most Christians and Buddhists that I know understand the role of religion (and when to NOT use religion).
Not so for the Muslims.
And how many Muslims do you know? Most Muslims also know when NOT to use religion. There are more than a billion of them - if half a billion of them did not know when to use it, I think we might have a tad bigger problem that we currently do.
Remember, the kooks you see on TV are like the kooks you see for other religions as well - they are the minority. Hell, the way faith is involved in politics in the US and informs policy decision (veiled as some other excuse) has done far more harm to the LGBT community than most other religions.
Since I don't have mod points, I'll second (and add to) this comment.
My scenario was almost identical - elderly parent, not tech savvy. I got a Kindle Fire HD five months ago, and have had no tech support calls. I added the most common apps to favorites (like Skype, E-mail, Browser), and configured them (disabled in-app purchasing, added e-mail accounts), and handed it over.
The carousel is one of the best features for this use case - my dad doesn't want to pin 20 widgets to the home screen; the carousel easily allows him to browse the most recent apps (the four or five he uses) and books and videos without having to shift home screens, navigate to an app drawer, or any of that. In fact, he might have forgotten all about the favorites since everything he needs is on the home screen (well, except the prime videos, and he discovered that on his own).
While it wasn't on the Fire HD, the new mayday functionality might be useful as well. And the audio and screen are really good (especially the audio - better than all my other tablets, and even my laptop speakers). He likes the swype feature - a huge drawback to the iOS devices (apart from the complexity - seriously, until you see how simple the Fire is, you won't understand how much the multiple home screen nonsense, hidden settings, etc. obfuscate a system for someone who doesn't want to learn about tech).
The drawbacks are the google apps are missing - especially Youtube. You can root it easily enough, but I'd recommend not going overboard - make underlying system changes, but don't change the UI. I feel the carousel is best for the usage scenario you have in mind. KISS principle.
What is the difference with other STEM subjects? For example, I liked learning calculus (ok, I didn't really learn calculus in the mathematics theory sense - measure theory and stuff - till grad school) in high school, though mainly I liked the use of calculus to physics (projectile motion, mechanics, electrostatics). Now, you might consider physics a "cool" application, but it really isn't - it is just as cool as say, building Pascal's triangle. If anything, I can see the results of programming almost instantaneously. I hated actually doing experiments with my hands (like proving Newton's laws using a block of wood and a weight).
So why is there this perceived need to make "coding" fun? It is as fun as any other subject in STEM, no more, no less (blowing things up in the chemistry lab is different; now that was cool. I thought - rightly or wrongly - that I had no aptitude for it because I couldn't figure out (at a high school level) what might happen on paper before doing the experiment for most things, like flame colors or what might give the best explosion).
If algorithms can be patented, then sure. If FB is using a unique algorithm to infer income, it might be granted (that I think patenting mathematics is absurd is irrelevant - if you believe your algorithm is so great, keep it a secret. Application of mathematics to one area shouldn't be patentable). I'd be surprised if Amazon doesn't look at your shopping history and suggest products in your price range. If I never bought anything over $25, why should they show me a product costing over $10,000?
On the other hand, what does this have to do with redlining? My outrage that statistics is being patented has nothing to do with the fact that FB should be allowed to show whatever ads to whomever they please. They are not a government organization (and haven't taken taxpayer money) that shouldn't be allowed to discriminate between consumers.
The system isn't designed to support outliers - no one in the auto industry complains that they are having Ph.Ds design cars using CFD simulations and a lot of technical know-how. Would Ford have been able to start an automotive company and be challenging today? These moments of individual brilliance changing a field are few and far between. The entire system is geared towards improving the average, rather than gambling on the outliers.
Another differences is that the nature of research has changed as well (at least in the engineering side). Even a brilliant researcher requires massive computational facilities, expensive equipment, and a lot of programming. So they hire grad students and supervise them, which needs grant money. To convince your sponsors that they are getting their moneys worth, you need a lot of publications. If the sponsorship mentality is - "see what you can do, we aren't going to be looking at publication count", things would be quite different. But can you imagine the outrage if an academic gets a one million dollar grant and turns out one paper on the effect of honey-bees on rainfall or some such topic? The NSF is being held up as a political punching bag. Everyone is in a CYA mentality. Not the "try your best, and if it doesn't work we will still stand behind you because we want to cultivate an environment of innovation." mode.
I thought of that, and I'm not sure how much of an impact that has in reality. The password 0 doesn't occur in this list. However, someone with a password of 0 is extremely insecure.
But from a practical standpoint, these companies might want a six or more character password with multiple cases, etc. To try and brute force a lot of passwords is extremely impractical. On the other hand, just trying the most common password again and again is much faster, and I can still own a significant number of accounts.
