Centrelink already runs such a system for welfare recipients and it sucks.
Instead of just opening a letter you get an email or SMS to tell you that you have an electronic letter. Then you have to log into their website past a password and security question and download a PDF of the letter.
The website is offline most Sundays and nights for routine maintenance. At other times it is overloaded and so slow that it hard to use. For a while some of the PDFs were corrupted and unreadable by either Foxit or Adobe. And if you missed the email or SMS you missed the letter which could be important and leave you open to having your welfare suspended.
The Government has never implemented a single IT project properly and always wastes billions. I went back to getting letters and intend to continue doing so.
You should say "See you later I am going somewhere else with reasonable conditions". However, if you can't say that you should say "Excellent idea sir".
Re:Backroom deals killed Linux on the Desktop.
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Linux has never ever been on its way to desktop success. It has never had more than 1% of the desktop market and is not growing. That is the entire point of the PC World article. That is not the result of a conspiracy, and referring to PC World article is not trolling.
Most people don't want to have to bother with updating an OS, let alone partitioning and installing one and hunting around to find drivers that work. Then hunting down and installing the applications they want to run. Homes and businesses want to buy a computer, push a button and use it. That is why the major desktop OS is still Windows XP, and it will become Windows 7 as people buy new computers because that is what will be installed on the computer they buy.
Linux computers cost more because they sell in smaller numbers and Linux is more costly to install, support and train users in. With Linux and X Windows, Gnome, KDE and host of libraries needed to run applications a full version of Linux runs slower than XP on a netbook. That is why Dell and Asus are ditching it, it is simply dollars because the cost of an OS is irrelevant compared to the testing and support to get and keep it working.
As to all this that my uncle's cousin runs it as a desktop so it must be growing and will soon take over the market that is all nonsense. Yes many people use Linux, but the fact is only 1% of the desktop market. Linux is modular and flexible and free but it is not homogenous, simple or easy and was never intended to be a mass market commercial OS.
And there is the claim here that universities use Linux so that is future. Not as desktops in Australia they don't. I have worked for two major universities one uses all Mac desktops and laptops the other used a mix of Macs and PCs but is now switching to centralised PCs and laptops with Microsoft Outlook, Exchange, Internet Explorer and MS Office all supplied and supported on a tender from one major computer supplier, because that is the cheapest to install and support.
Tasmania is a trial programme. The ISP are being charged a heavily subsided connection fee of $300 per customer.
There has been no cost benefit analysis down on the scheme, there have been wholesale prices set and we have no idea what it will cost in the end.
The Government's figures are for an average cost of $6000 per household, or $2000 per person. Regional centres will cost $8000 and rural properties up to $22,000 all subsidised by metropolitan users. The remotest 7% will be served by wireless and satellite.
To make that possible they are requiring 70-90% uptake. Which will be generated by ripping out copper phone lines and ADSL and restricting spectrum for wireless to make a corporatised monopoly operating on a set 6-7% profit margin to pay back the Government, and whom ever they eventually sell it of too.
No other country has tried fibre to the door of such a large low density population. No other fibre programme has gotten greater than 30% market penetration or made a profit, or generated any economic benefit. It is far from certain that retail ISP will even want to be involved in much of it, including low profitable rural areas where household incomes are on average 25% less than in metropolitan areas which would forcing the government to run its own subsidised ISP for them.
Assuming all this works the whole charges are expected to be about $33/month plus usage.
Currently the ACCC sets ADSL pricing at $16/month plus usage. At that level 40% of low income households in cities can't afford broadband. The bottom 10% of households can't afford the internet at all.
Howard gave tax cuts to all sections of society. He also delivered family benefits and child care subsidies through a tightly means tested welfare system. This meant that the benefits of the boom were shared and low income families got their share. Australia has had no increase in inequality over period of Howard's government (as measured by the ABS Gini co-efficient).
Of course this was achieved by taking the benefits of the boom caused by selling resources to China and handing all of it out. Which leaves nothing in reserve, may over heat the economy and cause serious problems if the boom runs out.
What Howard deregulating foreign students did was in 5 years create a $16b industry involved in selling residency permits. That scam is being shut down and we will then have to start funding our educution instead of ripping off foreign students to pay for it.
The mining industry has not agreed to the mining tax. The 3 biggest mining companies have agreed to a settlement to be negotiated by a committee chaired by Don Argus, ex-CEO of BHP. The small mining companies disagree with this. The legislation has not even been drafted. The independents and Swan are arguing over whether or not the Government's new Tax Committee will reexamine the whole issue of the mining tax (along with the GST and Henry's other recommendations).
Wave was not a disruptive technology
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The reason I didn't use Google Wave was simply because few of my friends did, and they didn't because was is the same for them. Whatever the technical, invitation and marketing problems were they were irrelevant. To be useful all your friends had to have a pressing need for the Wave and to bother to install and learn it. Otherwise email, facebook and twitter were good enough, and all your networks functioning on them.
