Michio just seems very self aggrandizing to me - especially with that one series of his where he dreams up of solutions to various things.
I really liked Sagan, and I think Brian Cox is a worthy successor to him, he just has and transmits that passion of his for science and I really like that. Neils DeGrasse Tyson also comes close. Then there are the mythbusters--.--, while sometimes horrible in their scientific method, they're at least showing practical experiments and how to do things besides theory.
And I suppose that's all okay. It's like those survivor shows, these days people have half a dozen guys to choose from (and debate the merits in forums all day) and it's less important who gets you interested, as long as you do get interested.
I think they have been increasing efficiency the past decade, because, just as a casual observer, I haven't seen the types of gains that were to be had from 1995 to 2003ish anymore.
Not in clock speed increases (yeah, I know this isn't everything, but it certainly was part of the equation) in CPUs and HDDs just don't increase in capacity like they used to. Back in the early-mid 00s, I upgraded from 40GB to 320GB, nearly an order of a magnitude bigger. And now, in my price range, I'm looking from jumping from a 500GB from 2006 to a "whopping" 2tb. Maybe 3tb. A lot less increase than I was expecting.
Things have already slowed down imo. The most exciting increases haven't come on the desktop but from the ARM chips and flash memory.
Though I'm not as pessimistic as Kaku, I don't know if this slow down is in response to "good enough" and money pouring into the mobile industries instead or an impasse in technology.
"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.'" --George Carlin
Well, for the average desktop with traditional inputs, maybe.
Of course, if you process high quality photos, simply store your movie collection, or work with uncompressed/lossless files, you could probably always use space. Science will always want more space too for their data and more precise data. For the rest of us, the excessive size is probably a good thing, as the move to a smaller SSD with an HDD simply as an archive would be easier.
But I don't pretend it will be good for all time. With the trends of the last decade (iPods, iPads) we're seeing computing trends of the future - more and more in our lives, more personalized. One day, we'll be wearing iShirts and iUnderwear that has a bunch of health related sensors and will download that data to our drives. Or the standard home security system will have 8 camera feeds at 1080p all going to a 100TB harddrive that saves weeks of footage while we're on vacation.
I wish I could block texts altogether - most of the exchanges are really faster with a phone call. Also the concept of charging for this chunk of data per byte/whatever_unit many magnitudes higher than their internet/voice stream is nonsense.
I don't want to pay for $20/month unlimited SMS service, wish I could block the damned things rather than being charged $0.05 for each one I receive. I wonder how many other private companies in the US can charge you for recieving something you simply don't want. Back in the later 1800s, mail order companies tried doing that, sending things people didn't order to them and then billing them afterwards, didn't stick in court.
Problem is that people are never taught security practices. The software just lets them get up and go, not even offering a tutorial.
It's the equivalent of handing a 16 year old kid the car keys, whether he knows to drive or not, whether he has taken classes or not, and then blaming the car when he gets into an accident.
I realize there are more vulnerabler OSes (XP, Win9x) and less (*BSD) but no security mechanisms can fix user error.
I have gotten my parents Macs and am happier, by and large, but set it up in a way so they still need to use passwords to use the computer and install software. I tried explaining the implications of installing software although I wonder if that just went in one ear and out another, or about surfing the web from public hotspots/wirelessly. Even set up their router to use encryption, and thankfully they don't travel much.
However, there are other security practices that drives them nuts, I wish they would use noscript, but it's more hassle than it's worth, and I get calls why such and such banking page isn't working, every so often...
As far as subsidizing automobiles, I agree -- the entire automobile infrastructure should be paid for by gas tax and DMV fees.
It mostly already does. It was depleted by $8B in 2008 (since the tax wasn't raised since 1993), but a raise of just $0.10 per gallon. will bring in an extra $20B a year.
Americans should be paying as much as Europeans do for petrol.
We already do. Our government just doesn't slap it's citizen's with the same amount of taxes yours does. It's the European governments that take the excessive taxes and put it in the general fund for everything.
Look, you cannot just double the price of gasoline in America overnight. Since the 1920's, this country built itself on cheap fuel prices, and that exploded post-WW2 with suburbanization. You don't see that in just the cars, but all the houses with shitty insulation that take 3x the amount of energy to heat/cool than it should. I don't think it's good, but it's the way it is, and to overcome that, there needs to be a lengthy transition period where people can get smaller cars and demand better built dwellings because those costs are ratcheting up.
But I don't think fuel should be increased for the hell of it. It should be increase to fund 2 things. 1, it should increase to gap any budget shortfall in maintenance and then again to fix bad infrastructure.
