Depends on your point of view - as a publicity stunt, it is an epic fail. It should have also been expected. Keeping open discussions on the internet is inherently problematic, even if you are posting the most non-controversial of statements. Start a discussion on how cancer is bad for humans, and there will be someone posting about how good it is for population control.
On the other hand, if some of the top government officials can be bothered to read the criticism, they might actually learn something. While democracy is great and all that, once people get into office they might as well be governing from the moon. It's easy for you to refuse to allocate funds to fix my roads if you don't use them on a daily basis.
The internet has made it easy to offer feedback and that should (in theory) help people govern better. While it is true that we could always "write/call" our congressman, it isn't really practical when you get to higher levels of government (e.g. do my tax dollars go to fund a war or education).
In what field, may I ask, are all these people with degrees not working for peanuts? I've been avoiding a degree on the basis that it won't guarantee me stable employment, just cost me time and money. Just wondering if I'm way off here.
Obviously, my experience is anecdotal (but from a large state university) - I know people from electrical engineering (VLSI/Signal processing), and Computer Science (video/image processing, and data mining) who get paid (at or above) the standard rate, as per glassdoor. But if you are a citizen, the best bet is control theory, if you are slightly mathematically inclined. I know several defense contractors who are unable to fill in control theory positions - a good international student who worked with NASA and Boeing (as a part of his advisor's team) was unable to get employment in his specialization because of citizenship issues. He got tired of waiting for it to get sorted out and had to take a (higher paying but less stable) position at Schlumberger.
Americans have university degrees. Unfortunately, they demand a competitive salary (since getting a degree in US is expensive). Also, Americans tend to leave and get another job if they are underpaid
I know lots of students who are paying US college rates for a masters degree (Ph.D students generally get paid by the university/grants) and so need a competitive salary as well - and no student who gets a degree from a US college (whom I know) is working for peanuts. They get the same salary as their US counterparts (you could argue that the increased workforce is driving down costs overall, but that is supply and demand). And 90% of the class are international students, almost all of whom want to stay in the US. And many H1B workers switch jobs when they can/need to. They just have to get the new job BEFORE quitting their old job (or within 30 days of quitting or something like that).
The real problem is the H1-B to green card process - the rules stipulate that once you apply for a green card (which many H1Bs do) you can't switch jobs (even within the same company) till the process is complete (3-5 years). Or else you need to start the application from scratch. The US is the only country that makes it so hard for even skilled workers to get a green card. It is easier to get a EU/Canadian/Australian green card sitting in the US than it is to get a US green card. If the US made it simpler to get a green card for skilled workers, many H1Bs would not be tied to an employer for so long.
Now, if you are talking about hiring overseas workers from outside the US - by getting them H1Bs from within their home country - then the issues you raised might be true. But a LOT of H1Bs are given to international citizens in the US itself.
But corporations are people, and rounded corners belong to Apple - clearly if Samsung had used razor-sharp edges on their tablet, people would have bought iPads instead, and so Samsung did steal from Apple.
This is depressing. On a slightly related note, I'm looking at my (physical) desktop and can't find one single device (including keyboards, monitors, computer cases, etc) without rounded corners.
It's hard to be a passenger of an unmanned aircraft... unless you happen to be a woman, I guess.
The New Hampshire bill doesn't require the aircraft to be unmanned (at least my cursory reading shows the following: A person is guilty of a class A misdemeanor if such person knowingly creates or assists in creating an image of the exterior of any residential dwelling in this state where such image is created by or with the assistance of a satellite, drone, or any device that is not supported by the ground. This prohibition shall not apply where the image does not reveal forms identifiable as human beings or man-made objects. In this paragraph, “dwelling” means any building, structure, or portion thereof which is occupied as, or designed or intended for occupancy as, a residence by one or more individuals).
So basically, any organization outside the US (including foreign governments with remote sensing satellites) can now see what it is illegal for US residents to see? Wow.
And WTF does support by the ground mean? If I take videos/pictures as a pilot or a passenger of an aircraft, does that count? What if I do launch a baloon, but have to manually tell it to take pictures and have the instructions sent wirelessly (which, umm, I do every 1/10 of a second by my ground-based triggering mechanism)?
I always wondered why possession/acquiring of copyright material is a crime.
The whole problem of making possession/downloading illegal is it tries to fight human nature in a clumsy way (I get that while downloading torrents you also MIGHT seed it - there might not be anyone else downloading from you). People will always want free stuff. If I find a copy of a popular book being sold at half price on the pavement, I will buy it (esp. if the print is great).
At certain times, fighting human nature is important/worth it (e.g. stealing and killing others is illegal). At other times, it is just plain stupid (e.g. War on XYZ). In the end if people want it badly enough they will find a way to get what they want, consequences be damned (see how much stealing laws work against a starving man). You are trying to make natural behavior illegal, and coming up with technical measures to prevent it. Which has the gaping loophole that most technical barriers can/will be breached. And there is little cost to building digital workarounds.
This is a problem with all names with a kind of non-uniqueness. The moment you use a common word (like space) to describe an idea or concept, you limit the mental map. For example, I find that using the word "saved" in a religious context limiting for the same reason. "Saved" in generally a good thing. So you start thinking the alternative (not being saved by religion) as bad.
As for the laws, we already have something I consider similar: the European Union. A region without real political unification, but with a sort of economic unification to allow free transport of goods, services, and capital. Which is kind of like `cyberspace', except information is included instead of goods (I'm not sure what the current status of the European Union Copyright Law is).
