Ok I understand that the mediocre schools add noise to the American system. But one can filter that out by only looking at applicants from the good schools. So how is filtering out based on good schools in America different from filtering out based on graduates from India coming from a good school (and the only school of choice there).
I see no difference, unless what you are saying is that employers don't look at the school one comes from. This is simply no true. Employers have always screened based on education.
Let me say this another way. You say Indian techies are already filtered because they come from one school. Ok so how different is choosing one from India then one from say MIT? After all an employer usually just does that anyway, or at least puts such applicants at higher priority.
So I suppose the only thing left in this would be that growing demand for cheaper labor is placing IIT at an interesting predicament as it will have to grow and include worse candidates or other schools in India will have to start appearing.
Either way it is not the 'filtering' that is making any difference. Because it can be easily done by either choosing one from India or choosing one from a good school in U.S.
As for the unfortunate timing of both events... Well it is not a coincidence. It is exactly the dot com bust that have prompted companies to look for cheaper alternatives in mass numbers. They are not exclusive of each other by any means.
On a final note, this 'filtering' on schools/India thing is silly. Many employers know of plenty great programmers that couldn't have cared less about their schools. Although being from a good school will make one stand out, it is hardly something to solely concentrate on. Let's not forget that programming in school is quite different from the programming in the real world. It just is. I have compared it from many schools and real world experience always counts more.
I see you point but I see the limitations of it as well. Just like you have IIT, America also has many very hard to get into schools. It can be easily argued that the 'noise ratio' (I like that one) coming from these schools is on par if not better then the one coming from IIT. Ok so having the word Indian can basically mean you come from the right school. Well if one looks for people from good schools in America, what is so different?
Ok so the argument is that employers don't look for schools so much as the qualification factor (though many DO), but they do look for the work Indian. Is that really so? Do people really pay less attention to what school you come from then whether you come from India. This is a highly speculative assumption. From my experience it is not true at all.
If people look for India for hires it is because of the bottom line. The well educated people are just cheaper there for the time being.
Judging from the post below, racism is quite strong among many. Sad thing really. The claim that Indians come to America to take advantage of what it has to offer only to undermine it by going back to their country is just silly. America is rich in part because of exploiting cheap (or free) labor.
I don't put sole responsibility of poverty in the world on U.S., but some responsibility it does deserve. It has been forcing lower (than the foreign country's growth would set) wages on countries for a long time. It has been holding up tariffs disastrous to many countries. A move blatantly against free trade, while at the same time forcing the developing nations to adopt free trade in markets convenient for U.S. Not to mention that it has also been supporting dictators whenever having a steady tyrannical rule in another country was cost effective.
Of course the reverse is also true. By growing it's economy, America has allowed for other countries' economies to grow as it uses them to create goods. Such things can be seen as exploitation, but one must remember that these countries had nothing going for them economically. Our 'exploitation' is actually creating real opportunities for those countries to pick them selves up from utter poverty.
Now onto outsourcing. Being one of the people that have lost their job to it I know how it feels. I am not totally ignorant to the plight of workers in the U.S.. And for such I do support protective tariffs as long as they are designed to ease the transition and not to prevent it.
The problem with anti-free trade speak is that it doesn't take into account that in the end it is good for America. Free trade forces U.S. population to take on more sophisticated jobs. The need for higher education grows on par with the export of low end jobs to outside. Although our internal job pool will be affected, it will not shrink. It simply moves in a direction the market demands. Go with the flow and you will be better off. The new jobs created usually are higher paying ones. Yes I understand that right now many are at loss with jobs seemingly disappearing. But most of that is because of our economy woes. Once the economy picks up, room for new jobs will open up. Just make sure you don't give too much to the rich in the next election.
Lastly I want to mention that besides jobs, us Americans have a choice to invest money. More and more it is something every American needs to start thinking of. Instead of being scared of shrinking markets in the U.S. start looking at the expanding ones overseas. Invest in those. With such a mind set you can be part of the people who own the growing countries. Sure I understand that "I have no money to invest" is something that immediately goes off in most people's minds. Well, are you sure? Once you do get a new job, are you sure you can't divert part of your income to investment. Most of the time I hear this "I'm so poor" speak from people I know make on par of at least $50k a year. Just think that most Americans live on far less then that. If the average family can do with $50k supporting four people, perhaps you can afford to make a better use of your money.