But 2nd, it should increase because fuel right now is being subsidized invisibly by our military. The US military has bases throughout the world and has an interest and presence in M.E. only because of oil and shipping it safely here. The defense budget is so huge, if it were really increased to reflect that, gas would really increase by double or triple. But before you laugh about being correct about the gas taxes not reflecting the infrastructure it takes to deliver oil, none of the European nations except maybe Britain, contribute an iota militarily either, they basically get a free ride from us.
If done transitionally, it would be better, plus let alternatives develop that can't compete right now at the artificially militarily subsidized prices.
Your parent didn't even mention "text book" in his post so why are you asking him?
Having used both devices, the Kindle is single/limited_use. The screen doesn't have the best contrast, it does not refresh fast enough for interactivity, nor does it have color. Okay for text, not for anything else. It has longer battery life, but the iPad's 10 hour battery life is sufficient. Outdoor reading is generally not an issue in a classroom.
Actually, while trolls just want attention and so it seems correct to ignore them, they'll always bait someone who'll feed them - unless you're in a community where the moderators actively punish the responders just as much as the troll (I know a few) where the avg poster is conditioned to report and ignore.
So, otherwise, it may be a good tactic to be a calm first responder. However, don't debate them or get angry. Trolls want a response, ignoring them might tick them off slightly, but engaging them w/o them getting a rise of you really pisses them off. It's their version of getting cockblocked.
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No, they're hypocritical. US Govt uses bribery and extortion all the time.
Michio just seems very self aggrandizing to me - especially with that one series of his where he dreams up of solutions to various things.
I really liked Sagan, and I think Brian Cox is a worthy successor to him, he just has and transmits that passion of his for science and I really like that. Neils DeGrasse Tyson also comes close. Then there are the mythbusters--.--, while sometimes horrible in their scientific method, they're at least showing practical experiments and how to do things besides theory.
And I suppose that's all okay. It's like those survivor shows, these days people have half a dozen guys to choose from (and debate the merits in forums all day) and it's less important who gets you interested, as long as you do get interested.
I think they have been increasing efficiency the past decade, because, just as a casual observer, I haven't seen the types of gains that were to be had from 1995 to 2003ish anymore.
Not in clock speed increases (yeah, I know this isn't everything, but it certainly was part of the equation) in CPUs and HDDs just don't increase in capacity like they used to. Back in the early-mid 00s, I upgraded from 40GB to 320GB, nearly an order of a magnitude bigger. And now, in my price range, I'm looking from jumping from a 500GB from 2006 to a "whopping" 2tb. Maybe 3tb. A lot less increase than I was expecting.
Things have already slowed down imo. The most exciting increases haven't come on the desktop but from the ARM chips and flash memory.
Though I'm not as pessimistic as Kaku, I don't know if this slow down is in response to "good enough" and money pouring into the mobile industries instead or an impasse in technology.
Bump works on androids as well, as shown pretty prominently in that link I posted. I'm sure it'll go to any viable smartphone platform.
It's called bump.
http://bu.mp/
Bump it?
http://bu.mp/
I hate Business cards, always lose the damn little things.
Democrats ran Congress from 2006-2010 and they made no meaningful changes either.
He's not isolationist. He's noninterventionist. There's a distinct difference between the two. Wiki it.
"Now, there's one thing you might have noticed I don't complain about: politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says they suck. Well, where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. They come from American parents and American families, American homes, American schools, American churches, American businesses and American universities, and they are elected by American citizens. This is the best we can do folks. This is what we have to offer. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out. If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're going to get selfish, ignorant leaders. Term limits ain't going to do any good; you're just going to end up with a brand new bunch of selfish, ignorant Americans. So, maybe, maybe, maybe, it's not the politicians who suck. Maybe something else sucks around here... like, the public. Yeah, the public sucks. There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody: 'The Public Sucks. Fuck Hope.'"
--George Carlin
Well, for the average desktop with traditional inputs, maybe.
Of course, if you process high quality photos, simply store your movie collection, or work with uncompressed/lossless files, you could probably always use space. Science will always want more space too for their data and more precise data. For the rest of us, the excessive size is probably a good thing, as the move to a smaller SSD with an HDD simply as an archive would be easier.
But I don't pretend it will be good for all time. With the trends of the last decade (iPods, iPads) we're seeing computing trends of the future - more and more in our lives, more personalized. One day, we'll be wearing iShirts and iUnderwear that has a bunch of health related sensors and will download that data to our drives. Or the standard home security system will have 8 camera feeds at 1080p all going to a 100TB harddrive that saves weeks of footage while we're on vacation.
