Then what damages does Apple deserve for what Samsung did?
Should it be ok for one company to do this to another?
None. And yes, it should be okay.
Did you actually read the memo? It looked like UI design 101, they just happened to (unfortunately) use the iPhone as the example of how it could be done right. It had such amazingly original nuggets such as: - increase the size of the daily schedule to make it legible - Don't allow duplicate icons to be placed on the home screen - Don't allow the keyboard to overlap the text entry screen - Reduce the number of steps required to toggle Wi-Fi
Why is this tagged science? This is simply a publicity piece, not a science piece.
As geneticist Steve Jones says in the article itself: "At first sight this is a classic case of Arts Faculty science. Never mind the hypothesis, give me the data, and there aren’t any,” said Professor Steve Jones, a geneticist at University College London.
This is a standard "fluff" piece that academics are forced to put out every so often in order to obtain continued sponsorship.
Wikipedia puts it best: "emphasis on publishing may decrease the value of resulting scholarship, as scholars must spend more time scrambling to publish whatever they can manage, rather than spend time developing significant research agendas."
These are some interesting ideas, and possibly contains the start of a a research topic, but without data, evidence, research methodologies, etc, this is pure speculation.
What are the consequences of not achieving AYP? NCLB spells out an array of consequences for schools and districts that repeatedly fail to meet the AYP goals. Any school that fails to achieve AYP for two consecutive years in the same subject area will be identified by the state as “needing improvement.” Initially, a school that does not make AYP for two consecutive years must, if possible, offer students the opportunity to transfer to another, higher-performing school within the district. After a third year, schools must offer “supplemental services” (such as tutoring) for students. Schools that do not show adequate progress after five years may be forced to take tough “corrective action” such as replacing school personnel or extending the school year.
I see nothing about required privatization, just the possibility of hiring additional (possibly private) tutors.
That being said, why not force lower student/teacher ratios for schools that do not achieve AYP or require increased state funding? These seem like more obvious beneficial solutions than "send the students to a different school"
Yes, cause what I want my kids teacher doing is repeating the same damn work that's been done countless times over by other educators all over the world.
It's a little like someone asking how to sort an array in Java and being told "write your own sort algorithm, that's what a programmer is supposed to do anyway".
Rather than having every single teacher re-invent all of the same assignments, I'd rather they spend some time studying methods for teaching to different learning styles. Or developing on standard exercises to make them more engaging and entertaining to the students. Or learning interesting background information on the subjects they are teaching. Or pretty much anything else than all repeating the exact same work.
Of course, it's only on the new kiddie-infested "skool sukz" new Slashdot that such a comment would get +4.
To what purpose? Doing it just to do it serves none. Like saying frm now all Ducks shall be called Nozzes! New label, same concept, no net change.
Not when the entire populace already knows how to think in one and not the other. Ever had to retrain an enitire corporation after a fundamental software package switchover? That would be a walk in teh park compared to this. Being able to think in a system of measurements is such a low level function of the brain its nearly impossible to completely retrain it to fluency levels in the new one. And the use of language related words is intentional because it's nearly at that level of brain function.
Being from a country (Canada) that made this exact change during my lifetime I have to say you couldn't be more wrong.
There are numerous advantages to making the change: - Labeling for exports becomes significantly easier and cheaper as you don't have to consider target market. - Textbooks don't need to be specialized for imperial units - Costly engineering mistakes that occur due to unit conversion wouldn't happen anymore.
Being able to think in a system of measurements is such a low level function of the brain its nearly impossible to completely retrain it to fluency levels in the new one.
Bullshit. I suppose you would also claim that people can never be as fluent in a second language as they can in their original one. Perhaps you would be unable to retrain yourself, but most people could manage quite fine if they put a little effort into it.
Just like they fail to consider that metric (or more accurately SI) has its own idiosyncracies.
I see you conveniently fail to give any example whatsoever....
where its naturally superior or advantageous to use it over metric. (hydrology is a good example; several conversions reduce to 1.0x)
Again, any examples of these "several" conversions which don't work exactly the same in metric?
It's just math, and conversion is not particularly hard anyway...
