They can protest all they want, but good luck with getting the 100k Euro/day fines lifted.
They could just change their homepage to a pretty 3 sentence announcement of the verdict until they have time to add back in all their marketing stuff. It would take 15 minutes to create such a homepage on a suitable hosting provider and call the DNS provider to redirect things there. The court order doesn't require them to make the page usable from a business standpoint - if they can comply while doing so that is fine, but if not it isn't the compliance that is expected to bend.
Your suggestion of a free for all doesn't make anything better, but does makes collaboration more difficult. It's a solution looking for a problem.
Uh, the problem was the one you posted at the very beginning - student has to buy an expensive new computer when they already have a perfectly fine one, simply because it doesn't run a particular program. Why make a kid throw away a perfectly nice $2000 Apple laptop because the software they need to run is Windows-only?
Well, I'm all for questioning the rebuilding of New Orleans - it is in a major hurricane zone and substantially below sea level.
NYC only rarely gets these problems and is at least above sea level to start, but I do think it would be wiser to not stick critical infrastructure underground even so. It is a really lousy place for the financial hub of the world. There is no reason that the servers can't be up in a mountain somewhere.
Oh, and in any case where there needs to be relocation I'm fine with reimbursement to property owners for the value of the land, and relocation funding to anybody impacted (landowner or not). It is probably cheaper than doing the rebuilding anyway. To me it isn't about punishing people so much as making better long-term decisions.
Yup. Would I prefer an SD slot? Sure! Would I spend $300 more for a comparable phone with an SD slot but whose vendor is unlikely to release updated device drivers for the next 1.5 year's worth of OS updates? I think I'll pass on that.
Agree partially - it isn't a community project, but it is fairly open. You can't just check stuff into Debian's package repository either.
Would I prefer to see commits on Key Lime Pie published as they're made, sure! Will I turn up my nose at free FOSS code released after the fact, of course not!
Well, a few issues with that analogy: 1. Difficulty to jailbreak - for many Android phones I'd agree with you 100%, though at various points in time some are easier or harder. For the Nexus line, however, I have to disagree - jailbreaking is vendor-supported via a standard tool that works out of the box and on every OS update. 2. Whatever ROM you like - you get a lot more ability to modify the OS on any rooted Android phone, since the OS is open source. It is true that people do modify iOS, but that isn't nearly as flexible. 3. Whatever apps you like - agree, though Android does make it legit to build software without paying for the SDK, for what that's worth.
Yes, but whatever choice the school makes is not the same choice a future employer will make, so getting them to learn the school's tools doesn't have any long-term benefit. People don't go to college to learn how to use software. They are there to learn how to make movies, or whatever it is that they're studying. Avid has as much to do with making movies as Excel has to do with the physical sciences.
Yup. I can see the use case for the UAV at least - stick one of those things in orbit over a city and it is like a satellite. It doesn't need to carry much weight, and it isn't actually going anywhere so as long as it can station keep speed isn't an issue.
Granted, it probably has little spare power, which might limit its usefuless as something like a cell phone tower.
But, those don't carry 250lb passengers, let alone their 50lbs of baggage.
Yup. Another factor is stuff that is ultimately going to an inland destination. With an airship you can fly direct. With a ship you have to unload onto trucks or trains, and only trucks give you maximum flexibility.
You also can take advantage of prevailing winds with an airship - if you get up into the jet stream you can be moving at 100mph with little energy expenditure. Of course, that only works on certain routes, and those routes certainly aren't round-trip the reverse leg. By airship it might be faster to fly around 3/4ths of the world than to go against the wind.
Ok, let's take a CRJ-200. That consumes 1200 lb/hr of fuel in cruise, or about 170 gal/hr. That's 5MW of power - still a huge amount for a solar plant to generate, and that neglects the power needed to reach cruise altitude which is MUCH higher.
A little Cessna 172 on 50% power uses 5gal/hr, which is 150kW of power. One of those probably could carry a single passenger and the pilot at typical passenger+baggage limits. If you stretched the thing out into the size of a small airliner using balsa wood you might be able to power it in cruise with top-mounted solar panels, assuming it could be towed up to cruise altitude, still carrying only two people.
We can't even build solar-powered cars - forget planes with any kind of payload and cruise speed.
