There is a difference between going back to a nomadic life and coming from one - primitive man was horrid on the environment. They planted one crop until it would no longer grow and moved on, they killed indiscriminately, they did a great deal of damage. The article quoted simply restates that idea and I doubt many will argue.
There is no "sustainability" in a modern high tech world. We require roads, buildings, energy, food, and a great deal of other infrastructure to live. Even if that is as low an impact as possible with respect to emissions do you *really* think that our concrete cities somehow are "sustainable"? Are we just going to keep building up? I guess instead of Turtles all the we down we will have concrete all the way up?
It is an inherently non-sustainable system. We survive by hoping to find new places to rob to pay for what we have taken. It *will* run out at some point.
It's not like computing resources where there is some finite level we can shrink things - it is still going to be a while before we truly hate that barrier. But when we do computers just aren't going to go away. When we hit the finite barrier with resources we start dying.
When we reach a point where there is nothing left to consume to pay for us it will stop. Maybe that will last long enough that we finally get enough space exploration that we can rob a great number of places (and thus meet my definition of radical technological changes - outside of breaking some fairly major laws I do not see anything outside of that working), but I doubt it.
Peak oil will happen, at some point we will be required to make a choice between housing/shelter and food plots, and we will surpass our ability to gather energy. Wind, Solar, Geothermal, Coal, Oil, Tidal, all of them require room to have the manufacturing *and* have environmental impacts too (some of those minor when used as an alternative, major when used a primary source).
Which leaves us - as a race - two real options: create some radical piece of technology that fixes this (in science fiction we can see this in Star Trek), or eventually fall back to a nomadic life style (which implies our current knowledge but at a much reduced global population).
Like Moore's law running out I'm not going to be betting it will happen in my life time, but one of those two things is inevitable. There is still a lot this Earth has to give. However the models given by most of our experts on Global Ecology vehemently disagree with that and say if we do not radically change in the next 20 years we will die. I just have to note for the last 30 or so years doom has been 10-20 years away.
There is nothing we can do with respect to "sustainability" to counter what their models show. At best we put things off and hope for a miracle. I find their "science" quite lacking (indeed, that it passes peer review shows how bad our educational system has become) and think we have longer than that - yet the ultimate conclusion is still more correct than wrong.
That being said plenty of reasons to adopt a great deal of those practices. If done well it saves in costs, health, and overall quality of life. The sad thing is that those things would have been good enough to get mostly passed. But no, we have to have the world ending 10-20 years from now. So we stay at our current rate of consumption, ignore the real threats because the fake ones have been so over-aggrandized, and march our merry way to oblivion for political reasons.
Not much energy to cremate if we all killed ourselves - no one to run the crematoriums. Further the Methane from rotting would be less than many natural source we have now - plus since it is all in one big month long rotting fest it isn't like years of accumulation. It's not like the earth doesn't have natural scrubbers of green house gasses (otherwise known as plants and many types of bacteria).
There are two basic ways for us to lower pollution output: stop living our modern high energy lifestyles or have an extreme technological breakthrough. I doubt the latter is going to occur anytime soon, even if it was discovered today there would be no way we could mass produce it enough to effectively change over our lifestyles and infrastructure (and it would have to be massive gains for it to most likely be worth the energy cost of the constructions of the new technology and recycling the waste from the old). Even if telecommuting and online line shopping saved some it is like trying to stop a hurricane by building a 4x8 wall to block the winds. There is no way for us to simply make minor shifts in technology yet live the same lifestyle and change anything - indeed we tend to not fully understand the issues yet enough to know if changes are often a net positive or negative (other than we know if we killed off most of us and went back to a nomadic life it would immediately stop).
If the situation is as dire as many say it is we are simply doomed one way or another - the ultimate question then becomes do we accept that and do what has to be done or wait till it degenerates into anarchy and only the strong survive. While the GP is a joke, it is unfortunately the only conclusion one has to draw if the models are correct. If the models are incorrect and it is not a dire situation then we are all wasting time too. Personally I'll take the slow way as we will find out eventually who is correct and other than it happening in a longer period of time the end result is going to be the same, but in the end it *is* "Save the planet, Kill yourself" if the predictions are correct, its just the manner of how we do it and the amount of time it takes.
What you do not understand is the whole "green movement" industry - and it is certainly an industry - is totally committed to the idea of carbon as a waste. This goes from the scientist trying to get funding up through those selling intangibles like Carbon Credits. It isn't about making the world a better place, it is about making money from it. To do that they need a dedicated bunch of people who will go out and champion what they say and lucky for them there are a great deal of people who are quit willing to do that. Those people may be thinking of saving the planet and simply do not know better, they are what the old Soviets called "useful Idiots". Many are highly educated but the education system is turned to produce people like that, not ones that can truly think and look at a bigger picture. *None* of the methods that do not make a corporation loads of money or give the government a great deal of power are even explored because money/power is what they are after. Even those that are pushed are simply abused.
IMO the whole situation would be even sadder if I thought most of those pushing for things like this even believed what they are saying because they would be the worst kinds of traitor (well that or they are so stupid as to be ignored and I do not think they are stupid). I'll believe it is as bad as most say it is when they start living like they believe it. Never invest in anything that those trying to tell you how wonderful or crucial it is that you do something yet they refuse to do it. I do not know where the truth sits - both sides of this debate are primarily running a con game and jockying to see who holds the money and power. Both sides do not remotely act the way they say we MUST, indeed the leaders of both sides act in about as detrimental way as they can if their ideas are true.
I find it likely that humans will have some major catastrophe in the semi-near future from all of this (it goes well beyond climate science and is nearly endemic in the research and education system) because the race isn't to find out what is really going on but is to garner funding/publications for scientists and money/power for corporations and govt officials. It will either stay so obviously corrupt that nothing gets done until it truly does spiral away. It doesn't even matter if some theory is correct or not, the "science" is so shoddily done that if it *is* occurring it is too easy to dismiss and if it is not and there is a looming catastrophe (I do not think we can continue as we are without one) we will not see it. The other big possibility is some idiot will do a large scale adoption of something like this that makes matters very much worse and it spirals away.
It all depends on how you define "rewards", it is implied the spies were doing this for money and if that is the case you are absolutely wrong. Very few US soldiers (and most of the first world, I do not mean to imply British, Canadian, Australian, indeed most countries soldiers are different) and certainly the vast majority of the worlds fire fighters (is there *anyplace* that they get the power granted to oppressive Law Enforcement?) are not in it for money. As such the risks to their lives are on a totally different metric. Most would say their reward far outweighs the risk. Many spies will say so too - certainly given the wages many that work for the CIA, MI5, the old KGB, and a number of other intelligence (that is - spies) aren't rolling in money despite what the James Bond movies show. Most have a high likely hood of death or imprisonment with the parent government not doing much other than looking the other way if caught too.
The ones that go for money, well that is just plain stupid. It is *never* enough to cover the risk even if they could realistically spend it. Since these people aren't really to be trusted to begin with - after all they are obviously out for the highest bidder - they aren't going to be someone that you fight to bring home at all. They will be left to whatever the host country does to them. Further since their main value is in the information they will gather most countries hiring them will push well past what is safe - you wouldn't want to lose a truly dedicated spy but that person that has leaked everything they know for money: why wouldn't you push for more? No skin off your back if they get caught (who is shocked and angered that one country is spying on another) and you may get a real payoff. Even if not and they get caught - who is going to sue you if you do not deliver on the money?
Lets face it, the Rosenberg's were mentioned in the article and what did it buy them with respect to money? Absolutely squat for them and their family. All it did was make them live in infamy, the Russians weren't about to spend the resources to get them back after they bled them dry of information and why give their descendants money if they already got what they wanted? That is even if the US would have allowed it to happen. However as I understand they felt that giving the Russians the information was more important than the money and they may have very well died figuring they did the Right Thing (and that is a separate argument).
The only spies that make any sense are the same ones that make sense for police, firefighters, and soldier - it is a cause you believe in and serving that cause is the major influence. That doesn't mean many will not get lured in by money or that money isn't a factor. Money is always a factor, no matter if you take the most altruistic full time position on the planet you still have to eat, drink, and have shelter (which takes money). However is money is your *main* factor with being a spy you are an idiot and the country hiring you will only use you as much as it can - as said your countries local fire fighters die for less money, but that isn't what they do their job for.
for the same reason Apple is working on a 7" one (at least according to rumor sources that have historically been very accurate) - for many people the 10" is too big (I happen to be one of them).
It's too big to easily carry around in an airport - I'm never going to find a coat, cargo pants, or even most small carry bags that it will slip into (one may find a bag for it, but if so then nothing else is going into it unless you get a fairly large bag). It's bigger than what I want to sit by me at the house just for looking something up on the internet - it gets heavy if you have to hold it for long. But then it is too small for most other things. It is too small for me to read for hours (and therefore put up with the size), it is too small to do real work on so I'm not going to find a large man-purse to carry the thing around in.
A 7" has none of those issues. I have coat pockets during the winter it is going to fit in and during the summer it will easily slip into any bag I happen to be carrying things in (for truly mobile I have my phone). I still can't read on it for hours or do real work on it, but then I'm not in a form factor I feel I'm lugging around dead weight so I do not care (I have a laptop or a netbook that is the minimum size for real work or reading for hours). It's small enough that I can put it on my end table and not have just it so it can co-exist with the TV remote, a snack bowl, and my drink.
So if I'm to get a tablet (not sure if I am or not) a 7" version is the only one that does me any good. The main question is going to be price, will they offer similar ones to Apple? We dunno, this one is specced closer to the top end iPad that is nearly 1000 US dollars and people are already comparing it price wise to the cheapest of the iPads (that is also the model you hear when people quote how much an iPad costs), While not really fair that will hurt.
