re-read my comment. There's lots better battles to be fighting. My point is tracking of this sort is largely harmless. Hell, for many people it's beneficial, since target advertising means they become aware of goods and services they otherwise missed.
programming anything but the most trivial applications is computer science, e.g. math, and lots of it. Every single aspect of programming involves lots and lots of math, even for supposed 'application programmers'. Take a few 300 level CS courses (you need them to work on big projects) and you'll find it's really just discrete math. As soon as you get past a web form + php for 20 users you're in math territory, if only to just make your app fast enough to scale.
about tracking. Seriously. You're tracked EVERYWHERE you go. You know all those free email accounts? How about Facebook? Your Newegg account? Amazon.com? Yep. All Tracked. Moreover, are people so easily manipulated to their detriment that a little web tracking matters. I guess there's the big scary gov't. But seriously. If a modern gov't is tracking you it's more for the hell of it then any real need to use it to oppress. A modern military does all that by itself. I'm ten times more worried about the Unions disintegrating then I am over some twit advertiser knowing what I googled last week.
But it scares me. PDFs are hideously complex. Can you really do this without opening a whole new world of security vulnerabilities? I guess it's in the JavaScript engine, and that's where the security is....
On an upside, it's cool to see what sort of document processing is possible when you've got as many CPU cycles as you do these days:).
lots of people predicted the economic meltdown. They just weren't very popular because a) Goldman Sachs et al run this country, and they pocketed trillions (20% of our GDP baby) and b) for anyone that mattered it was safe to ignore the cries of impending doom because there was a Republican in the Whitehouse.
So yeah, broad statical analysis can predict economic behavior. It doesn't mean anyone will do anything about it.
Oh, Ok. They we agree. Silly me. I misread your post:P. There's a certain class of people that believe we should have just let nature take it's course and allow the economy to collapse. Those people scare the heck out of me.
Seriously. If a Doctor could spare you 15 years of pain with a 10 minute surgery, or some pills, wouldn't you do it? Why not have the gov't bail out home owners and let the mortgage back securities fail? There were lots of plans for how to do this, we just ignored them with the old 'But, But, Socialism!' cries.
Bill Gates was a trust fund baby. His dad was a wealthy business lawyer, and Bill used those contacts to get in with IBM. Didn't you ever wonder how a fresh faced nerd boy made it with the big leagues? I'll give you Sam Walton though. Near as I can tell he was the first guy to realize Americans would prefer to buy cheap crap instead of well built merchandise.
they threatened to take our economy with them. I suppose the gov't could have let them die, then stepped in to keep the economy going. But you wouldn't have liked that either, would you?
If the data matters, you store it on another machine with removable drives, and take the drives off site. Then you change out the backup drives yearly. What you don't do is run a mirror. Mirrors are for hot swapping to avoid downtime. Not backup. Just 'cause it's convenient doesn't mean it's a real solution.
Do some poking around and you'll find 90% of the ground work in science is laid by gov't funds, mostly in Europe & Asia these days. The 'research' most companies do is figuring out how to monetize gov't funded research.
No, they're raising those prices because subsidies are being pulled. Specifically, funding for higher education is getting cut left and right. With the exception of the text book publishers, nobody in education is in it for the money. It pays like shit, and even the highest paid administrator can do better in the public sector. You do it because you love teaching. Don't know many teachers, do you?
that's why we have State Universities and Community colleges. Maybe PRIVATE colleges, yes. There is a difference, ya know. But never let facts get in the way of blind faith in capitalism, right?
That's the hard part about modern America. We've let the education system slide so far down in funding that a decision you make in 5th grade will affect your chances you getting into college. I know lots of people in the 90s that blew it in school and made good later on because they could get into college with grants & scholarships. These days, with a 4 year degree costing $30k from a local State U (and that's just books & tuition, forget living expenses), it's not possible. I guess we could raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for more school. But, but.. Socialism!
"my Windows 7 machine... how exactly does this make me a "stupid user"?", well, there's your answer
Sorry, I kid, I kid. But seriously, I feel your pain. My brother put a virus on my PC when he viewed a video about how to teach a kid to ride a bike. Go figure. What I've taken to doing is doing my web browsing in a Vitual Box running Ubuntu + Chrome. It's pretty bullet proof, and even if it gets through it's tough to get out of the V-Box (Yeah, I know it can be done, but who does it?).
a broken word document does not. If your software runs a device that people's lives depend on, then existing negligence laws cover the device just fine (e.g. pacemakers and whatnot).
Software Liability is just the big companies trying to take control. Nothing else (well, there's a healthy dose of fearful stupidity there, but those people are silly, so I don't count 'em).
Modern Socialism assumes human beings are irrational. Also, Capitalism as we know it doesn't punish the least efficient use of capital. Bailouts happen about every 15 to 20 years like clockwork.