The professor can illustrate what needs to be done using software familiar to the professor. If the student can't follow it, then the student is in the wrong class and should take a class on how to use their specific piece of software instead (likely at much lower cost).
Yup - with all the money being spent on Yucca mountain, why not just build a few fast breeders and build a huge military base around each one? That actually gets rid of the waste, and if somebody wants to sneak into a highly guarded facility to steal nuclear materials they'll just steal a fully functional hydrogen bomb from someplace else.
If the goal is to teach kids how to edit video without any prior knowledge
There's your first mistake. Why would anybody pay a fortune to take a college-level class having no prior knowledge of the field?
I studied Chemistry, and during the course of my studies I did not learn how to use any specific model of equipment that I later encountered in the real world (undergraduates rarely use modern equipment, and if they do there are so many varieties chances are two next-door labs don't have the same models). However, it took me all of 30 seconds to learn how to use them, because I understood the concepts. The same is true of software - I might not know where the create layer button is in Photoshop vs GIMP, but I could know what a layer is and does and when they should be used artistically.
Better still - be an expert in zero tools, and focus on the technique.
If I have trouble writing a term paper in a word processor of my choice, do I ask the professor for help?
If you're teaching movies, focus on the techniques/outcomes, and not on what buttons you push to make them happen. If the student wants to learn how to use their software, they should take a class on using the software, not a class on making movies.
Well, Apple is still a Phase 2 company*, so I suspect there is still a reasonable amount of dedication to the original vision left, and therefore some level of genuine accountability. If anything as the article stated this shows that without Jobs at the wheel there isn't the same unifying voice, and re-forming management consensus is part of the natural transition into a Phase 3 company*.
If a more mature company made this decision I'd be more inclined to agree with the assertion that this was a more cynical power play. There is a form of accountability in a Phase 3 company - ultimately if you mess up THAT badly then you risk awaking the shareholders, and the CEO is forced to take action. This is purely for self-preservation, not any sense of duty to shareholders. Apple is still in Phase 2, and I suspect that the leadership really does want to make good products.
*Phase 2 company - a company governed by the founder's hand-picked successor. *Phase 3 company - a company governed by a CEO selected by the executive search team and a bunch of consultants.
Not legally unless you have unlimited data. And not practically if somebody would actually make it easy to VPN your mobile data from your tablet (which I'd like to do even when not tethering for security).
T-Mobile. If you live in a well-populated area chances are they're fine. The only time I've ever had poor signal was out in the boonies, and I'm only very rarely out in the boonies.
I've got T-mobile with an unsubsidized plan. I pay $100/mo for four lines. Two have unlimited voice, the other two have 500min/month. Two are no-data, and two are 2GB 4G, unlimited 2G. All four have unlimited SMS/MMS.
They do offer payment plans on phones as well, which are basically like a zero-interest loan on full retail prices. For the high-end phones they're a good deal. For the low end phones you're probably better off finding a cheaper phone elsewhere.
It is about a wash if you upgrade all your phones every two years for high-end devices. However, if you upgrade less it costs less, and you get the option of buying any phone you want as long as it can be unlocked.
That only applies to a few fairly ancient designs. The vast majority of plants are newer and do not require active safety systems. The ones that do are almost impossible to upgrade due to regulation, which is truly ironic.
Yup. It doesn't help that the US system of government gives the President far more powers than any one person has in most democracies.
Typically the head of state in a democracy is a prime minister, who really is just a representative of the parliament. If they died parliament would just pick somebody else who would enact the exact same policies. They aren't directly elected.
In the US people go nuts over who is president precisely because they do have so much power, and they are directly elected. In fact, it has become the latest fashion for them to basically ignore the laws when they're really inconvenient, so they're almost the only person with any political power to begin with.
My whole point is that all of us will be physically and mentally incapable of working - I'll include myself in with the rest, even though at present I have a very good job that no computer that currently exists would be capable of doing well.
This is nothing about being pessimistic - try to out-perform a backhoe at digging holes some day. It simply isn't possible for a human to be more effective than a backhoe if you need some holes dug in the open. Now, automation hasn't gotten to the point where all human jobs can be replaced, especially those involving creativity and reasoning. However, that day will come - it is just a matter of time.
