I just bought a kindle for somebody who is trying to re-learn reading after a stroke. I didn't see any mention of text-to-speech capability in the new Kindles.
A bit of a fringe use, I'm sure, but it is REALLY nice for this application since the text and the speech are synced. If it weren't for that one feature I'd certainly have gotten a Nook, which at the time was better in pretty-much every regard that mattered.
No, we're not. The thing to keep in mind is that there's a distinction between simply booting and secure booting. Right now, no operating system can secure boot (as far as I'm aware, anyway - if there is hardware+software out there that can utilise this, please let me know) and Microsoft wants to push it for Windows 8. It would be nice if we can also utilise this for other operating systems as well (or rather, other boot loaders, like GRUB), however that task lies with the OEMs and their willingness to let us add our own keys. Like I said before - this is the OEM decision, not Microsoft's.
First, ChromeBooks all use secure boot. They allow it to be turned off, but they do not allow replacement of the keys in the firmware, so you can't keep Google out of your hardware if you want to, and you can't enable secure boot on a non-Google OS.
The problem with your logic is that hardware manufacturers really have no incentive to allow non-MS OSes to boot. They make no money when you install a non-MS OS, and 95%+ of all their customers just want an MS OS anyway.
I'm sure there will be the odd motherboard out there for enthusiasts that gives you more control. However, this will end the era of the linux live CD, or 3rd-party system recovery tools. People who know they want to run linux before they buy a PC could probably keep this option open. Anybody who has never heard of linux when they buy a PC will probably be barred from even trying it until they buy a new PC. Not being able to use an existing hardware base is not going to help with breaking the desktop OS monopoly.
MS has a monopoly on desktop operating systems. This makes keeping options for competition open THEIR PROBLEM. Secure boot can help prevent competition on the desktop OS market, and that means that it is a burden on the monopoly to avoid this. The same issue exists on cell phones and I'm not happy with it, but there is no monopoly currently in cell phone operating systems so the government tends to stay out of it.
I would love to see secure boot take off. I don't care how it is shipped by default as long as: 1. I can disable it and re-enable it whenever I want. 2. I can remove any or all keys that ship with the firmware, so that it is impossible for somebody else to boot a windows CD on my computer (and potentially mess with my stuff). 3. I can add any keys I wish to the firmware - I'm fine with some hard limit on how many keys it can store. I can then re-sign the MS install if I want to increase its security (MS can no longer hack my windows install), or install any OS of my choice and get the same benefits that I'd get from using an MS OS.
If this were implemented as a level playing field nobody would be likely to care about this...
That makes sense. A satellite in a highly eliptical orbit can change its orbit much less expensively than one in a circular orbit. When it is high up its velocity is low and so your delta-v gets you a lot more bang for the buck (changing inclination/etc). When it is low to the earth you basically benefit from the slingshot effect if you want to change the orbital period.
Disclaimer - I'm an amateur when it comes to these things...
You don't understand the true value of the Information that can be harvested out of a site like Facebook who requires (to the extent possible) the use of your proper IRL information. A big pile of that is worth a lot!
They require that on paper - and unless you are famous they really have no way to check.
Sure, the people in the top-100-number-of-friends list probably have fairly well-vetted info. However, that represents about 0.00001% of their accounts. The value is in the long tail, and that is whatever grandma tilly types in. I know lots of people that falsify profile info (birth dates, etc) to keep info private. That is noise.
Nobody is questioning that the data has some value - but is it really $50B? Those kinds of valuations assume that Facebook will still be on top 20 years from now, and that is a big assumption.
I'd say they're killing Facebook, or rather Facebook is killing themselves by letting people do it.
I've blocked all app traffic in Facebook for this reason, though for the most part I've switched to Google+. I want to read things that people have thought about and written - not auto-generated notices from their favorite apps. I'm fine with having some way to check the high score board on GameDuJure, but it doesn't need to take up 30% of my news feed or whatever.