There is no data here on bad password habits (like using a name, year of birth, or other such habits). If a significant portion of users did that, it is important to consider those as well. But on the whole, there are more systemic flaws, which was my point. This whole blame users for poor habits is counter-productive. If you don't realize that the system is flawed, you blame 'lusers' and have no incentive to fix the system (which should be the goal of anyone designing a consumer-friendly yet secure system).
The data says that the 10th password in the list was used by 1000 users out of two million. The top ten, combined, accounts for 36,000 (eyeballed) of the two million passwords. That doesn't seem like an epidemic to me. A bit less than 2% - that is actually, IMO, quite good. Two percent of internet users are bad at understanding security? Wow.
The keylogger is a bigger problem - so long as I type in my passwords, the keylogger can always find out what I am doing! I could have a 20 character really secure password, to no effect. Hell, things in real life are much worse. My pin is 4 digits long, banks identify me by the last four digits of my SSN (which, quite helpfully, they send out in the mail they send me). Maybe it is time to stop bashing people for choosing insecure passwords, and try to fix the systemic problems?
Kudos on your dedication to be self taught, but the questions you raised are one of the things that a university is great for. To make a meaningful contribution in mathematically-oriented fields (such as computational neuroscience), you need to have the following:
1) Access to latest journals and papers: This should help answer question (1), (2), and (3) - use the tools others are using. If you find an open-source tool, that is great. But often, people in the field will expect you to use a standard framework that has been vetted by lots of other researchers.
2) Access to latest data and tools: Matlab costs quite a bit (esp. with all the toolboxes that you might require). Most universities give you the license for free.
3) Like minded individuals are (for better or worse) almost all at universities and research labs and the main interactions come from conferences. Journals are good for non-interactive peer review, but if you want collaborators, you need to head to conferences. This is also where the university name (and financial backing) can help - "Oh, you work with $BigName? I'd love to collaborate with you!"
You don't have to spend a lot of money either. You can take non-degree enrollment (so you can work at your own pace) while still having a lot of access to the tools, data, and collaborators. In addition, you haven't mentioned your background. So you might find it harder or make trivial mistakes that betray your inexperience or out-of-field characteristics. Most graduate (including Ph.D.) students take a lot of classes on basics (at the start) so that they know the vocabulary and concepts necessary to read and understand the cutting edge research. Without that, you are likely too dependent on the tool. I have known lots of people in industry who swear by Matlab (for example), while not realizing how poor it is compared to more sophisticated optimization tools, especially when you get into large data-sets (which I assume you will be involved with).
I read the article, and all I could see is that when you join a group, you get the decryption key for that group - but from whom? If it is automatically done (i.e. Syme holds the key), then it is no more secure to snooping from agencies than any other service (well, except for the fact that it is based in Canada - ah, who am I kidding). What you would need is the group/thread creator send the decryption key directly to the collaborators - which basically means they already need a secure communication medium (sending it over unsecure email is just stupid). Which would then bring me to ask why not just use that medium?
Nope, it is a USB camera - Intel CS110. A quaint old camera; I was shocked that it worked with Windows 8 actually. My primary camera got busted, and I dug this out of my garage. Oddly enough, it works with Skype in Desktop mode, but the turd that is Metro Skype refuses to believe I have a camera.
Seriously - why on earth are you suggesting half those products? While I respect and am aligned with the goals of the FSF, half those "products" are going to change nothing (at best), or backfire (at worst). If you gave a list of decent products, that would be different - I can feel good about giving gifts that people (who don't care about FSF) can appreciate. This just seems like a set of gifts that make me feel good, while my non-techie friends spend hours trying to return the gift for refunds. And what is the point about "free, secure" software, when my family is just going to log on to Facebook and give up their details voluntarily?
Seriously, if this is the best FSF can do, it illustrates the problem: Non-techies really don't care about privacy. Instead, maybe an educational book could be offered? I'd pay for that. These gifts are going to either increase my tech support work or be ignored - the problem is, I want my family and friends to want to use these products; without education, that won't happen. A good reference for the dangers and fixes of proprietary stuff would be useful.
Breakdown of what the page offers: Trisquel: Modifiable is a selling point? No one in my (or most) family are going to modify the OS in any (significant) way - changing desktop background doesn't count. And I have a intel web-cam from early 2000s that is supported in Windows, but I couldn't find out how to get it to work on my Linux box. 3D printer: Can't comment, so I'm not sure what the free vs. proprietary debate on the printer is about - is it the 3D print file format? Or is it just because the company is evil (hint: my friends don't care, so long as it works. They shop in Walmart and Amazon) Gift card: This doesn't seem to be a gift card - 20% discount on other merchandise using the membership card? Why not give an apples-to-apples comparison and offer a gift card instead? Laptop: Well, this is a fair enough. If my friends could use Linux, I might just save the Windows/Mac tax and give them a PC with Linux. E-book: Again, a fair enough point. But I can give them an Amazon card that will allow my family to get books directly from Amazon and read it on their Kindles. I will not gift them a Kindle, but if they have one, they already don't care. And how do I get Gutenberg books onto a Kindle without having access to their device? Phone: This is a shot at Apple. Seems like the Android will still tie them to Google's store. Online storage: Hmm... Can't find any phone app or client application (hint, most non-techies aren't going to use SSH/SFTP - they want something like dropbox or SkyDrive mount). Media hosting: Most people I know use XBMC, which is open source.