As for that solar start up, it's not that much of a scandal. They didn't run off with the money, they just made an engineering mistake, namely that the price of silicone would continue to rise, so they invested heavily in alternatives. The price dropped, and all their tech was useless. Yes, it's unfortunate. Yes, mistakes were made. But they were honest mistakes. And the bill you're left holding isn't that large (compared to what it took to bail out the banks, which some pegged as high as several Trillion with a 'T'.). Plus we still got lots of new tech that might be useful in 20 years when other things advance. Look at Aerogel. It was worthless for 50 years, then someone figured out how to make it cheap, and now it's revolutionizing insulation.
Anyway, it's another case of a red herring to distract you from bigger issues. Don't be fooled.
about capitalism seeking the efficiency of capital. The trouble is, you're still working on the assumption that human beings consistently make rational choices. Adam Smith made the same mistake. What's slowing the velocity of money is pure capitalism is bunching it up at the top. A rational man doesn't hoard wealth for no reason. He invests it. But our super rich are just sitting on society's wealth. Doing nothing with it (It's something like $3 trillion worth or capital sitting in corporate war chests alone). Our entire civilization is grinding to a halt while the most absurd whims of a few lucky individuals are indulged. The classic example of this is the Sheik who built a ski resort in the middle of his desert. Private jets are another good example. And even the contents of this/. article are an example of our society prioritizing the whims of the super wealthy in a pointless and irrational way. Adam Smith didn't imagine conspicuous consumption. He never saw the iPhone coming, or landfills full of last years (perfectly good) phones. There's more, of course. Globalism breaks capitalism (for all his mistakes, Marx was right about that). I could go on for ages. But the bottom line is, Capitalism is a broken toy.
it's not so much anti-science as pro-short term profit. You can't get American companies to fund cutting edge treatments because research costs money. It's so much more profitable to let that work get done in Europe (usually on the public dime). But it also means our medical industry is starting to lag behind. It's the same thing you saw with HP firing their R&D guys.
there goes Netflix. What made them useful to me was the low price compared to cable television. Take that away (by charging me $20/mo for two or three different services) and I'm out.
I guess people will pay just about anything for TV. Life sucks pretty bad unless your rich, so I can't blame them.
Slashdot Mirror
re-read my comment. There's lots better battles to be fighting. My point is tracking of this sort is largely harmless. Hell, for many people it's beneficial, since target advertising means they become aware of goods and services they otherwise missed.
programming anything but the most trivial applications is computer science, e.g. math, and lots of it. Every single aspect of programming involves lots and lots of math, even for supposed 'application programmers'. Take a few 300 level CS courses (you need them to work on big projects) and you'll find it's really just discrete math. As soon as you get past a web form + php for 20 users you're in math territory, if only to just make your app fast enough to scale.
If it's one thing America's taught me it's that doing useful work is the worst way to earn money around these parts.
about tracking. Seriously. You're tracked EVERYWHERE you go. You know all those free email accounts? How about Facebook? Your Newegg account? Amazon.com? Yep. All Tracked. Moreover, are people so easily manipulated to their detriment that a little web tracking matters. I guess there's the big scary gov't. But seriously. If a modern gov't is tracking you it's more for the hell of it then any real need to use it to oppress. A modern military does all that by itself. I'm ten times more worried about the Unions disintegrating then I am over some twit advertiser knowing what I googled last week.
But it scares me. PDFs are hideously complex. Can you really do this without opening a whole new world of security vulnerabilities? I guess it's in the JavaScript engine, and that's where the security is....
:).
On an upside, it's cool to see what sort of document processing is possible when you've got as many CPU cycles as you do these days
lots of people predicted the economic meltdown. They just weren't very popular because a) Goldman Sachs et al run this country, and they pocketed trillions (20% of our GDP baby) and b) for anyone that mattered it was safe to ignore the cries of impending doom because there was a Republican in the Whitehouse.
So yeah, broad statical analysis can predict economic behavior. It doesn't mean anyone will do anything about it.
plus there's several million Netflix compatible Video Game Consoles. Seems they have something to market.
Oh, Ok. They we agree. Silly me. I misread your post :P. There's a certain class of people that believe we should have just let nature take it's course and allow the economy to collapse. Those people scare the heck out of me.
Seriously. If a Doctor could spare you 15 years of pain with a 10 minute surgery, or some pills, wouldn't you do it? Why not have the gov't bail out home owners and let the mortgage back securities fail? There were lots of plans for how to do this, we just ignored them with the old 'But, But, Socialism!' cries.
