IMHO as an artist, writer, designer, programmer - it's the content of the expression not the medium which conveys the meaning and emotion... and yes I equate cursive with a medium rather than a form of expression, it's not calligraphy, it's cursive.
Schools should rather focus on teaching children how to communicate than teaching them one medium of communication.
I'll use a comparison to make my point clearer. Cursive is to handwriting as acrylic paint is to painting. It's OK. It's not oil paint or water color or even good charcoal... it's kind of blah, has little depth and is best used for painting houses, ie: it's a utilitarian form which thinks too much of itself.
You can certainly be just as expressive and personal with block lettering (look at any 9 year old girl's print hand and you'll see what I mean), so there's no real advantage.
The disadvantage is that cursive is too personal... which makes it hard to read. If you make it more uniform so that others can read it, it's lost it's personality and may as well be uniform block lettering.
The other disadvantage is that it take a lot of time to master... time better spent on learning how to learn.
I'm not saying it should be abolished but I'd like to see it moved out of the main curriculum and put in as an elective art course... as a form of calligraphy - children and young adults can learn it along with other forms of handwriting which they can later use for writing notes and letters of a personal nature if they choose. In this way it can return to the uniform but highly stylized art form it should be instead of the irregular hard to read yet supposedly utilitarian handwriting technique that it is.
When the country is founded on invention and the right to distribute ideas - it is THAT critical.
Without progress through invention and freedom of information we will not be able to compete with other nations. It is a balance of individual rights and societal rights - it is THAT critical.
The big advantage of a touchscreen is that you don't have to find the cursor/pointer to start manipulating. With a mouse or a trackpad every action you perform has to start where the last action left off. This means a lot of repetitive moving of the cursor/pointer to get from point a to b to c back to a back to b, etc. WIth a touch screen you avoid all of this repetitive input.
For point and click users a touch screen could actually reduce the amount of input activity they have to do by 50% or potentially even more as touch gestures tend to be much more effective than having to click multiple buttons or keys to achieve the same results.
The reality is that very few people are *constantly* interacting with the GUI. More typical is for people to manipulate a window (scroll) then read for 2 minutes, then repeat. On my laptop I could do that while resting my hand on the lower surface, touch the bottom scroll arrow with a finger or my thumb and not think twice about it. It would be no different than resting my finger above a down arrow key. Move a window, resize or minimize... these are very brief actions that occur every hour or so and a lot of people already avoid them with multi-touch input or key combinations.
The question to ask is "What do we do repetitively and frequently with a mouse that would be a burden with a touch screen?"
I honestly can't think of much. There are some accuracy issues with specific GUIs which would not work well with a touch screen if fingers were the only input option (a stylus would solve that) - but otherwise I just can't think of any job related or leisure time activity on a computer that is so repetitive and frequent that it would cause muscle fatigue if a touchscreen were used instead.
If you are referring to typing - well everyone knows that a keyboard is the best interface for that activity, why would a touchscreen device not have a keyboard? We're not talking exclusively about Tablet PCs here... that's just one form factor.
I think all laptops should be touchscreen and all monitors should also be touchscreen. They should both still have keyboards of course and potentially a trackpad or mouse for when you need very accurate input. However I think people would adopt the touch interface for 99% of their activities without breaking a sweat and in fact will work less hard and be less mentally fatigued at the end of the day as they will be able to relax that part of their mind which currently controls the mouse... something not everyone is good at.
The business model can be reduced to a simple equation: Profit = earned premium + investment income - incurred loss - underwriting expenses. Insurers make money in two ways: 1) Through underwriting, the process by which insurers select the risks to insure and decide how much in premiums to charge for accepting those risks; 2) By investing the premiums they collect from insured parties.
Private insurers have no incentive to offer the plan you describe. They make more money offering plans that cover everything - forcing everyone to pay for it - take the surplus and invest in securities - then pay out to the minority who actually use the more expensive services when that time comes. They make the most money off the securities, much like the banking system. Your premiums are not paying for someone else's care, they are paying into a huge investment fund which you do not get a cut from.