I know that the analogy goes back to a 'spatial' interpretation, but calling it the cloud or cyberworld or cyber-dimension (which might be another good way to think of it?) would bring similar problems in restricting our mental map of things.
Just found it odd he threw in handwriting in this day and age. It was beat to death with Palm starting a decade and a half ago. It's gone. Dead. Byebye.
There was another article which stated that paper-and-pencils are the best tools in the classroom. While handwriting recognition (like all technologies) has had its hype, it is now becoming a serious tool. The stylus is actually a nice way to get work done on a computer in many technical fields (where drawings and notes are the way the people communicate).
I know faculty and students who use OneNote/EndNote and really like the Ink-to-Math and Ink-to-Text functionality.
Does Gates not know about Python? Python IMO is a whole lot easier to learn than BASIC ever was and you can do a lot more with it. And Python is much easier than C/C#/C++ to learn and is much, much, much cleaner than Java.
Slap on a few libraries and you can do just about anything in Python in less lines of code. AND you can actually read it when you're done:)
While that might be true, it still doesn't say much about the ease of learning Python compared to other traditional activities a high school student might engage in. I think Python is fairly neat, but I think that the abstractions required for modern OOP languages is something that is not easily understood by most people. Remember, this is high school he is talking about.
What you'd need is a language that is easy to learn, and can be related to other classes/life without too much programming. For example, in any language I know, creating a good graphics of a bouncing ball (or Newtonian dynamics visualizations) is fairly hard. I'd like to be proved wrong, but very few students in high-school like programming as an intellectual challenge in itself (and while I don't think everyone should become a programmer, a basic understanding of programming is becoming essential IMO. Much like understanding the basics of cars was required in the early days. Cars were common, but not as reliable as they are today. They broke down often enough that you needed some knowledge on how to fix them).
Compared to plain old Python, yes. But Cython offers a lot of capabilities that improve speed dramatically - just using a type for your data in Cython gives programs a wonderful boost in speed.
As someone who uses Matlab for most of my programming, I have come to detest languages that do not force specifying a variable type and/or declaring variables. Matlab offers neither, but it is a standard in some circles.
Yeah the govt needs better systems to manage the huge databases and dossiers they are building on everybody with their warrentless wiretaps and reading everybody's emails. Anybody who helps with this project is pretty damn naive if they don't think it will also be used for this.
For that matter anybody who trusts the govt and thinks the govt is your friend is pretty damn naive. Yeah I would like to believe that too. No I won't ignore the mountains of evidence to the contrary. I won't treat all the counterexamples as isolated cases. I see them for what they are: an amazingly consistent pattern. The rule, not the exception. Govt positions are really attractive to sociopath types who just love power and control and a feeling that they are important and they get that feeling by imposing their will on us.
So what you are saying is that DARPA funds will be used in a way to further the goals of DARPA/The government? Shocking. I haven't read anything that says which agencies will/won't have access to these tools - so I'd hazard a guess that any department that wants it can have it (including the famous three letter agencies).
FYI, Continuum Analytics is a company that is based on providing high-performance python-based computing to clients. Any packages they might release will either be open source (and can be checked), or closed source (in which case you don't have to use it). They aren't hijacking the Numpy/Scipy libraries. They are developing libraries/tools for a client (who happens to be DARPA). (Frankly, I'd hope that Continuum Analytics open sources their development because it might be useful to the larger community). You do know that DARPA funds also go to improve robotics, they supported ARPANET, and a lot of their space programs later got transferred to NASA?
Basically, I have no idea what you are ranting about. One government organization funded a project - it happens all the time. Do you rant about NSF/NIH/NASA money as well? If so, you'd better live in a cave - a lot of government sponsored research has gone into almost every modern convenience that we take for granted.
Sure, Einstein was ground breaking, but apart from E=mc^2, how many people know what he did (or even what it means)? How many know of the photoelectric effect? Relativity and quantum mechanics gets thrown around a lot as buzzwords, but most people have no idea what they mean.
So you might consider that Einstein has become a great popularizers of science - unintentionally, but most people know that he was in a physicist, and don't really have a clue what he did.
You seem to want groundbreaking to mean both Famous and Important Contributions. But I'm not sure how long it took for Einstein to become a household name. And you also want it to be One man/woman. That might not be as realistic anymore. Because research in most areas requires lots of equipments and teams (except in a few areas - theoretical mathematics and physics come to mind). But just because it is a team, doesn't make it any less valuable.
In fact, I prefer teams and organizations get recognition. Students and the younger crowd have something concrete to work towards. Not "I want to be the next XYZ", but instead "I want to work at XYZ". They might have a hero-worship of the organization, but will still work hard towards something measurable.
While I did say "nobody" in my original post, I didn't mean it literally. For that matter, cut the rope is on the Windows 8 store (and I'm sure it is on other platforms). My second point addressed this issue: I don't think Angry birds for Xbox would make anyone thinking of buying a console choose that platform instead of a PS3. They choose Xbox for Halo. When you want people to buy a console, they look for big-name titles. And Angry birds lacks the complexity that makes game play on a console fun (compare it to GTA or any other major title).
From the summary, I thought this device would support android games. If that is the case, why are their only 166 entries? Do Android games need to be ported to make use of the controller?