It's like being with someone who most of the time is perfectly reasonable, but at unpredictable moments flies into wild irrational rages, screaming about demons seen only by them...
I have a good stereo set, a decent flat screen TV, about 6 computers or so, a car I'm happy with, a boat that I'm happy with and I'm pretty much satisfied with my life.
Now and then I take a trip to the local "technology store" (Fry's) and I take a look at newegg and tigerdirect to see if I'm missing out on anything. I'm not.
I'm a bad consumer. I'm happy with what I have.
Actually, you are quite a good consumer by most reasonable standards. Not to start a flame-war, but the "must-have-latest-iThing" mentality is in the minority of the people I've met. You have made a lot of purchases, many of them with long lifetimes, so it isn't surprising that you don't get more now.
On the other hand, do you rent/buy movies? Or music? Or games? The first three things you mentioned are largely dead-end devices in themselves. A stereo without music is like a really expensive paperweight.
The only real consumption that I feel forced to take part in is the phone - my last phone was bought in early 2012 (no contract) - but it is getting to a point where planned obsolescence and poor battery life makes me feel compelled to buy one.
Apart from the inflammatory article, I believe there is a valid question to be asked here: how does one identify and catch/correct errors?
In experimental fields, if a result is interesting enough, there will be people who will verify it by trying to repeat or improve the results. However, in more theoretical fields (where computer simulations are the norm), I wonder how well vetted the results are. Especially since many people don't release the source code, and even if they do, it is too large to actually go through and verify each line.
I know of some models (in the aerospace industry) that have been widely used that are flawed in many ways - from sign changes, to impossible geometric configurations. I'm sure that in many other simulation-centric fields, the same problems exist. Often, the results and simulations are just part of some larger methodological contributions - the methodology is still solid, but the presented results are flawed.
I can only answer for myself and the reason that we develop for more than one platform is so that when/if the change happens then we will not be left behind (and fly by the competition when they have to stall all development for a few years in order to create a port). It was common sense to only support IE4 back in the day also, not so fun for those guys when people started to switch to Firefox et al.
Fair enough, and the question is then how confident is your organization in diversification (or more importantly in projecting future trends), and the cost of being wrong. There are countless stories of companies that spent a lot of money developing for multiple platforms, and then being burned when it became clear that diversification was pointless. If, for example, Google released Chrome a short time after firefox started becoming popular, would your strategy have worked.
On the whole, I wonder whether companies in the coming decade will bother to target multiple OS, as hardware/multicore improvements allow efficient virtualization. Either start with an OS-agnostic framework (if it can support your needs), or target one system. Hell, target Linux, because you can give free linux VMs to run under Windows (instead of expecting your Linux clients to pay for a Windows license). Similar to a JVM, but much better because you aren't stuck behind Oracle.
At the moment yes, nothing is set in stone here, it's not like it's impossible for these software's to be ported if the demand comes.
It's a chicken and egg problem - developers won't port unless the demand is there, and the demand won't rise till a lot of people move to Linux, which they won't because they don't have their software for Linux.
I think the whole debate is meaningless - maybe developers will start releasing their work in the form of virtual machines, or users might run virtual machines for their software. A linux base, with a Windows virtual machine (licensing issues with Macs OS on non-mac hardware) for Adobe Photoshop. PCs are good enough that they can take the performance hit of virtualization (except games in some cases). There might be also a few domain specific problems that can be addressed (like color settings for graphics work).
But on the whole, why would developers want to develop for more than one platform, if a single platform can (without too much effort) be used by all possible users?
I was wondering - why did this clam live to a ripe old age? Can all clams live for centuries if they aren't killed by chance (predators, starvation, what-have-you)? Or are clams like most animals in that they grow old and eventually die, even in the best of environments, but it is a really slow process (i.e. like how 20 years to a dog might be 70 years to a human?)
Also, what is it about underwater life that many of the underwater creatures live so long: Maximum life span in animals?
As such, the frugality of organizations like ISRO is more of a byproduct of the severely constrained environment in which they grew up in.
I had a chance to visit ISRO and DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation) as a high school student (won some competition), and the difference in the approach was night and day. There are smart people in each organization, but the ISRO people seem to take pride in their work, and are very ambitious to succeed from the top down. They have a very efficient chain of command, and not much politics. They all work towards a common goal - there isn't the head of one lab pitching a mission to Pluto, while another one tries to demand a mission to Mercury.