How about making a business method patent for creating/acquiring a bunch of broad patents and then waiting until someone infringes on them, waiting some more, and then suing for all back infringement and forcing a commission on future use.
Right on the money. People are so desperate, they willing to try anything to earn some money now a days. These companies (if they can be called such) know that so they try and hook anyone they get their hands on.
These Multi-Level marketing scams have been growing very fast in the past few years. I personally came into contact with few diffrerent ones. Why do so many ppl don't realize they are scams? Even when you explain to them how they work?
I've come to hate these "business opportunities" they sucked some of my friends in and I was so powerless in trying to get them out.
I have wondered about the health effects of low EM for years now. I remember, years ago, when I was taking my electrical engineering classes and realized that hooking up an oscilloscope to your skin will show all the EM waves that your body is receiving. Yes you are an antenna. Holding a TV antenna improves reception for that reason.
We are surrounded by EM fields in every part of our lives. Especially now a days, things like shavers are probably the least of our worries. Everyday for hours, we sit in front of TV's and monitors that have much stronger and sustained powerful EM waves. Not to mention that when we are at work, many times the back of a co-workers monitor is pointed right at us. Cathode Ray Tubes emit much stronger waves from behind and on the sides then from the direction you stare at. I'm not even sure whether such exposure is considered safe by the FCC.
Add to that a low but never ceasing EM field emitted by all the electrical lines running throughout buildings. Do you have a line running just 1 foot away from your head when you sleep? Probably yes. Hopefully it is not carrying a lot of current when you are asleep and the EM emissions are truly marginal, but it comes to show you just how exposed we really are.
Many here were saying how a DC shaver is not as dangerous as one plugged into an AC outlet. This is not true. At least it is not the DC/AC part the is making a difference. A battery powered device probably emits lower EM, but that is because it has less power going through it, as it is limited by how much charge we can store in a battery. In any case I doubt there is a big difference between the power consumption there.
Actually if you want to limit the amount of exposure you get, a safe bet would be to check the wattage a device is consuming (multiply the amperage by 120 volts if you can only find that). The more wattage goes through it, the more EM it will produce. Motors, heaters, and electromagnets are probably the worst culprits here.
In reality though, with all this EM to worry us, the bottom line is that its an unavoidable part of our world. Mostly, all this electrical activity make our live immensely better. So the benefits outweigh drawbacks. You can try to avoid some exposure. And eliminating cases like sitting with you head in the monitor or having ones back to you is probably the bast thing you can do. All other things are pretty marginal or can't be helped anyway. Let's hope that shielding all this EM becomes more realistic in the future, I don't see what else we can do.
Being drunk in public is a crime in many states. This also gives cops enough reason to search the person for any other contraband (and can use anything they find in the process, I think). The important part here is that the guy has a right to not say anything and to not hand anything over. The cops have to take everything off him them selves.
There is a very clear line of where his rights start. The courts have (contrary to what some here are saying) respected this line and usually seem poised to protect it.
The courts will in no way use this to let cops demand id, specifically because of this.
Absolutely right, you only missed one strong point. Rich-people-crimes are usually depicted as scams on the poor/middle class. It is important to note that in many cases the crimes are much more severe. Hidden behind corporate protection are decisions which many times kill people. There are limitless cases of how people's lives were weighted against profit.
The only thing about choosing you battles is that the law is supposed to protect and give rights to even most despicable cases. What I'm saying is that even a case where someone is probably guilty of committing a crime deserves due process.
The problem with making someone reveal their name/identity is that it violates the right to remain silent. This right, like it was elsewhere mentioned, extends to all stages of an investigation. (Remaining silent is of course an extension to the right to not self incriminate)
So the officer might suspect something happened, but if there is no reasonable circumstance to support his hunch, then he's out of luck. The burden of proof has to be on the law enforcement and elaborating on anything you did or revealing who you are can and does provide circumstantial evidence.