If insurers only offered basic health care plans which were tied to the risk policy you hold up as their profit model they would be small time businesses, like a pawn shop (which actually does use the risk based business model you describe).
Instead they are huge businesses which own vast amounts of property and large investment portfolios. Without high premiums they could not pull together such capital - so to make it all look legitimate they throw in all kinds of coverage that a very small minority of subscribers will actually use, jack up the payouts for everything they do cover and pay the bills with the premiums but keep all the investment returns.
To summarize, premiums are high because the Insurance companies need to capitalize their investment portfolios - not because they cover expensive procedures or treatments.
Listen to yourself. What benefit does the government itself get out of any of the things you describe? Zero, zilch, nada.
What benefit do politicians get from the Insurance lobbies in their respective states for supporting and voting for such legislation? Re-election money, bribes and indirect collateral.
Who is in control here? Government or private lobbies representing the private insurance industry?
The politicians have woven a tangled web wherein all of their private supporters do in fact compromise a little but all gain in the end. Insurers get higher premiums, big businesses get much needed tax write-offs to balance their books and a discount on insuring their most important assets (the people of course).
The public and small business pay for it all and get left out in the bargain.
Currently there are no measurements of success for Government health policies as there is no Government health plan. This means that the Gov policies that are in place are not tested for efficacy and are erroneously maintained despite the fact that they are unsustainable - which simply means that the public tax dollars pay for the overruns.
Put in place a Government plan that has a budget with measurements of success and political consequences for failure and you will see much improved policies legislated to support such a plan.
Create a plan or plans where federal spending is tied to measurable improvements in health care for the plans subscribers and you will see incredible competition for that funding and vastly improved care as a result. Politicians will then compete to bring those who offer such plans (profit or non-profit) into their state to bring that federal spending into their state's economy.
Think of is as an X-prize for health care. You don't get the money until you've shown the results.
p.s. Private Insurers have no incentive to offer basic health care plans. Their interest is in offering kitchen sink plans that everyone pays for but only a minority utilize. That is how they make money.
I looked at it briefly in someone's post up the page... and it sounds a lot like Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect allows 3rd party websites to query FB for data about a user who has logged in to FB via their API, mash it up with data the 3rd party has collected and send it all back to FB which will then respond with appropriate content.
So FBConnect maintains metadata across multiple app contexts and updates it appropriately.
This could also be applied to their FBApp system as well... since applications built for FB also maintain metadata about a user and then update FB with the results, which can then be used in a separate FB app, and on and on... (as long as the user 'allows' it)
Scale back everything related to space "flight" - use satellites and probes as test craft - start with inexpensive probes and work up to expensive satellites.
Focus on propulsion research and near earth orbit with a sprinkling of long stay satellites bound for orbit around other planets.
Put some money into things like habitats, terra-forming, chemical genesis (creating materials from scratch) and other research that will be needed when we're ready for a planetary research facility. There is a LOT of research that can be done right here.
Use the data collected from probes (both on and off mars/moon) to help prove out your research. Send up test habitats and remote controlled robotic builders, etc. for additional on-site testing...
Once you have some break-throughs in launch and inter-planetary propulsion and a tested solution for housing and sustaining a manned crew on mars/moon - then look into manned missions again.
"every species becomes either space-faring, or extinct"
Which species are you using as examples in this statement?
You've been modded insightful but I think the modders don't understand the meaning of that word.
There are no examples of any species becoming "space-faring" while there are a lot of species here on earth that have been around for millions of years (us included) and which have no indications of going extinct any time soon (read for several more million years).
There is no rush to become "space-faring" and no real pressure to do so either.
For your other cogent and insightful comments - meh... you're a troll.
Your "account" is indexed under your phone number - they are looking it up to know what offers they should let you in on, check to see if you have a store credit card or should have one and of course to build their profile on you.