On the other hand, the DRDO organization is messed up at the top - there are several people desperate to become directors of a lab, and the infighting often results in splintering. There is a 3 mile road where you can drive by six or seven different labs operating independently. While they do some good work, there are a lot of different projects that each lab tries to pitch.
Commander: "Shakes his head from left to right (roll or whatever)"
This is sooooo lost!
Really? You had to get into aliens/human voyages scenarios for f*ck ups? I'm sure the US' refusal to adopt the SI system (along with illustrious company in the form of Burma and Libera) would burn everyone to a crisp before they got out of the atmosphere. (NASA - Needs Another Seven Astronauts).
The last word from the USPS was that ending Saturday delivery was the key to staying solvent. Now opening on Sunday is the key to survival?
No one was paying them extra to deliver on Saturdays. Now, Amazon is footing (a part?) of the bill, and USPS can make money off it. Cognitive dissonance or comprehension-fail?
Also, the proposal to end Saturday delivery failed (first line of the article). And they already (apparently) deliver a some packages on Sundays and holidays for a fee. This just helps them make get a bigger piece of the e-commerce pie.
If I lived in India I'd take the first rocket to anywhere. Sign me up. It can't be much worse than the rest of their transportation options.
Actually, India has a very capable transportation network. Their railways are pretty good. Sure, you have the cheap seats that are not clean, but I've traveled a lot on their higher-class compartments, and they were clean and comfortable (air-conditioned sleepers).
The US has one of the worst PUBLIC transportation systems for a western country. Even air transport is horrible for an economy passenger. Frankly, the railway and bus network of India puts the US' public transport network to shame.
There are two ways to improve security - lock out the user, or educate them.
Locking out the user is great - but it only works on NEW products, and if you don't have competitors. The reason it works well on NEW products is that the user isn't conditioned on what to expect. Remember, trying to change how people use their computer is an uphill battle. It works well when the do not believe they have alternatives.
Educating the user is harder, but that is the real fix. You aren't improving security by saying 'As responsible devs, our software won't do what you want'. Instead, make a two minute video showing them how $technology is flawed, and make them watch it ONCE. Then, let the choose whether to block $technology or live with it. Because right now they get fed up with Firefox (NOT Java), and click the little blue e.
And yes, it isn't a great hassle to keep using FF when you allow users to "click to allow $applet". But the pain is that I need to look at the little red icon in the address bar to permanently enable something. You might say that if I can't handle this additional step, I shouldn't be making a choice on whether to run an applet or not (but that is a bad road to head down). You could have just made a popup when I run an applet that says "Do you want to remember this setting?" - it doesn't fix the security problem, but the current solution doesn't either. At least this way, I don't feel frustrated at my browser for someone else's (Oracle, in this case) screw ups.
Until recently, I hadn't programmed in anything apart from Matlab in Linux (which has a crappy "IDE") in over ten years (the last version of VS I ever used in any way was VS6.0). Anyway, I started to work on Python and C++, and have so far found a lot of positives with the IDE (Ultimate VS2012 - free from my organization).
VsVim and PTVS let me use a vim like editing features, and Python Tools for VS has also performed well (interactive debugging, autcomplete and command help). On the C++ side, the debugger (for simple code at least) is straightforward. The Git integration could be a better, but I can quite easily drop into the command line and sync with GitHub.
Since I am still learning the tools (and I have used Linux a lot over the last five years, so I am OS agnostic) and the language, I'd like to know what I am likely to miss out by using VS over say Eclipse (or other tools). I tried Eclipse for about half a day, but I had a bit of problem getting the debugger to work for C++. Again, since I am just starting out, I like the convenience of an IDE, rather than using vim+gcc at the command line - I'm not even sure how I'd do a command line debug.
There are lots of people who are healthy and don't see a doctor, nurse, or any other health care provider over the course of a year. They are not participating in the health care system that year, but are being taxed that year.
I'd say it is a fairly good assumption that at some point in their lives (from birth, immunization, etc.). they have been a part of the health care system. In fact, the argument could be made that everyone benefits from the healthcare system even though some people might not see a health care professional (herd immunity - if everyone around a person is immunized, that reduces the risk of an individual who isn't immunized). When you take into account the economic and social benefits accrued by a person indirectly, I don't think it can be said that a person who doesn't go to a doctor isn't a part of the healthcare system.
Obviously, very little is universally true - and the very nature of taxes (in todays society) is that I pay for things I don't believe I benefit from (or I'm not getting my moneys worth). But you don't pick and choose your taxes. I can find a lot of other ways my tax dollars are spent that I don't care for. A tax for healthcare is something that I doubt many people can honestly claim is unfair.
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most Christians and Buddhists that I know understand the role of religion (and when to NOT use religion).