I know some guy who just posted apologies because Spotify apparently posted on his wall every time he listened to a track of music, and he had no idea it was happening. I had blocked apps and hadn't seen this, but it sounds pretty annoying to me.
I'd also like any APIs for social networking systems to allow granular permissions control. I don't mind playing game xyz, and maybe I don't mind it doing A and B, but maybe I'd like to block C and D, and require confirmation each time it wants to do E. Too many of these APIs are all-or-nothing. The android world is finally starting to get on top of this (but you need to root your phone to do it).
Well, I tend to be a bit libertarian on many things, but I think that universal healthcare is inevitable and in many ways we're just prolonging the pain right now.
The nature of healthcare does not make for good consumer choices - are you really going to haggle with a doctor in the ER the way you might with a car salesman?
Plus, insurance is going to be untenable as our knowledge of medicine increases. When you can accurately classify the risk of injury then insurance stops working unless you force everybody to buy it (which is universal healthcare under a different name). Who would pay for insurance if it is cheaper for them to not do so, and who wouldn't purchase insurance if it is in their favor to do so? Either people likely to get sick wouldn't be able to afford insurance, or insurance companies would go out of business.
The legal situation also needs to be cleaned up tremendously - that is the whole reason why you get 47 different bills for a hospital stay.
I know somebody who has communications problems. She had the opportunity to purchase some software that would aid her communications (think something like Steven Hawking - but simpler). It ran on a 5-year-old macbook. The whole thing was sold as a bundled package for $10k (yes, with 5 zeros), and was highly locked down (ie no web browsing from the thing, so there would be no possible synergies using it to type emails or something).
The only reason they can get away with it is that insurance would pay most of that cost, but even the co-insurance would have been VERY expensive. For a poor person on medicare it might very well have been free (for all but the taxpayer, who is buying some software and a $50 ebay mac for $10k).
In the end they opted to not get it since the benefits just weren't there for the costs. If it were sold in a box for $75, or even $300 it might be a different story. The software wasn't actually that sophisticated.
However, the key was that it was FDA approved as a medical device.
Look, if you're taking about an insulin pump or a pacemaker I can see the need for rigorous regulation - those things can kill you if they malfunction. However, when you're talking about things like pacemakers, crutches, or things like this there needs to be more of a common-sense approach.
Well, the reality is that nobody pays more than $500 for an ER visit. However, the ER visit might well be billed in the thousands of dollars range.
That is the first thing I'd change about US healthcare if I were in charge: 1. Everybody pays the same price for everything. 2. Hospitals must publish their price lists. 3. For any particular diagnosis/treatment/etc you get one bill and you pay it. None of the crazy everybody-and-their-uncle is an independent contractor business.
The real problem with being uninsured isn't that you have to pay your own bills (though that can be VERY expensive). The even bigger problem is that they expect you to pay more than anybody else actually pays for the same treatment. If you get bypass surgery done the doctors and hospital will probably send your insurance company bills totaling $150k. The insurance company will basically look on their price list (which the doctors had to agree to in advance) and send them checks totaling $12k or so. If you didn't have insurance you'd get all those bills for $150k and have to negotiate something with each provider, and I guarantee you wouldn't be able to talk them down to $12k. Most likely you'd declare bankruptcy and they'd end up getting less than $12k anyway, and you lose your home as a bonus.
The whole system is seriously messed up. And, it isn't just the insurance companies - those noble doctors are just as much a part of it.
I dunno - I know a guy from the UK who ended up being unable to talk for a month because it took so long to get treated for pneumonia. Maybe he was doing something wrong but:
1. He went to his doctor. 2. The doctor first tried aspirin or whatever. A few days later he returned since it didn't work. 3. Doctor sends for x-rays. Wait a few days for scheduling. 3. X-ray is taken. 4. Wait ONE WEEK for the x-ray to be read. 5. He was diagnosed with pneumonia and given an antibiotic prescription. By this point he was VERY sick.