I've purchased a few geek/nerd shirts over the years and most are just to pass away the time - there have really only been two I truly liked (I have a few that were given to me that mean more to me).
The second place slot was an OpenSSH shirt that the front said something along the lines of "SSH, it is a secret" and the back had a blowfish with rsh, ftp, and telnet gravestones and freshly dug gravestones. It was something that other people that knew about OpenSSH got immediately and something that generated questions in other people. Having been asked enough I had an answer that most people didn't have their eyes glaze over, though few were interested in it.
My favorite was the DeCSS shirt with the the CSS logo and the red circle with a slash and the source on the back. It garnered an *enormous* number of questions and was an easy sound bite whilst standing in line to the cashier in the grocery store. By that time most had DvD's and most could understand the issues - indeed it was a time when most could go back and try what I said and then look it up and be angry. I regularly shopped the same places (being in college at the time limited my shopping to mostly k-mart and wal-mart) so they tended to remember me by my shirt and make comments on what they had discovered. Unlike the OpenSSH it was something they could understand *and* be irritated at when pointed out.
IMO that was a perfect shirt at the perfect time for a politically active geek in the US (be they Republican, Democrat, or Something Else). It was something we could all get behind, was fairly easy for non-geeks to understand, and there was *clearly* a civil rights violation going on (though it each "side" blamed the other). Not to mention the whole amusement factor of the shirt being illegal to wear. Sadly a great deal of those issues are still being fought today but in a way that a simple shirt can't express.
There is a great deal of energy lost out there. Lots of heat, sound, inertia, etc that just bleeds away (well, at least with respect to forms we find useful). The question is can we *efficiently* gather it back up - not *can* we gather it back up. The same things goes with any recycling of "waste" products - it isn't always good to recycle them. Sometimes the wast products from capturing that energy is worse than letting that energy go away (I know for a long time the waste products from solar panel production/disposal were *significantly* worse than any carbon emissions you were saving) and sometimes it is cheap (and therefor mroe resources can go towards fixing the long term issue) to *not* recycle.
That's a good question for most "environmental" questions and it isn't easy. Lets take Corn based ethanol fuels - there are a number of studies out there that show it takes *more* energy to create them than if you just stayed with oil based products. The gains are probably not in that arena, they are either in emissions or dependence on a number of not so great human rights nations. Then we can take into account Wind Power - something that looks great in all these things. Well, that is, until you look at the impact on bird wildlife in those regions - is it worth the cost? Hard to say, if you are primarily worried about carbon emissions then very much so, if you are primarily worried about avian life then most assuredly not, if you want the best over all then all you pretty much get are both sides battling it out for which one is correct (and IMO neither one is).
So, if we cut carbon emissions by 50% but increase sulfur emissions by 15% to collect all this sound energy it isn't too good for us, though under certain people views that is a "win". I do not know and I'm not trying to say it is a good or bad (in this case there may be no downside whatsoever) idea - just that this article (along with the vast vast vast majority of environmental articles and studies out there) do not really address this well. In the long term we will bump against levels where we have to do this, but for right now we are still in an infantancy stage and we are better off looking for better processes than refining our current ones - unless our current ones are so bad that we need to refine them now (and energy loss to sound is minor compared to the rest of the system).
They are in college - if they can't adapt to "no devices with wireless access" then they do not deserve their degree - even more so in a highly technical field that requires the ability to adapt to new information for their whole career. They are going to complain anytime you take something away that would make things easier, further the ones planning on cheating are going to *certainly* complain if they think it will get their ability to cheat back.
Pick an inexpensive calculator that can do the math needed - there are a plethora of them on the market - and require it. It's going to be cheaper than their text book anyway. Your math department probably already standardizes on one. If someone wants a different calculator take it on a case by case basis (for instance I have several of the older HP's that I MUCH prefer over any other calculator on the market - no reason why I couldn't use them and I never had professor that tried to force me to use TI's - I just couldn't get help on how to use it from the teacher. Since I had done assembly programming on the processor I can't say I found that an issue:)). If someone complains like your English as a second language person - point out that we have things called "books" that have that very same information in them too.
It's not really a hard problem, it is only hard if you think the students complaining are being reasonable. They weren't when I was in school, they weren't when my professors were in school, and they aren't now - most never have been in the history of this type of education. Indeed, my experience is that my generation - high school class of 1993 were the first to really start hitting a decline (my generation didn't walk to school barefoot uphill both ways in the snow - we demanded a snowmobile and the state grate a level road out!). Much before that and in my field (CS) but not my specialty (FLAC and Parallel Algorithms) I couldn't follow a well written thesis beyond the introduction, conclusion, and noting their process (that is as it should be). When I was in school in many disciplines totally unrelated to mine I can not only follow a *dissertation* but in many of the "softer" courses I'm certain I could have written them. It's even worse now.
There are still really bright motivated students - look at what they are doing to see if you really need too. If the person who is there because they love the field and would be doing it even without the education is complaining then take note. If the person who is looking for a degree and a good salary is complaining realize they are usually out for the degree to get a position and are looking for the path of least resistance to a good salary (most not even realizing that the good positions are going to go to the person who loves it, not the one who sees it as a distraction from and source of money to do what they really want to do). Your job isn't to make them feel good or be happy, it is to instruct them and ensure that they can meet the requirements for that career - if they want a job there are better ways to do it (and most of those will end up paying better in the long run for them too).
You will not be liked by most students (after all most will take the one that lets them cheat over the one that forces them to learn) and depending on your department you may not be able to do that. I still keep in touch with some of my professors from time to time and I know that they base funding partially on the percentage graduating the course work - as such there is tremendous pressure to graduate instead of teach. One of the constant complaints is that they can't balance the requirement to graduate with the requirement to have highly employable graduates. I can assure you that a number of my professors were certainly "old school" in how they approached your course work (I'm dyslexic and it was tough to get concessions for that at first, though once they knew me well enough to know I sought out the hard courses and I wasn't trying to cheat they gave me whatever I asked for).
Iit will depend on the application, I assume the iPhone is the same way as it is fairly typical of devices with fairly limited resources.
There are life cycles of an android application, some of them (say loosing focus) means they tend to store states so that when you return to them they are where you left off. There are also state changes where the OS totally kills the application and nothing is saved - if you write for the Android platform you *must* assume under a heavy load this will occur. However it is rare. So for the most part they can probably get it but it isn't guaranteed. Nor do I know of any way to force a random application to do such a thing - you would most likely need to get the Android source and modify your own ROM. While possible it isn't likely and that behavior will break a number of applications as it isn't a normal application process life-cycle.
A more relevant question is there any device that doesn't leave similar types of trails? If you carry a recording device that monitors you location, your schedule, your e-mail, your search patterns, and a great deal of your life do not be surprised when law enforcement can get a hold of it.
We have a few big tech companies that many have wondered if they can make it without their founders. Apple floundered when Jobs left for the first time, Microsoft is doing the same thing too. From all reports Gates truly is keeping a hands off approach to his retirement from them and I think it shows.
Love em, hate em, or indifferent one has to note that both Apple and Microsoft seem to be built around the ideas of one person - at the least they both flounder when that one person tries to step away.
Only if they are prosecuted - indeed we have so many laws out there that it is an unusual person who would *not* violate at least something. Some figure this is by design, personally I figure the old saying of never attributing to malice what can be attributed to stupidity holds true, but YMMV. However things are only truly illegal if you are prosecuted, though they may be against the law to do what good is the law if it isn't enforced?
Further ones needs to note that *at best* this guy is doing something dishonest so we know that honesty isn't a big part of his business. As such, whilst it fits many of our (including mine) idea of something I would expect I also wouldn't get totally worked up until we heard something more substantive. After all this certainly garnered his company a great deal of press.
Frankly I do something in between - "A-soos". In their adds I've heard it said both ways so I went back to how I said it from the beginning, which I have also heard in their adds. Given that I rather suspect that they prefer to pander to every way one can say it and do so.
I'm assuming this is some form of verbal jousting and I found that amusing, however if it is not do recall that Wozniak was the other half of the original founders. Wozniak is a geek, nerd, or whatever term you wish to describe most of us here at heart, though not much of a business man. I've always understood why people liked him and what Apple did whilst he had some say so, never understood why they like Jobs and his Apple. Jobs is every bit (and IMO more so) ruthless as Gates is, he just is better at marketing his self image than gates is.
I'll certainly believe that Wozniak/Jobs had the idea of it being for Turing and isn't something tacked on after the fact (which is what you imply if you are serious with your criticism), it is just Apple has been different in the past, though that was decades ago.
OK, here is one of my pet peeves and something I think is plaguing what we call science today (and why it is mostly pseudo-science) - that tone of the article assumes that life existed and we have just not been able to find it. What this means is *we do not know*. True, that means we may have dug it up and not know, but consider the following re-writing of the synopsis:
"A new study suggests that the Viking Landers used a flawed method to detect organic compounds. Because of the methodology used to detect organics all results would have been negative. The findings may suggest specific strategies that would improve on the way organic compounds are detected on the red planet."
and you frankly have a totally different report on the matter. The latter *is* science, the former is opinion and faith masquerading as science and our schools do *nothing whatsoever* to teach the difference. Indeed, they *encourage* the the pseudo-science. If you want to see what I think is going to eventually cause a total collapse of our society it is this - not the Democrats, not the Republicans, not Christians, not Muslims, not whatever social construct you want to pick. Those may be the final cause just as "emphysema" may go down as the report as to why a 4 pack a day cigarette smoker dies, but it isn't really the true cause. It is what allows that to occur and prevents it from being fought.