Exactly. I've given several examples where using this antiquated system costs actual time and money. You've provided some vague hand-waving for why metric shouldn't be adopted. If it's just math, and conversion is not particularly hard, why not do it. Once it's done, the entire country would be 100% converted in 100 years or so anyways.
Disclaimer: There is one obvious advantage that imperial has over metric, as it's units of length & weight do tend to be divisible by 3. But fractions really aren't that scary, and imperial measure has the same issue when dealing with fractional inches.
No, Virginia didn't. The shitty summary just made it look like they did.
To be fair, the shitty NPR article also made it look like they did.
From the article: "Here's what the Virginia state board of education actually did. It looked at students' test scores in reading and math and then proposed new passing rates. In math it set an acceptable passing rate at 82 percent for Asian students, 68 percent for whites, 52 percent for Latinos, 45 percent for blacks and 33 percent for kids with disabilities."
The article claims the board "looked at test scores" and then "proposed new passing rates". This implies an equivalence between the "test scores" and "passing rates", whereas in actual fact the first refers to student's actual scores, and the second refers to the target for the % of students of each race that must pass in order for the school to be judged as "successful".
It's still racist as heck, but the actual standards are not at all what the summary claims.
It not only encourages racism. It is racism. This is holding people to different standards depending solely upon their race. That is the very definition of racism.
It also encourages racism by telling these students that Asians and whites are expected to perform better.
Are we to think all races learn all subjects equally in school?
In the absence of any research indicating otherwise, yes. How about (here's an astonishing idea), we teach individual students according to their learning strengths and weaknesses, but in grade them all the same.
Passing students based on the color of their skin isn't helping anyone.
we need to stop yelling "it's racism" and instead look at how we're different
Yes, we need to look at how individual students learn and apply different teaching and learning strategies depending on the student. And when there is blatant racism occurring, we should loudly yell "it's racism".
Not doing so isn't helping anyone, and is harming a significant portion of the American population.
Actually it's more anti-Asian than anything else. You are forcing Asian students to work far harder than any of their peers to achieve the same results.
Funny, I see this move as being more anti-black, anti-disabled than anything. It depends on what you see the objective of the schools to be.
If the objective is to educate students, then this move encourages Asians & whites to learn more of the material in order to pass. It encourages blacks and Latinos to learn less of the material.
The basic problem is that graduates won't have remotely the same understanding of the material provided. And you can bet universities and industry aren't going to cut them the same slack.
So Virginia will likely end up with numerous high school "graduates" who are unable to find jobs or continue on to post-secondary education as they lack the knowledge that was supposed to be provided in high school. This is not doing Latinos or Blacks any favors.
Because a single UI written once and run anywhere is a success by default.
This.
Is exactly wrong.
A single UI that is write once and run anywhere is not a success by default. The same way a programming language that is write once and run anywhere is not a success by default (sorry Java). What is missing is the app must run well.
If the OS is confusing or difficult to navigate, it is not by any means a success.
IMHO, tablets and smartphones provide a significantly different interaction when compared to desktops/laptops. As such, they should have a significantly different UI.
And how the heck is Microsoft "the last one to enter the station hall" in respect to unifying UI's between devices. Apple doesn't have a unified OS between iOS and Mac devices. Google tries to maintain similar OS's on it's branded devices, but third-parties still sell new Android devices ranging from version 2.3 to 4.2.
Apple might be "stovepiped," but until recently they weren't trying to be everything to everybody. They also tend to care about their customers a hair more than M.S. ever has.
Yes, Apple loves you so much, they come up with proprietary connectors every few years just so customers can experience the joy of spending more time at the apple store rather than use any of the dozens of standardized cables they have lying around.
Then they add authentication chips so nasty third party manufacturers can't supply cheap cables to you without the holy blessing of Apple. After all, they wouldn't want to deny you those precious hours with the Apple "Genius".
And of course they patent the whole mess, just to make customers super satisfied to know that no other company will ever use this connectivity technology in their products. No, your Apple cables are extra-super-fun-special now!
Then they decide to scrap the whole thing, and come out with an entirely new connector when every other portable device manufacturer on the planet has settled on mini or micro-USB. But of course, they gave the new tech a cool new name....just for you, the happy consumer!
