With regard to Way Out #2, this is not possible with existing resources (by which I mean Earth - we'd need to start farming land and mining resources somewhere else). I suspect that a combination of 2 and 3 will be necessary to solve that problem long term, although I don't think it will actually happen.
Those shows are also totally unrealistic. Real life lawyers, cops, and doctors don't actually go through life like the people you see on TV. Perhaps most egregious of all are the "sciencey" shows like CSI, where they depict a bunch of science that's really, really inaccurate. It all makes for an exciting story, but it's not accurate by any stretch.
Now think of trying to make an engineering drama - would it work? If it did, would it be remotely accurate? Would kids who liked the show, when they started college and discovered that real engineering is nothing like it was on TV, stick it out and learn some real science and math? Or would they switch to a more glamorous major when they hit second semester calculus?
Will you still feel this is not a problem if Apple decides GMail can't access your Contacts?
On the contrary, this is desired behaviour. I should decide whether a GMail plugin is allowed to access my Contacts; it should not be able to do so without authorization. I don't really think the "cloud" needs to know everyone in my address book.
Oddly, yes. When I brought up the very same issue as is described by this article (that Apple may be locking down MacOS like it has with iOS), I was shouted down by several friends with comments along the lines of "The App Store is awesome, we finally have someplace we know we can search for software software that doesn't contain viruses. We don't want to have to worry about all the details that you do."
It abdicates any responsibility. That's why people love to say "Oh, I'm computer illiterate" or similar, seemingly self-deprecating remarks. This doesn't mean "I recognize your skill." This means "I can't be bothered to figure this out. Just make it go." That's what most people seem to want; someone to just make it go.
Apple's ecosystem is massively popular because Steve made it go, without having to understand anything more complicated than "enter your e-mail address and credit card number here, then click this button." There were problems, certainly, and still are, but the promise that someone else will just make it go is a powerful motivator.
People bought Android phones because AT&T was the only carrier with the iPhone, and people wanted that kind of shiny new device without having to switch networks. The sales people even told their customers "this is our version of the iPhone"** to make those sales. Most of those people were counting on Google to just make it go.
** As recounted by at least two Android customers when I tried to explain to them that they would need to buy additional software to access their Exchange mailboxes with Push functionality.
I think Apple is definitely in the "if it can't run well, disable it" camp. They disabled certain features in iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G (and when a jailbreak added them back, they crushed performance). I admit that the iPhone 3G did run "better" with iOS 3 than 4, but that's not really a surprising problem, and there were/are workarounds.
On the other hand, I'm not really sure where the phone manufacturers come down. I can see ICS being withheld from the Nexus One if it doesn't meet the requirements, which apparently include GPU minimum specs. However, there are a lot of different handsets available, from a bunch of different hardware manufacturers, which have nearly identical hardware but which all have different versions of Android installed. In fact, while shopping this summer I realized I could buy a phone running Android 2.3 that didn't have a couple of features I had been hoping for, or one with slightly better hardware specs but that was restricted to Android 2.2. Other, seemingly similar phones (similar processor speeds, similar memory specs) were restricted to Android 2.1. Would they ever be updated? No one can say. Why were they still running the old versions? Who knows?
It's worse - sometimes the movie won't play because you don't have the right version of firmware on your player, even if you've just updated that afternoon (The ads, previews, etc. always play).
Don't shoot Beiber - shoot his producers. They're the ones perpetrating the crap. If you knocked down the kids, the producers would just pick another one to stick in their spot, because in that business, it doesn't matter. Take out the producers, and we're back to sorting on talent, not budget. It would be a whole different world...
Space initiatives are being funded because some people are crazy billionaires and want to get to space, so they're paying for it. Not all government programs will get a patron to fund them, especially the ones that will never turn even an imaginary profit.
The worst thing to happen to education in the US was making it a "right" instead of a privilege.
And BTW, the lower quintiles should be learning a trade in woodshop or metal fabrication,
I will tentatively agree with you on the former point (it's definitely bad, but I don't know that it's necessarily the worst thing). I definitely agree with you on the latter point. Trade and vocational schools are sorely under-valued in this country, and it's not really woodshop or metal-working these days (those jobs barely exist in the US anymore). You could easily teach elementary programming, sales, IT, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, etc. as two-year trade programs and eliminate the glut of college "educated" people who can't find work because no one told them that college was about learning to think, not learning to do.
As a side benefit, it would reduce the demand side of the college equation, theoretically making college and university tracks cheaper for those who want to pursue real research. (Yes, I realize the idea of the price of tuition ever actually decreasing is laughable, but the real price of education could go down as the dollar continues to depreciate).
Private schools are allowed to screen attendees - most in my area have/had entrance exams. When you are not required to serve the lower few quintiles of the student population, it's much easier to have high average scores. Private schools also effectively screen for income level (maybe not explicitly, but they do). That shows a whole other set of disparities.