It is difficult to mount an attack on the so called "intelligent design" for that very reason. In the current state what the public face of science offers tends to simply be a thinly veiled pseudo-scientific version more based on what the person believes than what is shown to be true. As such it allows crazy ideas to flourish. If, instead, science had focused on what it *does* know, admitted that things it doesn't know could be true (even if you stated probably not), then crazy ideas like the current version of Intelligent Design would mostly drop away. As is it just becomes whose faith do you want to believe. Sadly real academic papers tend to understand this, it is when either journalists or individual scientists that can't separate their faith from their research speak (and the journalist who give them too much space to spout out their believes) that are causing it.
There is not a *single* thing in *any* evolutionary theory that has any say - positive or negative - about if there is an intelligence behind it. Once you choose one of those paths you are operating on faith. Once you choose that life exists outside of our planet you are operating on faith, not science. That it is more likely either true of false is *not* that same things as it *being* true or false, you can work based on assumptions (and often have no choice) but once it becomes such an ingrained idea that it is true by default then you are simply having faith in something despite the evidence. Once that happens it then becomes an argument of faith, not science and you compete with more popular faiths.
Yes and no - in most of those case you are asking a very straight forward question that requires a great deal of inputs and is fairly sensitive to small changes in them. It's not really *difficult* in the sense of "how do I do this" but is hard in the sense of "did I get all the options right?". We aren't talking about flying the plane, just answering questions that someone else is asking based on current sensory inputs.
The bigger issue, IMO this is one of the bigger issues in AI in general, is that you require someone to be an expert in AI *and* and expert in flying those craft. You can take the world foremost experts in both and put them together and have them communicate near perfectly and too many things will be left out. Each doesn't really think in the right way to express what they need to with the other person. The time involved for each task is so great that it is nearly impossible to get that individual. Add in the time and money needed to adequately test it (don't forget liability) and it isn't even going to be a profit maker. It's not like this is something that close is good enough either.
Still, I bet that a competent software engineer, a competent pilot, and a competent ground operator could sit together for a few days and work out something that drastically reduces the information load. I would rather assume a bigger reason this doesn't happen is given how little co-pilots are payed reducing their workload isn't worth much. It's not like spending a half a billion on development (and it would certainly cost that much with all the testing and validation they need) and no telling how much to retrofit current systems with the package so a medium payed person can sit and twiddle their thumbs is going to be a high priority.
Even if the co-pilot sits and does nothing you are going to have to have them for redundancy. Further I would be willing to bet there will be a cost in ability of the co-pilots to move that to an automated system. You may reduce the work load but that isn't always a Good Thing.
"However, I'd argue that 3D movies have already gotten past the blue LED phase."
Aren't "Piranha 3D" currently in theaters. Further isn't there is an add for an upcoming movie that the main draw is a stylized battle hammer being thrown into the screen?
Until it becomes something that isn't a gimmick it is going to be in he blue-LED phase. Indeed, I'll say until we start seeing them being filmed in 3d regularly it is going to be a blue LED phase. The bigger question is how long will audiences be transfixed by the blue LED and not notice the crappy filing? Probably not too long, I note that even a month ago you couldn't get into a 3D release, now it usually isn't sold out. Too many Alice In Wonderland's and not enough Avatars.
The only ones I'll go see now are animated ones that *can* be post processed into quality 3D. Most of the people I now who were also enamored with it think the same thing.
They have to make their money someplace. They really do not have many choices.
They can have normal day jobs - which means the likely hood of seeing them outside of a 200 mile radius of their residence is quite unlikely. Not really a good option so we will cross that one off the list. There are others in the "cross off list" category too - say a life of robbing banks and such, I'll assume (though given posts here I have to recall what assuming does) that we will not go there.
They can make it from album (or CD, or MP3, or whatever the format of the day is - I'm old enough to use that term generically) sales. We here do not like this type of thing - recorded music wants to be free and it is my Right to make all the copies I want of it. So for the most part that is not going to happen. Indeed, while I do not agree with that sentiment it *is* reality. It is too easy to copy and that makes it too expensive to purchase for most. Things like jackets, art work, and such are nice - but too many of us will take a decent MP3 over a high quality loss-less digital recording with full artwork for the latter to be a money maker without artificial legal protections. Even with said protections that models days are numbered.
So that pretty much leaves us with live shows. Not movies of them - they end up being a version of the second method to make money but with video. It will suffer the same fate. Therefore it leaves it up to live performances. Since they are popular it is going to be expensive. Given how they sell at 100 dollars a pop the chances of you getting in at 20 dollars a pop was just as slim (if not slimmer) due to demand.
The expense has to come in some area. Maybe you already know this - after all even knowing it I wouldn't be happy if I couldn't afford tickets to something I really wanted to see - but they have to make their money someplace. Further things like "supply and demand" mean something, even were they to drop prices to cheap and their expenses somehow magically get payed you would *still* most likely be putting frowny faces on a post for the tickets being sold out and a huge number of fans angry they didn't get to go. In that case almost no one is happy other than the small group that got cheap tickets. That isn't going to be a workable long term market either.
It's like complaining that some Open Source company want to charge for support - umm, yea.
And it hasn't been because of some great security model either - there has been now for weeks an iOS exploit that if you open a correctly formed (or rather malformed) PDF it silently roots your phone and installs any software it wants on your phone. It has access to *everything*. You can not tell me that is "good security". The Mac isn't any better either.
It hasn't been an issue for one of several reasons.
One is that no one had taken advantage of it beyond jail breaking phones. One needs to think through the implications of *that level* of an exploit out in the wild for this long and it not being taken advantage of. There is no *technical* reason why it couldn't this day be used to send your e-mail, browser history, all forms your fill out, pretty much everything you do to someone and unless you monitored your traffic and only used your own wifi would you know for certain. For the most part I think the macs have been in this category - if you are going to spend that effort it is better spent elsewhere.
Next is that exploits do not make news unless they are large enough. Windows exploits are often scripts that almost anyone can run and almost anyone does. iOS ones are more likely going to be one off custom scripts that may gather 10000 credit card numbers - unless someone has an anti-apple leaning (or anti-android if it happens on that platform - nothing remotely Apple centric here) it just isn't news. If I were to guess - and I think I'm more correct than not - there are a number of malformed PDF's out there that do just that. There just aren't any that propagate themselves through e-mail to everyone in your users list and thus make the news.
Lastly - and most unlikely - is that there is some conspiracy to silence it. Too many places out there that can say it for this to be true.
Ultimately there is going to be a major worm or virus out there for one of the main hand helds - RIM, Google, or Apple. They are becoming too much a general purpose machine. Whichever one gets it first will loose a great deal of market share for a while while the other two crow about how wonderful they are. They aren't and never have been. Android is more open to attacks on older phones, Apple more open to attacks on all their phones, and RIM is somewhere in between. Apple and RIM can probably handle it quicker but you are more bound to them deciding it is worth fixing and doing so. Lastly what the OP said is true - Apple and RIM users often seem to think they are immune to this. Both phones have some fairly major exploits that have happened and went further than they should because of this.
Such is life in our industry - number of known bugs, number of known exploits, and number of exploited users are irrelevant when talking about how secure a system is. There is a saying: security through obscurity isn't security. This has certain logical implications - one of those is that not being secure means you have a lot of *known* bugs (thus not obscure). It also implies (but doesn't logically prove) that just because you haven't had one means you are secure - it means there are MANY other factors there.
Were I to bet I would say Android will get the first followed closely by Apple simply because they are the two big players in the consumer market (corporate being fairly locked down) and the fact that there are more older Android out there means more known issues. Though given how Apple has responded to the PDF remote exploit I wouldn't give much more than even odds on it either. There have been more than a few truly serious exploits on Apple systems go out that were either never exploited (and you can supply your own reason for this given the length of time a number of these exploits remained live) or were not generally reported on. You response when one takes the whole PDF remote exploit into account more or less validates with the OP was saying - that I left my alarm off, all the doors and windows open on my house, and I put a big sign in yard that told people of this fact yet I wasn't robbed doesn't mean I was secure. That you think you are is *exactly* what he/she was posting about.
"The wierd thing is, why can't Google pull an Apple? The iPhone gets updates from Apple, leaving out the carrier middleman, even if the user is paying a contract on the iPhone."
Partly because it isn't that easy - these things are often using custom drivers or require custom kernels to run. Yea, some of it is junk but much of it isn't. How are they going to update a bug in Motorola's GPS driver? Or even *why* would they? Lets face it if you had a custom bit of hardware that you had a linux driver on would like Ubuntu to push a new kernel to your device because it can? Nope, especially if that device was a core operational feature. It would be a nightmare to push an upgrade and break phones - it isn't like these upgrades are within the Dalvik VM - those apps can fairly safely be updated across everything, low level upgrades not so much.
If Android and the phone versions of Linux mature enough to have a true Open Source following we may get something like Linux is today. That is a lot of hard work by volunteers to make drivers for every major phone out there. Now some phones will still have restrictive boot loaders and such, but not all (and I will bet most) will not. It *can* happen but will require Android and it's linux underpinnings to stop it's rapid development and give volunteers time to get things in place - that isn't going to happen for some time. There is a devoted following right now making root exploits and custom roms - many times those custom roms are truly not wanted by the manufacturer but such is life in the open source world. When that happens we can run supported builds while under maintenance (or our carrier contract) and re-build with a Canonical build afterward:)
There *will* come some point where the technology matures enough that there just isn't that many updates. Compare development in the early 2.x tree of the Linux Kernel to how stable the current 2.6 tree is - heck compare just the 2.4 to the 2.6! At some point we will also not really feel the need to upgrade hardware either - PC manufacturers are hitting that and simply reducing quality so you have to re-buy nearly the same thing every few years. Further I think our phones are marching towards becoming our general purpose machines. As that happens the market will force some level of stability and customability on it too as people *can* realistically reverse engineer things and write an community driver for it.