They don't care about your phone number other than that it is a unique identifier.
"It was mind-blowing to be there and it is clearly time we pulled our finger out and decided these habitats are worth us saving," said Dr George McGavin who headed the expedition.
What a great call to action for the world over... "pull your finger out" and get back to work!
I think the parent's point is that the 64 bit version of Safari is ~10 days old. Being 64 bit should qualify it as a *new* version over the 32 bit version previously available in pretty much any review process.
The article on Arstechnica about Snow Leopard goes into some detail about the advantages of Obj-C being a dynamic language... primarily due to the new inclusion of Closures aka functions assigned to variables so that you can pass a function to another function with dynamic arguments.
This makes for not necessarily a better performing language but an easier, more efficient and less buggy language.
It's still likely a personal coding preference of course.
I believe the problem is that this thinking of sex part happens automatically... no control, as in it's not a choice.. so with this knowledge women should a) take advantage (which they already do) or b) take pity (which some already do)
There's no new outcomes here - just new data supporting the already known inevitable ones.
One insight however... if you are an attractive woman and the man you're talking to *is* holding a conversation then a) he is not heterosexual or b) you are not as attractive as you think you are;-p
Uh that would be Microsoft charging for the service pack, not Apple... how this escaped you as you wrote your comment or anyone who modded you?
Snow Leopard may not be a full OS update in terms of what we think a full update should be (hence the lower price point) but it is not a service pack in that it introduces completely new technology. Windows 7 does not do this.
When eReaders hit critical market numbers many books will no longer be put into print... not a counter argument exactly but a statement you should consider.
how long did you work at your last job? you may not have qualified for longer benefits. I went on unemployment about 5 years ago after a 4 year employment. I got 9 months of benefits. that was the maximum at the time. it was $1650 per month also the max at the time.
Apple doesn't need that extra subscription money - they're already getting 30% of a 2.5 Billion dollar market. Apple is doing just fine running their little app store.
Half the apps on there are now ad supported - these are apps released for free (meaning no money for Apple) which make money from ad impressions where all the ad dollars go directly to the app developer.
I'd say the app store is evolving over time as they add new features and look at the various revenue streams...
iTunes was never intended to be a money maker anyways, rather it was the bait to get people to go with an iPod (now iPhone too) rather than a competing music playing device - so now that iPhone/Touch applications are driving device sales, Apple is better off not worrying about their iTunes investment - it's no longer the big device sales driver... it's just a great default music player for those who don't want to pay more or sign up for an extra service.
I think the point is that once you find said database you can only go looking in it for information that is within the scope of your warrant, ie: within that database you're searching for references to elephants your search should be limited to elephants, not major league baseball players.
If you're looking for MLB players but have a list of 10 specific ones, you should be limited to searching for those players names... if they use an alias you're out of luck and will need to convince a judge that this is so important that you need a 'john doe' warrant to search all records for evidence. Better yet just find some other specific criteria that is likely to pull up your aliased individuals records - such as a data, address, etc. that will properly narrow your results so as to exclude as many false matches as possible.
As in Certificate of Deposit. Get one with a 17 year maturity date for about $1000 or whatever the minimum is. She will thank you with tears in her eyes when she finds out she can get that car or prom dress she was wanting (or if she's smart it will pay for college when her parents are broke from the 18 year financial cycle).
Wow... someone who feels the same way about medical science as I do. Butchers indeed, albeit highly skilled butchers - still I second the opinion that other than more advanced tools and drugs, the treatments for injury and natural decay seem really really outdated compared to the other technologies we employ on a daily basis.
I disagree that this won't be available in our lifetime (we being the 30 somethings, who are having children now). We may be in our 50s before it's a normal procedure but hey that still leaves a good 20 years to appreciate it. Sorry if you're already in your 50s... yeah, it's probably too late for any real quality of life change but it could make life more comfortable (grow new corneas for better vision, grow new cochlear hairs to combat Presbycusis for hearing loss).