75 years ago anybody could get a job if they were willing to do work - a job that paid fairly well. Today simply being willing to work is not sufficient to get a job - almost all labor is skilled. Those jobs that didn't require skill still exist, but they're not performed by humans.
The economic problems we're seeing today are merely the first signs of a general change in the nature of productivity. Once upon a time it took half the population just to grow food. One day it won't require a single human being to do anything needed to sustain the entire human race at a level of opulence we do not have today. However, the question is who benefits from that opulence, as right now the only ways to make money are to do something or to own something, and the "do something" will no longer be an option.
Sure you can pay Tata $10,000 - you just end up with poor bug-ridden code thrown together with the minimal amount of rigor to meet whatever specification you sent. Even if your offshore coders speak the same language they don't understand your culture and what you get isn't what you want.
Yup, but the upgrade gets done on time, and the manager who picked them gets his promotion, and the next manager can deal with the aftermath.
That's the problem with corporate IT, and just about corporate anything these days. Nobody really cares if the job gets done right.
Others gave good answers, but I'd just take it a step further - you can't really directly compare key lengths for different algorithms.
How long does it take you to solve 100 math problems by hand? Well, when I was in elementary school I was expected to do it in 5 minutes, but those were single-digit add/subtract/multiple/divide problems.
If I asked you to calculate the log of 10 10-digit numbers by hand it would take you a LOT longer than 5 minutes, though a computer could do this quickly.
If I asked you to factor a single number 100 digits long it would take an awfully long time even for a computer, though it would be in the realm of possibility.
Different algorithms use different math, so keys need to be different lengths to be secure. These algorithms are chosen for many reasons, and a shorter key length is only one of them. In many applications it might make more sense to just make all the keys 10x longer if it means that you can do the math on a cheaper and lower power chip. In this particular case, having to use a really long key is worth it because the design of this particular type of crypto system allows n people to communicate with each other with a total of only 2n keys, and not 2^n.
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They can protest all they want, but good luck with getting the 100k Euro/day fines lifted.
They could just change their homepage to a pretty 3 sentence announcement of the verdict until they have time to add back in all their marketing stuff. It would take 15 minutes to create such a homepage on a suitable hosting provider and call the DNS provider to redirect things there. The court order doesn't require them to make the page usable from a business standpoint - if they can comply while doing so that is fine, but if not it isn't the compliance that is expected to bend.
Your suggestion of a free for all doesn't make anything better, but does makes collaboration more difficult. It's a solution looking for a problem.
Uh, the problem was the one you posted at the very beginning - student has to buy an expensive new computer when they already have a perfectly fine one, simply because it doesn't run a particular program. Why make a kid throw away a perfectly nice $2000 Apple laptop because the software they need to run is Windows-only?
Well, I'm all for questioning the rebuilding of New Orleans - it is in a major hurricane zone and substantially below sea level.
NYC only rarely gets these problems and is at least above sea level to start, but I do think it would be wiser to not stick critical infrastructure underground even so. It is a really lousy place for the financial hub of the world. There is no reason that the servers can't be up in a mountain somewhere.
Oh, and in any case where there needs to be relocation I'm fine with reimbursement to property owners for the value of the land, and relocation funding to anybody impacted (landowner or not). It is probably cheaper than doing the rebuilding anyway. To me it isn't about punishing people so much as making better long-term decisions.
Yup. Would I prefer an SD slot? Sure! Would I spend $300 more for a comparable phone with an SD slot but whose vendor is unlikely to release updated device drivers for the next 1.5 year's worth of OS updates? I think I'll pass on that.
Agree partially - it isn't a community project, but it is fairly open. You can't just check stuff into Debian's package repository either.
Would I prefer to see commits on Key Lime Pie published as they're made, sure! Will I turn up my nose at free FOSS code released after the fact, of course not!
Well, a few issues with that analogy:
1. Difficulty to jailbreak - for many Android phones I'd agree with you 100%, though at various points in time some are easier or harder. For the Nexus line, however, I have to disagree - jailbreaking is vendor-supported via a standard tool that works out of the box and on every OS update.
2. Whatever ROM you like - you get a lot more ability to modify the OS on any rooted Android phone, since the OS is open source. It is true that people do modify iOS, but that isn't nearly as flexible.