Of course, there is also the obvious: - If your phone doesn't work, you must be holding it wrong. Stupid customer! - Way to buy our latest product! We'll be releasing a new version which will make it completely outdated in about 3 weeks. - We're going to try and push legislation to make it illegal to jailbreak your phone. Don't you realize, dear customer, you have no right to tinker with your apple devices? - Apple Maps.
I'm really happy more companies don't "care about their customers" the way apple does.
"and then if you want it from a "green source" cause youre "environmentally conscious", you can pay extra for electricy that comes from a green source...cause it's somehow different from normal electricity."
And the kicker is they dont change anything other than your bill. You CANT buy only "green" energy unless you go off grid and set up your own solar/wind farm.
I would assume what the power company would do is compare the total revenue in "green" dollars to the total overall revenue and ensure that % of electricity was obtained from green sources. Of course this could not be done live, but it should be possible to do over an annual basis....
I know. They were going to have no gas because it was too cheap and supply was low. Or they can have some gas because it is really expensive. Either way, most people aren't getting gas.
Huh?
If the gas was cheap, many would buy it. So they would have gas. With the price gouging the prices are exorbitantly high, so few can obtain it.
These people increased the scarcity of these items (buy buying large quantities for themselves) to try to extort money from people who needed them. Regardless of what your hero Ayn might think, a completely free enterprise doesn't always work.
The compiler/runtime in C# will optimize your example away if it can prove the property isn't calling a webservice or generating side-effects, which is true 99.9% of the time.
No. for (i=0;i<SayNo();i++) { } private int SayNo() { Console.WriteLine("No"); return 1000; }
The C# JIT compiler DOES optimize bounds-checking on for loops, but only when checking the length of an array, and only when using the length directly (i.e. not someArray.Length + 5).
It does not automagically check if your code is calling a web service or generating "side effects" (how the heck would it do so anyways)?
WTF? I don't see how this post could have been more wrong.
in C#, if Count was a method it would look like: for int j=0;j<Count();j++) { } If it's a property, it looks like: for int j=0;j<Count;j++) { } Java is actually slightly worse in this case, as I have no way to tell whether getCount() is a true method, or just a property getter/setter. This can lead to unnecessarily cumbersome code as I must always assume the worst-case. Providing properties at the language level provides a very convenient mechanism to indicate to other coders whether the code being executed can introduce side-effects or not.
Yes, you can in theory write side-effect code inside properties in C#, but (a) I'd smack anyone who does so upside the head (b) it's fairly trivial in VS2010 to configure a compiler error for properties that contain code blocks.
Also, yield has nothing to do with property access. It's used to provide for lazy return of IEnumerables...
It's a simple question as to whether it's better to have a single dictator determining some policy, or having unanimous support for a policy from near 200 people
This entirely misses the point being argued. There is no single dictator currently determining policy. There is a decentralized system with no central oversight over policy.
The argument is not "should the US or the ITU control the internet?" (although the summary implies this). The argument is "should the UN be granted regulatory power over the internet". These are additional regulations that would be formed by the UN which would then be enforced by member nations.
I see no reason to enforce a top-down bureaucracy on what has been a largely successful decentralized system.
I heard the other day, about a lady who's kids were riding scooters in a neighborhood cul-de-sac, in front of their house, with fucking HELMETS on...the Mom got arrested because she was reported by neighbors (who had an ax to grind) that she had them out there unsupervised.
I'd do the same and hope that the Mom went to jail
But thats because you're a jerk....
Us non-jerk's might go and actually talk to their neighbors before wasting tax money on getting the authorities involved. Though given your attitude, I wouldn't be surprised if your neighbors have restraining orders preventing you from talking to them.
Also, the legality of motorized scooters really depends on the municipality you are talking about. They are completely legal in many places in North America...
Large fines to the telephone company that passed on the robocall. That will be more than enough incentive for them to figure a solution that avoids the fines by stopping the robocalls.
Seriously? Don't you think it would be far more economical for them to just pass those costs onto the consumer? The problem is that is there was an easy solution, they'd likely be doing it already (and charging for the service).
If there isn't an easy solution, it's unlikely that corporations (especially large telecoms) are going to invest a bunch of time and money in a solution that may or may not prevent the fines.