Bill Gates was a trust fund baby. His dad was a wealthy business lawyer, and Bill used those contacts to get in with IBM. Didn't you ever wonder how a fresh faced nerd boy made it with the big leagues? I'll give you Sam Walton though. Near as I can tell he was the first guy to realize Americans would prefer to buy cheap crap instead of well built merchandise.
they threatened to take our economy with them. I suppose the gov't could have let them die, then stepped in to keep the economy going. But you wouldn't have liked that either, would you?
If the data matters, you store it on another machine with removable drives, and take the drives off site. Then you change out the backup drives yearly. What you don't do is run a mirror. Mirrors are for hot swapping to avoid downtime. Not backup. Just 'cause it's convenient doesn't mean it's a real solution.
Citation?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as a patent holder you're required by law to make a good faith effort to license your patent.
and where'd the money for the equipment come from?
Do some poking around and you'll find 90% of the ground work in science is laid by gov't funds, mostly in Europe & Asia these days. The 'research' most companies do is figuring out how to monetize gov't funded research.
No, they're raising those prices because subsidies are being pulled. Specifically, funding for higher education is getting cut left and right. With the exception of the text book publishers, nobody in education is in it for the money. It pays like shit, and even the highest paid administrator can do better in the public sector. You do it because you love teaching. Don't know many teachers, do you?
that's why we have State Universities and Community colleges. Maybe PRIVATE colleges, yes. There is a difference, ya know. But never let facts get in the way of blind faith in capitalism, right?
That's the hard part about modern America. We've let the education system slide so far down in funding that a decision you make in 5th grade will affect your chances you getting into college. I know lots of people in the 90s that blew it in school and made good later on because they could get into college with grants & scholarships. These days, with a 4 year degree costing $30k from a local State U (and that's just books & tuition, forget living expenses), it's not possible. I guess we could raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for more school. But, but.. Socialism!
"my Windows 7 machine ... how exactly does this make me a "stupid user"?", well, there's your answer
Sorry, I kid, I kid. But seriously, I feel your pain. My brother put a virus on my PC when he viewed a video about how to teach a kid to ride a bike. Go figure. What I've taken to doing is doing my web browsing in a Vitual Box running Ubuntu + Chrome. It's pretty bullet proof, and even if it gets through it's tough to get out of the V-Box (Yeah, I know it can be done, but who does it?).
a broken word document does not. If your software runs a device that people's lives depend on, then existing negligence laws cover the device just fine (e.g. pacemakers and whatnot).
Software Liability is just the big companies trying to take control. Nothing else (well, there's a healthy dose of fearful stupidity there, but those people are silly, so I don't count 'em).
Modern Socialism assumes human beings are irrational. Also, Capitalism as we know it doesn't punish the least efficient use of capital. Bailouts happen about every 15 to 20 years like clockwork.
As for that solar start up, it's not that much of a scandal. They didn't run off with the money, they just made an engineering mistake, namely that the price of silicone would continue to rise, so they invested heavily in alternatives. The price dropped, and all their tech was useless. Yes, it's unfortunate. Yes, mistakes were made. But they were honest mistakes. And the bill you're left holding isn't that large (compared to what it took to bail out the banks, which some pegged as high as several Trillion with a 'T'.). Plus we still got lots of new tech that might be useful in 20 years when other things advance. Look at Aerogel. It was worthless for 50 years, then someone figured out how to make it cheap, and now it's revolutionizing insulation.
Anyway, it's another case of a red herring to distract you from bigger issues. Don't be fooled.
about capitalism seeking the efficiency of capital. The trouble is, you're still working on the assumption that human beings consistently make rational choices. Adam Smith made the same mistake. What's slowing the velocity of money is pure capitalism is bunching it up at the top. A rational man doesn't hoard wealth for no reason. He invests it. But our super rich are just sitting on society's wealth. Doing nothing with it (It's something like $3 trillion worth or capital sitting in corporate war chests alone). Our entire civilization is grinding to a halt while the most absurd whims of a few lucky individuals are indulged. The classic example of this is the Sheik who built a ski resort in the middle of his desert. Private jets are another good example. And even the contents of this /. article are an example of our society prioritizing the whims of the super wealthy in a pointless and irrational way. Adam Smith didn't imagine conspicuous consumption. He never saw the iPhone coming, or landfills full of last years (perfectly good) phones. There's more, of course. Globalism breaks capitalism (for all his mistakes, Marx was right about that). I could go on for ages. But the bottom line is, Capitalism is a broken toy.
it's not so much anti-science as pro-short term profit. You can't get American companies to fund cutting edge treatments because research costs money. It's so much more profitable to let that work get done in Europe (usually on the public dime). But it also means our medical industry is starting to lag behind. It's the same thing you saw with HP firing their R&D guys.
there goes Netflix. What made them useful to me was the low price compared to cable television. Take that away (by charging me $20/mo for two or three different services) and I'm out.
I guess people will pay just about anything for TV. Life sucks pretty bad unless your rich, so I can't blame them.