In the US my wife had a touch of pneumonia and went to the ER (aka A+E) and was triaged to the front of the line since she was having breathing problems. Within about 10 minutes she was X-rayed and that was read within 15-20 minutes. All the while she is on O2. Oh, and this was all around midnight, so that was an off-hours response time. Not long after she was nebulized to open up her airways and sent home with prescriptions for advair and antibiotics. She was breathing fine when she left and had no further problems as she finished her course of treatment.
Now, maybe my friend's problem in the UK was going to a family doctor and not A+E or something. In the US going that route would certainly add a day here or there to the response time but not nearly as long as in the UK.
I hear the real problem in the UK is anything elective (ie necessary but not life threatening). If you need a hip replacement or something like that be prepared to wait a VERY long time.
All that said, I'm not entirely pleased with the scheduling efficiency of the US healthcare system either. My wife has been hospitalized and often the process is doctor comes in at 9AM, orders test, test is done at 2PM, doctor comes in at 9AM and looks at results, lather rinse repeat. There is WAY too much latency in the system and it results in patients sitting around in beds for far longer than necessary, which is neither convenient or conducive to recovery.
I see online learning as a way to allow us to have interactive time focus on the sorts of things that you mention, where it adds real value.
Too many lectures are just that - lectures. If the teacher is mainly going to run through a scripted lecture, then doing it online makes more sense than tying up an hour of everybody's time doing it in a class. Why not have a lecture online, and then have a class that is purely discussion, application, etc? You could also cut down on class time (and therefore on costs) this way - have three hours of online lecture and one hour of pure interaction each week. That would probably expose everybody to more interaction than they'd otherwise get, and would allow a professor to probably teach 3x as many class sessions at the same time.
Also, there is no rule that says the professor doing the lecture needs to be the one doing the interaction. A university could buy recorded lectures from MIT or whatever and then just have their local professors spend their time on the interactive content. Then everybody can benefit from world-class talent at a more modest price.
A classroom, a lab, and a web browser are just different communications mediums. No one is better than the others - they're different, and you get the most value when you employ each to their greatest effect.
Well, that is part of my question around superluminal neutrinos. If they really worked that way, then couldn't you potentially detect a supernova weeks or months before it becomes visible via light/radio? The speed difference is small, but when the travel time is measured in decades to centuries a tiny percentage adds up.
CS is programming. IT is the maintenance of computer systems.
Interesting. Is this the prevalent definition of IT in the US (assuming that's where you are from)? Because in Europe, IT in common parlance means "computer stuff"
Funny, I know a guy who would argue that programming isn't CS - it is software engineering, or maybe IT. Personally I prefer not to fight about definitions. That is, unless we're talking about units - then I stick with SI (hey, I'm a scientist), and mostly because it drives the CS and IT guys nuts.:)
I've always founds scientific priority fights to be childish. When you're talking about whether somebody discovered something 1587 vs 1702 then this is interesting history. These days it seems like these are squabbles over whether some doodles on a napkin on Aug 3rd take priority over somebody's recollection of a chalkboard figure from Aug 8th.
What is really odd to me is that many a grad student has been burned by priority - having to essentially backtrack on their thesis and take it in a new direction. I understand the desire to have a student work on something novel, but if the Ph.D. is a measure of the ability to lead independent research, then the only thing that should be truly critical is whether the work was independent, not whether three months prior to completion somebody else beats you to it.
Ultimately society is spending good money for discoveries that will benefit mankind, not to have scientists squabbling over bragging rights and intrigue. Often the quest for priority leads to information hoarding, which is bad for the progress of science - it turns discovery into property.
Uh, so just show them the door, and change the locks. If my boss doesn't like my performance he doesn't give me $10M to get me to stop showing up the work.
Yeah, imagine if he had only worked there for 2 years at $5M/yr and then lost his job. With only $10M in the bank he'd have to choose between a private jet and a 45 bedroom house!