I also wonder if any big-named titles are coming to it. Without that, I believe this console is dead in the water. Most people who do console gaming want big famous titles (like Halo/Zelda/FIFA/CoD).
Angry birds on a console wouldn't (IMO) do much good. I doubt anyone would play angry birds on a PC/Console. Part of the appeal with games for phones is that the games are quick, easy to play, and relatively straightforward. Some console/PC games transition well to phones (e.g. Team 17's Worms), but I don't think that holds for the majority of games. Most console gamers (whom I know - including me) prefer games with greater complexity in gameplay (even if it is just shooting things).
This is such a vague question that it cannot be answered in a sensible way. It depends on the service, and alternatives. If I have no alternatives, I am out of luck. On the other hand, if there are dozens of options, I'd switch as soon as I believe the alternatives would provide better value for money. If it is a critical service (depending on the application), even a few minutes might be catastrophic.
The re-compensation issue should be dealt with in the service level agreements/TOS (including no-cost cancellations).
As for communicating problems, I'd expect to be kept in the loop - each time they make a new estimate of restoration time, I should be send a notification by my medium of choice. It is unacceptable that a paying client have no idea when service would be restored. Obviously, as problems are discovered, the estimate will be modified. But I still would want to have the latest estimate (especially for work-related services).
(1) It has to work - that is why you go in for older (read: more tested) hardware. What happens if a bug in the code causes a crash a million miles from home? You can't pull out the battery (oops, you can't do that for the iPhone either;) ) - and reboot. (2) Who cares whether the processing power is greater? What matters is whether the hardware can support the software to do what the system was designed for (which in the rover case is fixed). You use the most RELIABLE hardware to get the mission done. Any additional power/capabilities in the hardware just introduces more points of failure (OTOH, the phone should (ideally) play games that come out in two years, which might require more processing power).
My phone might also have better processing power than the autopilot hardware on most commercial airlines. You need tens of thousands of flight test/real world hours of testing before you can safely use it. Putting in the latest and greatest processor just creates more rooms for error. I would also expect a lot of the code came from other tried-and-tested systems, so you'd like to use the same hardware.
It is like using a hammer to crack a peanut shell. Sure, you get greater force with the hammer. But you have to be very, very careful when using the wrong tool for the job. Frankly, I'm not sure what the point of the article is. I don't know of any reasonable person who would even consider using a desktop/laptop/phone processors on mission critical hardware.
Okay. I will not argue about whether or not people "should" be doing menial labor... but i would like to ask you and other folks who are fixated on this idea: Have you created any new skilled jobs that all of these former wage slaves can perform? If not, what will those wage slaves do to feed themselves? They are not permitted to leave society and just grow or hunt their own food as that requires land and land is taxed and tax MUST be paid in a currency created by society. So... what? I think you will have a VERY hard time convincing billions of unnecessary people to just politely lay down and die now that they are no longer needed.
No, I haven't created any new skilled jobs that the wage slaves can perform. However, part of my point was that these jobs are going to vanish (or not keep up with population growth) due to automation anyway. We will have billions of unnecessary people if we keep up this trajectory.
I think that the problem is fundamentally due to the "Work Or Starve" society that we live in. That model is flawed because it assumes (among several things) that there always exists Work as an alternative to starving. If not enough jobs exist due to population growth and increased automation, the "Or Starve" is the only option on the table.
I understand that this view is radical (or even unrealistic/crazy). I don't, however, buy the belief that Starvation needs to be the stick that forces people to work. If people do have access to food and shelter, then most people seem to believe that large sections of society will spend all day watching TV in their underwear. I don't agree. A small minority will do that, but most people will do something they love to keep themselves occupied, or to earn money to buy things. But if they don't/cannot find such jobs, they shouldn't have to starve. And that, IMO, will improve societies progress because the "wage-slave" (and I count myself as one - if I didn't have to pay bills, I'd pursue some of my hobbies full time) will now spend time doing things they are actually good at/enjoy (and do it better) than what they do right now. There will always be engineers, mathematicians, architects, cooks, etc. because they like it.
While this phenomenon is to be expected, it happened much faster than I expected. And I consider it a good thing. We need people to move people out of low-level manufacturing.
The problem with manual labor is that sooner or later, automation will cause a majority of the workforce to become unemployed. Irrespective of wage cuts, cramped spaces, etc. A machine can almost always do it better than a human can (and for cheaper given a large enough scale). If there is a fixed algorithm/procedure to follow with very little dynamic decision making, you don't need humans to do it.
We should be educating people more and more and give them the skills that won't be automated in 5-10 years. Otherwise, you are just pushing the problem a few years down the line - "iPhone manufacturing is now automated? Fine, I'll join an iTeleport manufacturing plant". Which is why when I hate it when a politician talk about how they are going to "bring back manufacturing from China" - they aren't addressing the problem. Those low-skill manufacturing jobs aren't coming back. Either they will be automated, or you are competing against an extremely cheap labor force and will never win out.
Talk about narcissism. I cannot fathom why I would take precious time analyzing my own data just to discover I posted 101 times, three with pictures, only 10 with comments (nobody likes me). We have gone beyond the me generation to now the I generation.
You are doing it wrong. It isn't to analyze what your profile says, but what your profile implies.
For example, I gave a fake date of birth, dummy email, no location, no interests etc. I don't use FB as a connectivity tool as much as a communication tool (yes, I know that with IMs, phones, emails, it isn't necessary. But social networks make group sharing easier). And while I was looking over the analysis, I was interested to see that it doesn't really matter. You could get a pretty accurate age, location, interest, relationship status, etc. just by looking at all my friends' data.