Further it isn't even like Apple is immune to the issue - ask people with anything before a 3g how they like their current crop of updates with iOS 4 - chances are you are going to get some grumbling there. Then ask the iPhone 3 users who saw a significant slowdown after the update and you can see that even when you only have *one* hardware specification how hard it is to do. Even with the lockdown Apple has they can't do it to the point people want to make them out to have achieved - they only achieve that *if* you have compatible hardware which is true with Androids too. It's even arguable which is the larger group affected - only *some* older android users are whilst *all* older iPhone users are.
Ultimately the more freedom one has the more responsibility one has. This includes things like making sure you purchase upgradeable hardware and know how to do it. The more locked down a system is the less you have to worry with it but also the less you can deal with it when it occurs. Apple chose the latter route, Google chose the former. I think Google will win for a number of reasons - the above being one (Apple could win handily if they simply opened up the app store and ability to install unsigned software - but I do not think they will as long as Jobs is at the helm).
Yes, it was intended to be "geek" - took reading it a time or two to catch it after you noted it.
However I doubt that is the issue, it's being critical of apple in a non-vague non-open source based complaint. I have had posts be 0 insightful too - it has been especially bad in the last few months. I do not know if you still can (used to be able too) but I bet if you look at the moderation history it has a lot of ups and downs. Most of mine that get this do.
In the end I was correct in the late 80 to early 90's and I can assure you that if the BBS's I read had a similar moderation system it would have been "flamebait" then too.
While what I wrote in the previous post isn't, nor was it intended to be (it is how I see the market happening and how it happened back then), the following could be declared as such: Apple fans (which is distinct subset of Apple users) are currently in an all out attack mode. It will die down once the iPhone goes the way it is going to go - back into something people know about because Best Buy (or whatever retail chain) has an isle with an Apple on it.
Amusingly enough even if I had meant a racial slur I do not know what in the world that would have meant or how it would have been flamebait either. I'm not sure what it would have been other than just plain stupid, it is a word that doesn't make any sense whatsoever there in any fashion (well, except noting I misspelled "geek").
Lastly not only do I have plenty of karma here to burn I also do not really care what my score is either - so no worry.
"How many more people does Apple have to hurt before it starts to tarnish the brand?"
Not very many. It is mostly selling as a fashion statement, not on its technical merits. Fashion is fickle and, for whatever reason, whomever is currently on top thinks they will always be. In this case it is because they are squatting on devs and the customers will not care so it will remain the fashion have to have. The issue is that those two ideas are orthogonal - the devs aren't the ones driving the fashion, they are the ones driving the technical superiority route.
Once the fashion moves on then it has to live or die by it's technical status, further the next fashion statement to make may not even be in the cell phone arena. At that point several things are big against the iPhone - one is AT&T only (but, of course, they could change that). The other *is* devs. Of course as stated no consumer cares what hoops a dev has to jump through, however what they care about is having the apps they want to use and apps are driven the devs. It is why (and how) Microsoft initially became so dominate - developers, developers, developers, developers. They may even *always* have more apps than an Android (though I doubt it), but if they aren't having the few key apps for general usage then it doesn't matter.
Flash is a biggie - many here want it gone, however the reasons are gook related, not consumer related. Consumers do not care about so much of the arguments against it - they just want to be able to view web pages. Niche apps can also often drive acceptance. Sure there may only be 150 people in the world care if they can get an archery journal app and no one develops one for the iPhone because of Apples rules - but there are *tens of thousands* such apps like that. It isn't any one of those that will kill it or give it a bad name but all together.
All one has to do is look at the sales between the iPhone and the Androids to see where it is going - the 1980's again as Apple going from a market leader to - while one of the biggest *single* deliverer of computers - only a small part of the whole market and mostly marginalized. The more open systems ended up crushing them because you could get them all over the place and get any software you wanted for them. There were few single points of distribution as large as them - after all if you had ~10% of the market and the rest was split between several hundred companies chances are you are the biggest single player - but you still only had around 10%. For Apple they made a profit and catered to their market niche so it was certainly a success, but it wasn't a dominate force at all.
It is a capacitive touch screen - right? These work by having a sheet of glass with a conductive material that when your finger (also conductive) touches it is sensed. The question then becomes - how small a "spot" can it sense and how many multi-touches at the same time? If it can sense small enough and a large enough number then a braille like symbol on the bottom of the playing pieces would be plenty to identify the item along with its direction. Some of the items they are placing on the screen *aren't* conductive so they are either faking it or have something else on it. If the latter there are a number of other applications that use capacitive dots so other than applying this to game pieces not really much new.
If the screen *can not* see like that then I can't figure out how it would work. Most bases for board games are round and there is no way to "see" which way the top of the piece is facing - round items do not have direction from their bases. One may be able to have some patterns indicate direction - say each time a piece is placed you are required to move it (maybe even a really small amount) in the direction it is facing, but that isn't inherent in just dropping the piece on the surface and it knowing where it is. Further if it is just a round base and no indentifying marks can be read there is no way to know which piece is what from just setting it on the board. Again, one could make a a system where other information is used - for instance have all the pieces start in known locations. Double tap to remove a piece from the board and every time a piece is picked up it is being "moved" to the next location it touches - basically the pieces are a mouse.
Of course those are how other things "sense" what item is on the surface and direction - the hard part is the surface.
The real issue is why? How many board games can be played on a 10" surface let alone a 4" one? At least with respect to board games (would have to think a bit about other applications) I can't see playing much of anything that way. Even with something that already uses a small board (chess) you would have to have *really* small pieces and would be hard to accurately pick them up and place them. Like many products in search of an audience if their goal is to play with some neat hardware and learn something then there is no answer to why needed past that, if they are looking to make money from this good luck - I think you are going to need it (better get a a patent so you can at least hold onto the idea until screen surfaces catch up with your idea).
Some people prefer a 7" tablet (I am one). That is also why Apple is rumored to be producing one too.
For my self a 10" one seems silly. It's not big enough to use a have a good keyboard and carrying an external one defeats the purpose. It's heavy and bulky - it isn't going into a pocket or be carried on a plane comfortably either. Add inn all the issues with it having a fairly stripped down OS and hardware so I can't do much more than watch a movie or browse the web and it is worthless to me.
7" is perfect - those "flaws" are OK due to the increased portability (minimal OS/software stack and hardware) and when I want to do some "serious" note taking I'll take a netbook - or even better a notebook - any day of the week. Any smaller than a 7" and I start into eye strain for any extended viewing. Plus it is small enough to fit into some pockets/pouches and definitely small enough to easily carry around no matter what yet large enough to not get eye strain.
But then that is why there are several form factors too - not everyone likes the same thing and those that prefer a 7" or a 10" are not stupid because they do. Personally I would say someone who is confused if this is a phone or not fits that bill better.
There are two different answers to that question and I'm not sure which yu are asking.
One is if the law, statue, or whatever it is should be in effect. That can be fairly well argued around and my guess is that it will do not good - if you care enough to know the answer you have already heard it. No reason to go over it again (and I do not feel I care enough either way to "pick" a side so it isn't even going to do any good to try and argue with me if that is what you want).
The next is with respect to this ruling and what you ask is irrelevant. The first relevant question is does Congress have the ability to deny it, the judge (and I agree) clearly think so. They can stop federal funding of research using coffee beans, deceased dogs, chicken embryos, or whatever - fetal stem cells are no different. There isn't a "right to privacy", "right to do what you want to your own body", or any of the other things we argue about with respect to abortion - they can clearly deny funding if they wish no matter what and under our current reading of the constitution regulate the research (though I think they shouldn't be able too that bridge has already been crossed decades ago with similar regulations).
Since we have established that then the question is *have they done so*, and yes they have. Others here listed it, it wasn't the current Congress that passed it, but it hasn't been rescinded or something else passed the negates it.
As such Obama does not have the authority to override the legislative branches decision and hence the judges decision. We can't override legislation we do not like simply because we do not like it - the next group to get in will probably not have the same likes/dislikes you do and then you are without any recourse. If there is enough to warrant changing it go through the proper channels. I shudder to think of what Bush and the Republicans would have done if he had taken the authority this congress and the President have just as I shudder with what they have done. It *is* going to come back at them at some point too.
True - but when they start taking on government powers and *forcing* you to do something then they aren't simply running things they way they want. If they are a govt sponsored monopoly then it is also a different story.
If Comcast wishes to charge you and extra 100 dollars if you use more than 1gb per day then that is their business - I can go to Charter who doesn't. If Comcast is the *only* way (through govt exclusive contracts) then that is most likely not in line with the constitution but we can argue (was the situation I was in a few years back), if my local govt decides that I have to use Comcast no matter what and if I use more than 1gb per month then I am fined an extra 100 dollars that is just plain illegal (the position that Ma Bell was in before they were broken up).
This has been obvious in the past for *so* many things, it is currently one of the bigger complaints across the globe with respect to data lines. That this is trash instead of our precious bits and bytes doesn't make it suddenly OK for them to do - that is how we have ended up with ridiculous laws on the books with respect to "crimes" in the digital world. We can't have them separate where we want them so and the same where we want them the same - if we do that then others have different random lines in the sand. Sadly the thinking and creep towards totalitarianism works both ways.
Being the government enforced monopoly means you are a government entity. If you want to be under free markets rules then you are going to have to be in a free market. You can't be governed by free market rules yet have government enforced client base - it just doesn't work. Indeed, if we want to try and do that then they will fall under anti-trust legislation and then end up in a paradox (govt says they must exists, govt says they can't). You can't have it both ways and have it remotely work, you end up arguing (as we do now and have for a while - it is probably the primary source of our current problems) where to draw the line instead of if we should be doing this in the first place.