Keep in mind that cars are typically manufactured to specifically perform well on the standardized barrier crash-test. It's similar to how CPU's are designed to specifically perform well on standardized benchmarks.
Damnit, I just used a computer analogy in a story about cars....somehow, that just...feels....wrong.....
American culture remains largely a culture of cowboys: decency of speech is based on the threat of violence if you spoke offensively. That's why Texans are still very polite.
I like this part of the culture. I wish liberals understand that if they have retain the right to insult me, I am retaining the right to respond in a manner suitable for a man.
Wow. Sounds like extremist Muslims would feel right at home in Texas.
After all, they were insulted by the "Innocence of Muslims" movie and "responded in a manner suitable for a man" based on your post.
Slashdot Mirror
None. And yes, it should be okay.
Did you actually read the memo? It looked like UI design 101, they just happened to (unfortunately) use the iPhone as the example of how it could be done right.
It had such amazingly original nuggets such as:
- increase the size of the daily schedule to make it legible
- Don't allow duplicate icons to be placed on the home screen
- Don't allow the keyboard to overlap the text entry screen
- Reduce the number of steps required to toggle Wi-Fi
These are the basis of a patent?
That would be a very sad fact. Except that it isn't true in the United States. Or globally
Why is this tagged science? This is simply a publicity piece, not a science piece.
As geneticist Steve Jones says in the article itself:
"At first sight this is a classic case of Arts Faculty science. Never mind the hypothesis, give me the data, and there aren’t any,” said Professor Steve Jones, a geneticist at University College London.
This is a standard "fluff" piece that academics are forced to put out every so often in order to obtain continued sponsorship.
Wikipedia puts it best:
"emphasis on publishing may decrease the value of resulting scholarship, as scholars must spend more time scrambling to publish whatever they can manage, rather than spend time developing significant research agendas."
These are some interesting ideas, and possibly contains the start of a a research topic, but without data, evidence, research methodologies, etc, this is pure speculation.
Only in the most extreme circumstances:
From http://dese.mo.gov/divimprove/nclb/QandA.html:
What are the consequences of not achieving AYP?
NCLB spells out an array of consequences for schools and districts that repeatedly fail to meet the AYP goals. Any school that fails to achieve AYP for two consecutive years in the same subject area will be identified by the state as “needing improvement.” Initially, a school that does not make AYP for two consecutive years must, if possible, offer students the opportunity to transfer to another, higher-performing school within the district. After a third year, schools must offer “supplemental services” (such as tutoring) for students. Schools that do not show adequate progress after five years may be forced to take tough “corrective action” such as replacing school personnel or extending the school year.
I see nothing about required privatization, just the possibility of hiring additional (possibly private) tutors.
That being said, why not force lower student/teacher ratios for schools that do not achieve AYP or require increased state funding? These seem like more obvious beneficial solutions than "send the students to a different school"
Yes, cause what I want my kids teacher doing is repeating the same damn work that's been done countless times over by other educators all over the world.
It's a little like someone asking how to sort an array in Java and being told "write your own sort algorithm, that's what a programmer is supposed to do anyway".
Rather than having every single teacher re-invent all of the same assignments, I'd rather they spend some time studying methods for teaching to different learning styles. Or developing on standard exercises to make them more engaging and entertaining to the students. Or learning interesting background information on the subjects they are teaching. Or pretty much anything else than all repeating the exact same work.
Of course, it's only on the new kiddie-infested "skool sukz" new Slashdot that such a comment would get +4.
Being from a country (Canada) that made this exact change during my lifetime I have to say you couldn't be more wrong.
There are numerous advantages to making the change:
- Labeling for exports becomes significantly easier and cheaper as you don't have to consider target market.
- Textbooks don't need to be specialized for imperial units
- Costly engineering mistakes that occur due to unit conversion wouldn't happen anymore.
Bullshit. I suppose you would also claim that people can never be as fluent in a second language as they can in their original one. Perhaps you would be unable to retrain yourself, but most people could manage quite fine if they put a little effort into it.
I see you conveniently fail to give any example whatsoever....
Again, any examples of these "several" conversions which don't work exactly the same in metric?
Exactly. I've given several examples where using this antiquated system costs actual time and money. You've provided some vague hand-waving for why metric shouldn't be adopted. If it's just math, and conversion is not particularly hard, why not do it. Once it's done, the entire country would be 100% converted in 100 years or so anyways.