Why is that useful? It might not be. But I'd be surprised if someone at FB isn't doing something to flag the fake/misleading profiles and set the information straight in their internal database. All you need is the majority to be privacy lax. I could be the most misleading person on the planet (as opposed to a privacy nazi, who would never have a FB account), and it wouldn't do me any good.
So Wolfram can show you what it is you are revealing on FB without actually posting anything. Which should be of interest to people, especially here on Slashdot.
I wonder who Eric Schmidt is preaching to here. Does he expect the people of North Korea to actually hear his words? (They won't). Are the government officials unaware of the impact of the internet? No. Are the people aware of what they are being denied? I don't think so.
I remember when I was watching the 2010 FIFA world cup. During the NK national anthem, several of their players had tears in their eyes. They were proud to be representing their country. And these people are the relatively "better off" residents of NK. If they don't realize/care what a crazy country they represent, why should the majority of the population? I'm sure many people believe their government is a good entity. The ordinary citizens might have no idea that there is a better way to live. All their life, they have been listening to propaganda. And like most people in every other country, they believe the bullshit they are being fed.
So when Schmidt says that NK should open up, does he really think anyone is going to change their behavior? He needs to show a different argument. Maybe start off by showing how technology can help the government. The only way you are going to make any inroads into NK (without actually using brute force) is via the government. Once people working there see the benefits of technology, it might spread to civilian life.
The state of actual medical research to fix conditions like his is in just as sorry of a state. Companies are too busy pouring cash into penis pills and weight loss drugs to spend R&D money on tailoring targeted DNA rejuvenation treatments. No, it's not just Sci-Fi, or rather it ought not to be, but assholes like you act like this is being feverishly worked on around the clock when in reality nobody is doing a GODDAMN THING.
Two points: (1) Do you claim to have a solution that can be implemented? (2) What are YOU doing about curing the diseasse?
I know it is fun to sit at home and bash medical R&D of focusing on weight-loss pills etc. But look at the statistics. About 5000 people in the US have ALS at any given time (and death rate is close to incidence rate of 2/100,000 per year: Citation). So in the US (300 million population) that is 6000 deaths a year. Do you know how many people die due to obesity? Automobile accidents? Heart disease? ALS doesn't even count compared to those: Rank of causes of death.
Just so you know, I would love cures for a lot of diseases to be found (including ALS). But in the real world, companies focus on what makes business sense. Why should the NIH grants/Medical R&D focus on ALS when there are a lot more deaths due to other causes? Because one person who has it is famous? I'm sure there are a lot of smart/famous people (okay, may not be Stephen Hawking type of smart, but talented and contributing to society in other ways) who die of lots of other causes. We don't live entirely in a meritocracy that says Famous Guy's life is worth more than everyone else's and is therefore more deserving of resources.
Thats $54782 per household being spent by the government.
While I never denied inefficiencies, that number also accounts for defense, paying interests on debt, communications, infrastructure, etc - things you might not benefit from in a direct tangible way. Should it (and the tangible benefits) cost $55,000 per household? Almost certainly not. But is the solution just to reduce the amount spent? I don't agree.
My beef with the OP was saying he hardly got anything, and the solution was to cut spending on both ends of the spectrum, as if that was a solution. There are lots of countries that tax like the US and get more and less bang for their buck. Some countries tax more and give more. Others tax more and give less. Does the average household get $55,000 worth? No - different people want different things. My neighbor wants great roads so he can drive his expensive cars. I want good, inexpensive public transport. So a large portion of my money goes to providing things other people want that I don't. Which is true of everyone.
I feel we do not have a discussion on efficiencies in budgets - the cry is always 'Stop giving money to group X/company Y, since I don't use those services. But don't touch things that benefit me'. (OP mentioned defense and welfare as things that don't benefit him/her directly). I'm for more efficient government - smaller government is a side-effect of that. I don't expect every dollar I give to welfare to go directly to educate and house poor children. But I don't think the solution is to cut spending while not trying to address the inefficiencies. Cut foodstamps by 90%? More people starving. Cut Education spending by half? We wind up with a large population that are unqualified for work, can't hold a job, and are starving because they can't get foodstamps. If the programs become more efficient, on the other hand, they will automatically cost less.
The people in the middle (like me, and mine) get just about nothing from the government.
Let me guess: you live in isolation, using no roads, no government subsidized infrastructure, went to a private school (again, in the middle of nowhere), have enough ammo to keep yourself and your family safe, wouldn't ever call the fire department, don't rely on any offshoot of government research, etc.
I don't deny that government, like any large organization, has lots of inefficiencies that need to be cut down. And there are people who abuse the system to freeload. But, it isn't easy to live off food stamps, as one politician found out. And if people really start starving, there will be problems. The social safety nets exist not just for the poor, but they also benefit others higher up in the food chain (see how desperate a hungry man can be to survive).
If you have any solutions to really cut down inefficiencies and freeloaders, while making sure people who need help can get it, then I'm all ears. But this mantra of cut them out of the government teat and we will all be better off might not work as well as you'd expect.
Slashdot Mirror
Depends on your point of view - as a publicity stunt, it is an epic fail. It should have also been expected. Keeping open discussions on the internet is inherently problematic, even if you are posting the most non-controversial of statements. Start a discussion on how cancer is bad for humans, and there will be someone posting about how good it is for population control.