Not so for the Muslims.
And how many Muslims do you know? Most Muslims also know when NOT to use religion. There are more than a billion of them - if half a billion of them did not know when to use it, I think we might have a tad bigger problem that we currently do.
Remember, the kooks you see on TV are like the kooks you see for other religions as well - they are the minority. Hell, the way faith is involved in politics in the US and informs policy decision (veiled as some other excuse) has done far more harm to the LGBT community than most other religions.
Since I don't have mod points, I'll second (and add to) this comment.
My scenario was almost identical - elderly parent, not tech savvy. I got a Kindle Fire HD five months ago, and have had no tech support calls. I added the most common apps to favorites (like Skype, E-mail, Browser), and configured them (disabled in-app purchasing, added e-mail accounts), and handed it over.
The carousel is one of the best features for this use case - my dad doesn't want to pin 20 widgets to the home screen; the carousel easily allows him to browse the most recent apps (the four or five he uses) and books and videos without having to shift home screens, navigate to an app drawer, or any of that. In fact, he might have forgotten all about the favorites since everything he needs is on the home screen (well, except the prime videos, and he discovered that on his own).
While it wasn't on the Fire HD, the new mayday functionality might be useful as well. And the audio and screen are really good (especially the audio - better than all my other tablets, and even my laptop speakers). He likes the swype feature - a huge drawback to the iOS devices (apart from the complexity - seriously, until you see how simple the Fire is, you won't understand how much the multiple home screen nonsense, hidden settings, etc. obfuscate a system for someone who doesn't want to learn about tech).
The drawbacks are the google apps are missing - especially Youtube. You can root it easily enough, but I'd recommend not going overboard - make underlying system changes, but don't change the UI. I feel the carousel is best for the usage scenario you have in mind. KISS principle.
What is the difference with other STEM subjects? For example, I liked learning calculus (ok, I didn't really learn calculus in the mathematics theory sense - measure theory and stuff - till grad school) in high school, though mainly I liked the use of calculus to physics (projectile motion, mechanics, electrostatics). Now, you might consider physics a "cool" application, but it really isn't - it is just as cool as say, building Pascal's triangle. If anything, I can see the results of programming almost instantaneously. I hated actually doing experiments with my hands (like proving Newton's laws using a block of wood and a weight).
So why is there this perceived need to make "coding" fun? It is as fun as any other subject in STEM, no more, no less (blowing things up in the chemistry lab is different; now that was cool. I thought - rightly or wrongly - that I had no aptitude for it because I couldn't figure out (at a high school level) what might happen on paper before doing the experiment for most things, like flame colors or what might give the best explosion).
If algorithms can be patented, then sure. If FB is using a unique algorithm to infer income, it might be granted (that I think patenting mathematics is absurd is irrelevant - if you believe your algorithm is so great, keep it a secret. Application of mathematics to one area shouldn't be patentable). I'd be surprised if Amazon doesn't look at your shopping history and suggest products in your price range. If I never bought anything over $25, why should they show me a product costing over $10,000?
On the other hand, what does this have to do with redlining? My outrage that statistics is being patented has nothing to do with the fact that FB should be allowed to show whatever ads to whomever they please. They are not a government organization (and haven't taken taxpayer money) that shouldn't be allowed to discriminate between consumers.
The system isn't designed to support outliers - no one in the auto industry complains that they are having Ph.Ds design cars using CFD simulations and a lot of technical know-how. Would Ford have been able to start an automotive company and be challenging today? These moments of individual brilliance changing a field are few and far between. The entire system is geared towards improving the average, rather than gambling on the outliers.
Another differences is that the nature of research has changed as well (at least in the engineering side). Even a brilliant researcher requires massive computational facilities, expensive equipment, and a lot of programming. So they hire grad students and supervise them, which needs grant money. To convince your sponsors that they are getting their moneys worth, you need a lot of publications. If the sponsorship mentality is - "see what you can do, we aren't going to be looking at publication count", things would be quite different. But can you imagine the outrage if an academic gets a one million dollar grant and turns out one paper on the effect of honey-bees on rainfall or some such topic? The NSF is being held up as a political punching bag. Everyone is in a CYA mentality. Not the "try your best, and if it doesn't work we will still stand behind you because we want to cultivate an environment of innovation." mode.
I thought of that, and I'm not sure how much of an impact that has in reality. The password 0 doesn't occur in this list. However, someone with a password of 0 is extremely insecure.
But from a practical standpoint, these companies might want a six or more character password with multiple cases, etc. To try and brute force a lot of passwords is extremely impractical. On the other hand, just trying the most common password again and again is much faster, and I can still own a significant number of accounts.