This is a problem in many larger (failing) companies as well.
I was doing a count at work. I'm a leaf node on the org chart. I have 5 siblings. I also have 5 ancestors. So, the 5 of us are collectively managed by 5 people.
This is probably pretty typical within the company. In fact, in most areas the tree depth is larger.
Those parent nodes do almost nothing in terms of tangible work. Plus, you have to factor in how many subtrees don't actually do any real value-added work.
The issue is that supply/demand and capitalism in general is way out of whack in the university system. There just simply aren't enough schools to have meaningful competition. People are often spending other people's money, which of course gives them little incentive to negotiate hard. The typical college freshman just wants to make sure they're not one of the three people they know who end up having to get a job while their friends get to meet new people and keep experiencing high school. What's $100k to somebody who has never gotten paid more than $9/hr and who has NEVER had to actually pay back a debt on their own?
Agreed. I have an MS degree, but if I were to take a job in anything other than a very particular subset of my general subject area my income would easily drop in half. Anybody with a strong income tends to be a specialist. Two guys get an EE degree. One guy gets a job designing servo control circuits, and another guy gets a job designing cell phone antennas. After 15 years, both lose their jobs. In theory both have the degree requirements to do the others' jobs, but they would both be treated like fresh college grads (with stale educations) in terms of salary, or they simply wouldn't be hired. Experience gets you high salaries, and the only way you get it is to stick yourself in some domain for a period of time.
I believe FAFSA requires the incomes of the parent with physical custody and their spouse. That is of course completely crazy, since the step-parent isn't otherwise financially responsible for a step-child, and any evolutionary biologist would maintain that they have no real incentive to be so.
Most step-parents care and probably feel like they are being held for ransom. Some don't care and simply don't sign the forms, which means no subsidized financial aid of any kind until the kid hits 25 or whatever.
I really don't see why parental income should have anything to do with aid eligibility - kids should be adults at 18 and treated as such. I know I'd certainly never agree to co-sign on loans or anything like that unless I was REALLY sure there was a strong ROI and the kid was VERY likely to follow through.
I don't think that utilities should have discretion to determine what services they do and don't sell at a consumer level.
In fact, I don't think utilities should even be allowed to sell internet service. They should sell a cable that goes to the CO, and you can then buy service from an ISP there. Suddenly the last mile problem is gone and the free market can address these issues.
"Otherwise, if everybody can just sit around doing what they want, then they'll probably end up wanting to have a fair number of kids."
And with a seemingly empty and devoid-of-life solar system and galaxy around us, this is wrong because?
Simple - we're likely to have shortages of employment on Earth long before we are able to colonize other planets.
I'll agree that once interplanetary travel and terraforming are available then population will not be an issue for a LONG time. However, I think problems of population will become worse long before they become better.
Where I work HR is mainly perceived as being a rules-enforcement organization. They don't help you hire anybody - they just make sure you filled out all 47 forms in triplicate and generally ensure that the process takes nine months.
When they need to fire 50 people they also ensure that it is done in such a way that the company won't get sued.
Sadly, this is the state of HR in many big companies I suspect.
I agree there is value to face-to-face communication.
The funny thing is that at my workplace 99% of the teams out there don't have more than 2 people on them that are in the same building. I can easily go a day with 5 1-hour meetings and not see a single person in the flesh that I actually work with. I do of course see people and chat with them and all that, but it does almost nothing for the job.
Many big companies can be like this - and yet they are often reluctant to allow telecommuting. I chuckle, since it has been years since I had a boss that worked within 100 miles of me, despite having a typical office job. For a while I didn't have a boss on the same continent.
Slashdot Mirror
I just bought a kindle for somebody who is trying to re-learn reading after a stroke. I didn't see any mention of text-to-speech capability in the new Kindles.
A bit of a fringe use, I'm sure, but it is REALLY nice for this application since the text and the speech are synced. If it weren't for that one feature I'd certainly have gotten a Nook, which at the time was better in pretty-much every regard that mattered.