On the other hand, if some of the top government officials can be bothered to read the criticism, they might actually learn something. While democracy is great and all that, once people get into office they might as well be governing from the moon. It's easy for you to refuse to allocate funds to fix my roads if you don't use them on a daily basis.
The internet has made it easy to offer feedback and that should (in theory) help people govern better. While it is true that we could always "write/call" our congressman, it isn't really practical when you get to higher levels of government (e.g. do my tax dollars go to fund a war or education).
In what field, may I ask, are all these people with degrees not working for peanuts? I've been avoiding a degree on the basis that it won't guarantee me stable employment, just cost me time and money. Just wondering if I'm way off here.
Obviously, my experience is anecdotal (but from a large state university) - I know people from electrical engineering (VLSI/Signal processing), and Computer Science (video/image processing, and data mining) who get paid (at or above) the standard rate, as per glassdoor. But if you are a citizen, the best bet is control theory, if you are slightly mathematically inclined. I know several defense contractors who are unable to fill in control theory positions - a good international student who worked with NASA and Boeing (as a part of his advisor's team) was unable to get employment in his specialization because of citizenship issues. He got tired of waiting for it to get sorted out and had to take a (higher paying but less stable) position at Schlumberger.
Americans have university degrees. Unfortunately, they demand a competitive salary (since getting a degree in US is expensive). Also, Americans tend to leave and get another job if they are underpaid
I know lots of students who are paying US college rates for a masters degree (Ph.D students generally get paid by the university/grants) and so need a competitive salary as well - and no student who gets a degree from a US college (whom I know) is working for peanuts. They get the same salary as their US counterparts (you could argue that the increased workforce is driving down costs overall, but that is supply and demand). And 90% of the class are international students, almost all of whom want to stay in the US. And many H1B workers switch jobs when they can/need to. They just have to get the new job BEFORE quitting their old job (or within 30 days of quitting or something like that).
The real problem is the H1-B to green card process - the rules stipulate that once you apply for a green card (which many H1Bs do) you can't switch jobs (even within the same company) till the process is complete (3-5 years). Or else you need to start the application from scratch. The US is the only country that makes it so hard for even skilled workers to get a green card. It is easier to get a EU/Canadian/Australian green card sitting in the US than it is to get a US green card. If the US made it simpler to get a green card for skilled workers, many H1Bs would not be tied to an employer for so long.
Now, if you are talking about hiring overseas workers from outside the US - by getting them H1Bs from within their home country - then the issues you raised might be true. But a LOT of H1Bs are given to international citizens in the US itself.
No victim, no crime.
But corporations are people, and rounded corners belong to Apple - clearly if Samsung had used razor-sharp edges on their tablet, people would have bought iPads instead, and so Samsung did steal from Apple.
This is depressing. On a slightly related note, I'm looking at my (physical) desktop and can't find one single device (including keyboards, monitors, computer cases, etc) without rounded corners.
It's hard to be a passenger of an unmanned aircraft... unless you happen to be a woman, I guess.
The New Hampshire bill doesn't require the aircraft to be unmanned (at least my cursory reading shows the following: A person is guilty of a class A misdemeanor if such person knowingly creates or assists in creating an image of the exterior of any residential dwelling in this state where such image is created by or with the assistance of a satellite, drone, or any device that is not supported by the ground. This prohibition shall not apply where the image does not reveal forms identifiable as human beings or man-made objects. In this paragraph, “dwelling” means any building, structure, or portion thereof which is occupied as, or designed or intended for occupancy as, a residence by one or more individuals).
So basically, any organization outside the US (including foreign governments with remote sensing satellites) can now see what it is illegal for US residents to see? Wow.
And WTF does support by the ground mean? If I take videos/pictures as a pilot or a passenger of an aircraft, does that count? What if I do launch a baloon, but have to manually tell it to take pictures and have the instructions sent wirelessly (which, umm, I do every 1/10 of a second by my ground-based triggering mechanism)?
I always wondered why possession/acquiring of copyright material is a crime.
The whole problem of making possession/downloading illegal is it tries to fight human nature in a clumsy way (I get that while downloading torrents you also MIGHT seed it - there might not be anyone else downloading from you). People will always want free stuff. If I find a copy of a popular book being sold at half price on the pavement, I will buy it (esp. if the print is great).
At certain times, fighting human nature is important/worth it (e.g. stealing and killing others is illegal). At other times, it is just plain stupid (e.g. War on XYZ). In the end if people want it badly enough they will find a way to get what they want, consequences be damned (see how much stealing laws work against a starving man). You are trying to make natural behavior illegal, and coming up with technical measures to prevent it. Which has the gaping loophole that most technical barriers can/will be breached. And there is little cost to building digital workarounds.
This is a problem with all names with a kind of non-uniqueness. The moment you use a common word (like space) to describe an idea or concept, you limit the mental map. For example, I find that using the word "saved" in a religious context limiting for the same reason. "Saved" in generally a good thing. So you start thinking the alternative (not being saved by religion) as bad.
As for the laws, we already have something I consider similar: the European Union. A region without real political unification, but with a sort of economic unification to allow free transport of goods, services, and capital. Which is kind of like `cyberspace', except information is included instead of goods (I'm not sure what the current status of the European Union Copyright Law is).