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There is a difference between going back to a nomadic life and coming from one - primitive man was horrid on the environment. They planted one crop until it would no longer grow and moved on, they killed indiscriminately, they did a great deal of damage. The article quoted simply restates that idea and I doubt many will argue.
There is no "sustainability" in a modern high tech world. We require roads, buildings, energy, food, and a great deal of other infrastructure to live. Even if that is as low an impact as possible with respect to emissions do you *really* think that our concrete cities somehow are "sustainable"? Are we just going to keep building up? I guess instead of Turtles all the we down we will have concrete all the way up?
It is an inherently non-sustainable system. We survive by hoping to find new places to rob to pay for what we have taken. It *will* run out at some point.
It's not like computing resources where there is some finite level we can shrink things - it is still going to be a while before we truly hate that barrier. But when we do computers just aren't going to go away. When we hit the finite barrier with resources we start dying.
When we reach a point where there is nothing left to consume to pay for us it will stop. Maybe that will last long enough that we finally get enough space exploration that we can rob a great number of places (and thus meet my definition of radical technological changes - outside of breaking some fairly major laws I do not see anything outside of that working), but I doubt it.
Peak oil will happen, at some point we will be required to make a choice between housing/shelter and food plots, and we will surpass our ability to gather energy. Wind, Solar, Geothermal, Coal, Oil, Tidal, all of them require room to have the manufacturing *and* have environmental impacts too (some of those minor when used as an alternative, major when used a primary source).
Which leaves us - as a race - two real options: create some radical piece of technology that fixes this (in science fiction we can see this in Star Trek), or eventually fall back to a nomadic life style (which implies our current knowledge but at a much reduced global population).
Like Moore's law running out I'm not going to be betting it will happen in my life time, but one of those two things is inevitable. There is still a lot this Earth has to give. However the models given by most of our experts on Global Ecology vehemently disagree with that and say if we do not radically change in the next 20 years we will die. I just have to note for the last 30 or so years doom has been 10-20 years away.
There is nothing we can do with respect to "sustainability" to counter what their models show. At best we put things off and hope for a miracle. I find their "science" quite lacking (indeed, that it passes peer review shows how bad our educational system has become) and think we have longer than that - yet the ultimate conclusion is still more correct than wrong.
That being said plenty of reasons to adopt a great deal of those practices. If done well it saves in costs, health, and overall quality of life. The sad thing is that those things would have been good enough to get mostly passed. But no, we have to have the world ending 10-20 years from now. So we stay at our current rate of consumption, ignore the real threats because the fake ones have been so over-aggrandized, and march our merry way to oblivion for political reasons.
However, thanks for trying I guess.
Not much energy to cremate if we all killed ourselves - no one to run the crematoriums. Further the Methane from rotting would be less than many natural source we have now - plus since it is all in one big month long rotting fest it isn't like years of accumulation. It's not like the earth doesn't have natural scrubbers of green house gasses (otherwise known as plants and many types of bacteria).
There are two basic ways for us to lower pollution output: stop living our modern high energy lifestyles or have an extreme technological breakthrough. I doubt the latter is going to occur anytime soon, even if it was discovered today there would be no way we could mass produce it enough to effectively change over our lifestyles and infrastructure (and it would have to be massive gains for it to most likely be worth the energy cost of the constructions of the new technology and recycling the waste from the old). Even if telecommuting and online line shopping saved some it is like trying to stop a hurricane by building a 4x8 wall to block the winds. There is no way for us to simply make minor shifts in technology yet live the same lifestyle and change anything - indeed we tend to not fully understand the issues yet enough to know if changes are often a net positive or negative (other than we know if we killed off most of us and went back to a nomadic life it would immediately stop).
If the situation is as dire as many say it is we are simply doomed one way or another - the ultimate question then becomes do we accept that and do what has to be done or wait till it degenerates into anarchy and only the strong survive. While the GP is a joke, it is unfortunately the only conclusion one has to draw if the models are correct. If the models are incorrect and it is not a dire situation then we are all wasting time too. Personally I'll take the slow way as we will find out eventually who is correct and other than it happening in a longer period of time the end result is going to be the same, but in the end it *is* "Save the planet, Kill yourself" if the predictions are correct, its just the manner of how we do it and the amount of time it takes.
What you do not understand is the whole "green movement" industry - and it is certainly an industry - is totally committed to the idea of carbon as a waste. This goes from the scientist trying to get funding up through those selling intangibles like Carbon Credits. It isn't about making the world a better place, it is about making money from it. To do that they need a dedicated bunch of people who will go out and champion what they say and lucky for them there are a great deal of people who are quit willing to do that. Those people may be thinking of saving the planet and simply do not know better, they are what the old Soviets called "useful Idiots". Many are highly educated but the education system is turned to produce people like that, not ones that can truly think and look at a bigger picture. *None* of the methods that do not make a corporation loads of money or give the government a great deal of power are even explored because money/power is what they are after. Even those that are pushed are simply abused.
IMO the whole situation would be even sadder if I thought most of those pushing for things like this even believed what they are saying because they would be the worst kinds of traitor (well that or they are so stupid as to be ignored and I do not think they are stupid). I'll believe it is as bad as most say it is when they start living like they believe it. Never invest in anything that those trying to tell you how wonderful or crucial it is that you do something yet they refuse to do it. I do not know where the truth sits - both sides of this debate are primarily running a con game and jockying to see who holds the money and power. Both sides do not remotely act the way they say we MUST, indeed the leaders of both sides act in about as detrimental way as they can if their ideas are true.
I find it likely that humans will have some major catastrophe in the semi-near future from all of this (it goes well beyond climate science and is nearly endemic in the research and education system) because the race isn't to find out what is really going on but is to garner funding/publications for scientists and money/power for corporations and govt officials. It will either stay so obviously corrupt that nothing gets done until it truly does spiral away. It doesn't even matter if some theory is correct or not, the "science" is so shoddily done that if it *is* occurring it is too easy to dismiss and if it is not and there is a looming catastrophe (I do not think we can continue as we are without one) we will not see it. The other big possibility is some idiot will do a large scale adoption of something like this that makes matters very much worse and it spirals away.
It all depends on how you define "rewards", it is implied the spies were doing this for money and if that is the case you are absolutely wrong. Very few US soldiers (and most of the first world, I do not mean to imply British, Canadian, Australian, indeed most countries soldiers are different) and certainly the vast majority of the worlds fire fighters (is there *anyplace* that they get the power granted to oppressive Law Enforcement?) are not in it for money. As such the risks to their lives are on a totally different metric. Most would say their reward far outweighs the risk. Many spies will say so too - certainly given the wages many that work for the CIA, MI5, the old KGB, and a number of other intelligence (that is - spies) aren't rolling in money despite what the James Bond movies show. Most have a high likely hood of death or imprisonment with the parent government not doing much other than looking the other way if caught too.
The ones that go for money, well that is just plain stupid. It is *never* enough to cover the risk even if they could realistically spend it. Since these people aren't really to be trusted to begin with - after all they are obviously out for the highest bidder - they aren't going to be someone that you fight to bring home at all. They will be left to whatever the host country does to them. Further since their main value is in the information they will gather most countries hiring them will push well past what is safe - you wouldn't want to lose a truly dedicated spy but that person that has leaked everything they know for money: why wouldn't you push for more? No skin off your back if they get caught (who is shocked and angered that one country is spying on another) and you may get a real payoff. Even if not and they get caught - who is going to sue you if you do not deliver on the money?
Lets face it, the Rosenberg's were mentioned in the article and what did it buy them with respect to money? Absolutely squat for them and their family. All it did was make them live in infamy, the Russians weren't about to spend the resources to get them back after they bled them dry of information and why give their descendants money if they already got what they wanted? That is even if the US would have allowed it to happen. However as I understand they felt that giving the Russians the information was more important than the money and they may have very well died figuring they did the Right Thing (and that is a separate argument).
The only spies that make any sense are the same ones that make sense for police, firefighters, and soldier - it is a cause you believe in and serving that cause is the major influence. That doesn't mean many will not get lured in by money or that money isn't a factor. Money is always a factor, no matter if you take the most altruistic full time position on the planet you still have to eat, drink, and have shelter (which takes money). However is money is your *main* factor with being a spy you are an idiot and the country hiring you will only use you as much as it can - as said your countries local fire fighters die for less money, but that isn't what they do their job for.
for the same reason Apple is working on a 7" one (at least according to rumor sources that have historically been very accurate) - for many people the 10" is too big (I happen to be one of them).
It's too big to easily carry around in an airport - I'm never going to find a coat, cargo pants, or even most small carry bags that it will slip into (one may find a bag for it, but if so then nothing else is going into it unless you get a fairly large bag). It's bigger than what I want to sit by me at the house just for looking something up on the internet - it gets heavy if you have to hold it for long. But then it is too small for most other things. It is too small for me to read for hours (and therefore put up with the size), it is too small to do real work on so I'm not going to find a large man-purse to carry the thing around in.
A 7" has none of those issues. I have coat pockets during the winter it is going to fit in and during the summer it will easily slip into any bag I happen to be carrying things in (for truly mobile I have my phone). I still can't read on it for hours or do real work on it, but then I'm not in a form factor I feel I'm lugging around dead weight so I do not care (I have a laptop or a netbook that is the minimum size for real work or reading for hours). It's small enough that I can put it on my end table and not have just it so it can co-exist with the TV remote, a snack bowl, and my drink.
So if I'm to get a tablet (not sure if I am or not) a 7" version is the only one that does me any good. The main question is going to be price, will they offer similar ones to Apple? We dunno, this one is specced closer to the top end iPad that is nearly 1000 US dollars and people are already comparing it price wise to the cheapest of the iPads (that is also the model you hear when people quote how much an iPad costs), While not really fair that will hurt.