Just think of it as a kind of hacking.
AFAYK - as far as you know.
to Congress campaigns enough lately.
What kind of problems would we have instead?
It's relevant as it highlights how ubiquitous and cheap something so useful like this can become. Also, smart phone device also implies pocket size.
Several concepts tied up in one word.
I wish I could block texts altogether - most of the exchanges are really faster with a phone call. Also the concept of charging for this chunk of data per byte/whatever_unit many magnitudes higher than their internet/voice stream is nonsense.
I don't want to pay for $20/month unlimited SMS service, wish I could block the damned things rather than being charged $0.05 for each one I receive. I wonder how many other private companies in the US can charge you for recieving something you simply don't want. Back in the later 1800s, mail order companies tried doing that, sending things people didn't order to them and then billing them afterwards, didn't stick in court.
More likely that was a million rabid anti-Apple haters orgasming from the news.
Apple users probably going about their day unaware of the news. A few of their computers may be pwned w/o them knowing it, who knows.
Problem is that people are never taught security practices. The software just lets them get up and go, not even offering a tutorial.
It's the equivalent of handing a 16 year old kid the car keys, whether he knows to drive or not, whether he has taken classes or not, and then blaming the car when he gets into an accident.
I realize there are more vulnerabler OSes (XP, Win9x) and less (*BSD) but no security mechanisms can fix user error.
I have gotten my parents Macs and am happier, by and large, but set it up in a way so they still need to use passwords to use the computer and install software. I tried explaining the implications of installing software although I wonder if that just went in one ear and out another, or about surfing the web from public hotspots/wirelessly. Even set up their router to use encryption, and thankfully they don't travel much.
However, there are other security practices that drives them nuts, I wish they would use noscript, but it's more hassle than it's worth, and I get calls why such and such banking page isn't working, every so often...
Certified Mail is highly useful for legal matters.
My parent's ebay business is only viable because of USPS.
A company denying something doesn't make it not true. Doesn't make it true either.
What?
The base iPad costs $499.
So the parts cost -$1?
That's an interesting theory.
Among other things, R&D spread out over millions of units is a lot less than R&D spread out over 100k units.
It mostly already does. It was depleted by $8B in 2008 (since the tax wasn't raised since 1993), but a raise of just $0.10 per gallon. will bring in an extra $20B a year.
We already do. Our government just doesn't slap it's citizen's with the same amount of taxes yours does. It's the European governments that take the excessive taxes and put it in the general fund for everything.
Look, you cannot just double the price of gasoline in America overnight. Since the 1920's, this country built itself on cheap fuel prices, and that exploded post-WW2 with suburbanization. You don't see that in just the cars, but all the houses with shitty insulation that take 3x the amount of energy to heat/cool than it should. I don't think it's good, but it's the way it is, and to overcome that, there needs to be a lengthy transition period where people can get smaller cars and demand better built dwellings because those costs are ratcheting up.
But I don't think fuel should be increased for the hell of it. It should be increase to fund 2 things. 1, it should increase to gap any budget shortfall in maintenance and then again to fix bad infrastructure.
But 2nd, it should increase because fuel right now is being subsidized invisibly by our military. The US military has bases throughout the world and has an interest and presence in M.E. only because of oil and shipping it safely here. The defense budget is so huge, if it were really increased to reflect that, gas would really increase by double or triple. But before you laugh about being correct about the gas taxes not reflecting the infrastructure it takes to deliver oil, none of the European nations except maybe Britain, contribute an iota militarily either, they basically get a free ride from us.
If done transitionally, it would be better, plus let alternatives develop that can't compete right now at the artificially militarily subsidized prices.
Your parent didn't even mention "text book" in his post so why are you asking him?
Having used both devices, the Kindle is single/limited_use. The screen doesn't have the best contrast, it does not refresh fast enough for interactivity, nor does it have color. Okay for text, not for anything else. It has longer battery life, but the iPad's 10 hour battery life is sufficient. Outdoor reading is generally not an issue in a classroom.
Actually, while trolls just want attention and so it seems correct to ignore them, they'll always bait someone who'll feed them - unless you're in a community where the moderators actively punish the responders just as much as the troll (I know a few) where the avg poster is conditioned to report and ignore.
So, otherwise, it may be a good tactic to be a calm first responder. However, don't debate them or get angry. Trolls want a response, ignoring them might tick them off slightly, but engaging them w/o them getting a rise of you really pisses them off. It's their version of getting cockblocked.