The Wave was just not a successful disruptive technology. Email was and succeeded because it was universal and the alternatives were telegrams, faxes and letters.
Did people actually read the article? It is about what to do with legacy OS/2 systems.
There are lots of legacy system still used by large companies and you have the choice of continuing to maintain them or developing a new system which isn't cheap. One large finance company I used to work for has just spent $100m replacing their workflow system and got one that does half of what the old system, after 20 years of modifications and tweaking, did for the money.
So reportantly IBM has considered buying modern hardware, runing Linux on it and then writing a version of OS/2 on top of that runs the old applications. They may or may not do it. It may or may not work. If it does work it will replace some legacy systems sitting in basements and you will probably never hear about it unless you work supporting old OS/2 and AS/400 systems, like a friend of mine does.
Teach For America have collected statistics on all their teachers and have tried and tested theories about what makes a good teacher. They have found only two variables that matter, and matter a great deal, and by focusing on these two features have improved the performance of their scheme.
Their best teachers: 1. Are enthusiastic and engage the class room 2. They ask the students questions to check they have learnt something and then adapt their approach till until the kids gets it.
Experience, background, race, education, master's degrees and class size etc. are all totally irrelevant.
The main reason Google is developing Chrome OS is so that there will be a simple platform for running web apps for their staff, and as a bonus any corporate clients using their apps. Google are spending a lot of money on developing their own version of Ubuntu to provide a desktop for their staff, and simpler more secure platform has advantage for them.
Google's business is advertising and tax avoidance by billing all their business to Ireland, not operating systems. They developed Chrome for similar reasons. Chrome has 3.6% of the browser market as of November, down from 3.8%, and it's not like it matters to them.
Chrome OS, like most OSes, isn't going to change the world. It will have its uses though.
This is a Linux distro that can't run any non-google-SDK software. No X server wipes out being able to run most of the GUI software in the ecosystem. You locked to google. Why would I want this?... The best google could have done is done yet another standard Linux distro, with X in some form, so they can tap into the existing software ecosystem. </quote>
The reason you want this is because you sitting a coffee shop and want to something quickly without booting Windows7. Google have a vision of the thin client, and it is an old vision, but these days there is fast wireless and the software available to do it and the sales of netbooks indicate there is a lot of demand for the idea.
Google can't use Linux/GNU/X11/KDE/Gnome because it has already failed in the Netbook environment. It is too bloated and overly complex for doing simple stuff and no one but a Linux geek can get it to work. While X11 isn't that bad it is based on an out-dated local server/client model, the sever runs as root and it is not easy to develop for. If want to add to X you end up with complexity and diversity of a multitude of libraries and the whole KDE/Gnome thing. This makes Linux a difficult environment to develop for (as Google complained about with Chrome), unless you have lots of keen volunteers doing all the work. Very few commercial businesses have seen any profit from in getting into the Linux desktop.
Vista was a debarcle and has also failed in netbooks since it is way too bloated. Apple haven't bothered with the net book market at all relying on the iPhone. I would have thought Google would go with Android, but they have obviously realised that while it works for PDAs and phones it won't scale up.
The Netbook winner so far has thus been Window XP, with ASUS doing very minor business with Xandros! Thus Google is dependent mostly on XP to run the platform they want -- that is hardly nice or secure. Microsoft's plan is for a plethora of versions of Windows 7 offering one platform from PDAs and Netbooks up to servers. If Google doesn't want to be dependent on Microsoft they have a problem.
So first Google designed a browser to be fast and secure and that runs applications twice as fast on XP as Firefox. Sure it it is a memory hog but how much does 1GB of RAM cost these days? . Second Google have announced a replacement for Windows XP on netbooks just before Microsoft replace it with Windows 7 and everyone starts talking about how complete Microsoft's domination of the market will be. A bit of old fashion FUD to make up for the fact that Google are 12 months too late with delivering something to compete with Windows 7.
The idea that Chrome OS will be some replacement for or compete with the Linux development environment is just wrong. Google have simply seen a gap in the market and want something fast and secure that manufacturers will install on netbooks for surfing and web applications and that will stop Microsoft gaining complete dominance. So they are cobbling together something from what they have as quickly as possible.
Personally a cheap Netbook that I can use to surf, email, watch the Tour de France on and use to play online bridge with, all of which all only requires Chrome with Flash 10, without Windows 7 sounds good to me.
Shift workers suffer higher rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, gastric problems, mental health problems and substance abuse problems. After 5-10 years the amount of cortisol you need to produce to work shifts destroys you physically and mentally, no matter how well you think your are coping with it.
Work it while you need the money and experience then get a job with reasonable hours.
Unfamiliar software and hardware are just one reason.
2. The main reason is there is no economic reason to install Linux. The cost of the OS and software are only a small fraction of the price and it's not worth the cost of having different models with another OS. Linux users will just install their favourite version anyway.
3. There is no Linux desktop, there are hundreds of them.
4. There is no performance gain. By the time you run Linux, X, KDE and GNOME and Open Office etc., XP with Chrome is faster.