All throughout history people in power did trample on the rights of those not in power. It is not a case of possible abuse, but a case of imminent abuse of the most basic right we as a society hold sacred.
You said that you hold your rights dear. Well most do. In fact most hold them so dear that we allow the chance of even horrible crime going unpunished to uphold them. There is no alternative.
I think what was meant here was that if you identify your self, the officer might get a reason to arrest you *after the identification*, where before the identification, he would be just suspicious of what you were doing.
So the jist of it is that you would want to be protected from self-incrimination.
I am too weak in patent-speak to decipher what is the real claim in this one, but from what I can see this is patenting programing through a markup language. If this is so, what happened to Marcomedia's ColdFusion? To add to that, what about those folks that have been working on using XML to program (DSSSL was it?). Finally what about XSLT? Wasn't it proven to be a Turing complete programing language?
Can somebody explain how these things are not relevant to this patent, or at least to it's validity?
Pardon my sloppiness with this post (I'm a bit tired).
Actually we do pay attention to ants. We exterminate them for one thing. For another, we exploit them as well. Ants are used in chemical research and in agriculture. We toy with them as well. How many ants have been the victim of a magnifying glass on a sunny day?
The point is that we interfere with ants' lives all the time, we just don't think twice of it because we don't care. After all, what are a few ants when there is a shit load of them.
Use them mod points ppl. This guy is right. This is dangerous stuff they do. I wish ppl realized how many of these treatments can be so dangerous and are totally unsupervised by the medical community. Not to mention that this particular one is connected to Scientology which as I hope many of you know is a very dangerous thing in it self.
Re:America's leading export; poisonous culture
on
Japan's Empire of Cool
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I can agree that all those things you mentioned are not enlightened. I can agree that US has repeatedly mistreated other countries for our benefit. One thing that bothers me, when people go all of on this topic is that U.S. is not unique in any of this. Every f'n country does the same thing, given a chance.
The countries that are the most critical of U.S. have histories of treating others that are worse than ours. We are no more hypocrites than the rest of them. Yet we are evil? The only reason we are 'evil' is that we have the most influence right now and it's popular to bring those higher then us down a peg. That will surely change and U.S. 'tyranny' will be just another blip in the past, much smaller then others.
Another point of mine is about the redial Islamic beliefs. I can see that rich pigs like U.S. are disgusting to them, but who the flock are they? The way they treat women is so draconian it's amazing why nobody turns around and call that evil. Radical Islam treats people worse then U.S. culture ever did. People are killed for arbitrary reasons. Many times it is not only going against a ridiculously strict law that will get you shot. If somebody in power doesn't like the way you look, they can pretty much accuse you of anything and get you punished. Let's not forget that raped women are guilty for being raped and punished by death many times as well.
If we are talking about poisonous culture, let's first examine how bad the poison is. If westernization means that all the atrocities of Mid-east (and Africa, and much of Asia) are going to go away and instead we are going to have McDonald's on every corner, I'll take that any day. After all, you have not known poisonous food after you had food where hygiene is non existent.
Yes but it's a very particular kind of fantasy we are talking about here. Comparably, there are very few Hollywood movies about "forbidden love", which seems to be the main theme in a good percentage of every Bollywood movie I saw.
As for music, you can't realistically say that selling music is any real goal of Hollywood. Perhaps it ties into the entire pop culture, but that's different from motives to make a movie.
I will give this much, the world is beginning to shrink way faster than ever before. So what we are interested in will become similar, but not yet.
The fundamental christian groups, have probably the strongest influence on the current presidency. Yes one could say that there is a lot of corporate interests there as well (actually there is more then have ever been), but these are not random corporate interests. Rather, most of the corporate interests have strong connections to the fundamental christian movement, as well.
I don't see your grim view of how clones will be ostracized. You can't tell whether someone is cloned so it is doubtful that 'clones' would receive more prejudice then the current minorities already do. I will grant that a clone might feel bad for being a clone, but will they fell all that worse then people with other taboo/unwelcome traits? Doubtful.