I know that the analogy goes back to a 'spatial' interpretation, but calling it the cloud or cyberworld or cyber-dimension (which might be another good way to think of it?) would bring similar problems in restricting our mental map of things.
Just found it odd he threw in handwriting in this day and age. It was beat to death with Palm starting a decade and a half ago. It's gone. Dead. Byebye.
There was another article which stated that paper-and-pencils are the best tools in the classroom. While handwriting recognition (like all technologies) has had its hype, it is now becoming a serious tool. The stylus is actually a nice way to get work done on a computer in many technical fields (where drawings and notes are the way the people communicate).
I know faculty and students who use OneNote/EndNote and really like the Ink-to-Math and Ink-to-Text functionality.
Does Gates not know about Python? Python IMO is a whole lot easier to learn than BASIC ever was and you can do a lot more with it. And Python is much easier than C/C#/C++ to learn and is much, much, much cleaner than Java. Slap on a few libraries and you can do just about anything in Python in less lines of code. AND you can actually read it when you're done :)
While that might be true, it still doesn't say much about the ease of learning Python compared to other traditional activities a high school student might engage in. I think Python is fairly neat, but I think that the abstractions required for modern OOP languages is something that is not easily understood by most people. Remember, this is high school he is talking about.
What you'd need is a language that is easy to learn, and can be related to other classes/life without too much programming. For example, in any language I know, creating a good graphics of a bouncing ball (or Newtonian dynamics visualizations) is fairly hard. I'd like to be proved wrong, but very few students in high-school like programming as an intellectual challenge in itself (and while I don't think everyone should become a programmer, a basic understanding of programming is becoming essential IMO. Much like understanding the basics of cars was required in the early days. Cars were common, but not as reliable as they are today. They broke down often enough that you needed some knowledge on how to fix them).
And Mr. Gates' answer? Higher is better. ;)
Ah, I guess that was the developers' motto during product design as well.
Compared to plain old Python, yes. But Cython offers a lot of capabilities that improve speed dramatically - just using a type for your data in Cython gives programs a wonderful boost in speed.
As someone who uses Matlab for most of my programming, I have come to detest languages that do not force specifying a variable type and/or declaring variables. Matlab offers neither, but it is a standard in some circles.
Yeah the govt needs better systems to manage the huge databases and dossiers they are building on everybody with their warrentless wiretaps and reading everybody's emails. Anybody who helps with this project is pretty damn naive if they don't think it will also be used for this.
For that matter anybody who trusts the govt and thinks the govt is your friend is pretty damn naive. Yeah I would like to believe that too. No I won't ignore the mountains of evidence to the contrary. I won't treat all the counterexamples as isolated cases. I see them for what they are: an amazingly consistent pattern. The rule, not the exception. Govt positions are really attractive to sociopath types who just love power and control and a feeling that they are important and they get that feeling by imposing their will on us.
So what you are saying is that DARPA funds will be used in a way to further the goals of DARPA/The government? Shocking. I haven't read anything that says which agencies will/won't have access to these tools - so I'd hazard a guess that any department that wants it can have it (including the famous three letter agencies).
FYI, Continuum Analytics is a company that is based on providing high-performance python-based computing to clients. Any packages they might release will either be open source (and can be checked), or closed source (in which case you don't have to use it). They aren't hijacking the Numpy/Scipy libraries. They are developing libraries/tools for a client (who happens to be DARPA). (Frankly, I'd hope that Continuum Analytics open sources their development because it might be useful to the larger community). You do know that DARPA funds also go to improve robotics, they supported ARPANET, and a lot of their space programs later got transferred to NASA?
Basically, I have no idea what you are ranting about. One government organization funded a project - it happens all the time. Do you rant about NSF/NIH/NASA money as well? If so, you'd better live in a cave - a lot of government sponsored research has gone into almost every modern convenience that we take for granted.
Sure, Einstein was ground breaking, but apart from E=mc^2, how many people know what he did (or even what it means)? How many know of the photoelectric effect? Relativity and quantum mechanics gets thrown around a lot as buzzwords, but most people have no idea what they mean.
So you might consider that Einstein has become a great popularizers of science - unintentionally, but most people know that he was in a physicist, and don't really have a clue what he did.
You seem to want groundbreaking to mean both Famous and Important Contributions. But I'm not sure how long it took for Einstein to become a household name. And you also want it to be One man/woman. That might not be as realistic anymore. Because research in most areas requires lots of equipments and teams (except in a few areas - theoretical mathematics and physics come to mind). But just because it is a team, doesn't make it any less valuable.
In fact, I prefer teams and organizations get recognition. Students and the younger crowd have something concrete to work towards. Not "I want to be the next XYZ", but instead "I want to work at XYZ". They might have a hero-worship of the organization, but will still work hard towards something measurable.
Angry birds on a console wouldn't (IMO) do much good. I doubt anyone would play angry birds on a PC/Console.
Yep... nobody does that.
While I did say "nobody" in my original post, I didn't mean it literally. For that matter, cut the rope is on the Windows 8 store (and I'm sure it is on other platforms). My second point addressed this issue: I don't think Angry birds for Xbox would make anyone thinking of buying a console choose that platform instead of a PS3. They choose Xbox for Halo. When you want people to buy a console, they look for big-name titles. And Angry birds lacks the complexity that makes game play on a console fun (compare it to GTA or any other major title).