I've purchased a few geek/nerd shirts over the years and most are just to pass away the time - there have really only been two I truly liked (I have a few that were given to me that mean more to me).
The second place slot was an OpenSSH shirt that the front said something along the lines of "SSH, it is a secret" and the back had a blowfish with rsh, ftp, and telnet gravestones and freshly dug gravestones. It was something that other people that knew about OpenSSH got immediately and something that generated questions in other people. Having been asked enough I had an answer that most people didn't have their eyes glaze over, though few were interested in it.
My favorite was the DeCSS shirt with the the CSS logo and the red circle with a slash and the source on the back. It garnered an *enormous* number of questions and was an easy sound bite whilst standing in line to the cashier in the grocery store. By that time most had DvD's and most could understand the issues - indeed it was a time when most could go back and try what I said and then look it up and be angry. I regularly shopped the same places (being in college at the time limited my shopping to mostly k-mart and wal-mart) so they tended to remember me by my shirt and make comments on what they had discovered. Unlike the OpenSSH it was something they could understand *and* be irritated at when pointed out.
IMO that was a perfect shirt at the perfect time for a politically active geek in the US (be they Republican, Democrat, or Something Else). It was something we could all get behind, was fairly easy for non-geeks to understand, and there was *clearly* a civil rights violation going on (though it each "side" blamed the other). Not to mention the whole amusement factor of the shirt being illegal to wear. Sadly a great deal of those issues are still being fought today but in a way that a simple shirt can't express.
There is a great deal of energy lost out there. Lots of heat, sound, inertia, etc that just bleeds away (well, at least with respect to forms we find useful). The question is can we *efficiently* gather it back up - not *can* we gather it back up. The same things goes with any recycling of "waste" products - it isn't always good to recycle them. Sometimes the wast products from capturing that energy is worse than letting that energy go away (I know for a long time the waste products from solar panel production/disposal were *significantly* worse than any carbon emissions you were saving) and sometimes it is cheap (and therefor mroe resources can go towards fixing the long term issue) to *not* recycle.
That's a good question for most "environmental" questions and it isn't easy. Lets take Corn based ethanol fuels - there are a number of studies out there that show it takes *more* energy to create them than if you just stayed with oil based products. The gains are probably not in that arena, they are either in emissions or dependence on a number of not so great human rights nations. Then we can take into account Wind Power - something that looks great in all these things. Well, that is, until you look at the impact on bird wildlife in those regions - is it worth the cost? Hard to say, if you are primarily worried about carbon emissions then very much so, if you are primarily worried about avian life then most assuredly not, if you want the best over all then all you pretty much get are both sides battling it out for which one is correct (and IMO neither one is).
So, if we cut carbon emissions by 50% but increase sulfur emissions by 15% to collect all this sound energy it isn't too good for us, though under certain people views that is a "win". I do not know and I'm not trying to say it is a good or bad (in this case there may be no downside whatsoever) idea - just that this article (along with the vast vast vast majority of environmental articles and studies out there) do not really address this well. In the long term we will bump against levels where we have to do this, but for right now we are still in an infantancy stage and we are better off looking for better processes than refining our current ones - unless our current ones are so bad that we need to refine them now (and energy loss to sound is minor compared to the rest of the system).
They are in college - if they can't adapt to "no devices with wireless access" then they do not deserve their degree - even more so in a highly technical field that requires the ability to adapt to new information for their whole career. They are going to complain anytime you take something away that would make things easier, further the ones planning on cheating are going to *certainly* complain if they think it will get their ability to cheat back.
Pick an inexpensive calculator that can do the math needed - there are a plethora of them on the market - and require it. It's going to be cheaper than their text book anyway. Your math department probably already standardizes on one. If someone wants a different calculator take it on a case by case basis (for instance I have several of the older HP's that I MUCH prefer over any other calculator on the market - no reason why I couldn't use them and I never had professor that tried to force me to use TI's - I just couldn't get help on how to use it from the teacher. Since I had done assembly programming on the processor I can't say I found that an issue :)). If someone complains like your English as a second language person - point out that we have things called "books" that have that very same information in them too.
It's not really a hard problem, it is only hard if you think the students complaining are being reasonable. They weren't when I was in school, they weren't when my professors were in school, and they aren't now - most never have been in the history of this type of education. Indeed, my experience is that my generation - high school class of 1993 were the first to really start hitting a decline (my generation didn't walk to school barefoot uphill both ways in the snow - we demanded a snowmobile and the state grate a level road out!). Much before that and in my field (CS) but not my specialty (FLAC and Parallel Algorithms) I couldn't follow a well written thesis beyond the introduction, conclusion, and noting their process (that is as it should be). When I was in school in many disciplines totally unrelated to mine I can not only follow a *dissertation* but in many of the "softer" courses I'm certain I could have written them. It's even worse now.
There are still really bright motivated students - look at what they are doing to see if you really need too. If the person who is there because they love the field and would be doing it even without the education is complaining then take note. If the person who is looking for a degree and a good salary is complaining realize they are usually out for the degree to get a position and are looking for the path of least resistance to a good salary (most not even realizing that the good positions are going to go to the person who loves it, not the one who sees it as a distraction from and source of money to do what they really want to do). Your job isn't to make them feel good or be happy, it is to instruct them and ensure that they can meet the requirements for that career - if they want a job there are better ways to do it (and most of those will end up paying better in the long run for them too).
You will not be liked by most students (after all most will take the one that lets them cheat over the one that forces them to learn) and depending on your department you may not be able to do that. I still keep in touch with some of my professors from time to time and I know that they base funding partially on the percentage graduating the course work - as such there is tremendous pressure to graduate instead of teach. One of the constant complaints is that they can't balance the requirement to graduate with the requirement to have highly employable graduates. I can assure you that a number of my professors were certainly "old school" in how they approached your course work (I'm dyslexic and it was tough to get concessions for that at first, though once they knew me well enough to know I sought out the hard courses and I wasn't trying to cheat they gave me whatever I asked for).
Iit will depend on the application, I assume the iPhone is the same way as it is fairly typical of devices with fairly limited resources.
There are life cycles of an android application, some of them (say loosing focus) means they tend to store states so that when you return to them they are where you left off. There are also state changes where the OS totally kills the application and nothing is saved - if you write for the Android platform you *must* assume under a heavy load this will occur. However it is rare. So for the most part they can probably get it but it isn't guaranteed. Nor do I know of any way to force a random application to do such a thing - you would most likely need to get the Android source and modify your own ROM. While possible it isn't likely and that behavior will break a number of applications as it isn't a normal application process life-cycle.
A more relevant question is there any device that doesn't leave similar types of trails? If you carry a recording device that monitors you location, your schedule, your e-mail, your search patterns, and a great deal of your life do not be surprised when law enforcement can get a hold of it.
We have a few big tech companies that many have wondered if they can make it without their founders. Apple floundered when Jobs left for the first time, Microsoft is doing the same thing too. From all reports Gates truly is keeping a hands off approach to his retirement from them and I think it shows.
Love em, hate em, or indifferent one has to note that both Apple and Microsoft seem to be built around the ideas of one person - at the least they both flounder when that one person tries to step away.
Only if they are prosecuted - indeed we have so many laws out there that it is an unusual person who would *not* violate at least something. Some figure this is by design, personally I figure the old saying of never attributing to malice what can be attributed to stupidity holds true, but YMMV. However things are only truly illegal if you are prosecuted, though they may be against the law to do what good is the law if it isn't enforced?
Further ones needs to note that *at best* this guy is doing something dishonest so we know that honesty isn't a big part of his business. As such, whilst it fits many of our (including mine) idea of something I would expect I also wouldn't get totally worked up until we heard something more substantive. After all this certainly garnered his company a great deal of press.
Frankly I do something in between - "A-soos". In their adds I've heard it said both ways so I went back to how I said it from the beginning, which I have also heard in their adds. Given that I rather suspect that they prefer to pander to every way one can say it and do so.
I'm assuming this is some form of verbal jousting and I found that amusing, however if it is not do recall that Wozniak was the other half of the original founders. Wozniak is a geek, nerd, or whatever term you wish to describe most of us here at heart, though not much of a business man. I've always understood why people liked him and what Apple did whilst he had some say so, never understood why they like Jobs and his Apple. Jobs is every bit (and IMO more so) ruthless as Gates is, he just is better at marketing his self image than gates is.
I'll certainly believe that Wozniak/Jobs had the idea of it being for Turing and isn't something tacked on after the fact (which is what you imply if you are serious with your criticism), it is just Apple has been different in the past, though that was decades ago.
OK, here is one of my pet peeves and something I think is plaguing what we call science today (and why it is mostly pseudo-science) - that tone of the article assumes that life existed and we have just not been able to find it. What this means is *we do not know*. True, that means we may have dug it up and not know, but consider the following re-writing of the synopsis:
"A new study suggests that the Viking Landers used a flawed method to detect organic compounds. Because of the methodology used to detect organics all results would have been negative. The findings may suggest specific strategies that would improve on the way organic compounds are detected on the red planet."
and you frankly have a totally different report on the matter. The latter *is* science, the former is opinion and faith masquerading as science and our schools do *nothing whatsoever* to teach the difference. Indeed, they *encourage* the the pseudo-science. If you want to see what I think is going to eventually cause a total collapse of our society it is this - not the Democrats, not the Republicans, not Christians, not Muslims, not whatever social construct you want to pick. Those may be the final cause just as "emphysema" may go down as the report as to why a 4 pack a day cigarette smoker dies, but it isn't really the true cause. It is what allows that to occur and prevents it from being fought.