I have trouble fathoming your grim view of the 'harvest clone' as well. It's pretty outlandish to have another you waiting in the freezer just so that you can cut parts of it out when you are due for a replacement. Yes, I can see some vital body parts being grown, but not a human being. Big difference. On top of this, can you seriously imagine that the law would allow one to use another human being as replacement parts. For this to ever happen, a cloned human being would have to be granted sub-human status, which again is more than doubtful.
So if I get smallpox (or some other disease) and die because someone intentionally released it in New York it is my fault because i didn't take the vaccine?
The biggest problem with this and any other "picture in the air" technologies when it comes to interaction is that there is no force feedback.
Touch plays an important role in interaction by providing us with feedback without us having to think about it. Without that sensation, we would have to either concentrate on our interaction or constrain to to a very limited and well defined space. As the science of interaction is becoming more mature now-a-days, it is becoming generally understood that interaction should be natural and thoughtless. Hovering controls go directly against that principle.
Force feedback plays another important role. It is connected to the previous point yet resulting is a slightly different result. Force feedback makes interaction less physically straining. Waving hands in mid air is very tiring for any but very short interactions. This becomes especially tiring when the movements have to be so controlled as to operate such small controls as buttons.
With these points in mind, is is hard for me to be excited about this technology. I doubt it will be of any use, except for certain niche applications.
The artickle is bad in so many ways, I simply lack words. Looks like it was written by a high school kid. I see no references to actual research saying that people are having any problems with *unrefiuned* queries being biased. By no even my grandma knows to refine a search.
I think that the future of digital video much bigger then VOD. It is true that VOD is coming, but it is coming slowly. The main progress being cable companies introducing it into their services. You really need to address the many other important things that are about to evolve into reality.
For one thing, take DV camcorders. They are getting cheaper and more accessible to the average gadget junkie by the day. Many use them right now. Not to mention the ease with which one can edit their home videos just by plugging in the camcorder to one's computer.
Perhaps the real story here is not that these two things are maturing. Rather that in few years we will come at a point where such products are as ubicuous as the cell phone (and most likely incorporated into it).
VOD and personal video might sound like separate things, but I bet you they won't be so separate soon. With the human fetish of reality TV an voyeurism being marketed by video so broadly now a days, it seems natural for the two things to evolve into a well connected pair.
This will be a symbiotic relationship, as the move to sell other's lives will make the corporations invest in the infrastructure of personal video and TV.
Putting aside the consumer market, plentiful other products are on the horizon.
Real teleconferencing is getting close to reality (or is reality, depending on who you talk to). And this is especially now, with companies realizing that they no longer need nor want to pay for business travel. With the continuous government bailouts to the air travel companies, it is becoming clear that their infrastructure is crumbling and a need for trimming the fat from the market will have to happen soon.
Live field reporting is here now. Armies (the ones with guns and corporate) are beginning to heavily use other new digital video systems. As it becomes more and more possible to equip field agents with video capabilities, this market will certainly grow quite large. From insurance companies doing video damage assessments to war correspondents and soldiers sending real-time images of current war progress.
I cannot end this discussion without mentioning surveillance. It's recent growth, is directly caused by digital video. From city streets under the watch of "big brother" to daycare being a click away for concerned parents. Heck I can even see my entire apartment live if I want to check on my cats and see a log of what happened during the day.
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I see no difference, unless what you are saying is that employers don't look at the school one comes from. This is simply no true. Employers have always screened based on education.
Let me say this another way. You say Indian techies are already filtered because they come from one school. Ok so how different is choosing one from India then one from say MIT? After all an employer usually just does that anyway, or at least puts such applicants at higher priority.
So I suppose the only thing left in this would be that growing demand for cheaper labor is placing IIT at an interesting predicament as it will have to grow and include worse candidates or other schools in India will have to start appearing.
Either way it is not the 'filtering' that is making any difference. Because it can be easily done by either choosing one from India or choosing one from a good school in U.S.
As for the unfortunate timing of both events... Well it is not a coincidence. It is exactly the dot com bust that have prompted companies to look for cheaper alternatives in mass numbers. They are not exclusive of each other by any means.