Note there is an advantage over Vista, which is why Microsoft kept and discounted XP for netbooks. You can't claim Microsoft are dumping and old OS when the competition is free.
When Linux is useful is running a cut down system on low power devices, especially once XP is gone.
I was transfered to a different dept., where they use Macs and found everything you said. I also found that:
1. The interface was inconsistant. In XP you have right button menu options for copy, cut, paste, rename, delete etc., all simply marked and where you want them. They are also menus under edit, control keys and the delete key as well as dropping and dragging; and they all work the same and are always available everywhere (the desktop, file manager and applications). In the Mac menus you only get some of the options and they are described by mini essays not simple easy to recongise terms. After a month on a Mac I am still not sure what is the best way of doing things in specific circumstances.
2. Droping and dragging may be fine for simple tasks but it is dreadful for dealing with multiple objects and if you want to copy sometimes and move others across a file system. Dropping and dragging with a mouse is also the best way to get carpal tunnel syndrome (I know I got it doing that in proprietary DB that required lots of it). XP and X Windows window and file managers are both much superior; I can just do stuff twice as fast in them. Though on the Mac there is a shell handy, which I found was often the best way of dealing with lots of files.
3. The use of the control key for the right button mouse options and the Mac key for the standard 'x', 'c', 'v' options and application short cuts drove me up the wall. The point of using the control key for them was so that touch-typists could use them without disrupting their flow (they are originally from Word Perfect). Using the Mac key under the 'x' is highly awkward and impossible while touch-typing.
4. Programmes that don't exit when you hit the red button drove me up the wall, I was continually having to go to the dock and quit them them because the Mac only had 512MB RAM. And if you don't when you log off the OS sends warning and you have no idea if you have left something open and unsaved, or if it is just one of those empty applications still running.
6. Having menus all at the top may be good use of a small monitor, but with a large LCD monitor you have to cover vast distances with a dreadful mouse system to get at them.
7. IE just kept crashing when you opened it, and Firefox was unstable when there were 10 or so windows open. The machine also wouldn't run Endnotes properly, even though it had the lastest OS X 10.4 on it. I suspect that those problems were directly related to the small memory.
While the OS 10.4 GUI does look nice, the idea of it being simpler and more intutive is nonsense -- pure marketing hype. Apple deliberately threw out the right mouse button and the control key and designed a limited file manager in order to make this marketing claim. It is simple to use only if you want to save and drop and drag everything to desktop (which most Mac uses do); if you need to deal with hundreds of files it's an unergonomic nightmare.
The main advantage of the Mac seems to be that it comes with standard set of hardware and applications, which does make them easier to administer than a pile of PCs with different cards, drivers and applications on them. The BSD also makes it better for multiple users and secure networking, though the many layers seem to make applications much slower and prone to problems. But unless you are in an area where the applications you want are historically Mac (Quicktime etc.) XP is the much better UI.
Again people are missing the point. Brin doesn't want a learning language and he isn't talking about teaching serious programming at all. Brin just wants something that can be used to illustrate basic algorithms and logic to kids. Something that might serve as the first step in learning programming, without which many kids may never bother to try. He points out his boy is learning C++ to learn computer programming.
By line-oriented Brin means something that steps through each stage numbered line by line, and whose flow control is based on those lines numbers.
BASIC is an easy way to grasp the concept of iteration and what can be done with a few simple commands. It was universal, compact and extremely simple (you could learn it by looking at about 20 lines of code without manuals or tutorials). That is why the tradition of putting an example of an algorithm in BASIC in maths textbooks and newspaper articles about maths or astronomy developed, and it seems still persists to this day (or at least the old textbooks have).
Djkstra thought BASIC was evil because it was easier to teach university students to programme well if they hadn't picked up bad habits playing around with BASIC at home. He ignores the fact that it enabled them to understand the logic of machine language that all programmes are built from, or that it might have inspired them to come to his class in the first place. There is no harm in learning a bit of BASIC first, though these days you would want to switch to something better before getting serious about programming.
You could use Python to demonstrate algorithms but Python isn't universally known so you won't find the examples written in it; you also have to download and install it; you need to know a bit about its idiosyncratic syntax (indentation, colons etc.) before you can do anything; to replicate what a goto can accomplish you would need learn flow control functions or how to define and call procedures and how Python passes variables etc.
Brin's point is that kids aren't going to bother with that so aren't even going to start the journey. Have we lost some advantages of simplicity and universality with the great range of good high-level languages available today? Whether Brin is right or not who knows? It is just an op-ed. It made me think and remember how I learnt about algorithms and programming, which was worthwhile.
Electionmethod are bunch of ideologues trying to solve the theoretical problem of how to resolve the most complex set of relative preferences possible. It is something that you can construct half-a-dozen vote examples for letters but it is not something that happens when millions of real people vote for real candidates in real elections. You don't get random spreads of preferences; people preference like candidates or they vote for their candidate and then an independant who they think might win if they hate the other side.