Disclaimer:
There is one obvious advantage that imperial has over metric, as it's units of length & weight do tend to be divisible by 3. But fractions really aren't that scary, and imperial measure has the same issue when dealing with fractional inches.
To be fair, the shitty NPR article also made it look like they did.
From the article:
"Here's what the Virginia state board of education actually did. It looked at students' test scores in reading and math and then proposed new passing rates. In math it set an acceptable passing rate at 82 percent for Asian students, 68 percent for whites, 52 percent for Latinos, 45 percent for blacks and 33 percent for kids with disabilities."
The article claims the board "looked at test scores" and then "proposed new passing rates". This implies an equivalence between the "test scores" and "passing rates", whereas in actual fact the first refers to student's actual scores, and the second refers to the target for the % of students of each race that must pass in order for the school to be judged as "successful".
It's still racist as heck, but the actual standards are not at all what the summary claims.
It not only encourages racism. It is racism. This is holding people to different standards depending solely upon their race. That is the very definition of racism.
It also encourages racism by telling these students that Asians and whites are expected to perform better.
In the absence of any research indicating otherwise, yes. How about (here's an astonishing idea), we teach individual students according to their learning strengths and weaknesses, but in grade them all the same.
Passing students based on the color of their skin isn't helping anyone.
Yes, we need to look at how individual students learn and apply different teaching and learning strategies depending on the student. And when there is blatant racism occurring, we should loudly yell "it's racism".
Not doing so isn't helping anyone, and is harming a significant portion of the American population.
Funny, I see this move as being more anti-black, anti-disabled than anything. It depends on what you see the objective of the schools to be.
If the objective is to educate students, then this move encourages Asians & whites to learn more of the material in order to pass. It encourages blacks and Latinos to learn less of the material.
The basic problem is that graduates won't have remotely the same understanding of the material provided. And you can bet universities and industry aren't going to cut them the same slack.
So Virginia will likely end up with numerous high school "graduates" who are unable to find jobs or continue on to post-secondary education as they lack the knowledge that was supposed to be provided in high school. This is not doing Latinos or Blacks any favors.
This.
Is exactly wrong.
A single UI that is write once and run anywhere is not a success by default. The same way a programming language that is write once and run anywhere is not a success by default (sorry Java). What is missing is the app must run well.
If the OS is confusing or difficult to navigate, it is not by any means a success.
IMHO, tablets and smartphones provide a significantly different interaction when compared to desktops/laptops. As such, they should have a significantly different UI.
And how the heck is Microsoft "the last one to enter the station hall" in respect to unifying UI's between devices. Apple doesn't have a unified OS between iOS and Mac devices. Google tries to maintain similar OS's on it's branded devices, but third-parties still sell new Android devices ranging from version 2.3 to 4.2.
Yes, Apple loves you so much, they come up with proprietary connectors every few years just so customers can experience the joy of spending more time at the apple store rather than use any of the dozens of standardized cables they have lying around.
Then they add authentication chips so nasty third party manufacturers can't supply cheap cables to you without the holy blessing of Apple. After all, they wouldn't want to deny you those precious hours with the Apple "Genius".
And of course they patent the whole mess, just to make customers super satisfied to know that no other company will ever use this connectivity technology in their products. No, your Apple cables are extra-super-fun-special now!
Then they decide to scrap the whole thing, and come out with an entirely new connector when every other portable device manufacturer on the planet has settled on mini or micro-USB. But of course, they gave the new tech a cool new name....just for you, the happy consumer!
Of course, there is also the obvious:
- If your phone doesn't work, you must be holding it wrong. Stupid customer!
- Way to buy our latest product! We'll be releasing a new version which will make it completely outdated in about 3 weeks.
- We're going to try and push legislation to make it illegal to jailbreak your phone. Don't you realize, dear customer, you have no right to tinker with your apple devices?
- Apple Maps.
I'm really happy more companies don't "care about their customers" the way apple does.
I would assume what the power company would do is compare the total revenue in "green" dollars to the total overall revenue and ensure that % of electricity was obtained from green sources. Of course this could not be done live, but it should be possible to do over an annual basis....