On a final note, this 'filtering' on schools/India thing is silly. Many employers know of plenty great programmers that couldn't have cared less about their schools. Although being from a good school will make one stand out, it is hardly something to solely concentrate on. Let's not forget that programming in school is quite different from the programming in the real world. It just is. I have compared it from many schools and real world experience always counts more.
Ok so the argument is that employers don't look for schools so much as the qualification factor (though many DO), but they do look for the work Indian. Is that really so? Do people really pay less attention to what school you come from then whether you come from India. This is a highly speculative assumption. From my experience it is not true at all.
If people look for India for hires it is because of the bottom line. The well educated people are just cheaper there for the time being.
I don't put sole responsibility of poverty in the world on U.S., but some responsibility it does deserve. It has been forcing lower (than the foreign country's growth would set) wages on countries for a long time. It has been holding up tariffs disastrous to many countries. A move blatantly against free trade, while at the same time forcing the developing nations to adopt free trade in markets convenient for U.S. Not to mention that it has also been supporting dictators whenever having a steady tyrannical rule in another country was cost effective.
Of course the reverse is also true. By growing it's economy, America has allowed for other countries' economies to grow as it uses them to create goods. Such things can be seen as exploitation, but one must remember that these countries had nothing going for them economically. Our 'exploitation' is actually creating real opportunities for those countries to pick them selves up from utter poverty.
Now onto outsourcing. Being one of the people that have lost their job to it I know how it feels. I am not totally ignorant to the plight of workers in the U.S.. And for such I do support protective tariffs as long as they are designed to ease the transition and not to prevent it.
The problem with anti-free trade speak is that it doesn't take into account that in the end it is good for America. Free trade forces U.S. population to take on more sophisticated jobs. The need for higher education grows on par with the export of low end jobs to outside. Although our internal job pool will be affected, it will not shrink. It simply moves in a direction the market demands. Go with the flow and you will be better off. The new jobs created usually are higher paying ones. Yes I understand that right now many are at loss with jobs seemingly disappearing. But most of that is because of our economy woes. Once the economy picks up, room for new jobs will open up. Just make sure you don't give too much to the rich in the next election.
Lastly I want to mention that besides jobs, us Americans have a choice to invest money. More and more it is something every American needs to start thinking of. Instead of being scared of shrinking markets in the U.S. start looking at the expanding ones overseas. Invest in those. With such a mind set you can be part of the people who own the growing countries. Sure I understand that "I have no money to invest" is something that immediately goes off in most people's minds. Well, are you sure? Once you do get a new job, are you sure you can't divert part of your income to investment. Most of the time I hear this "I'm so poor" speak from people I know make on par of at least $50k a year. Just think that most Americans live on far less then that. If the average family can do with $50k supporting four people, perhaps you can afford to make a better use of your money.
How about making a business method patent for creating/acquiring a bunch of broad patents and then waiting until someone infringes on them, waiting some more, and then suing for all back infringement and forcing a commission on future use.
Right on the money. People are so desperate, they willing to try anything to earn some money now a days. These companies (if they can be called such) know that so they try and hook anyone they get their hands on. These Multi-Level marketing scams have been growing very fast in the past few years. I personally came into contact with few diffrerent ones. Why do so many ppl don't realize they are scams? Even when you explain to them how they work? I've come to hate these "business opportunities" they sucked some of my friends in and I was so powerless in trying to get them out.
We are surrounded by EM fields in every part of our lives. Especially now a days, things like shavers are probably the least of our worries. Everyday for hours, we sit in front of TV's and monitors that have much stronger and sustained powerful EM waves. Not to mention that when we are at work, many times the back of a co-workers monitor is pointed right at us. Cathode Ray Tubes emit much stronger waves from behind and on the sides then from the direction you stare at. I'm not even sure whether such exposure is considered safe by the FCC.
Add to that a low but never ceasing EM field emitted by all the electrical lines running throughout buildings. Do you have a line running just 1 foot away from your head when you sleep? Probably yes. Hopefully it is not carrying a lot of current when you are asleep and the EM emissions are truly marginal, but it comes to show you just how exposed we really are.