Condorcet has such a complex counting method that it abstracts the whole process so far away from the way people really think about voting that it would stop voters understanding what is going on and destroy trust in the electoral system. That is why it has never been used for anything serious despite being around for hundreds of years.
Optional preferential voting (IRV) solves the major problem of first-past-the-post, which is multiple candidates on one side of politics can split the vote handing the result to the other side. It does it in simple way that is the same as run off elections without all the extra delay and expense.
It can be explained simply: use numbers to rank as many candidates as you want in order of preference; if someone gets 50% they win, if not you eliminate the candidate the least people wanted to win and allocate any preferences and keep doing that until someone wins.
What's more you can get a fair idea of what is happening from partial counts and you can run opinion polls on preferences and get some idea of the outcome. Optional preferential voting is also not so complicated that it can't be run on paper if you don't want to use computerised voting. If you put symbols on the ballot beside the names then the illiterate can also vote (important in some parts of the world). The basic method can used for single representative and multiple reresentative elecctions.
One thing, however, you want to avoid at all costs is the Australian system of complusory preferences (where you have to preference every candidate) especially for multiple representative elections. That leads to massively complex counts. Then registered party preference tickets (which 95% use for the senate) were introduced to simply things, which means the parties horse trade perferences to try and get the best result for themselves, so and you end up with ballot papers 2 metres long as everyone tries to cash in on the game,.often running fake parties to exploit the process.
To express an individual vote people then have to number upto 200 boxes, and if they make mistakes their votes become informal. Though a clause was introduced that getting 90% filled in with only 3 simple errors was good enough.
>Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Not it is not. As the article says it is because the mind first recognises letters, then common phonetic combinations, then words that fit that pattern. It does this by stimulating neural pathways that match the pattern and inhibiting those that don't.
So what is happening in your example with "tihs" is that the mind recognises the letters. There are no particular letter combinations that match any phonemes so nothing is triggered there. The initial "t" and final "s" will fire pathways that match "this" and "ties" and inhibit those that don't. "tihs" will fire "this" more than "ties" because of the letters "h" and "i" and contextual information will re-enforce that. The mind then reads it as "this" and inhibits all other possible matches. So while the mind is capable of reading "t..s" as "this" with a bit of contextual information (which why we can do crosswords) the closer there are matches to the shapes of "h" and "i", (and in the right positions), the quicker it will do it.
This also explains why phonetics beats whole language as an approach to learning to read, especially for kids with learning disabilities. The bottom up approach of phonetics better fits the brains natural processes. In most people it won't make a difference, their brain figures it out anyway, however for those with slight learning difficulties having things structured in the correct way to start with can be very important.
>Once could also look to Spanish, a closely tied language, and realized that when the person's sex is unknown "el" is used.
Why would I care what Spanish uses? English is a germanic language that has lost most of its cases, conjugations and gender. Spanish is more case and gender based and is descended from spoken Latin.
Just use a singular "they" for when you want to imply a person rather than a thing but not a gender. It has only ever been wrong in the strict rules for formal written English that were set down during the 19th Century when education and formal grammar were all the rage. "You" serves as singular and plural 2nd person and "they" is used that way in ordinary speech. No one, except a grammar pedant who is trained to spot it, will even notice a singular "they".
Gittins is writing about the extension of the US IP regimes to Australia. Truth be told it doesn't make much difference. The entertainment and software industries are global and dominated by the US and Europe. Even if you write software in Australia you are going to want to sell it in the US or markets where US companies have interests they will defend.
These days the commercial software market is dominated by off-the-shelf applications, which tend to be be either propriotary systems written in India or Open Source. So there is either a lot of IP costs already or none, it won't make much difference.
The solution to the problem is for the US Congress to fix the US IP system, and the rest of the world will follow. That however is unlikely to happen. The corporations who benefit get large sums of money while the consumers lose only a few cents at a time and don't notice, so they are unlikely to ever get mad enough to exert pressure on Congress for change.
The situation will end up exactly the same in the US as Australia, though the final price will be cheaper because of the larger market and greater competition. Bandwidth and data do cost and the user has to pay for it in the end. A few heavy users can't expect to be undercharged and have their access paid for by those who use less and are being grossly overcharged.
What you are describing is that when a new ISP starts up they have paid for plenty of bandwidth and servers, have few customers and there is plenty to go around so they offer fast cheap rates to attract new customers. When more customers join either congestion slows performance, the price goes up or they introduce caps to ration.
You may be able to keep swapping to new ISPs for a while but it is only a temporary solution to the problem.
Once the market is mature and everyone is using the service price is the main selling point. ISP end up running cheap congested services. Have a look at what happened with dial-up - you may have a 56k modem connetion to the ISP but you can only download stuff at a fraction of that. [Thats if you get a 56k connection with Telstra spliting copper lines to ration them and ASDL degrading performance you are lucky to these days].
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Centrelink already runs such a system for welfare recipients and it sucks.