From the summary, I thought this device would support android games. If that is the case, why are their only 166 entries? Do Android games need to be ported to make use of the controller?
I also wonder if any big-named titles are coming to it. Without that, I believe this console is dead in the water. Most people who do console gaming want big famous titles (like Halo/Zelda/FIFA/CoD).
Angry birds on a console wouldn't (IMO) do much good. I doubt anyone would play angry birds on a PC/Console. Part of the appeal with games for phones is that the games are quick, easy to play, and relatively straightforward. Some console/PC games transition well to phones (e.g. Team 17's Worms), but I don't think that holds for the majority of games. Most console gamers (whom I know - including me) prefer games with greater complexity in gameplay (even if it is just shooting things).
This is such a vague question that it cannot be answered in a sensible way. It depends on the service, and alternatives. If I have no alternatives, I am out of luck. On the other hand, if there are dozens of options, I'd switch as soon as I believe the alternatives would provide better value for money. If it is a critical service (depending on the application), even a few minutes might be catastrophic.
The re-compensation issue should be dealt with in the service level agreements/TOS (including no-cost cancellations).
As for communicating problems, I'd expect to be kept in the loop - each time they make a new estimate of restoration time, I should be send a notification by my medium of choice. It is unacceptable that a paying client have no idea when service would be restored. Obviously, as problems are discovered, the estimate will be modified. But I still would want to have the latest estimate (especially for work-related services).
Two reasons why the older hardware is better
(1) It has to work - that is why you go in for older (read: more tested) hardware. What happens if a bug in the code causes a crash a million miles from home? You can't pull out the battery (oops, you can't do that for the iPhone either ;) ) - and reboot.
(2) Who cares whether the processing power is greater? What matters is whether the hardware can support the software to do what the system was designed for (which in the rover case is fixed). You use the most RELIABLE hardware to get the mission done. Any additional power/capabilities in the hardware just introduces more points of failure (OTOH, the phone should (ideally) play games that come out in two years, which might require more processing power).
My phone might also have better processing power than the autopilot hardware on most commercial airlines. You need tens of thousands of flight test/real world hours of testing before you can safely use it. Putting in the latest and greatest processor just creates more rooms for error. I would also expect a lot of the code came from other tried-and-tested systems, so you'd like to use the same hardware.
It is like using a hammer to crack a peanut shell. Sure, you get greater force with the hammer. But you have to be very, very careful when using the wrong tool for the job. Frankly, I'm not sure what the point of the article is. I don't know of any reasonable person who would even consider using a desktop/laptop/phone processors on mission critical hardware.
Okay. I will not argue about whether or not people "should" be doing menial labor... but i would like to ask you and other folks who are fixated on this idea: Have you created any new skilled jobs that all of these former wage slaves can perform? If not, what will those wage slaves do to feed themselves? They are not permitted to leave society and just grow or hunt their own food as that requires land and land is taxed and tax MUST be paid in a currency created by society. So ... what? I think you will have a VERY hard time convincing billions of unnecessary people to just politely lay down and die now that they are no longer needed.
No, I haven't created any new skilled jobs that the wage slaves can perform. However, part of my point was that these jobs are going to vanish (or not keep up with population growth) due to automation anyway. We will have billions of unnecessary people if we keep up this trajectory.
I think that the problem is fundamentally due to the "Work Or Starve" society that we live in. That model is flawed because it assumes (among several things) that there always exists Work as an alternative to starving. If not enough jobs exist due to population growth and increased automation, the "Or Starve" is the only option on the table.
I understand that this view is radical (or even unrealistic/crazy). I don't, however, buy the belief that Starvation needs to be the stick that forces people to work. If people do have access to food and shelter, then most people seem to believe that large sections of society will spend all day watching TV in their underwear. I don't agree. A small minority will do that, but most people will do something they love to keep themselves occupied, or to earn money to buy things. But if they don't/cannot find such jobs, they shouldn't have to starve. And that, IMO, will improve societies progress because the "wage-slave" (and I count myself as one - if I didn't have to pay bills, I'd pursue some of my hobbies full time) will now spend time doing things they are actually good at/enjoy (and do it better) than what they do right now. There will always be engineers, mathematicians, architects, cooks, etc. because they like it.
While this phenomenon is to be expected, it happened much faster than I expected. And I consider it a good thing. We need people to move people out of low-level manufacturing.
The problem with manual labor is that sooner or later, automation will cause a majority of the workforce to become unemployed. Irrespective of wage cuts, cramped spaces, etc. A machine can almost always do it better than a human can (and for cheaper given a large enough scale). If there is a fixed algorithm/procedure to follow with very little dynamic decision making, you don't need humans to do it.
We should be educating people more and more and give them the skills that won't be automated in 5-10 years. Otherwise, you are just pushing the problem a few years down the line - "iPhone manufacturing is now automated? Fine, I'll join an iTeleport manufacturing plant". Which is why when I hate it when a politician talk about how they are going to "bring back manufacturing from China" - they aren't addressing the problem. Those low-skill manufacturing jobs aren't coming back. Either they will be automated, or you are competing against an extremely cheap labor force and will never win out.
Talk about narcissism. I cannot fathom why I would take precious time analyzing my own data just to discover I posted 101 times, three with pictures, only 10 with comments (nobody likes me). We have gone beyond the me generation to now the I generation.
You are doing it wrong. It isn't to analyze what your profile says, but what your profile implies.