Many here were saying how a DC shaver is not as dangerous as one plugged into an AC outlet. This is not true. At least it is not the DC/AC part the is making a difference. A battery powered device probably emits lower EM, but that is because it has less power going through it, as it is limited by how much charge we can store in a battery. In any case I doubt there is a big difference between the power consumption there.
Actually if you want to limit the amount of exposure you get, a safe bet would be to check the wattage a device is consuming (multiply the amperage by 120 volts if you can only find that). The more wattage goes through it, the more EM it will produce. Motors, heaters, and electromagnets are probably the worst culprits here.
In reality though, with all this EM to worry us, the bottom line is that its an unavoidable part of our world. Mostly, all this electrical activity make our live immensely better. So the benefits outweigh drawbacks. You can try to avoid some exposure. And eliminating cases like sitting with you head in the monitor or having ones back to you is probably the bast thing you can do. All other things are pretty marginal or can't be helped anyway. Let's hope that shielding all this EM becomes more realistic in the future, I don't see what else we can do.
Honestly it seems you are the one trolling here.
There is a very clear line of where his rights start. The courts have (contrary to what some here are saying) respected this line and usually seem poised to protect it.
The courts will in no way use this to let cops demand id, specifically because of this.
We need to always remind this fact.
The problem with making someone reveal their name/identity is that it violates the right to remain silent. This right, like it was elsewhere mentioned, extends to all stages of an investigation. (Remaining silent is of course an extension to the right to not self incriminate)
So the officer might suspect something happened, but if there is no reasonable circumstance to support his hunch, then he's out of luck. The burden of proof has to be on the law enforcement and elaborating on anything you did or revealing who you are can and does provide circumstantial evidence.
All throughout history people in power did trample on the rights of those not in power. It is not a case of possible abuse, but a case of imminent abuse of the most basic right we as a society hold sacred.
You said that you hold your rights dear. Well most do. In fact most hold them so dear that we allow the chance of even horrible crime going unpunished to uphold them. There is no alternative.
So the jist of it is that you would want to be protected from self-incrimination.
Can somebody explain how these things are not relevant to this patent, or at least to it's validity?
Pardon my sloppiness with this post (I'm a bit tired).
The point is that we interfere with ants' lives all the time, we just don't think twice of it because we don't care. After all, what are a few ants when there is a shit load of them.
Use them mod points ppl. This guy is right. This is dangerous stuff they do. I wish ppl realized how many of these treatments can be so dangerous and are totally unsupervised by the medical community. Not to mention that this particular one is connected to Scientology which as I hope many of you know is a very dangerous thing in it self.
I can agree that all those things you mentioned are not enlightened. I can agree that US has repeatedly mistreated other countries for our benefit. One thing that bothers me, when people go all of on this topic is that U.S. is not unique in any of this. Every f'n country does the same thing, given a chance.
The countries that are the most critical of U.S. have histories of treating others that are worse than ours. We are no more hypocrites than the rest of them. Yet we are evil? The only reason we are 'evil' is that we have the most influence right now and it's popular to bring those higher then us down a peg. That will surely change and U.S. 'tyranny' will be just another blip in the past, much smaller then others.
Another point of mine is about the redial Islamic beliefs. I can see that rich pigs like U.S. are disgusting to them, but who the flock are they? The way they treat women is so draconian it's amazing why nobody turns around and call that evil. Radical Islam treats people worse then U.S. culture ever did. People are killed for arbitrary reasons. Many times it is not only going against a ridiculously strict law that will get you shot. If somebody in power doesn't like the way you look, they can pretty much accuse you of anything and get you punished. Let's not forget that raped women are guilty for being raped and punished by death many times as well.
If we are talking about poisonous culture, let's first examine how bad the poison is. If westernization means that all the atrocities of Mid-east (and Africa, and much of Asia) are going to go away and instead we are going to have McDonald's on every corner, I'll take that any day. After all, you have not known poisonous food after you had food where hygiene is non existent.