Instead of just opening a letter you get an email or SMS to tell you that you have an electronic letter. Then you have to log into their website past a password and security question and download a PDF of the letter.
The website is offline most Sundays and nights for routine maintenance. At other times it is overloaded and so slow that it hard to use. For a while some of the PDFs were corrupted and unreadable by either Foxit or Adobe. And if you missed the email or SMS you missed the letter which could be important and leave you open to having your welfare suspended.
The Government has never implemented a single IT project properly and always wastes billions. I went back to getting letters and intend to continue doing so.
50 pixels -- that's an extra limb you can see while watching porn on your netbook!
You should say "See you later I am going somewhere else with reasonable conditions".
However, if you can't say that you should say "Excellent idea sir".
Linux has never ever been on its way to desktop success. It has never had more than 1% of the desktop market and is not growing. That is the entire point of the PC World article. That is not the result of a conspiracy, and referring to PC World article is not trolling.
Most people don't want to have to bother with updating an OS, let alone partitioning and installing one and hunting around to find drivers that work. Then hunting down and installing the applications they want to run. Homes and businesses want to buy a computer, push a button and use it. That is why the major desktop OS is still Windows XP, and it will become Windows 7 as people buy new computers because that is what will be installed on the computer they buy.
Linux computers cost more because they sell in smaller numbers and Linux is more costly to install, support and train users in. With Linux and X Windows, Gnome, KDE and host of libraries needed to run applications a full version of Linux runs slower than XP on a netbook. That is why Dell and Asus are ditching it, it is simply dollars because the cost of an OS is irrelevant compared to the testing and support to get and keep it working.
As to all this that my uncle's cousin runs it as a desktop so it must be growing and will soon take over the market that is all nonsense. Yes many people use Linux, but the fact is only 1% of the desktop market. Linux is modular and flexible and free but it is not homogenous, simple or easy and was never intended to be a mass market commercial OS.
And there is the claim here that universities use Linux so that is future. Not as desktops in Australia they don't. I have worked for two major universities one uses all Mac desktops and laptops the other used a mix of Macs and PCs but is now switching to centralised PCs and laptops with Microsoft Outlook, Exchange, Internet Explorer and MS Office all supplied and supported on a tender from one major computer supplier, because that is the cheapest to install and support.
Tasmania is a trial programme. The ISP are being charged a heavily subsided connection fee of $300 per customer.
There has been no cost benefit analysis down on the scheme, there have been wholesale prices set and we have no idea what it will cost in the end.
The Government's figures are for an average cost of $6000 per household, or $2000 per person. Regional centres will cost $8000 and rural properties up to $22,000 all subsidised by metropolitan users. The remotest 7% will be served by wireless and satellite.
To make that possible they are requiring 70-90% uptake. Which will be generated by ripping out copper phone lines and ADSL and restricting spectrum for wireless to make a corporatised monopoly operating on a set 6-7% profit margin to pay back the Government, and whom ever they eventually sell it of too.
No other country has tried fibre to the door of such a large low density population. No other fibre programme has gotten greater than 30% market penetration or made a profit, or generated any economic benefit. It is far from certain that retail ISP will even want to be involved in much of it, including low profitable rural areas where household incomes are on average 25% less than in metropolitan areas which would forcing the government to run its own subsidised ISP for them.
Assuming all this works the whole charges are expected to be about $33/month plus usage.
Currently the ACCC sets ADSL pricing at $16/month plus usage. At that level 40% of low income households in cities can't afford broadband. The bottom 10% of households can't afford the internet at all.
The NBN is a massive uncosted risk.
Bollocks.
Howard gave tax cuts to all sections of society. He also delivered family benefits and child care subsidies through a tightly means tested welfare system. This meant that the benefits of the boom were shared and low income families got their share. Australia has had no increase in inequality over period of Howard's government (as measured by the ABS Gini co-efficient).
Of course this was achieved by taking the benefits of the boom caused by selling resources to China and handing all of it out. Which leaves nothing in reserve, may over heat the economy and cause serious problems if the boom runs out.
Our education industry is not that large.
What Howard deregulating foreign students did was in 5 years create a $16b industry involved in selling residency permits. That scam is being shut down and we will then have to start funding our educution instead of ripping off foreign students to pay for it.
The mining industry has not agreed to the mining tax. The 3 biggest mining companies have agreed to a settlement to be negotiated by a committee chaired by Don Argus, ex-CEO of BHP. The small mining companies disagree with this. The legislation has not even been drafted. The independents and Swan are arguing over whether or not the Government's new Tax Committee will reexamine the whole issue of the mining tax (along with the GST and Henry's other recommendations).
The reason I didn't use Google Wave was simply because few of my friends did, and they didn't because was is the same for them. Whatever the technical, invitation and marketing problems were they were irrelevant. To be useful all your friends had to have a pressing need for the Wave and to bother to install and learn it. Otherwise email, facebook and twitter were good enough, and all your networks functioning on them.
The Wave was just not a successful disruptive technology. Email was and succeeded because it was universal and the alternatives were telegrams, faxes and letters.
