUI pipe scripting metaphor was part of Job's NextStep OS.
At any rate, I was always a bit surprised that people (me included) didn't write a generic TK interface that would wrap around sed/grep/cut/perl/etc and provide a way to save off a script that you were building and allow you to tie such blocks together. For me, building shell programs is fast enough that this interface wouldn't create much of a speed-up.
The problem with Mice are well known. The basic interaction is silly, i.e.: Shake the mouse around until you see the cursor, coordinate your hand movement with something that happening in a different location,click or drag, and stare at the screen to see whether your efforts were recognized. Mice aren't particulary useful for people who have poor fine motor control and they don't help people who have impaired eyesight.
The best interface is where beginners have no problem interacting at a basic level, commands are accepted in a variety of formats for more advanced (or special needs) users (speech, gesture, command line, pen, keyboard shortcuts, etc.) AND experts are not hamstrung. Current UI's have bred a pool of perpetual novices.
First, merely sending a secure communication isn't a violent act. The contents may order a violent act, plan a violent act, offer payment for commission of one or argue that one should be committed, but the communication itself isn't the act. The act is done by a person. So one step is to arrest and convict people who commit violent acts. This is the correction step.
Two, whether or not you can read a communication, the fact that it is being done and the length of the communication can be used to fortell actions. For example, the last minute purchase of multiple expensive one-way first class tickets on different flights should have raised a computerized eyebrow.
Three, few large scale attacks can be done without spending money on unusual resources or purchasing unusually large amounts of mundane ones. For example blasting caps cannot be purchased without identification.
Four, when a problem is detected be ready to act. I'm still not clear how multiple planes could alter their flight plans, turn off their transponders, fall below radar, and for three of four reach their intended targets without being challenged or interdicted.
Do we need to come up with new analogies to explain the civil and privacy rights justification for encryption to politicians and the lay public?
In the past we've used envelopes and locks, but I think these fall short because the reason for encryption is to create a time delay to access sufficient to dissuade the smart and lazy opponent AND allow detection of the stupid but industrious ones.
The seminal work on this topic. Carse talks in depth about both winnable and continuous games.
A review excerpt from Amazon:
An extraordinary book that will dramatically change the way you experience life. Finite games are the familiar contests of everyday life, the games we play in business and politics, in the bedroom and on the battlefied -- games with winners and losers, a beginning and an end. Infinite games are more mysterious -- and ultimately more rewarding. They are unscripted
and unpredictable; they are the source of true freedom. In this elegant and compelling work, James Carse explores what these games mean, and what they can mean to you. He offers stunning new insights into the nature of property and power,
of culture and community, of sexuality and self-discovery, opening the door to a world of infinite delight and possibility.
"An extraordinary little book . . . a wise and intimate companion, an elegant reminder of the real." -- Brain/Mind Bulletin
My homephone number forwards to my cellphone for my convenience. I have a cellphone so that I don't have to be any particular place not so that I can be at everyone's beck and call. My friends know that my preferred methods of communication are email and face-to-face gatherings (not necessarily in that order). My employer knows that I consider my primary job to be ensuring that there are no emergencies that require my dropping everything to come in. Most of the problems are self-correcting or can wait until the next morning at 9am.
In general, much of the stress in my life stems from not saying "no" when appropriate, not setting priorities and being too available for ad hoc reactive non-value-added bullsh*t instead of being proactive, strategic and thoughtful.
In short, go home, don't think about work, don't answer the phone when you're eating dinner or engrossed in the latest Harry Potter novel, and use your cellphone to order pizza while at the beach. It will seem strange the first dozen or so times, but its a habit worth cultivating.
I have been monitoring the eBook/datapad market as well and I have money for the first company that does it right. First and fore most, high contrast screens with great resolution are needed to make eBooks useful for reading long documents. Font choices and methods of displaying characters on the screen (like ClearType) can help this, but there is no competition between a RocketBook screen and a 2400 dpi typesetter. If someone could fix this problem, I'd probably buy one then. But...
Then, they need to be cheap. Now they are several hundred dollars, have relatively little storage and require a computer (with the exception of the SoftBook) to download books from. As cheap as a gameboy would help, but ultimately they need to be cheaper than CD jewel boxes or floppy disks so you can have dozens of them laying around and would think nothing of handing one to a friend for a weekend. Think of eBooks as physical manifestations of your file system directories. High capacity removable media that has its own display. Xerox continues their efforts to develop digital paper, but that's another thread.