No, we're not. The thing to keep in mind is that there's a distinction between simply booting and secure booting. Right now, no operating system can secure boot (as far as I'm aware, anyway - if there is hardware+software out there that can utilise this, please let me know) and Microsoft wants to push it for Windows 8. It would be nice if we can also utilise this for other operating systems as well (or rather, other boot loaders, like GRUB), however that task lies with the OEMs and their willingness to let us add our own keys. Like I said before - this is the OEM decision, not Microsoft's.
First, ChromeBooks all use secure boot. They allow it to be turned off, but they do not allow replacement of the keys in the firmware, so you can't keep Google out of your hardware if you want to, and you can't enable secure boot on a non-Google OS.
The problem with your logic is that hardware manufacturers really have no incentive to allow non-MS OSes to boot. They make no money when you install a non-MS OS, and 95%+ of all their customers just want an MS OS anyway.
I'm sure there will be the odd motherboard out there for enthusiasts that gives you more control. However, this will end the era of the linux live CD, or 3rd-party system recovery tools. People who know they want to run linux before they buy a PC could probably keep this option open. Anybody who has never heard of linux when they buy a PC will probably be barred from even trying it until they buy a new PC. Not being able to use an existing hardware base is not going to help with breaking the desktop OS monopoly.
MS has a monopoly on desktop operating systems. This makes keeping options for competition open THEIR PROBLEM. Secure boot can help prevent competition on the desktop OS market, and that means that it is a burden on the monopoly to avoid this. The same issue exists on cell phones and I'm not happy with it, but there is no monopoly currently in cell phone operating systems so the government tends to stay out of it.
I would love to see secure boot take off. I don't care how it is shipped by default as long as:
1. I can disable it and re-enable it whenever I want.
2. I can remove any or all keys that ship with the firmware, so that it is impossible for somebody else to boot a windows CD on my computer (and potentially mess with my stuff).
3. I can add any keys I wish to the firmware - I'm fine with some hard limit on how many keys it can store. I can then re-sign the MS install if I want to increase its security (MS can no longer hack my windows install), or install any OS of my choice and get the same benefits that I'd get from using an MS OS.
If this were implemented as a level playing field nobody would be likely to care about this...
You can enable it somewhere deep inside the ever-changing youtube interface.
And then re-enable it about once every two weeks when for whatever reason it forgets your setting.
I run chromium on linux without a flash plugin, and youtube works fine in html5, but I CONSTANTLY have to re-enable it. That is a major annoyance.
Look, Google makes youtube. Google makes chrome. Can't they figure out whether the one works with the other and just use html5 by default?
That makes sense. A satellite in a highly eliptical orbit can change its orbit much less expensively than one in a circular orbit. When it is high up its velocity is low and so your delta-v gets you a lot more bang for the buck (changing inclination/etc). When it is low to the earth you basically benefit from the slingshot effect if you want to change the orbital period.
Disclaimer - I'm an amateur when it comes to these things...
Cold-War Missile Launches Military Baby Shower
Yeah, but what is the ICD10 code for that?
You don't understand the true value of the Information that can be harvested out of a site like Facebook who requires (to the extent possible) the use of your proper IRL information. A big pile of that is worth a lot!
They require that on paper - and unless you are famous they really have no way to check.
Sure, the people in the top-100-number-of-friends list probably have fairly well-vetted info. However, that represents about 0.00001% of their accounts. The value is in the long tail, and that is whatever grandma tilly types in. I know lots of people that falsify profile info (birth dates, etc) to keep info private. That is noise.
Nobody is questioning that the data has some value - but is it really $50B? Those kinds of valuations assume that Facebook will still be on top 20 years from now, and that is a big assumption.
I'd say they're killing Facebook, or rather Facebook is killing themselves by letting people do it.