And it's not like the lawyers didn't know it is stupid.
This was probably the most fun they had all year.
Did people actually read the article? It is about what to do with legacy OS/2 systems.
There are lots of legacy system still used by large companies and you have the choice of continuing to maintain them or developing a new system which isn't cheap. One large finance company I used to work for has just spent $100m replacing their workflow system and got one that does half of what the old system, after 20 years of modifications and tweaking, did for the money.
So reportantly IBM has considered buying modern hardware, runing Linux on it and then writing a version of OS/2 on top of that runs the old applications.
They may or may not do it.
It may or may not work.
If it does work it will replace some legacy systems sitting in basements and you will probably never hear about it unless you work supporting old OS/2 and AS/400 systems, like a friend of mine does.
Teach For America have collected statistics on all their teachers and have tried and tested theories about what makes a good teacher. They have found only two variables that matter, and matter a great deal, and by focusing on these two features have improved the performance of their scheme.
Their best teachers:
1. Are enthusiastic and engage the class room
2. They ask the students questions to check they have learnt something and then adapt their approach till until the kids gets it.
Experience, background, race, education, master's degrees and class size etc. are all totally irrelevant.
The main reason Google is developing Chrome OS is so that there will be a simple platform for running web apps for their staff, and as a bonus any corporate clients using their apps. Google are spending a lot of money on developing their own version of Ubuntu to provide a desktop for their staff, and simpler more secure platform has advantage for them.
Google's business is advertising and tax avoidance by billing all their business to Ireland, not operating systems. They developed Chrome for similar reasons. Chrome has 3.6% of the browser market as of November, down from 3.8%, and it's not like it matters to them.
Chrome OS, like most OSes, isn't going to change the world. It will have its uses though.
This is a Linux distro that can't run any non-google-SDK software. No X server wipes out being able to run most of the GUI software in the ecosystem. You locked to google. Why would I want this? ...
The best google could have done is done yet another standard Linux distro, with X in some form, so they can tap into the existing software ecosystem. </quote>
The reason you want this is because you sitting a coffee shop and want to something quickly without booting Windows7. Google have a vision of the thin client, and it is an old vision, but these days there is fast wireless and the software available to do it and the sales of netbooks indicate there is a lot of demand for the idea.
Google can't use Linux/GNU/X11/KDE/Gnome because it has already failed in the Netbook environment. It is too bloated and overly complex for doing simple stuff and no one but a Linux geek can get it to work. While X11 isn't that bad it is based on an out-dated local server/client model, the sever runs as root and it is not easy to develop for. If want to add to X you end up with complexity and diversity of a multitude of libraries and the whole KDE/Gnome thing. This makes Linux a difficult environment to develop for (as Google complained about with Chrome), unless you have lots of keen volunteers doing all the work. Very few commercial businesses have seen any profit from in getting into the Linux desktop.
Vista was a debarcle and has also failed in netbooks since it is way too bloated. Apple haven't bothered with the net book market at all relying on the iPhone. I would have thought Google would go with Android, but they have obviously realised that while it works for PDAs and phones it won't scale up.
The Netbook winner so far has thus been Window XP, with ASUS doing very minor business with Xandros!
Thus Google is dependent mostly on XP to run the platform they want -- that is hardly nice or secure. Microsoft's plan is for a plethora of versions of Windows 7 offering one platform from PDAs and Netbooks up to servers. If Google doesn't want to be dependent on Microsoft they have a problem.
So first Google designed a browser to be fast and secure and that runs applications twice as fast on XP as Firefox. Sure it it is a memory hog but how much does 1GB of RAM cost these days? . Second Google have announced a replacement for Windows XP on netbooks just before Microsoft replace it with Windows 7 and everyone starts talking about how complete Microsoft's domination of the market will be. A bit of old fashion FUD to make up for the fact that Google are 12 months too late with delivering something to compete with Windows 7.
The idea that Chrome OS will be some replacement for or compete with the Linux development environment is just wrong. Google have simply seen a gap in the market and want something fast and secure that manufacturers will install on netbooks for surfing and web applications and that will stop Microsoft gaining complete dominance. So they are cobbling together something from what they have as quickly as possible.
Personally a cheap Netbook that I can use to surf, email, watch the Tour de France on and use to play online bridge with, all of which all only requires Chrome with Flash 10, without Windows 7 sounds good to me.
Shift workers suffer higher rates of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, gastric problems, mental health problems and substance abuse problems. After 5-10 years the amount of cortisol you need to produce to work shifts destroys you physically and mentally, no matter how well you think your are coping with it.
Work it while you need the money and experience then get a job with reasonable hours.
Unfamiliar software and hardware are just one reason.
2. The main reason is there is no economic reason to install Linux. The cost of the OS and software are only a small fraction of the price and it's not worth the cost of having different models with another OS. Linux users will just install their favourite version anyway.
3. There is no Linux desktop, there are hundreds of them.
4. There is no performance gain. By the time you run Linux, X, KDE and GNOME and Open Office etc., XP with Chrome is faster.