For example, I gave a fake date of birth, dummy email, no location, no interests etc. I don't use FB as a connectivity tool as much as a communication tool (yes, I know that with IMs, phones, emails, it isn't necessary. But social networks make group sharing easier). And while I was looking over the analysis, I was interested to see that it doesn't really matter. You could get a pretty accurate age, location, interest, relationship status, etc. just by looking at all my friends' data.
Why is that useful? It might not be. But I'd be surprised if someone at FB isn't doing something to flag the fake/misleading profiles and set the information straight in their internal database. All you need is the majority to be privacy lax. I could be the most misleading person on the planet (as opposed to a privacy nazi, who would never have a FB account), and it wouldn't do me any good.
So Wolfram can show you what it is you are revealing on FB without actually posting anything. Which should be of interest to people, especially here on Slashdot.
I wonder who Eric Schmidt is preaching to here. Does he expect the people of North Korea to actually hear his words? (They won't). Are the government officials unaware of the impact of the internet? No. Are the people aware of what they are being denied? I don't think so.
I remember when I was watching the 2010 FIFA world cup. During the NK national anthem, several of their players had tears in their eyes. They were proud to be representing their country. And these people are the relatively "better off" residents of NK. If they don't realize/care what a crazy country they represent, why should the majority of the population? I'm sure many people believe their government is a good entity. The ordinary citizens might have no idea that there is a better way to live. All their life, they have been listening to propaganda. And like most people in every other country, they believe the bullshit they are being fed.
So when Schmidt says that NK should open up, does he really think anyone is going to change their behavior? He needs to show a different argument. Maybe start off by showing how technology can help the government. The only way you are going to make any inroads into NK (without actually using brute force) is via the government. Once people working there see the benefits of technology, it might spread to civilian life.
The state of actual medical research to fix conditions like his is in just as sorry of a state. Companies are too busy pouring cash into penis pills and weight loss drugs to spend R&D money on tailoring targeted DNA rejuvenation treatments. No, it's not just Sci-Fi, or rather it ought not to be, but assholes like you act like this is being feverishly worked on around the clock when in reality nobody is doing a GODDAMN THING.
Two points: (1) Do you claim to have a solution that can be implemented? (2) What are YOU doing about curing the diseasse?
I know it is fun to sit at home and bash medical R&D of focusing on weight-loss pills etc. But look at the statistics. About 5000 people in the US have ALS at any given time (and death rate is close to incidence rate of 2/100,000 per year: Citation). So in the US (300 million population) that is 6000 deaths a year. Do you know how many people die due to obesity? Automobile accidents? Heart disease? ALS doesn't even count compared to those: Rank of causes of death.
Just so you know, I would love cures for a lot of diseases to be found (including ALS). But in the real world, companies focus on what makes business sense. Why should the NIH grants/Medical R&D focus on ALS when there are a lot more deaths due to other causes? Because one person who has it is famous? I'm sure there are a lot of smart/famous people (okay, may not be Stephen Hawking type of smart, but talented and contributing to society in other ways) who die of lots of other causes. We don't live entirely in a meritocracy that says Famous Guy's life is worth more than everyone else's and is therefore more deserving of resources.
Thats $54782 per household being spent by the government.
While I never denied inefficiencies, that number also accounts for defense, paying interests on debt, communications, infrastructure, etc - things you might not benefit from in a direct tangible way. Should it (and the tangible benefits) cost $55,000 per household? Almost certainly not. But is the solution just to reduce the amount spent? I don't agree.
My beef with the OP was saying he hardly got anything, and the solution was to cut spending on both ends of the spectrum, as if that was a solution. There are lots of countries that tax like the US and get more and less bang for their buck. Some countries tax more and give more. Others tax more and give less. Does the average household get $55,000 worth? No - different people want different things. My neighbor wants great roads so he can drive his expensive cars. I want good, inexpensive public transport. So a large portion of my money goes to providing things other people want that I don't. Which is true of everyone.
I feel we do not have a discussion on efficiencies in budgets - the cry is always 'Stop giving money to group X/company Y, since I don't use those services. But don't touch things that benefit me'. (OP mentioned defense and welfare as things that don't benefit him/her directly). I'm for more efficient government - smaller government is a side-effect of that. I don't expect every dollar I give to welfare to go directly to educate and house poor children. But I don't think the solution is to cut spending while not trying to address the inefficiencies. Cut foodstamps by 90%? More people starving. Cut Education spending by half? We wind up with a large population that are unqualified for work, can't hold a job, and are starving because they can't get foodstamps. If the programs become more efficient, on the other hand, they will automatically cost less.
The people in the middle (like me, and mine) get just about nothing from the government.
Let me guess: you live in isolation, using no roads, no government subsidized infrastructure, went to a private school (again, in the middle of nowhere), have enough ammo to keep yourself and your family safe, wouldn't ever call the fire department, don't rely on any offshoot of government research, etc.
I don't deny that government, like any large organization, has lots of inefficiencies that need to be cut down. And there are people who abuse the system to freeload. But, it isn't easy to live off food stamps, as one politician found out. And if people really start starving, there will be problems. The social safety nets exist not just for the poor, but they also benefit others higher up in the food chain (see how desperate a hungry man can be to survive).
If you have any solutions to really cut down inefficiencies and freeloaders, while making sure people who need help can get it, then I'm all ears. But this mantra of cut them out of the government teat and we will all be better off might not work as well as you'd expect.