3. Whatever apps you like - agree, though Android does make it legit to build software without paying for the SDK, for what that's worth.
Yes, but whatever choice the school makes is not the same choice a future employer will make, so getting them to learn the school's tools doesn't have any long-term benefit. People don't go to college to learn how to use software. They are there to learn how to make movies, or whatever it is that they're studying. Avid has as much to do with making movies as Excel has to do with the physical sciences.
Yup. I can see the use case for the UAV at least - stick one of those things in orbit over a city and it is like a satellite. It doesn't need to carry much weight, and it isn't actually going anywhere so as long as it can station keep speed isn't an issue.
Granted, it probably has little spare power, which might limit its usefuless as something like a cell phone tower.
But, those don't carry 250lb passengers, let alone their 50lbs of baggage.
Yup. Another factor is stuff that is ultimately going to an inland destination. With an airship you can fly direct. With a ship you have to unload onto trucks or trains, and only trucks give you maximum flexibility.
You also can take advantage of prevailing winds with an airship - if you get up into the jet stream you can be moving at 100mph with little energy expenditure. Of course, that only works on certain routes, and those routes certainly aren't round-trip the reverse leg. By airship it might be faster to fly around 3/4ths of the world than to go against the wind.
Ok, let's take a CRJ-200. That consumes 1200 lb/hr of fuel in cruise, or about 170 gal/hr. That's 5MW of power - still a huge amount for a solar plant to generate, and that neglects the power needed to reach cruise altitude which is MUCH higher.
A little Cessna 172 on 50% power uses 5gal/hr, which is 150kW of power. One of those probably could carry a single passenger and the pilot at typical passenger+baggage limits. If you stretched the thing out into the size of a small airliner using balsa wood you might be able to power it in cruise with top-mounted solar panels, assuming it could be towed up to cruise altitude, still carrying only two people.
We can't even build solar-powered cars - forget planes with any kind of payload and cruise speed.
The professor can illustrate what needs to be done using software familiar to the professor. If the student can't follow it, then the student is in the wrong class and should take a class on how to use their specific piece of software instead (likely at much lower cost).
Yup - with all the money being spent on Yucca mountain, why not just build a few fast breeders and build a huge military base around each one? That actually gets rid of the waste, and if somebody wants to sneak into a highly guarded facility to steal nuclear materials they'll just steal a fully functional hydrogen bomb from someplace else.
If the goal is to teach kids how to edit video without any prior knowledge
There's your first mistake. Why would anybody pay a fortune to take a college-level class having no prior knowledge of the field?
I studied Chemistry, and during the course of my studies I did not learn how to use any specific model of equipment that I later encountered in the real world (undergraduates rarely use modern equipment, and if they do there are so many varieties chances are two next-door labs don't have the same models). However, it took me all of 30 seconds to learn how to use them, because I understood the concepts. The same is true of software - I might not know where the create layer button is in Photoshop vs GIMP, but I could know what a layer is and does and when they should be used artistically.
Better still - be an expert in zero tools, and focus on the technique.
If I have trouble writing a term paper in a word processor of my choice, do I ask the professor for help?
If you're teaching movies, focus on the techniques/outcomes, and not on what buttons you push to make them happen. If the student wants to learn how to use their software, they should take a class on using the software, not a class on making movies.
Gotta love those customer-oriented schools that dictate the use of specific brands of tools.
Well, Apple is still a Phase 2 company*, so I suspect there is still a reasonable amount of dedication to the original vision left, and therefore some level of genuine accountability. If anything as the article stated this shows that without Jobs at the wheel there isn't the same unifying voice, and re-forming management consensus is part of the natural transition into a Phase 3 company*.
If a more mature company made this decision I'd be more inclined to agree with the assertion that this was a more cynical power play. There is a form of accountability in a Phase 3 company - ultimately if you mess up THAT badly then you risk awaking the shareholders, and the CEO is forced to take action. This is purely for self-preservation, not any sense of duty to shareholders. Apple is still in Phase 2, and I suspect that the leadership really does want to make good products.
*Phase 2 company - a company governed by the founder's hand-picked successor.
*Phase 3 company - a company governed by a CEO selected by the executive search team and a bunch of consultants.