Note there is an advantage over Vista, which is why Microsoft kept and discounted XP for netbooks. You can't claim Microsoft are dumping and old OS when the competition is free.
When Linux is useful is running a cut down system on low power devices, especially once XP is gone.
I was transfered to a different dept., where they use Macs and found everything you said.
I also found that:
1. The interface was inconsistant. In XP you have right button menu options for copy, cut, paste, rename, delete etc., all simply marked and where you want them. They are also menus under edit, control keys and the delete key as well as dropping and dragging; and they all work the same and are always available everywhere (the desktop, file manager and applications). In the Mac menus you only get some of the options and they are described by mini essays not simple easy to recongise terms. After a month on a Mac I am still not sure what is the best way of doing things in specific circumstances.
2. Droping and dragging may be fine for simple tasks but it is dreadful for dealing with multiple objects and if you want to copy sometimes and move others across a file system. Dropping and dragging with a mouse is also the best way to get carpal tunnel syndrome (I know I got it doing that in proprietary DB that required lots of it). XP and X Windows window and file managers are both much superior; I can just do stuff twice as fast in them. Though on the Mac there is a shell handy, which I found was often the best way of dealing with lots of files.
3. The use of the control key for the right button mouse options and the Mac key for the standard 'x', 'c', 'v' options and application short cuts drove me up the wall. The point of using the control key for them was so that touch-typists could use them without disrupting their flow (they are originally from Word Perfect). Using the Mac key under the 'x' is highly awkward and impossible while touch-typing.
4. Programmes that don't exit when you hit the red button drove me up the wall, I was continually having to go to the dock and quit them them because the Mac only had 512MB RAM. And if you don't when you log off the OS sends warning and you have no idea if you have left something open and unsaved, or if it is just one of those empty applications still running.
6. Having menus all at the top may be good use of a small monitor, but with a large LCD monitor you have to cover vast distances with a dreadful mouse system to get at them.
7. IE just kept crashing when you opened it, and Firefox was unstable when there were 10 or so windows open. The machine also wouldn't run Endnotes properly, even though it had the lastest OS X 10.4 on it. I suspect that those problems were directly related to the small memory.
While the OS 10.4 GUI does look nice, the idea of it being simpler and more intutive is nonsense -- pure marketing hype. Apple deliberately threw out the right mouse button and the control key and designed a limited file manager in order to make this marketing claim. It is simple to use only if you want to save and drop and drag everything to desktop (which most Mac uses do); if you need to deal with hundreds of files it's an unergonomic nightmare.
The main advantage of the Mac seems to be that it comes with standard set of hardware and applications, which does make them easier to administer than a pile of PCs with different cards, drivers and applications on them. The BSD also makes it better for multiple users and secure networking, though the many layers seem to make applications much slower and prone to problems.
But unless you are in an area where the applications you want are historically Mac (Quicktime etc.) XP is the much better UI.
dewatf.
Again people are missing the point. Brin doesn't want a learning language and he isn't talking about teaching serious programming at all. Brin just wants something that can be used to illustrate basic algorithms and logic to kids. Something that might serve as the first step in learning programming, without which many kids may never bother to try. He points out his boy is learning C++ to learn computer programming.
By line-oriented Brin means something that steps through each stage numbered line by line, and whose flow control is based on those lines numbers.
BASIC is an easy way to grasp the concept of iteration and what can be done with a few simple commands. It was universal, compact and extremely simple (you could learn it by looking at about 20 lines of code without manuals or tutorials). That is why the tradition of putting an example of an algorithm in BASIC in maths textbooks and newspaper articles about maths or astronomy developed, and it seems still persists to this day (or at least the old textbooks have).
Djkstra thought BASIC was evil because it was easier to teach university students to programme well if they hadn't picked up bad habits playing around with BASIC at home. He ignores the fact that it enabled them to understand the logic of machine language that all programmes are built from, or that it might have inspired them to come to his class in the first place. There is no harm in learning a bit of BASIC first, though these days you would want to switch to something better before getting serious about programming.
You could use Python to demonstrate algorithms but Python isn't universally known so you won't find the examples written in it; you also have to download and install it; you need to know a bit about its idiosyncratic syntax (indentation, colons etc.) before you can do anything; to replicate what a goto can accomplish you would need learn flow control functions or how to define and call procedures and how Python passes variables etc.
Brin's point is that kids aren't going to bother with that so aren't even going to start the journey. Have we lost some advantages of simplicity and universality with the great range of good high-level languages available today? Whether Brin is right or not who knows? It is just an op-ed. It made me think and remember how I learnt about algorithms and programming, which was worthwhile.
dewatf.
Electionmethod are bunch of ideologues trying to solve the theoretical problem of how to resolve the most complex set of relative preferences possible. It is something that you can construct half-a-dozen vote examples for letters but it is not something that happens when millions of real people vote for real candidates in real elections. You don't get random spreads of preferences; people preference like candidates or they vote for their candidate and then an independant who they think might win if they hate the other side.