Next, the tired razor and blades strategy used by (NuvoMedia, Audible, Audio Highway, etc.) which requires you to buy books only from one eBook vendor needs to give way to a business model that rewards people who use digital media by charging realistic prices that reflect the reduced distribution and near non-existent duplication costs. Instead pricing reflects the fact that the companies spend a lot of effort trying to ensure that their intellectual property rights are guaranteed even if it means that the customer loses their entire investment if the reader is lost or destroyed or the company folds.
Finally, few books are available in electronic format. I'm mystified that despite the fact that most books are written and edited electronically, they are not all available in digital format and can go "out-of-print".
As a postscript, in spite of no clear leader in this arena, Gemstar has purchased both the Rocket and Softbook products. The Everybook is still in development. It will be interesting to see what happens when the first crop of Transmeta Crusoe-powered webslates begin to hit the market.
Slashdot Mirror
Very nicely put arkanes. Unfortunately Gates' shallow understanding of these topics don't seem to curb his spouting off. Choosing to contribute to the common good, whether by writing software or by working as a Red Cross volunteer, is a noble act. I tire of people that think everything has to have a profit motive behind it.
One of the characteristics of a mature profession is pro bono work. Whether contributors to the open source movement do it out of concern for their fellow humans, a personal need to give back or as an ego trip is of no consequence. Service in support of the greater good is a noble act whether its money, time or brain power. Some might argue that the counter-balance to market-based capitalism is compassion.
Even with tax credits, the crossover point for purchasing a hybrid electric car is years in the future. You can't really make an economic argument for buying one in the short term. If you think of it as a donation to the future development of cheaper car models down the road or a contribution to the environment, bully for you.
It seems to me that a hybrid electric or pure electric car is not the only choice. Honda's Civic HX coupe gets nearly as good mileage without the extra complication. It uses a lean burn engine and a more expensive catalyst to make up the increase in emissions. More energy efficient and low emission choices can be seen at http://www.greenercars.com or http://www.fueleconomy.gov.
I've driven the first generation Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid. Of the two, I preferred the Honda Civic's driving characteristics. It's also very nicely appointed, were the early Prius was fairly spartan in features. The new Prius has a larger motor which allows it to run on electric more and gets better mileage and is quicker.
If you're brave and/or have great weather, many smaller displacement motorcycles beat out cars for mileage. The need for rain gear and a certain amount of aggression makes these a tough choice for many.
Finally, if you can arrange to live in one of the few pedestrian/bicycle friendly towns you might be able to avoid the whole issue. Carsharing, www.flexcar.com, is available in many such cities.
Good luck with your decision!
I widely held theory is that material surrounding the star sorts by mass with denser materials being closer to the star. These clouds of material condense into planets. You'd expect that metallic planets would be closest to the star, rocky ones next and icy ones (gas giants) last. At least in our solar system, we have bands of broken up rocky bodies (the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter) and icy bodies (the Kuiper belt between Neptune and the Oort cloud).
Large bodies that fall into the correct sorting areas would seem to be planets original to the star. Pluto, as a rocky body way out past the gas giants is probably not an original planet, but could be considered a captured planet for any number of reasons. It has its own, admittedly large, moon. It has a reasonably isolated orbit (which is way I'm reluctant to think of Ceres as a planet anymore than I think of the members of Saturns rings as moons). And yes, tradition.
The pinnacle of programmer's calculators for many is the HP16C: http://www.hpmuseum.org/16.jpg. RPN may dissuade many, but it isn't a general purpose calculator. Instead it provides access to all the normal radix conversions, dedicated A-F keys, shift, rotate, etc. These are bullet proof and are probably available used in good condition.
If I remember correctly, a GUI pipe scripting metaphor was part of Job's NextStep OS.
At any rate, I was always a bit surprised that people (me included) didn't write a generic TK interface that would wrap around sed/grep/cut/perl/etc and provide a way to save off a script that you were building and allow you to tie such blocks together. For me, building shell programs is fast enough that this interface wouldn't create much of a speed-up.
The problem with Mice are well known. The basic interaction is silly, i.e.: Shake the mouse around until you see the cursor, coordinate your hand movement with something that happening in a different location,click or drag, and stare at the screen to see whether your efforts were recognized. Mice aren't particulary useful for people who have poor fine motor control and they don't help people who have impaired eyesight.
The best interface is where beginners have no problem interacting at a basic level, commands are accepted in a variety of formats for more advanced (or special needs) users (speech, gesture, command line, pen, keyboard shortcuts, etc.) AND experts are not hamstrung. Current UI's have bred a pool of perpetual novices.
