Erlen-what? They don't use lab ware. They cook up meth in motel coffee makers. It's a combination of left-wing nanny state and right-wing paranoia that's really killing us here.
Since Arthur Clarke was a key firgure in popularizing the idea of the space elevator, it may be apropos to quote him here:
"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
In other words, companies get away with shipping buggy software because they can. If customers demanded it, the way manufacturers of airplanes and medical equipment did, the industry would be force to respond.
The problem is, computers are so useful, that customers would (for now) rather put up with bugs than do without. Just as in the early days of the automobile, people would put up with the danger of having the hand-crank break your arm if the car backfired while you started it. Cars were new and had big advantages over horses and mules. Nowadays, however, if you tried to sell a car that was likely to break your arm (or even required hand cranking) you'd go out of business in a heartbeat.
Face it, computers are still in their Model-T era.
While I find this particular application to be uninteresting,I do think that it's opening an interesting door for the iPod as a wireless data collection device.
Will Apple sell iPods to meter readers for gathering gas and water use info?
What other opportunites exist for mobile data collection?
I agree. The only thing I would have redacted was the address and floor of the building containing the tapping equipment. If anything bad happened at that building, a case could be made that Wired endangered the employees there.
While I'm not a Libertarian, and I don't have much use for the Ayn Rand crowd, I don't find it' particularly helpful to view Libertarians as strictly right-wing.
Take a feature like generics. There were at least two implementations (Pizza, GJ) available a couple of years before JDK 1.5. That's a fork that could have happened easily.
There are also raging debates over how certain numerics extensions should be done. You could argue that a minor fork has already happened with logging. Some people have a strong preference for Log4j over the Java API.
You get three or four examples of good but different forks, and Java as a stable, uniform platform could be in trouble.
guilt at not having backed up their mission critical data
Of course, the industry (which knows its software is buggy and tends to crash) has never provided a decent, afforable, back-up solution with its home systems.
Since they provide us will fallible operating systems, backup and restore should be easy and out-of-the box.
Also note that the number 4000 is as high as it is because the terrorists basically got lucky. Bin Laden said as much himself. If the pilots had dumped their fuel, or the core of the tower's had been more heat resistant, the World Trade Center would still be standing and the number would be closer to 400.
Why is it (both here and on Metafilter) that you can't critique Colbert's performance without being accused of being a right-wing tool.
I'd give Colbert points for sticking it to Bush with him in the room. Great, so he's got balls. He said some things the press needed to hear. ("Bush decides. I announce. You write it down." was great.) But as comedy, it was pretty mediocre. The whole Helen Thomas as stalker thing was badly done. To be effective, you either need very good timing or, better yet, to create a real sense of danger or urgency. Fake key fumbling does neither.
Part of the problem is also his shtick. Seeing a pompous ass is funny mostly when there's someone to deflate him or play off of him. Watching a real pompous ass is mostly annoying.
Well, to be fair, in media res, doesn't mean "Write movie #4 first, and do #1 later" it means, "Don't bore your audience with unnecessary exposition." The assumption is that the action driving the book/play/movie should already be underway, and that the audience can learn what they need along the way.
You could easily buy it without knowing it. In fact, it could be in your TV now, they just haven't sent the "feature enable" code across the airwaves yet.
Unfortunately, it's a fairly large percent of the population. According to the latest surveys, 42% of Americans believethat life existed in its present form from the beginning of time.
Speaking of history. It's not like the government sat up one day and said "Lets invent health insurance and force companies to pay for it." It evolved as a fairly efficient method for insurance grouping.
Because insurance companies like to spread their risk by insuring groups rather than individuals, it's actually cheaper for the employer to pay for the insurance at a discounted group rate rather than pay each individual enough money to get covered at the individual rate.
Or, now that Jobs is on the board at Disney, they could sell the iTunes music store to Disney, which is already in that business, while continuing to keep the profitable hardware (iPod) to themselves.
None of these are to be controlled by the Federal government. None of them should.
I know you've got some big guns on your side. Thomas Jefferson, for example, would have argued for state's rights just as strongly. However, that's also the kind of reasoning that got us into the Civil War. Is it really possible to be free in one state but a slave in another?
If we are one country, it seems that there are things that deserve a little consistancy. The federal government defines water standards, for example, so I have some assurance that if I can drink from a tap in California, I won't be poisoned by doing so in Oregon.
I'm not particularly interested in arguing the merits of the obscenity case, just suggesting that a little Federalism isn't necessarily a bad thing. Consider South Dakota, which just criminalized abortion. Let's say their next step is making it illegal to travel for the purpose of getting an abortion. Perfectly fine within a state's rights framework, but those women are no less citizens of the US than those in North Dakota, why should they be forced to give the state control of their bodies?
The average person in this country couldn't even begin to tell you what... scientists do.
A great illustration of this (literally) is drawings of scientists by seventh graders. Two sets of drawings were made, one before the kids went on a field trip to the Fermilab physics center, and one afterwards. The differences are stark.
While I don't think it's likely to happen, Apple would be far better off buying Sony than Disney. In addition to getting the media assets that Sony has (which are comparable to Disney's), they'd also be expanding their consumer electronics space.
Imagine VAIOs running OS X, Trinitrons that were WiFi/computer-enabled, a giant music library instantly available in iTunes, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
There's also a rumor that Intel is going to layoff people as well, to the tune of 16,000 workers.
Erlen-what? They don't use lab ware. They cook up meth in motel coffee makers. It's a combination of left-wing nanny state and right-wing paranoia that's really killing us here.