I've blocked all app traffic in Facebook for this reason, though for the most part I've switched to Google+. I want to read things that people have thought about and written - not auto-generated notices from their favorite apps. I'm fine with having some way to check the high score board on GameDuJure, but it doesn't need to take up 30% of my news feed or whatever.
I know some guy who just posted apologies because Spotify apparently posted on his wall every time he listened to a track of music, and he had no idea it was happening. I had blocked apps and hadn't seen this, but it sounds pretty annoying to me.
I'd also like any APIs for social networking systems to allow granular permissions control. I don't mind playing game xyz, and maybe I don't mind it doing A and B, but maybe I'd like to block C and D, and require confirmation each time it wants to do E. Too many of these APIs are all-or-nothing. The android world is finally starting to get on top of this (but you need to root your phone to do it).
Well, I tend to be a bit libertarian on many things, but I think that universal healthcare is inevitable and in many ways we're just prolonging the pain right now.
The nature of healthcare does not make for good consumer choices - are you really going to haggle with a doctor in the ER the way you might with a car salesman?
Plus, insurance is going to be untenable as our knowledge of medicine increases. When you can accurately classify the risk of injury then insurance stops working unless you force everybody to buy it (which is universal healthcare under a different name). Who would pay for insurance if it is cheaper for them to not do so, and who wouldn't purchase insurance if it is in their favor to do so? Either people likely to get sick wouldn't be able to afford insurance, or insurance companies would go out of business.
The legal situation also needs to be cleaned up tremendously - that is the whole reason why you get 47 different bills for a hospital stay.
Yup, that was basically what I was getting at...
I know somebody who has communications problems. She had the opportunity to purchase some software that would aid her communications (think something like Steven Hawking - but simpler). It ran on a 5-year-old macbook. The whole thing was sold as a bundled package for $10k (yes, with 5 zeros), and was highly locked down (ie no web browsing from the thing, so there would be no possible synergies using it to type emails or something).
The only reason they can get away with it is that insurance would pay most of that cost, but even the co-insurance would have been VERY expensive. For a poor person on medicare it might very well have been free (for all but the taxpayer, who is buying some software and a $50 ebay mac for $10k).
In the end they opted to not get it since the benefits just weren't there for the costs. If it were sold in a box for $75, or even $300 it might be a different story. The software wasn't actually that sophisticated.
However, the key was that it was FDA approved as a medical device.
Look, if you're taking about an insulin pump or a pacemaker I can see the need for rigorous regulation - those things can kill you if they malfunction. However, when you're talking about things like pacemakers, crutches, or things like this there needs to be more of a common-sense approach.
Well, the reality is that nobody pays more than $500 for an ER visit. However, the ER visit might well be billed in the thousands of dollars range.
That is the first thing I'd change about US healthcare if I were in charge:
1. Everybody pays the same price for everything.
2. Hospitals must publish their price lists.
3. For any particular diagnosis/treatment/etc you get one bill and you pay it. None of the crazy everybody-and-their-uncle is an independent contractor business.
The real problem with being uninsured isn't that you have to pay your own bills (though that can be VERY expensive). The even bigger problem is that they expect you to pay more than anybody else actually pays for the same treatment. If you get bypass surgery done the doctors and hospital will probably send your insurance company bills totaling $150k. The insurance company will basically look on their price list (which the doctors had to agree to in advance) and send them checks totaling $12k or so. If you didn't have insurance you'd get all those bills for $150k and have to negotiate something with each provider, and I guarantee you wouldn't be able to talk them down to $12k. Most likely you'd declare bankruptcy and they'd end up getting less than $12k anyway, and you lose your home as a bonus.
The whole system is seriously messed up. And, it isn't just the insurance companies - those noble doctors are just as much a part of it.