It is difficult to mount an attack on the so called "intelligent design" for that very reason. In the current state what the public face of science offers tends to simply be a thinly veiled pseudo-scientific version more based on what the person believes than what is shown to be true. As such it allows crazy ideas to flourish. If, instead, science had focused on what it *does* know, admitted that things it doesn't know could be true (even if you stated probably not), then crazy ideas like the current version of Intelligent Design would mostly drop away. As is it just becomes whose faith do you want to believe. Sadly real academic papers tend to understand this, it is when either journalists or individual scientists that can't separate their faith from their research speak (and the journalist who give them too much space to spout out their believes) that are causing it.
There is not a *single* thing in *any* evolutionary theory that has any say - positive or negative - about if there is an intelligence behind it. Once you choose one of those paths you are operating on faith. Once you choose that life exists outside of our planet you are operating on faith, not science. That it is more likely either true of false is *not* that same things as it *being* true or false, you can work based on assumptions (and often have no choice) but once it becomes such an ingrained idea that it is true by default then you are simply having faith in something despite the evidence. Once that happens it then becomes an argument of faith, not science and you compete with more popular faiths.
Yes and no - in most of those case you are asking a very straight forward question that requires a great deal of inputs and is fairly sensitive to small changes in them. It's not really *difficult* in the sense of "how do I do this" but is hard in the sense of "did I get all the options right?". We aren't talking about flying the plane, just answering questions that someone else is asking based on current sensory inputs.
The bigger issue, IMO this is one of the bigger issues in AI in general, is that you require someone to be an expert in AI *and* and expert in flying those craft. You can take the world foremost experts in both and put them together and have them communicate near perfectly and too many things will be left out. Each doesn't really think in the right way to express what they need to with the other person. The time involved for each task is so great that it is nearly impossible to get that individual. Add in the time and money needed to adequately test it (don't forget liability) and it isn't even going to be a profit maker. It's not like this is something that close is good enough either.
Still, I bet that a competent software engineer, a competent pilot, and a competent ground operator could sit together for a few days and work out something that drastically reduces the information load. I would rather assume a bigger reason this doesn't happen is given how little co-pilots are payed reducing their workload isn't worth much. It's not like spending a half a billion on development (and it would certainly cost that much with all the testing and validation they need) and no telling how much to retrofit current systems with the package so a medium payed person can sit and twiddle their thumbs is going to be a high priority.
Even if the co-pilot sits and does nothing you are going to have to have them for redundancy. Further I would be willing to bet there will be a cost in ability of the co-pilots to move that to an automated system. You may reduce the work load but that isn't always a Good Thing.
"However, I'd argue that 3D movies have already gotten past the blue LED phase."
Aren't "Piranha 3D" currently in theaters. Further isn't there is an add for an upcoming movie that the main draw is a stylized battle hammer being thrown into the screen?
Until it becomes something that isn't a gimmick it is going to be in he blue-LED phase. Indeed, I'll say until we start seeing them being filmed in 3d regularly it is going to be a blue LED phase. The bigger question is how long will audiences be transfixed by the blue LED and not notice the crappy filing? Probably not too long, I note that even a month ago you couldn't get into a 3D release, now it usually isn't sold out. Too many Alice In Wonderland's and not enough Avatars.
The only ones I'll go see now are animated ones that *can* be post processed into quality 3D. Most of the people I now who were also enamored with it think the same thing.
They have to make their money someplace. They really do not have many choices.
They can have normal day jobs - which means the likely hood of seeing them outside of a 200 mile radius of their residence is quite unlikely. Not really a good option so we will cross that one off the list. There are others in the "cross off list" category too - say a life of robbing banks and such, I'll assume (though given posts here I have to recall what assuming does) that we will not go there.
They can make it from album (or CD, or MP3, or whatever the format of the day is - I'm old enough to use that term generically) sales. We here do not like this type of thing - recorded music wants to be free and it is my Right to make all the copies I want of it. So for the most part that is not going to happen. Indeed, while I do not agree with that sentiment it *is* reality. It is too easy to copy and that makes it too expensive to purchase for most. Things like jackets, art work, and such are nice - but too many of us will take a decent MP3 over a high quality loss-less digital recording with full artwork for the latter to be a money maker without artificial legal protections. Even with said protections that models days are numbered.
So that pretty much leaves us with live shows. Not movies of them - they end up being a version of the second method to make money but with video. It will suffer the same fate. Therefore it leaves it up to live performances. Since they are popular it is going to be expensive. Given how they sell at 100 dollars a pop the chances of you getting in at 20 dollars a pop was just as slim (if not slimmer) due to demand.
The expense has to come in some area. Maybe you already know this - after all even knowing it I wouldn't be happy if I couldn't afford tickets to something I really wanted to see - but they have to make their money someplace. Further things like "supply and demand" mean something, even were they to drop prices to cheap and their expenses somehow magically get payed you would *still* most likely be putting frowny faces on a post for the tickets being sold out and a huge number of fans angry they didn't get to go. In that case almost no one is happy other than the small group that got cheap tickets. That isn't going to be a workable long term market either.
It's like complaining that some Open Source company want to charge for support - umm, yea.
And it hasn't been because of some great security model either - there has been now for weeks an iOS exploit that if you open a correctly formed (or rather malformed) PDF it silently roots your phone and installs any software it wants on your phone. It has access to *everything*. You can not tell me that is "good security". The Mac isn't any better either.
It hasn't been an issue for one of several reasons.
One is that no one had taken advantage of it beyond jail breaking phones. One needs to think through the implications of *that level* of an exploit out in the wild for this long and it not being taken advantage of. There is no *technical* reason why it couldn't this day be used to send your e-mail, browser history, all forms your fill out, pretty much everything you do to someone and unless you monitored your traffic and only used your own wifi would you know for certain. For the most part I think the macs have been in this category - if you are going to spend that effort it is better spent elsewhere.
Next is that exploits do not make news unless they are large enough. Windows exploits are often scripts that almost anyone can run and almost anyone does. iOS ones are more likely going to be one off custom scripts that may gather 10000 credit card numbers - unless someone has an anti-apple leaning (or anti-android if it happens on that platform - nothing remotely Apple centric here) it just isn't news. If I were to guess - and I think I'm more correct than not - there are a number of malformed PDF's out there that do just that. There just aren't any that propagate themselves through e-mail to everyone in your users list and thus make the news.
Lastly - and most unlikely - is that there is some conspiracy to silence it. Too many places out there that can say it for this to be true.
Ultimately there is going to be a major worm or virus out there for one of the main hand helds - RIM, Google, or Apple. They are becoming too much a general purpose machine. Whichever one gets it first will loose a great deal of market share for a while while the other two crow about how wonderful they are. They aren't and never have been. Android is more open to attacks on older phones, Apple more open to attacks on all their phones, and RIM is somewhere in between. Apple and RIM can probably handle it quicker but you are more bound to them deciding it is worth fixing and doing so. Lastly what the OP said is true - Apple and RIM users often seem to think they are immune to this. Both phones have some fairly major exploits that have happened and went further than they should because of this.
Such is life in our industry - number of known bugs, number of known exploits, and number of exploited users are irrelevant when talking about how secure a system is. There is a saying: security through obscurity isn't security. This has certain logical implications - one of those is that not being secure means you have a lot of *known* bugs (thus not obscure). It also implies (but doesn't logically prove) that just because you haven't had one means you are secure - it means there are MANY other factors there.
Were I to bet I would say Android will get the first followed closely by Apple simply because they are the two big players in the consumer market (corporate being fairly locked down) and the fact that there are more older Android out there means more known issues. Though given how Apple has responded to the PDF remote exploit I wouldn't give much more than even odds on it either. There have been more than a few truly serious exploits on Apple systems go out that were either never exploited (and you can supply your own reason for this given the length of time a number of these exploits remained live) or were not generally reported on. You response when one takes the whole PDF remote exploit into account more or less validates with the OP was saying - that I left my alarm off, all the doors and windows open on my house, and I put a big sign in yard that told people of this fact yet I wasn't robbed doesn't mean I was secure. That you think you are is *exactly* what he/she was posting about.
"The wierd thing is, why can't Google pull an Apple? The iPhone gets updates from Apple, leaving out the carrier middleman, even if the user is paying a contract on the iPhone."
Partly because it isn't that easy - these things are often using custom drivers or require custom kernels to run. Yea, some of it is junk but much of it isn't. How are they going to update a bug in Motorola's GPS driver? Or even *why* would they? Lets face it if you had a custom bit of hardware that you had a linux driver on would like Ubuntu to push a new kernel to your device because it can? Nope, especially if that device was a core operational feature. It would be a nightmare to push an upgrade and break phones - it isn't like these upgrades are within the Dalvik VM - those apps can fairly safely be updated across everything, low level upgrades not so much.
If Android and the phone versions of Linux mature enough to have a true Open Source following we may get something like Linux is today. That is a lot of hard work by volunteers to make drivers for every major phone out there. Now some phones will still have restrictive boot loaders and such, but not all (and I will bet most) will not. It *can* happen but will require Android and it's linux underpinnings to stop it's rapid development and give volunteers time to get things in place - that isn't going to happen for some time. There is a devoted following right now making root exploits and custom roms - many times those custom roms are truly not wanted by the manufacturer but such is life in the open source world. When that happens we can run supported builds while under maintenance (or our carrier contract) and re-build with a Canonical build afterward :)
There *will* come some point where the technology matures enough that there just isn't that many updates. Compare development in the early 2.x tree of the Linux Kernel to how stable the current 2.6 tree is - heck compare just the 2.4 to the 2.6! At some point we will also not really feel the need to upgrade hardware either - PC manufacturers are hitting that and simply reducing quality so you have to re-buy nearly the same thing every few years. Further I think our phones are marching towards becoming our general purpose machines. As that happens the market will force some level of stability and customability on it too as people *can* realistically reverse engineer things and write an community driver for it.