Not legally unless you have unlimited data. And not practically if somebody would actually make it easy to VPN your mobile data from your tablet (which I'd like to do even when not tethering for security).
T-Mobile. If you live in a well-populated area chances are they're fine. The only time I've ever had poor signal was out in the boonies, and I'm only very rarely out in the boonies.
I've got T-mobile with an unsubsidized plan. I pay $100/mo for four lines. Two have unlimited voice, the other two have 500min/month. Two are no-data, and two are 2GB 4G, unlimited 2G. All four have unlimited SMS/MMS.
They do offer payment plans on phones as well, which are basically like a zero-interest loan on full retail prices. For the high-end phones they're a good deal. For the low end phones you're probably better off finding a cheaper phone elsewhere.
It is about a wash if you upgrade all your phones every two years for high-end devices. However, if you upgrade less it costs less, and you get the option of buying any phone you want as long as it can be unlocked.
That only applies to a few fairly ancient designs. The vast majority of plants are newer and do not require active safety systems. The ones that do are almost impossible to upgrade due to regulation, which is truly ironic.
Yup. It doesn't help that the US system of government gives the President far more powers than any one person has in most democracies.
Typically the head of state in a democracy is a prime minister, who really is just a representative of the parliament. If they died parliament would just pick somebody else who would enact the exact same policies. They aren't directly elected.
In the US people go nuts over who is president precisely because they do have so much power, and they are directly elected. In fact, it has become the latest fashion for them to basically ignore the laws when they're really inconvenient, so they're almost the only person with any political power to begin with.
My whole point is that all of us will be physically and mentally incapable of working - I'll include myself in with the rest, even though at present I have a very good job that no computer that currently exists would be capable of doing well.
This is nothing about being pessimistic - try to out-perform a backhoe at digging holes some day. It simply isn't possible for a human to be more effective than a backhoe if you need some holes dug in the open. Now, automation hasn't gotten to the point where all human jobs can be replaced, especially those involving creativity and reasoning. However, that day will come - it is just a matter of time.
75 years ago anybody could get a job if they were willing to do work - a job that paid fairly well. Today simply being willing to work is not sufficient to get a job - almost all labor is skilled. Those jobs that didn't require skill still exist, but they're not performed by humans.
The economic problems we're seeing today are merely the first signs of a general change in the nature of productivity. Once upon a time it took half the population just to grow food. One day it won't require a single human being to do anything needed to sustain the entire human race at a level of opulence we do not have today. However, the question is who benefits from that opulence, as right now the only ways to make money are to do something or to own something, and the "do something" will no longer be an option.
Sure you can pay Tata $10,000 - you just end up with poor bug-ridden code thrown together with the minimal amount of rigor to meet whatever specification you sent. Even if your offshore coders speak the same language they don't understand your culture and what you get isn't what you want.
Yup, but the upgrade gets done on time, and the manager who picked them gets his promotion, and the next manager can deal with the aftermath.
That's the problem with corporate IT, and just about corporate anything these days. Nobody really cares if the job gets done right.
I would bet money that most of the people in that class are not in the field today. They just weren't IT people.
Uh, I work in the field. Most of the people in the field aren't IT people either, unless you work at some place like Google.
Much of corporate IT is more about manipulating people than manipulating technology.
Others gave good answers, but I'd just take it a step further - you can't really directly compare key lengths for different algorithms.
How long does it take you to solve 100 math problems by hand? Well, when I was in elementary school I was expected to do it in 5 minutes, but those were single-digit add/subtract/multiple/divide problems.
If I asked you to calculate the log of 10 10-digit numbers by hand it would take you a LOT longer than 5 minutes, though a computer could do this quickly.
If I asked you to factor a single number 100 digits long it would take an awfully long time even for a computer, though it would be in the realm of possibility.
Different algorithms use different math, so keys need to be different lengths to be secure. These algorithms are chosen for many reasons, and a shorter key length is only one of them. In many applications it might make more sense to just make all the keys 10x longer if it means that you can do the math on a cheaper and lower power chip. In this particular case, having to use a really long key is worth it because the design of this particular type of crypto system allows n people to communicate with each other with a total of only 2n keys, and not 2^n.