I dunno - I know a guy from the UK who ended up being unable to talk for a month because it took so long to get treated for pneumonia. Maybe he was doing something wrong but:
1. He went to his doctor.
2. The doctor first tried aspirin or whatever. A few days later he returned since it didn't work.
3. Doctor sends for x-rays. Wait a few days for scheduling.
3. X-ray is taken.
4. Wait ONE WEEK for the x-ray to be read.
5. He was diagnosed with pneumonia and given an antibiotic prescription. By this point he was VERY sick.
In the US my wife had a touch of pneumonia and went to the ER (aka A+E) and was triaged to the front of the line since she was having breathing problems. Within about 10 minutes she was X-rayed and that was read within 15-20 minutes. All the while she is on O2. Oh, and this was all around midnight, so that was an off-hours response time. Not long after she was nebulized to open up her airways and sent home with prescriptions for advair and antibiotics. She was breathing fine when she left and had no further problems as she finished her course of treatment.
Now, maybe my friend's problem in the UK was going to a family doctor and not A+E or something. In the US going that route would certainly add a day here or there to the response time but not nearly as long as in the UK.
I hear the real problem in the UK is anything elective (ie necessary but not life threatening). If you need a hip replacement or something like that be prepared to wait a VERY long time.
All that said, I'm not entirely pleased with the scheduling efficiency of the US healthcare system either. My wife has been hospitalized and often the process is doctor comes in at 9AM, orders test, test is done at 2PM, doctor comes in at 9AM and looks at results, lather rinse repeat. There is WAY too much latency in the system and it results in patients sitting around in beds for far longer than necessary, which is neither convenient or conducive to recovery.
I see online learning as a way to allow us to have interactive time focus on the sorts of things that you mention, where it adds real value.
Too many lectures are just that - lectures. If the teacher is mainly going to run through a scripted lecture, then doing it online makes more sense than tying up an hour of everybody's time doing it in a class. Why not have a lecture online, and then have a class that is purely discussion, application, etc? You could also cut down on class time (and therefore on costs) this way - have three hours of online lecture and one hour of pure interaction each week. That would probably expose everybody to more interaction than they'd otherwise get, and would allow a professor to probably teach 3x as many class sessions at the same time.
Also, there is no rule that says the professor doing the lecture needs to be the one doing the interaction. A university could buy recorded lectures from MIT or whatever and then just have their local professors spend their time on the interactive content. Then everybody can benefit from world-class talent at a more modest price.
A classroom, a lab, and a web browser are just different communications mediums. No one is better than the others - they're different, and you get the most value when you employ each to their greatest effect.
Well, that is part of my question around superluminal neutrinos. If they really worked that way, then couldn't you potentially detect a supernova weeks or months before it becomes visible via light/radio? The speed difference is small, but when the travel time is measured in decades to centuries a tiny percentage adds up.
CS is programming. IT is the maintenance of computer systems.
Interesting. Is this the prevalent definition of IT in the US (assuming that's where you are from)? Because in Europe, IT in common parlance means "computer stuff"
Funny, I know a guy who would argue that programming isn't CS - it is software engineering, or maybe IT. Personally I prefer not to fight about definitions. That is, unless we're talking about units - then I stick with SI (hey, I'm a scientist), and mostly because it drives the CS and IT guys nuts. :)
I've always founds scientific priority fights to be childish. When you're talking about whether somebody discovered something 1587 vs 1702 then this is interesting history. These days it seems like these are squabbles over whether some doodles on a napkin on Aug 3rd take priority over somebody's recollection of a chalkboard figure from Aug 8th.
What is really odd to me is that many a grad student has been burned by priority - having to essentially backtrack on their thesis and take it in a new direction. I understand the desire to have a student work on something novel, but if the Ph.D. is a measure of the ability to lead independent research, then the only thing that should be truly critical is whether the work was independent, not whether three months prior to completion somebody else beats you to it.
Ultimately society is spending good money for discoveries that will benefit mankind, not to have scientists squabbling over bragging rights and intrigue. Often the quest for priority leads to information hoarding, which is bad for the progress of science - it turns discovery into property.