There is no data here on bad password habits (like using a name, year of birth, or other such habits). If a significant portion of users did that, it is important to consider those as well. But on the whole, there are more systemic flaws, which was my point. This whole blame users for poor habits is counter-productive. If you don't realize that the system is flawed, you blame 'lusers' and have no incentive to fix the system (which should be the goal of anyone designing a consumer-friendly yet secure system).
The data says that the 10th password in the list was used by 1000 users out of two million. The top ten, combined, accounts for 36,000 (eyeballed) of the two million passwords. That doesn't seem like an epidemic to me. A bit less than 2% - that is actually, IMO, quite good. Two percent of internet users are bad at understanding security? Wow.
The keylogger is a bigger problem - so long as I type in my passwords, the keylogger can always find out what I am doing! I could have a 20 character really secure password, to no effect. Hell, things in real life are much worse. My pin is 4 digits long, banks identify me by the last four digits of my SSN (which, quite helpfully, they send out in the mail they send me). Maybe it is time to stop bashing people for choosing insecure passwords, and try to fix the systemic problems?
Kudos on your dedication to be self taught, but the questions you raised are one of the things that a university is great for. To make a meaningful contribution in mathematically-oriented fields (such as computational neuroscience), you need to have the following:
1) Access to latest journals and papers: This should help answer question (1), (2), and (3) - use the tools others are using. If you find an open-source tool, that is great. But often, people in the field will expect you to use a standard framework that has been vetted by lots of other researchers.
2) Access to latest data and tools: Matlab costs quite a bit (esp. with all the toolboxes that you might require). Most universities give you the license for free.
3) Like minded individuals are (for better or worse) almost all at universities and research labs and the main interactions come from conferences. Journals are good for non-interactive peer review, but if you want collaborators, you need to head to conferences. This is also where the university name (and financial backing) can help - "Oh, you work with $BigName? I'd love to collaborate with you!"
You don't have to spend a lot of money either. You can take non-degree enrollment (so you can work at your own pace) while still having a lot of access to the tools, data, and collaborators. In addition, you haven't mentioned your background. So you might find it harder or make trivial mistakes that betray your inexperience or out-of-field characteristics. Most graduate (including Ph.D.) students take a lot of classes on basics (at the start) so that they know the vocabulary and concepts necessary to read and understand the cutting edge research. Without that, you are likely too dependent on the tool. I have known lots of people in industry who swear by Matlab (for example), while not realizing how poor it is compared to more sophisticated optimization tools, especially when you get into large data-sets (which I assume you will be involved with).
I read the article, and all I could see is that when you join a group, you get the decryption key for that group - but from whom? If it is automatically done (i.e. Syme holds the key), then it is no more secure to snooping from agencies than any other service (well, except for the fact that it is based in Canada - ah, who am I kidding). What you would need is the group/thread creator send the decryption key directly to the collaborators - which basically means they already need a secure communication medium (sending it over unsecure email is just stupid). Which would then bring me to ask why not just use that medium?
Nope, it is a USB camera - Intel CS110. A quaint old camera; I was shocked that it worked with Windows 8 actually. My primary camera got busted, and I dug this out of my garage. Oddly enough, it works with Skype in Desktop mode, but the turd that is Metro Skype refuses to believe I have a camera.
Seriously - why on earth are you suggesting half those products? While I respect and am aligned with the goals of the FSF, half those "products" are going to change nothing (at best), or backfire (at worst). If you gave a list of decent products, that would be different - I can feel good about giving gifts that people (who don't care about FSF) can appreciate. This just seems like a set of gifts that make me feel good, while my non-techie friends spend hours trying to return the gift for refunds. And what is the point about "free, secure" software, when my family is just going to log on to Facebook and give up their details voluntarily?
Seriously, if this is the best FSF can do, it illustrates the problem: Non-techies really don't care about privacy. Instead, maybe an educational book could be offered? I'd pay for that. These gifts are going to either increase my tech support work or be ignored - the problem is, I want my family and friends to want to use these products; without education, that won't happen. A good reference for the dangers and fixes of proprietary stuff would be useful.
Breakdown of what the page offers:
Trisquel: Modifiable is a selling point? No one in my (or most) family are going to modify the OS in any (significant) way - changing desktop background doesn't count. And I have a intel web-cam from early 2000s that is supported in Windows, but I couldn't find out how to get it to work on my Linux box.
3D printer: Can't comment, so I'm not sure what the free vs. proprietary debate on the printer is about - is it the 3D print file format? Or is it just because the company is evil (hint: my friends don't care, so long as it works. They shop in Walmart and Amazon)
Gift card: This doesn't seem to be a gift card - 20% discount on other merchandise using the membership card? Why not give an apples-to-apples comparison and offer a gift card instead?
Laptop: Well, this is a fair enough. If my friends could use Linux, I might just save the Windows/Mac tax and give them a PC with Linux.