Question. Did you grow up somewhere drinking naturally non-fluoridated water? Did your land have a well rather than a hookup to city / county water supply?
I also have horrid teeth (not as bad as yours sound but still bad enough) and I grew up without fluoride treatments or fluoridated water - just wondering if there is a correlation at least. Hopefully it is also causation and I can worry less about dental bills for my kids as they grow up (even with replacement teeth, keeping the original teeth in good shape is still cheaper).
On a mac it picks the fastest network automatically (well it at least picks ethernet over wifi). It does not turn off Wifi automatically though as people sometimes share their ethernet connection via wifi as an adhoc wireless access point.
If I for some reason was plugged into ethernet but still on battery power I would turn WiFi off manually to save juice but otherwise it's nice to just unplug and seamlessly switch over to WiFi (well kind of seamlessly, mounted drives don't survive the transition due to the change in IP).
Slashdot Mirror
IMHO as an artist, writer, designer, programmer - it's the content of the expression not the medium which conveys the meaning and emotion... and yes I equate cursive with a medium rather than a form of expression, it's not calligraphy, it's cursive.
Schools should rather focus on teaching children how to communicate than teaching them one medium of communication.
I'll use a comparison to make my point clearer. Cursive is to handwriting as acrylic paint is to painting. It's OK. It's not oil paint or water color or even good charcoal... it's kind of blah, has little depth and is best used for painting houses, ie: it's a utilitarian form which thinks too much of itself.
You can certainly be just as expressive and personal with block lettering (look at any 9 year old girl's print hand and you'll see what I mean), so there's no real advantage.
The disadvantage is that cursive is too personal... which makes it hard to read. If you make it more uniform so that others can read it, it's lost it's personality and may as well be uniform block lettering.
The other disadvantage is that it take a lot of time to master... time better spent on learning how to learn.
I'm not saying it should be abolished but I'd like to see it moved out of the main curriculum and put in as an elective art course... as a form of calligraphy - children and young adults can learn it along with other forms of handwriting which they can later use for writing notes and letters of a personal nature if they choose. In this way it can return to the uniform but highly stylized art form it should be instead of the irregular hard to read yet supposedly utilitarian handwriting technique that it is.
When the country is founded on invention and the right to distribute ideas - it is THAT critical.
Without progress through invention and freedom of information we will not be able to compete with other nations. It is a balance of individual rights and societal rights - it is THAT critical.
The big advantage of a touchscreen is that you don't have to find the cursor/pointer to start manipulating. With a mouse or a trackpad every action you perform has to start where the last action left off. This means a lot of repetitive moving of the cursor/pointer to get from point a to b to c back to a back to b, etc. WIth a touch screen you avoid all of this repetitive input.
For point and click users a touch screen could actually reduce the amount of input activity they have to do by 50% or potentially even more as touch gestures tend to be much more effective than having to click multiple buttons or keys to achieve the same results.
The reality is that very few people are *constantly* interacting with the GUI. More typical is for people to manipulate a window (scroll) then read for 2 minutes, then repeat. On my laptop I could do that while resting my hand on the lower surface, touch the bottom scroll arrow with a finger or my thumb and not think twice about it. It would be no different than resting my finger above a down arrow key. Move a window, resize or minimize... these are very brief actions that occur every hour or so and a lot of people already avoid them with multi-touch input or key combinations.
The question to ask is "What do we do repetitively and frequently with a mouse that would be a burden with a touch screen?"
I honestly can't think of much. There are some accuracy issues with specific GUIs which would not work well with a touch screen if fingers were the only input option (a stylus would solve that) - but otherwise I just can't think of any job related or leisure time activity on a computer that is so repetitive and frequent that it would cause muscle fatigue if a touchscreen were used instead.
If you are referring to typing - well everyone knows that a keyboard is the best interface for that activity, why would a touchscreen device not have a keyboard? We're not talking exclusively about Tablet PCs here... that's just one form factor.