The top students at the private schools don't perform any better than the top students at the public schools, but the averages are higher because the lower performing students just aren't there.
In the global, out-sourcing, speculative economy we have now, Bell Labs is an impossibility. Basic Research has too many steps between it and "Profit" to make shareholders happy; no publicly-traded company would be able to keep funding research for more than a few years before the money-men (and -women) demanded bigger profits.
Wall Street makes it impossible for anyone that isn't government-funded to do real research.
True, the downside is that you're using the big G and they're mining your texts for data like everything else. However, you can pull up your GoogleVoice account in a browser, and send texts back and forth to whomever for free.
Paper didn't fail miserably - paper ballots work fantastically. Punch-cards failed miserably, which was the problem in Florida. Given that every child in this country is rigorously trained in the use of scan-tron forms (the kind where you fill in or mark the bubble for the answer you want), I think we should switch to that model. They are easily machine readable, and easily human (re-)countable. Heck, it'll give all those College Board employees something to do in the off-season.
I definitely prefer machine-readable paper ballots. I've seen "complete the arrow" ballots (you fill in the middle of the arrow in front of the candidate you want), with multiple contests per side, that seem to work fine. Easily machine readable, and easily human readable. Sounds like the beginning a list of requirements for any modern voting system, methinks.
Incidentally, city officials (from various cities) have give parking turnover as the primary reason to have parking meters, and to charge as much as they do.
I'm skeptical of your claims on Apple blocking generic RAM; I've had no trouble at all with non-Apple-branded RAM in any Mac. I admittedly tend to buy from Crucial or similar vendors due to their reputations (I've seen no-name RAM fail in plenty of white-box PCs, too), but a bunch of Dell-branded FB-Dimms I scrounged from some derelict PE1950's work just fine in my Mac Pro, even without the crazy Apple-specific heat-sinks on them.
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China and India had no trouble with the Kyoto protocol, because it exempted them from any of the requirements.
With regard to Way Out #2, this is not possible with existing resources (by which I mean Earth - we'd need to start farming land and mining resources somewhere else). I suspect that a combination of 2 and 3 will be necessary to solve that problem long term, although I don't think it will actually happen.
But that would admittedly be a pretty boring episode. And not the sort of thing he usually worries about.
I'm not sure that would stop them. Can you imagine all the people on the train playing angry birds by voice command!?
It's a good thing my headphones are sound isolating. I'd hate to have to listen to that.
I have seen atrocious code from BSCS folks.
Oooh, you mean a Bachelor's of Science in Computer Science. Carry on.
Also, I'd have to agree about the abysmal state of vocational training options in the US.
Those shows are also totally unrealistic. Real life lawyers, cops, and doctors don't actually go through life like the people you see on TV. Perhaps most egregious of all are the "sciencey" shows like CSI, where they depict a bunch of science that's really, really inaccurate. It all makes for an exciting story, but it's not accurate by any stretch.
Now think of trying to make an engineering drama - would it work? If it did, would it be remotely accurate? Would kids who liked the show, when they started college and discovered that real engineering is nothing like it was on TV, stick it out and learn some real science and math? Or would they switch to a more glamorous major when they hit second semester calculus?
I 1 the sandbox.
Will you still feel this is not a problem if Apple decides GMail can't access your Contacts?
On the contrary, this is desired behaviour. I should decide whether a GMail plugin is allowed to access my Contacts; it should not be able to do so without authorization. I don't really think the "cloud" needs to know everyone in my address book.
Oddly, yes. When I brought up the very same issue as is described by this article (that Apple may be locking down MacOS like it has with iOS), I was shouted down by several friends with comments along the lines of "The App Store is awesome, we finally have someplace we know we can search for software software that doesn't contain viruses. We don't want to have to worry about all the details that you do."
The App Store will stay - the masses want it.
The point that most people in this thread are trying to make is that Apple appears to be making them just a little bit closer together.
It abdicates any responsibility. That's why people love to say "Oh, I'm computer illiterate" or similar, seemingly self-deprecating remarks. This doesn't mean "I recognize your skill." This means "I can't be bothered to figure this out. Just make it go." That's what most people seem to want; someone to just make it go.
Apple's ecosystem is massively popular because Steve made it go, without having to understand anything more complicated than "enter your e-mail address and credit card number here, then click this button." There were problems, certainly, and still are, but the promise that someone else will just make it go is a powerful motivator.
People bought Android phones because AT&T was the only carrier with the iPhone, and people wanted that kind of shiny new device without having to switch networks. The sales people even told their customers "this is our version of the iPhone"** to make those sales. Most of those people were counting on Google to just make it go.