E-book: Again, a fair enough point. But I can give them an Amazon card that will allow my family to get books directly from Amazon and read it on their Kindles. I will not gift them a Kindle, but if they have one, they already don't care. And how do I get Gutenberg books onto a Kindle without having access to their device?
Phone: This is a shot at Apple. Seems like the Android will still tie them to Google's store.
Online storage: Hmm... Can't find any phone app or client application (hint, most non-techies aren't going to use SSH/SFTP - they want something like dropbox or SkyDrive mount).
Media hosting: Most people I know use XBMC, which is open source.
It's like being with someone who most of the time is perfectly reasonable, but at unpredictable moments flies into wild irrational rages, screaming about demons seen only by them...
Ahh.. I see you've met my ex
I have a good stereo set, a decent flat screen TV, about 6 computers or so, a car I'm happy with, a boat that I'm happy with and I'm pretty much satisfied with my life. Now and then I take a trip to the local "technology store" (Fry's) and I take a look at newegg and tigerdirect to see if I'm missing out on anything. I'm not. I'm a bad consumer. I'm happy with what I have.
Actually, you are quite a good consumer by most reasonable standards. Not to start a flame-war, but the "must-have-latest-iThing" mentality is in the minority of the people I've met. You have made a lot of purchases, many of them with long lifetimes, so it isn't surprising that you don't get more now.
On the other hand, do you rent/buy movies? Or music? Or games? The first three things you mentioned are largely dead-end devices in themselves. A stereo without music is like a really expensive paperweight.
The only real consumption that I feel forced to take part in is the phone - my last phone was bought in early 2012 (no contract) - but it is getting to a point where planned obsolescence and poor battery life makes me feel compelled to buy one.
Apart from the inflammatory article, I believe there is a valid question to be asked here: how does one identify and catch/correct errors?
In experimental fields, if a result is interesting enough, there will be people who will verify it by trying to repeat or improve the results. However, in more theoretical fields (where computer simulations are the norm), I wonder how well vetted the results are. Especially since many people don't release the source code, and even if they do, it is too large to actually go through and verify each line.
I know of some models (in the aerospace industry) that have been widely used that are flawed in many ways - from sign changes, to impossible geometric configurations. I'm sure that in many other simulation-centric fields, the same problems exist. Often, the results and simulations are just part of some larger methodological contributions - the methodology is still solid, but the presented results are flawed.
I can only answer for myself and the reason that we develop for more than one platform is so that when/if the change happens then we will not be left behind (and fly by the competition when they have to stall all development for a few years in order to create a port). It was common sense to only support IE4 back in the day also, not so fun for those guys when people started to switch to Firefox et al.
Fair enough, and the question is then how confident is your organization in diversification (or more importantly in projecting future trends), and the cost of being wrong. There are countless stories of companies that spent a lot of money developing for multiple platforms, and then being burned when it became clear that diversification was pointless. If, for example, Google released Chrome a short time after firefox started becoming popular, would your strategy have worked.
On the whole, I wonder whether companies in the coming decade will bother to target multiple OS, as hardware/multicore improvements allow efficient virtualization. Either start with an OS-agnostic framework (if it can support your needs), or target one system. Hell, target Linux, because you can give free linux VMs to run under Windows (instead of expecting your Linux clients to pay for a Windows license). Similar to a JVM, but much better because you aren't stuck behind Oracle.
At the moment yes, nothing is set in stone here, it's not like it's impossible for these software's to be ported if the demand comes.
It's a chicken and egg problem - developers won't port unless the demand is there, and the demand won't rise till a lot of people move to Linux, which they won't because they don't have their software for Linux.
I think the whole debate is meaningless - maybe developers will start releasing their work in the form of virtual machines, or users might run virtual machines for their software. A linux base, with a Windows virtual machine (licensing issues with Macs OS on non-mac hardware) for Adobe Photoshop. PCs are good enough that they can take the performance hit of virtualization (except games in some cases). There might be also a few domain specific problems that can be addressed (like color settings for graphics work).
But on the whole, why would developers want to develop for more than one platform, if a single platform can (without too much effort) be used by all possible users?
I was wondering - why did this clam live to a ripe old age? Can all clams live for centuries if they aren't killed by chance (predators, starvation, what-have-you)? Or are clams like most animals in that they grow old and eventually die, even in the best of environments, but it is a really slow process (i.e. like how 20 years to a dog might be 70 years to a human?)
Also, what is it about underwater life that many of the underwater creatures live so long: Maximum life span in animals?
As such, the frugality of organizations like ISRO is more of a byproduct of the severely constrained environment in which they grew up in.
I had a chance to visit ISRO and DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation) as a high school student (won some competition), and the difference in the approach was night and day. There are smart people in each organization, but the ISRO people seem to take pride in their work, and are very ambitious to succeed from the top down. They have a very efficient chain of command, and not much politics. They all work towards a common goal - there isn't the head of one lab pitching a mission to Pluto, while another one tries to demand a mission to Mercury.