Uh, so just show them the door, and change the locks. If my boss doesn't like my performance he doesn't give me $10M to get me to stop showing up the work.
Yeah, imagine if he had only worked there for 2 years at $5M/yr and then lost his job. With only $10M in the bank he'd have to choose between a private jet and a 45 bedroom house!
This is a problem in many larger (failing) companies as well.
I was doing a count at work. I'm a leaf node on the org chart. I have 5 siblings. I also have 5 ancestors. So, the 5 of us are collectively managed by 5 people.
This is probably pretty typical within the company. In fact, in most areas the tree depth is larger.
Those parent nodes do almost nothing in terms of tangible work. Plus, you have to factor in how many subtrees don't actually do any real value-added work.
The issue is that supply/demand and capitalism in general is way out of whack in the university system. There just simply aren't enough schools to have meaningful competition. People are often spending other people's money, which of course gives them little incentive to negotiate hard. The typical college freshman just wants to make sure they're not one of the three people they know who end up having to get a job while their friends get to meet new people and keep experiencing high school. What's $100k to somebody who has never gotten paid more than $9/hr and who has NEVER had to actually pay back a debt on their own?
Agreed. I have an MS degree, but if I were to take a job in anything other than a very particular subset of my general subject area my income would easily drop in half. Anybody with a strong income tends to be a specialist. Two guys get an EE degree. One guy gets a job designing servo control circuits, and another guy gets a job designing cell phone antennas. After 15 years, both lose their jobs. In theory both have the degree requirements to do the others' jobs, but they would both be treated like fresh college grads (with stale educations) in terms of salary, or they simply wouldn't be hired. Experience gets you high salaries, and the only way you get it is to stick yourself in some domain for a period of time.
I believe FAFSA requires the incomes of the parent with physical custody and their spouse. That is of course completely crazy, since the step-parent isn't otherwise financially responsible for a step-child, and any evolutionary biologist would maintain that they have no real incentive to be so.
Most step-parents care and probably feel like they are being held for ransom. Some don't care and simply don't sign the forms, which means no subsidized financial aid of any kind until the kid hits 25 or whatever.
I really don't see why parental income should have anything to do with aid eligibility - kids should be adults at 18 and treated as such. I know I'd certainly never agree to co-sign on loans or anything like that unless I was REALLY sure there was a strong ROI and the kid was VERY likely to follow through.
I don't think that utilities should have discretion to determine what services they do and don't sell at a consumer level.
In fact, I don't think utilities should even be allowed to sell internet service. They should sell a cable that goes to the CO, and you can then buy service from an ISP there. Suddenly the last mile problem is gone and the free market can address these issues.
"Otherwise, if everybody can just sit around doing what they want, then they'll probably end up wanting to have a fair number of kids."
And with a seemingly empty and devoid-of-life solar system and galaxy around us, this is wrong because?
Simple - we're likely to have shortages of employment on Earth long before we are able to colonize other planets.
I'll agree that once interplanetary travel and terraforming are available then population will not be an issue for a LONG time. However, I think problems of population will become worse long before they become better.
Where I work HR is mainly perceived as being a rules-enforcement organization. They don't help you hire anybody - they just make sure you filled out all 47 forms in triplicate and generally ensure that the process takes nine months.
When they need to fire 50 people they also ensure that it is done in such a way that the company won't get sued.
Sadly, this is the state of HR in many big companies I suspect.
I agree there is value to face-to-face communication.
The funny thing is that at my workplace 99% of the teams out there don't have more than 2 people on them that are in the same building. I can easily go a day with 5 1-hour meetings and not see a single person in the flesh that I actually work with. I do of course see people and chat with them and all that, but it does almost nothing for the job.
Many big companies can be like this - and yet they are often reluctant to allow telecommuting. I chuckle, since it has been years since I had a boss that worked within 100 miles of me, despite having a typical office job. For a while I didn't have a boss on the same continent.