Condorcet has such a complex counting method that it abstracts the whole process so far away from the way people really think about voting that it would stop voters understanding what is going on and destroy trust in the electoral system. That is why it has never been used for anything serious despite being around for hundreds of years.
Optional preferential voting (IRV) solves the major problem of first-past-the-post, which is multiple candidates on one side of politics can split the vote handing the result to the other side. It does it in simple way that is the same as run off elections without all the extra delay and expense.
It can be explained simply: use numbers to rank as many candidates as you want in order of preference; if someone gets 50% they win, if not you eliminate the candidate the least people wanted to win and allocate any preferences and keep doing that until someone wins.
What's more you can get a fair idea of what is happening from partial counts and you can run opinion polls on preferences and get some idea of the outcome. Optional preferential voting is also not so complicated that it can't be run on paper if you don't want to use computerised voting. If you put symbols on the ballot beside the names then the illiterate can also vote (important in some parts of the world). The basic method can used for single representative and multiple reresentative elecctions.
One thing, however, you want to avoid at all costs is the Australian system of complusory preferences (where you have to preference every candidate) especially for multiple representative elections. That leads to massively complex counts. Then registered party preference tickets (which 95% use for the senate) were introduced to simply things, which means the parties horse trade perferences to try and get the best result for themselves, so and you end up with ballot papers 2 metres long as everyone tries to cash in on the game,.often running fake parties to exploit the process.
To express an individual vote people then have to number upto 200 boxes, and if they make mistakes their votes become informal. Though a clause was introduced that getting 90% filled in with only 3 simple errors was good enough.
dewatf.
>Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Not it is not. As the article says it is because the mind first recognises letters, then common phonetic combinations, then words that fit that pattern. It does this by stimulating neural pathways that match the pattern and inhibiting those that don't.
So what is happening in your example with "tihs" is that the mind recognises the letters. There are no particular letter combinations that match any phonemes so nothing is triggered there. The initial "t" and final "s" will fire pathways that match "this" and "ties" and inhibit those that don't. "tihs" will fire "this" more than "ties" because of the letters "h" and "i" and contextual information will re-enforce that. The mind then reads it as "this" and inhibits all other possible matches. So while the mind is capable of reading "t..s" as "this" with a bit of contextual information (which why we can do crosswords) the closer there are matches to the shapes of "h" and "i", (and in the right positions), the quicker it will do it.
This also explains why phonetics beats whole language as an approach to learning to read, especially for kids with learning disabilities. The bottom up approach of phonetics better fits the brains natural processes. In most people it won't make a difference, their brain figures it out anyway, however for those with slight learning difficulties having things structured in the correct way to start with can be very important.
dewatf.
>Once could also look to Spanish, a closely tied language, and realized that when the person's sex is unknown "el" is used.
Why would I care what Spanish uses?
English is a germanic language that has lost most of its cases, conjugations and gender. Spanish is more case and gender based and is descended from spoken Latin.
Just use a singular "they" for when you want to imply a person rather than a thing but not a gender. It has only ever been wrong in the strict rules for formal written English that were set down during the 19th Century when education and formal grammar were all the rage. "You" serves as singular and plural 2nd person and "they" is used that way in ordinary speech. No one, except a grammar pedant who is trained to spot it, will even notice a singular "they".
dewatf.
Gittins is writing about the extension of the US IP regimes to Australia. Truth be told it doesn't make much difference. The entertainment and software industries are global and dominated by the US and Europe. Even if you write software in Australia you are going to want to sell it in the US or markets where US companies have interests they will defend.
These days the commercial software market is dominated by off-the-shelf applications, which tend to be be either propriotary systems written in India or Open Source. So there is either a lot of IP costs already or none, it won't make much difference.
The solution to the problem is for the US Congress to fix the US IP system, and the rest of the world will follow. That however is unlikely to happen. The corporations who benefit get large sums of money while the consumers lose only a few cents at a time and don't notice, so they are unlikely to ever get mad enough to exert pressure on Congress for change.
The situation will end up exactly the same in the US as Australia, though the final price will be cheaper because of the larger market and greater competition. Bandwidth and data do cost and the user has to pay for it in the end. A few heavy users can't expect to be undercharged and have their access paid for by those who use less and are being grossly overcharged.
What you are describing is that when a new ISP starts up they have paid for plenty of bandwidth and servers, have few customers and there is plenty to go around so they offer fast cheap rates to attract new customers. When more customers join either congestion slows performance, the price goes up or they introduce caps to ration.
You may be able to keep swapping to new ISPs for a while but it is only a temporary solution to the problem.
Once the market is mature and everyone is using the service price is the main selling point. ISP end up running cheap congested services. Have a look at what happened with dial-up - you may have a 56k modem connetion to the ISP but you can only download stuff at a fraction of that. [Thats if you get a 56k connection with Telstra spliting copper lines to ration them and ASDL degrading performance you are lucky to these days].
dewatf.