I think all laptops should be touchscreen and all monitors should also be touchscreen. They should both still have keyboards of course and potentially a trackpad or mouse for when you need very accurate input. However I think people would adopt the touch interface for 99% of their activities without breaking a sweat and in fact will work less hard and be less mentally fatigued at the end of the day as they will be able to relax that part of their mind which currently controls the mouse... something not everyone is good at.
Just the supporting statements from Wikipedia:
Insurers Business Model
The business model can be reduced to a simple equation: Profit = earned premium + investment income - incurred loss - underwriting expenses.
Insurers make money in two ways:
1) Through underwriting, the process by which insurers select the risks to insure and decide how much in premiums to charge for accepting those risks;
2) By investing the premiums they collect from insured parties.
Private insurers have no incentive to offer the plan you describe. They make more money offering plans that cover everything - forcing everyone to pay for it - take the surplus and invest in securities - then pay out to the minority who actually use the more expensive services when that time comes. They make the most money off the securities, much like the banking system. Your premiums are not paying for someone else's care, they are paying into a huge investment fund which you do not get a cut from.
If insurers only offered basic health care plans which were tied to the risk policy you hold up as their profit model they would be small time businesses, like a pawn shop (which actually does use the risk based business model you describe).
Instead they are huge businesses which own vast amounts of property and large investment portfolios. Without high premiums they could not pull together such capital - so to make it all look legitimate they throw in all kinds of coverage that a very small minority of subscribers will actually use, jack up the payouts for everything they do cover and pay the bills with the premiums but keep all the investment returns.
To summarize, premiums are high because the Insurance companies need to capitalize their investment portfolios - not because they cover expensive procedures or treatments.
Listen to yourself. What benefit does the government itself get out of any of the things you describe? Zero, zilch, nada.
What benefit do politicians get from the Insurance lobbies in their respective states for supporting and voting for such legislation? Re-election money, bribes and indirect collateral.
Who is in control here? Government or private lobbies representing the private insurance industry?
The politicians have woven a tangled web wherein all of their private supporters do in fact compromise a little but all gain in the end. Insurers get higher premiums, big businesses get much needed tax write-offs to balance their books and a discount on insuring their most important assets (the people of course).
The public and small business pay for it all and get left out in the bargain.
Currently there are no measurements of success for Government health policies as there is no Government health plan. This means that the Gov policies that are in place are not tested for efficacy and are erroneously maintained despite the fact that they are unsustainable - which simply means that the public tax dollars pay for the overruns.
Put in place a Government plan that has a budget with measurements of success and political consequences for failure and you will see much improved policies legislated to support such a plan.
Create a plan or plans where federal spending is tied to measurable improvements in health care for the plans subscribers and you will see incredible competition for that funding and vastly improved care as a result. Politicians will then compete to bring those who offer such plans (profit or non-profit) into their state to bring that federal spending into their state's economy.
Think of is as an X-prize for health care. You don't get the money until you've shown the results.
p.s. Private Insurers have no incentive to offer basic health care plans. Their interest is in offering kitchen sink plans that everyone pays for but only a minority utilize. That is how they make money.
I looked at it briefly in someone's post up the page... and it sounds a lot like Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect allows 3rd party websites to query FB for data about a user who has logged in to FB via their API, mash it up with data the 3rd party has collected and send it all back to FB which will then respond with appropriate content.
So FBConnect maintains metadata across multiple app contexts and updates it appropriately.
This could also be applied to their FBApp system as well... since applications built for FB also maintain metadata about a user and then update FB with the results, which can then be used in a separate FB app, and on and on... (as long as the user 'allows' it)
I agree... what's the rush?
Scale back everything related to space "flight" - use satellites and probes as test craft - start with inexpensive probes and work up to expensive satellites.
Focus on propulsion research and near earth orbit with a sprinkling of long stay satellites bound for orbit around other planets.