Further it isn't even like Apple is immune to the issue - ask people with anything before a 3g how they like their current crop of updates with iOS 4 - chances are you are going to get some grumbling there. Then ask the iPhone 3 users who saw a significant slowdown after the update and you can see that even when you only have *one* hardware specification how hard it is to do. Even with the lockdown Apple has they can't do it to the point people want to make them out to have achieved - they only achieve that *if* you have compatible hardware which is true with Androids too. It's even arguable which is the larger group affected - only *some* older android users are whilst *all* older iPhone users are.
Ultimately the more freedom one has the more responsibility one has. This includes things like making sure you purchase upgradeable hardware and know how to do it. The more locked down a system is the less you have to worry with it but also the less you can deal with it when it occurs. Apple chose the latter route, Google chose the former. I think Google will win for a number of reasons - the above being one (Apple could win handily if they simply opened up the app store and ability to install unsigned software - but I do not think they will as long as Jobs is at the helm).
Yes, it was intended to be "geek" - took reading it a time or two to catch it after you noted it.
However I doubt that is the issue, it's being critical of apple in a non-vague non-open source based complaint. I have had posts be 0 insightful too - it has been especially bad in the last few months. I do not know if you still can (used to be able too) but I bet if you look at the moderation history it has a lot of ups and downs. Most of mine that get this do.
In the end I was correct in the late 80 to early 90's and I can assure you that if the BBS's I read had a similar moderation system it would have been "flamebait" then too.
While what I wrote in the previous post isn't, nor was it intended to be (it is how I see the market happening and how it happened back then), the following could be declared as such: Apple fans (which is distinct subset of Apple users) are currently in an all out attack mode. It will die down once the iPhone goes the way it is going to go - back into something people know about because Best Buy (or whatever retail chain) has an isle with an Apple on it.
Amusingly enough even if I had meant a racial slur I do not know what in the world that would have meant or how it would have been flamebait either. I'm not sure what it would have been other than just plain stupid, it is a word that doesn't make any sense whatsoever there in any fashion (well, except noting I misspelled "geek").
Lastly not only do I have plenty of karma here to burn I also do not really care what my score is either - so no worry.
"How many more people does Apple have to hurt before it starts to tarnish the brand?"
Not very many. It is mostly selling as a fashion statement, not on its technical merits. Fashion is fickle and, for whatever reason, whomever is currently on top thinks they will always be. In this case it is because they are squatting on devs and the customers will not care so it will remain the fashion have to have. The issue is that those two ideas are orthogonal - the devs aren't the ones driving the fashion, they are the ones driving the technical superiority route.
Once the fashion moves on then it has to live or die by it's technical status, further the next fashion statement to make may not even be in the cell phone arena. At that point several things are big against the iPhone - one is AT&T only (but, of course, they could change that). The other *is* devs. Of course as stated no consumer cares what hoops a dev has to jump through, however what they care about is having the apps they want to use and apps are driven the devs. It is why (and how) Microsoft initially became so dominate - developers, developers, developers, developers. They may even *always* have more apps than an Android (though I doubt it), but if they aren't having the few key apps for general usage then it doesn't matter.
Flash is a biggie - many here want it gone, however the reasons are gook related, not consumer related. Consumers do not care about so much of the arguments against it - they just want to be able to view web pages. Niche apps can also often drive acceptance. Sure there may only be 150 people in the world care if they can get an archery journal app and no one develops one for the iPhone because of Apples rules - but there are *tens of thousands* such apps like that. It isn't any one of those that will kill it or give it a bad name but all together.
All one has to do is look at the sales between the iPhone and the Androids to see where it is going - the 1980's again as Apple going from a market leader to - while one of the biggest *single* deliverer of computers - only a small part of the whole market and mostly marginalized. The more open systems ended up crushing them because you could get them all over the place and get any software you wanted for them. There were few single points of distribution as large as them - after all if you had ~10% of the market and the rest was split between several hundred companies chances are you are the biggest single player - but you still only had around 10%. For Apple they made a profit and catered to their market niche so it was certainly a success, but it wasn't a dominate force at all.
It is a capacitive touch screen - right? These work by having a sheet of glass with a conductive material that when your finger (also conductive) touches it is sensed. The question then becomes - how small a "spot" can it sense and how many multi-touches at the same time? If it can sense small enough and a large enough number then a braille like symbol on the bottom of the playing pieces would be plenty to identify the item along with its direction. Some of the items they are placing on the screen *aren't* conductive so they are either faking it or have something else on it. If the latter there are a number of other applications that use capacitive dots so other than applying this to game pieces not really much new.
If the screen *can not* see like that then I can't figure out how it would work. Most bases for board games are round and there is no way to "see" which way the top of the piece is facing - round items do not have direction from their bases. One may be able to have some patterns indicate direction - say each time a piece is placed you are required to move it (maybe even a really small amount) in the direction it is facing, but that isn't inherent in just dropping the piece on the surface and it knowing where it is. Further if it is just a round base and no indentifying marks can be read there is no way to know which piece is what from just setting it on the board. Again, one could make a a system where other information is used - for instance have all the pieces start in known locations. Double tap to remove a piece from the board and every time a piece is picked up it is being "moved" to the next location it touches - basically the pieces are a mouse.
Of course those are how other things "sense" what item is on the surface and direction - the hard part is the surface.
The real issue is why? How many board games can be played on a 10" surface let alone a 4" one? At least with respect to board games (would have to think a bit about other applications) I can't see playing much of anything that way. Even with something that already uses a small board (chess) you would have to have *really* small pieces and would be hard to accurately pick them up and place them. Like many products in search of an audience if their goal is to play with some neat hardware and learn something then there is no answer to why needed past that, if they are looking to make money from this good luck - I think you are going to need it (better get a a patent so you can at least hold onto the idea until screen surfaces catch up with your idea).
A tablet.
Some people prefer a 7" tablet (I am one). That is also why Apple is rumored to be producing one too.
For my self a 10" one seems silly. It's not big enough to use a have a good keyboard and carrying an external one defeats the purpose. It's heavy and bulky - it isn't going into a pocket or be carried on a plane comfortably either. Add inn all the issues with it having a fairly stripped down OS and hardware so I can't do much more than watch a movie or browse the web and it is worthless to me.
7" is perfect - those "flaws" are OK due to the increased portability (minimal OS/software stack and hardware) and when I want to do some "serious" note taking I'll take a netbook - or even better a notebook - any day of the week. Any smaller than a 7" and I start into eye strain for any extended viewing. Plus it is small enough to fit into some pockets/pouches and definitely small enough to easily carry around no matter what yet large enough to not get eye strain.
But then that is why there are several form factors too - not everyone likes the same thing and those that prefer a 7" or a 10" are not stupid because they do. Personally I would say someone who is confused if this is a phone or not fits that bill better.
There are two different answers to that question and I'm not sure which yu are asking.
One is if the law, statue, or whatever it is should be in effect. That can be fairly well argued around and my guess is that it will do not good - if you care enough to know the answer you have already heard it. No reason to go over it again (and I do not feel I care enough either way to "pick" a side so it isn't even going to do any good to try and argue with me if that is what you want).
The next is with respect to this ruling and what you ask is irrelevant. The first relevant question is does Congress have the ability to deny it, the judge (and I agree) clearly think so. They can stop federal funding of research using coffee beans, deceased dogs, chicken embryos, or whatever - fetal stem cells are no different. There isn't a "right to privacy", "right to do what you want to your own body", or any of the other things we argue about with respect to abortion - they can clearly deny funding if they wish no matter what and under our current reading of the constitution regulate the research (though I think they shouldn't be able too that bridge has already been crossed decades ago with similar regulations).
Since we have established that then the question is *have they done so*, and yes they have. Others here listed it, it wasn't the current Congress that passed it, but it hasn't been rescinded or something else passed the negates it.
As such Obama does not have the authority to override the legislative branches decision and hence the judges decision. We can't override legislation we do not like simply because we do not like it - the next group to get in will probably not have the same likes/dislikes you do and then you are without any recourse. If there is enough to warrant changing it go through the proper channels. I shudder to think of what Bush and the Republicans would have done if he had taken the authority this congress and the President have just as I shudder with what they have done. It *is* going to come back at them at some point too.
True - but when they start taking on government powers and *forcing* you to do something then they aren't simply running things they way they want. If they are a govt sponsored monopoly then it is also a different story.
If Comcast wishes to charge you and extra 100 dollars if you use more than 1gb per day then that is their business - I can go to Charter who doesn't. If Comcast is the *only* way (through govt exclusive contracts) then that is most likely not in line with the constitution but we can argue (was the situation I was in a few years back), if my local govt decides that I have to use Comcast no matter what and if I use more than 1gb per month then I am fined an extra 100 dollars that is just plain illegal (the position that Ma Bell was in before they were broken up).
This has been obvious in the past for *so* many things, it is currently one of the bigger complaints across the globe with respect to data lines. That this is trash instead of our precious bits and bytes doesn't make it suddenly OK for them to do - that is how we have ended up with ridiculous laws on the books with respect to "crimes" in the digital world. We can't have them separate where we want them so and the same where we want them the same - if we do that then others have different random lines in the sand. Sadly the thinking and creep towards totalitarianism works both ways.
Being the government enforced monopoly means you are a government entity. If you want to be under free markets rules then you are going to have to be in a free market. You can't be governed by free market rules yet have government enforced client base - it just doesn't work. Indeed, if we want to try and do that then they will fall under anti-trust legislation and then end up in a paradox (govt says they must exists, govt says they can't). You can't have it both ways and have it remotely work, you end up arguing (as we do now and have for a while - it is probably the primary source of our current problems) where to draw the line instead of if we should be doing this in the first place.