First, merely sending a secure communication isn't a violent act. The contents may order a violent act, plan a violent act, offer payment for commission of one or argue that one should be committed, but the communication itself isn't the act. The act is done by a person. So one step is to arrest and convict people who commit violent acts. This is the correction step.
Two, whether or not you can read a communication, the fact that it is being done and the length of the communication can be used to fortell actions. For example, the last minute purchase of multiple expensive one-way first class tickets on different flights should have raised a computerized eyebrow.
Three, few large scale attacks can be done without spending money on unusual resources or purchasing unusually large amounts of mundane ones. For example blasting caps cannot be purchased without identification.
Four, when a problem is detected be ready to act. I'm still not clear how multiple planes could alter their flight plans, turn off their transponders, fall below radar, and for three of four reach their intended targets without being challenged or interdicted.
Do we need to come up with new analogies to explain the civil and privacy rights justification for encryption to politicians and the lay public?
In the past we've used envelopes and locks, but I think these fall short because the reason for encryption is to create a time delay to access sufficient to dissuade the smart and lazy opponent AND allow detection of the stupid but industrious ones.
The seminal work on this topic. Carse talks in depth about both winnable and continuous games.
A review excerpt from Amazon:
An extraordinary book that will dramatically change the way you experience life. Finite games are the familiar contests of everyday life, the games we play in business and politics, in the bedroom and on the battlefied -- games with winners and losers, a beginning and an end. Infinite games are more mysterious -- and ultimately more rewarding. They are unscripted
and unpredictable; they are the source of true freedom. In this elegant and compelling work, James Carse explores what these games mean, and what they can mean to you. He offers stunning new insights into the nature of property and power,
of culture and community, of sexuality and self-discovery, opening the door to a world of infinite delight and possibility.
"An extraordinary little book . . . a wise and intimate companion, an elegant reminder of the real." -- Brain/Mind Bulletin
My homephone number forwards to my cellphone for my convenience. I have a cellphone so that I don't have to be any particular place not so that I can be at everyone's beck and call. My friends know that my preferred methods of communication are email and face-to-face gatherings (not necessarily in that order). My employer knows that I consider my primary job to be ensuring that there are no emergencies that require my dropping everything to come in. Most of the problems are self-correcting or can wait until the next morning at 9am.
In general, much of the stress in my life stems from not saying "no" when appropriate, not setting priorities and being too available for ad hoc reactive non-value-added bullsh*t instead of being proactive, strategic and thoughtful.
In short, go home, don't think about work, don't answer the phone when you're eating dinner or engrossed in the latest Harry Potter novel, and use your cellphone to order pizza while at the beach. It will seem strange the first dozen or so times, but its a habit worth cultivating.
I have been monitoring the eBook/datapad market as well and I have money for the first company that does it right. First and fore most, high contrast screens with great resolution are needed to make eBooks useful for reading long documents. Font choices and methods of displaying characters on the screen (like ClearType) can help this, but there is no competition between a RocketBook screen and a 2400 dpi typesetter. If someone could fix this problem, I'd probably buy one then. But...
Then, they need to be cheap. Now they are several hundred dollars, have relatively little storage and require a computer (with the exception of the SoftBook) to download books from. As cheap as a gameboy would help, but ultimately they need to be cheaper than CD jewel boxes or floppy disks so you can have dozens of them laying around and would think nothing of handing one to a friend for a weekend. Think of eBooks as physical manifestations of your file system directories. High capacity removable media that has its own display. Xerox continues their efforts to develop digital paper, but that's another thread.
Next, the tired razor and blades strategy used by (NuvoMedia, Audible, Audio Highway, etc.) which requires you to buy books only from one eBook vendor needs to give way to a business model that rewards people who use digital media by charging realistic prices that reflect the reduced distribution and near non-existent duplication costs. Instead pricing reflects the fact that the companies spend a lot of effort trying to ensure that their intellectual property rights are guaranteed even if it means that the customer loses their entire investment if the reader is lost or destroyed or the company folds.
Finally, few books are available in electronic format. I'm mystified that despite the fact that most books are written and edited electronically, they are not all available in digital format and can go "out-of-print".
As a postscript, in spite of no clear leader in this arena, Gemstar has purchased both the Rocket and Softbook products. The Everybook is still in development. It will be interesting to see what happens when the first crop of Transmeta Crusoe-powered webslates begin to hit the market.