** As recounted by at least two Android customers when I tried to explain to them that they would need to buy additional software to access their Exchange mailboxes with Push functionality.
Indeed. Anna finally out for the N8 in the US!
Although, it still doesn't support WPA enterprise wi-fi networks, but hey, you can't ask for everything, right?
I think Apple is definitely in the "if it can't run well, disable it" camp. They disabled certain features in iOS 4 on the iPhone 3G (and when a jailbreak added them back, they crushed performance). I admit that the iPhone 3G did run "better" with iOS 3 than 4, but that's not really a surprising problem, and there were/are workarounds.
On the other hand, I'm not really sure where the phone manufacturers come down. I can see ICS being withheld from the Nexus One if it doesn't meet the requirements, which apparently include GPU minimum specs. However, there are a lot of different handsets available, from a bunch of different hardware manufacturers, which have nearly identical hardware but which all have different versions of Android installed. In fact, while shopping this summer I realized I could buy a phone running Android 2.3 that didn't have a couple of features I had been hoping for, or one with slightly better hardware specs but that was restricted to Android 2.2. Other, seemingly similar phones (similar processor speeds, similar memory specs) were restricted to Android 2.1. Would they ever be updated? No one can say. Why were they still running the old versions? Who knows?
It's worse - sometimes the movie won't play because you don't have the right version of firmware on your player, even if you've just updated that afternoon (The ads, previews, etc. always play).
Don't shoot Beiber - shoot his producers. They're the ones perpetrating the crap. If you knocked down the kids, the producers would just pick another one to stick in their spot, because in that business, it doesn't matter. Take out the producers, and we're back to sorting on talent, not budget. It would be a whole different world...
Seriously. Some people have no respect for tradition.
Space initiatives are being funded because some people are crazy billionaires and want to get to space, so they're paying for it. Not all government programs will get a patron to fund them, especially the ones that will never turn even an imaginary profit.
The worst thing to happen to education in the US was making it a "right" instead of a privilege.
And BTW, the lower quintiles should be learning a trade in woodshop or metal fabrication,
I will tentatively agree with you on the former point (it's definitely bad, but I don't know that it's necessarily the worst thing). I definitely agree with you on the latter point. Trade and vocational schools are sorely under-valued in this country, and it's not really woodshop or metal-working these days (those jobs barely exist in the US anymore). You could easily teach elementary programming, sales, IT, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, etc. as two-year trade programs and eliminate the glut of college "educated" people who can't find work because no one told them that college was about learning to think, not learning to do.
As a side benefit, it would reduce the demand side of the college equation, theoretically making college and university tracks cheaper for those who want to pursue real research. (Yes, I realize the idea of the price of tuition ever actually decreasing is laughable, but the real price of education could go down as the dollar continues to depreciate).
Private schools are allowed to screen attendees - most in my area have/had entrance exams. When you are not required to serve the lower few quintiles of the student population, it's much easier to have high average scores. Private schools also effectively screen for income level (maybe not explicitly, but they do). That shows a whole other set of disparities.
The top students at the private schools don't perform any better than the top students at the public schools, but the averages are higher because the lower performing students just aren't there.
In the global, out-sourcing, speculative economy we have now, Bell Labs is an impossibility. Basic Research has too many steps between it and "Profit" to make shareholders happy; no publicly-traded company would be able to keep funding research for more than a few years before the money-men (and -women) demanded bigger profits.
Wall Street makes it impossible for anyone that isn't government-funded to do real research.
True, the downside is that you're using the big G and they're mining your texts for data like everything else. However, you can pull up your GoogleVoice account in a browser, and send texts back and forth to whomever for free.
Paper didn't fail miserably - paper ballots work fantastically. Punch-cards failed miserably, which was the problem in Florida. Given that every child in this country is rigorously trained in the use of scan-tron forms (the kind where you fill in or mark the bubble for the answer you want), I think we should switch to that model. They are easily machine readable, and easily human (re-)countable. Heck, it'll give all those College Board employees something to do in the off-season.
I definitely prefer machine-readable paper ballots. I've seen "complete the arrow" ballots (you fill in the middle of the arrow in front of the candidate you want), with multiple contests per side, that seem to work fine. Easily machine readable, and easily human readable. Sounds like the beginning a list of requirements for any modern voting system, methinks.
Incidentally, city officials (from various cities) have give parking turnover as the primary reason to have parking meters, and to charge as much as they do.
I'm skeptical of your claims on Apple blocking generic RAM; I've had no trouble at all with non-Apple-branded RAM in any Mac. I admittedly tend to buy from Crucial or similar vendors due to their reputations (I've seen no-name RAM fail in plenty of white-box PCs, too), but a bunch of Dell-branded FB-Dimms I scrounged from some derelict PE1950's work just fine in my Mac Pro, even without the crazy Apple-specific heat-sinks on them.