On the other hand, the DRDO organization is messed up at the top - there are several people desperate to become directors of a lab, and the infighting often results in splintering. There is a 3 mile road where you can drive by six or seven different labs operating independently. While they do some good work, there are a lot of different projects that each lab tries to pitch.
Commander: "Shakes his head from left to right (roll or whatever)"
This is sooooo lost!
Really? You had to get into aliens/human voyages scenarios for f*ck ups? I'm sure the US' refusal to adopt the SI system (along with illustrious company in the form of Burma and Libera) would burn everyone to a crisp before they got out of the atmosphere. (NASA - Needs Another Seven Astronauts).
The last word from the USPS was that ending Saturday delivery was the key to staying solvent. Now opening on Sunday is the key to survival?
No one was paying them extra to deliver on Saturdays. Now, Amazon is footing (a part?) of the bill, and USPS can make money off it. Cognitive dissonance or comprehension-fail?
Also, the proposal to end Saturday delivery failed (first line of the article). And they already (apparently) deliver a some packages on Sundays and holidays for a fee. This just helps them make get a bigger piece of the e-commerce pie.
If I lived in India I'd take the first rocket to anywhere. Sign me up. It can't be much worse than the rest of their transportation options.
Actually, India has a very capable transportation network. Their railways are pretty good. Sure, you have the cheap seats that are not clean, but I've traveled a lot on their higher-class compartments, and they were clean and comfortable (air-conditioned sleepers).
The US has one of the worst PUBLIC transportation systems for a western country. Even air transport is horrible for an economy passenger. Frankly, the railway and bus network of India puts the US' public transport network to shame.
There are two ways to improve security - lock out the user, or educate them.
Locking out the user is great - but it only works on NEW products, and if you don't have competitors. The reason it works well on NEW products is that the user isn't conditioned on what to expect. Remember, trying to change how people use their computer is an uphill battle. It works well when the do not believe they have alternatives.
Educating the user is harder, but that is the real fix. You aren't improving security by saying 'As responsible devs, our software won't do what you want'. Instead, make a two minute video showing them how $technology is flawed, and make them watch it ONCE. Then, let the choose whether to block $technology or live with it. Because right now they get fed up with Firefox (NOT Java), and click the little blue e.
And yes, it isn't a great hassle to keep using FF when you allow users to "click to allow $applet". But the pain is that I need to look at the little red icon in the address bar to permanently enable something. You might say that if I can't handle this additional step, I shouldn't be making a choice on whether to run an applet or not (but that is a bad road to head down). You could have just made a popup when I run an applet that says "Do you want to remember this setting?" - it doesn't fix the security problem, but the current solution doesn't either. At least this way, I don't feel frustrated at my browser for someone else's (Oracle, in this case) screw ups.
Hi... I haven't used mixed mode debugging - I'm still learning the two languages independently.
I'd like to ask - what am I missing?
Until recently, I hadn't programmed in anything apart from Matlab in Linux (which has a crappy "IDE") in over ten years (the last version of VS I ever used in any way was VS6.0). Anyway, I started to work on Python and C++, and have so far found a lot of positives with the IDE (Ultimate VS2012 - free from my organization).
VsVim and PTVS let me use a vim like editing features, and Python Tools for VS has also performed well (interactive debugging, autcomplete and command help). On the C++ side, the debugger (for simple code at least) is straightforward. The Git integration could be a better, but I can quite easily drop into the command line and sync with GitHub.
Since I am still learning the tools (and I have used Linux a lot over the last five years, so I am OS agnostic) and the language, I'd like to know what I am likely to miss out by using VS over say Eclipse (or other tools). I tried Eclipse for about half a day, but I had a bit of problem getting the debugger to work for C++. Again, since I am just starting out, I like the convenience of an IDE, rather than using vim+gcc at the command line - I'm not even sure how I'd do a command line debug.
There are lots of people who are healthy and don't see a doctor, nurse, or any other health care provider over the course of a year. They are not participating in the health care system that year, but are being taxed that year.
I'd say it is a fairly good assumption that at some point in their lives (from birth, immunization, etc.). they have been a part of the health care system. In fact, the argument could be made that everyone benefits from the healthcare system even though some people might not see a health care professional (herd immunity - if everyone around a person is immunized, that reduces the risk of an individual who isn't immunized). When you take into account the economic and social benefits accrued by a person indirectly, I don't think it can be said that a person who doesn't go to a doctor isn't a part of the healthcare system.
Obviously, very little is universally true - and the very nature of taxes (in todays society) is that I pay for things I don't believe I benefit from (or I'm not getting my moneys worth). But you don't pick and choose your taxes. I can find a lot of other ways my tax dollars are spent that I don't care for. A tax for healthcare is something that I doubt many people can honestly claim is unfair.