Huh?
If the gas was cheap, many would buy it. So they would have gas. With the price gouging the prices are exorbitantly high, so few can obtain it.
These people increased the scarcity of these items (buy buying large quantities for themselves) to try to extort money from people who needed them. Regardless of what your hero Ayn might think, a completely free enterprise doesn't always work.
That depends. For Windows 8, OEM versions can be used for personal use.
From: Microsoft
Q. I am not a system builder, but I am building my own PC for personal use. Can I purchase OEM System Builder software?
A. Yes. Anyone who is building a PC for personal use with Windows 8 or Windows 8 Pro software can use the Personal Use License.
They do when no proof is offered for the opposing position.
I've seen no evidence that this "general trend" or even the "agism" apparently so prevalent in IT even exists.
So you are claiming that the mere existence of connectivity code increases the chance of bugs in the infusion code?
How so?
Even better, Disney may choose to follow the current Hollywood fad of re-imagining recent films, and reboot Episodes 1-3.
The only thing George got right about the prequels is the idea that there should be an interesting story there.
Heck, anything would be more interested that those 3 movies.
No.
for (i=0;i<SayNo();i++) {
}
private int SayNo() {
Console.WriteLine("No");
return 1000;
}
The C# JIT compiler DOES optimize bounds-checking on for loops, but only when checking the length of an array, and only when using the length directly (i.e. not someArray.Length + 5).
It does not automagically check if your code is calling a web service or generating "side effects" (how the heck would it do so anyways)?
WTF? I don't see how this post could have been more wrong.
in C#, if Count was a method it would look like:
for int j=0;j<Count();j++) {
}
If it's a property, it looks like:
for int j=0;j<Count;j++) {
}
Java is actually slightly worse in this case, as I have no way to tell whether getCount() is a true method, or just a property getter/setter. This can lead to unnecessarily cumbersome code as I must always assume the worst-case. Providing properties at the language level provides a very convenient mechanism to indicate to other coders whether the code being executed can introduce side-effects or not.
Yes, you can in theory write side-effect code inside properties in C#, but (a) I'd smack anyone who does so upside the head (b) it's fairly trivial in VS2010 to configure a compiler error for properties that contain code blocks.
Also, yield has nothing to do with property access. It's used to provide for lazy return of IEnumerables...
This entirely misses the point being argued. There is no single dictator currently determining policy. There is a decentralized system with no central oversight over policy.
The argument is not "should the US or the ITU control the internet?" (although the summary implies this). The argument is "should the UN be granted regulatory power over the internet". These are additional regulations that would be formed by the UN which would then be enforced by member nations.
I see no reason to enforce a top-down bureaucracy on what has been a largely successful decentralized system.
But thats because you're a jerk....
Us non-jerk's might go and actually talk to their neighbors before wasting tax money on getting the authorities involved. Though given your attitude, I wouldn't be surprised if your neighbors have restraining orders preventing you from talking to them.
Also, the legality of motorized scooters really depends on the municipality you are talking about. They are completely legal in many places in North America...
see: Here
or
Here
Damnit, why is there NO F'ING UNDO MODERATION BUTTON!!!! I slipped and hit "Overrrated" rather than "Funny"
Posting to undo...
Seriously? Don't you think it would be far more economical for them to just pass those costs onto the consumer? The problem is that is there was an easy solution, they'd likely be doing it already (and charging for the service).
If there isn't an easy solution, it's unlikely that corporations (especially large telecoms) are going to invest a bunch of time and money in a solution that may or may not prevent the fines.
Correct. Crash tests against fixed barriers (the standard test quoted by manufacturers), indicate good survivability.
However, crash tests against even mid-sized sedans indicate very poor results for a smart car:
http://www.iihs.org/news/rss/pr041409.html
Keep in mind that cars are typically manufactured to specifically perform well on the standardized barrier crash-test. It's similar to how CPU's are designed to specifically perform well on standardized benchmarks.
Damnit, I just used a computer analogy in a story about cars....somehow, that just...feels....wrong.....
Wow. Sounds like extremist Muslims would feel right at home in Texas.
After all, they were insulted by the "Innocence of Muslims" movie and "responded in a manner suitable for a man" based on your post.