Because when you have limited resources, you are forced to be more creative to make up for it.
As for music, you can't realistically say that selling music is any real goal of Hollywood. Perhaps it ties into the entire pop culture, but that's different from motives to make a movie.
I will give this much, the world is beginning to shrink way faster than ever before. So what we are interested in will become similar, but not yet.
The fundamental christian groups, have probably the strongest influence on the current presidency. Yes one could say that there is a lot of corporate interests there as well (actually there is more then have ever been), but these are not random corporate interests. Rather, most of the corporate interests have strong connections to the fundamental christian movement, as well.
I don't see your grim view of how clones will be ostracized. You can't tell whether someone is cloned so it is doubtful that 'clones' would receive more prejudice then the current minorities already do. I will grant that a clone might feel bad for being a clone, but will they fell all that worse then people with other taboo/unwelcome traits? Doubtful.
I have trouble fathoming your grim view of the 'harvest clone' as well. It's pretty outlandish to have another you waiting in the freezer just so that you can cut parts of it out when you are due for a replacement. Yes, I can see some vital body parts being grown, but not a human being. Big difference. On top of this, can you seriously imagine that the law would allow one to use another human being as replacement parts. For this to ever happen, a cloned human being would have to be granted sub-human status, which again is more than doubtful.
This, my friend, is going into my quote book.
So if I get smallpox (or some other disease) and die because someone intentionally released it in New York it is my fault because i didn't take the vaccine?
The biggest problem with this and any other "picture in the air" technologies when it comes to interaction is that there is no force feedback.
Touch plays an important role in interaction by providing us with feedback without us having to think about it. Without that sensation, we would have to either concentrate on our interaction or constrain to to a very limited and well defined space. As the science of interaction is becoming more mature now-a-days, it is becoming generally understood that interaction should be natural and thoughtless. Hovering controls go directly against that principle.
Force feedback plays another important role. It is connected to the previous point yet resulting is a slightly different result. Force feedback makes interaction less physically straining. Waving hands in mid air is very tiring for any but very short interactions. This becomes especially tiring when the movements have to be so controlled as to operate such small controls as buttons.
With these points in mind, is is hard for me to be excited about this technology. I doubt it will be of any use, except for certain niche applications.
yes yes, i can't spell. whatever.
The artickle is bad in so many ways, I simply lack words. Looks like it was written by a high school kid. I see no references to actual research saying that people are having any problems with *unrefiuned* queries being biased. By no even my grandma knows to refine a search.
For one thing, take DV camcorders. They are getting cheaper and more accessible to the average gadget junkie by the day. Many use them right now. Not to mention the ease with which one can edit their home videos just by plugging in the camcorder to one's computer.
Perhaps the real story here is not that these two things are maturing. Rather that in few years we will come at a point where such products are as ubicuous as the cell phone (and most likely incorporated into it).
VOD and personal video might sound like separate things, but I bet you they won't be so separate soon. With the human fetish of reality TV an voyeurism being marketed by video so broadly now a days, it seems natural for the two things to evolve into a well connected pair.
This will be a symbiotic relationship, as the move to sell other's lives will make the corporations invest in the infrastructure of personal video and TV.
Putting aside the consumer market, plentiful other products are on the horizon.
Real teleconferencing is getting close to reality (or is reality, depending on who you talk to). And this is especially now, with companies realizing that they no longer need nor want to pay for business travel. With the continuous government bailouts to the air travel companies, it is becoming clear that their infrastructure is crumbling and a need for trimming the fat from the market will have to happen soon.
Live field reporting is here now. Armies (the ones with guns and corporate) are beginning to heavily use other new digital video systems. As it becomes more and more possible to equip field agents with video capabilities, this market will certainly grow quite large. From insurance companies doing video damage assessments to war correspondents and soldiers sending real-time images of current war progress.
I cannot end this discussion without mentioning surveillance. It's recent growth, is directly caused by digital video. From city streets under the watch of "big brother" to daycare being a click away for concerned parents. Heck I can even see my entire apartment live if I want to check on my cats and see a log of what happened during the day.