In other words, companies get away with shipping buggy software because they can. If customers demanded it, the way manufacturers of airplanes and medical equipment did, the industry would be force to respond.
The problem is, computers are so useful, that customers would (for now) rather put up with bugs than do without. Just as in the early days of the automobile, people would put up with the danger of having the hand-crank break your arm if the car backfired while you started it. Cars were new and had big advantages over horses and mules. Nowadays, however, if you tried to sell a car that was likely to break your arm (or even required hand cranking) you'd go out of business in a heartbeat.
Face it, computers are still in their Model-T era.
While I find this particular application to be uninteresting,I do think that it's opening an interesting door for the iPod as a wireless data collection device.
Will Apple sell iPods to meter readers for gathering gas and water use info?
What other opportunites exist for mobile data collection?
I agree. The only thing I would have redacted was the address and floor of the building containing the tapping equipment. If anything bad happened at that building, a case could be made that Wired endangered the employees there.
While I'm not a Libertarian, and I don't have much use for the Ayn Rand crowd, I don't find it' particularly helpful to view Libertarians as strictly right-wing.
Viewing political ideologies as left-right is too simplistic. I like the Nolan chart or other spectrum approaches better.
Take a feature like generics. There were at least two implementations (Pizza, GJ) available a couple of years before JDK 1.5. That's a fork that could have happened easily.
There are also raging debates over how certain numerics extensions should be done. You could argue that a minor fork has already happened with logging. Some people have a strong preference for Log4j over the Java API.
You get three or four examples of good but different forks, and Java as a stable, uniform platform could be in trouble.
guilt at not having backed up their mission critical data
Of course, the industry (which knows its software is buggy and tends to crash) has never provided a decent, afforable, back-up solution with its home systems.
Since they provide us will fallible operating systems, backup and restore should be easy and out-of-the box.
Pervert.
Monsters. Monsters from the Id!
And the ever popular...
President Merkin Muffley: Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Also note that the number 4000 is as high as it is because the terrorists basically got lucky. Bin Laden said as much himself. If the pilots had dumped their fuel, or the core of the tower's had been more heat resistant, the World Trade Center would still be standing and the number would be closer to 400.
Why is it (both here and on Metafilter) that you can't critique Colbert's performance without being accused of being a right-wing tool.
I'd give Colbert points for sticking it to Bush with him in the room. Great, so he's got balls. He said some things the press needed to hear. ("Bush decides. I announce. You write it down." was great.) But as comedy, it was pretty mediocre. The whole Helen Thomas as stalker thing was badly done. To be effective, you either need very good timing or, better yet, to create a real sense of danger or urgency. Fake key fumbling does neither.
Part of the problem is also his shtick. Seeing a pompous ass is funny mostly when there's someone to deflate him or play off of him. Watching a real pompous ass is mostly annoying.
Well, to be fair, in media res, doesn't mean "Write movie #4 first, and do #1 later" it means, "Don't bore your audience with unnecessary exposition." The assumption is that the action driving the book/play/movie should already be underway, and that the audience can learn what they need along the way.
You could easily buy it without knowing it. In fact, it could be in your TV now, they just haven't sent the "feature enable" code across the airwaves yet.
Unfortunately, it's a fairly large percent of the population. According to the latest surveys, 42% of Americans believethat life existed in its present form from the beginning of time.
In France, an April Fool is called "Poisson d'Avril" or April Fish. Clearly the cats are looking for the fish.
Speaking of history. It's not like the government sat up one day and said "Lets invent health insurance and force companies to pay for it." It evolved as a fairly efficient method for insurance grouping.
Because insurance companies like to spread their risk by insuring groups rather than individuals, it's actually cheaper for the employer to pay for the insurance at a discounted group rate rather than pay each individual enough money to get covered at the individual rate.
Or, now that Jobs is on the board at Disney, they could sell the iTunes music store to Disney, which is already in that business, while continuing to keep the profitable hardware (iPod) to themselves.
IE was integrated to get by monopoly restrictions.
It's possible to share code without making an application part of the operating system. They're called DLLs.
None of these are to be controlled by the Federal government. None of them should.
I know you've got some big guns on your side. Thomas Jefferson, for example, would have argued for state's rights just as strongly. However, that's also the kind of reasoning that got us into the Civil War. Is it really possible to be free in one state but a slave in another?
If we are one country, it seems that there are things that deserve a little consistancy. The federal government defines water standards, for example, so I have some assurance that if I can drink from a tap in California, I won't be poisoned by doing so in Oregon.
I'm not particularly interested in arguing the merits of the obscenity case, just suggesting that a little Federalism isn't necessarily a bad thing. Consider South Dakota, which just criminalized abortion. Let's say their next step is making it illegal to travel for the purpose of getting an abortion. Perfectly fine within a state's rights framework, but those women are no less citizens of the US than those in North Dakota, why should they be forced to give the state control of their bodies?
The average person in this country couldn't even begin to tell you what ... scientists do.
A great illustration of this (literally) is drawings of scientists by seventh graders. Two sets of drawings were made, one before the kids went on a field trip to the Fermilab physics center, and one afterwards. The differences are stark.
I tried a search with a two-word quoted string, and the first result had the two words in separate paragraphs. That's not good.
While I don't think it's likely to happen, Apple would be far better off buying Sony than Disney. In addition to getting the media assets that Sony has (which are comparable to Disney's), they'd also be expanding their consumer electronics space.
Imagine VAIOs running OS X, Trinitrons that were WiFi/computer-enabled, a giant music library instantly available in iTunes, etc.