Put some money into things like habitats, terra-forming, chemical genesis (creating materials from scratch) and other research that will be needed when we're ready for a planetary research facility. There is a LOT of research that can be done right here.
Use the data collected from probes (both on and off mars/moon) to help prove out your research. Send up test habitats and remote controlled robotic builders, etc. for additional on-site testing...
Once you have some break-throughs in launch and inter-planetary propulsion and a tested solution for housing and sustaining a manned crew on mars/moon - then look into manned missions again.
"every species becomes either space-faring, or extinct"
Which species are you using as examples in this statement?
You've been modded insightful but I think the modders don't understand the meaning of that word.
There are no examples of any species becoming "space-faring" while there are a lot of species here on earth that have been around for millions of years (us included) and which have no indications of going extinct any time soon (read for several more million years).
There is no rush to become "space-faring" and no real pressure to do so either.
For your other cogent and insightful comments - meh... you're a troll.
Your "account" is indexed under your phone number - they are looking it up to know what offers they should let you in on, check to see if you have a store credit card or should have one and of course to build their profile on you.
They don't care about your phone number other than that it is a unique identifier.
"It was mind-blowing to be there and it is clearly time we pulled our finger out and decided these habitats are worth us saving," said Dr George McGavin who headed the expedition.
What a great call to action for the world over... "pull your finger out" and get back to work!
I think the parent's point is that the 64 bit version of Safari is ~10 days old. Being 64 bit should qualify it as a *new* version over the 32 bit version previously available in pretty much any review process.
The article on Arstechnica about Snow Leopard goes into some detail about the advantages of Obj-C being a dynamic language... primarily due to the new inclusion of Closures aka functions assigned to variables so that you can pass a function to another function with dynamic arguments.
This makes for not necessarily a better performing language but an easier, more efficient and less buggy language.
It's still likely a personal coding preference of course.
I believe the problem is that this thinking of sex part happens automatically... no control, as in it's not a choice.. so with this knowledge women should a) take advantage (which they already do) or b) take pity (which some already do)
There's no new outcomes here - just new data supporting the already known inevitable ones.
One insight however... if you are an attractive woman and the man you're talking to *is* holding a conversation then a) he is not heterosexual or b) you are not as attractive as you think you are ;-p
Uh that would be Microsoft charging for the service pack, not Apple... how this escaped you as you wrote your comment or anyone who modded you?
Snow Leopard may not be a full OS update in terms of what we think a full update should be (hence the lower price point) but it is not a service pack in that it introduces completely new technology. Windows 7 does not do this.
When eReaders hit critical market numbers many books will no longer be put into print... not a counter argument exactly but a statement you should consider.
how long did you work at your last job? you may not have qualified for longer benefits. I went on unemployment about 5 years ago after a 4 year employment. I got 9 months of benefits. that was the maximum at the time. it was $1650 per month also the max at the time.
Apple doesn't need that extra subscription money - they're already getting 30% of a 2.5 Billion dollar market. Apple is doing just fine running their little app store.
Half the apps on there are now ad supported - these are apps released for free (meaning no money for Apple) which make money from ad impressions where all the ad dollars go directly to the app developer.
I'd say the app store is evolving over time as they add new features and look at the various revenue streams...
iTunes was never intended to be a money maker anyways, rather it was the bait to get people to go with an iPod (now iPhone too) rather than a competing music playing device - so now that iPhone/Touch applications are driving device sales, Apple is better off not worrying about their iTunes investment - it's no longer the big device sales driver... it's just a great default music player for those who don't want to pay more or sign up for an extra service.
I think the point is that once you find said database you can only go looking in it for information that is within the scope of your warrant, ie: within that database you're searching for references to elephants your search should be limited to elephants, not major league baseball players.
If you're looking for MLB players but have a list of 10 specific ones, you should be limited to searching for those players names... if they use an alias you're out of luck and will need to convince a judge that this is so important that you need a 'john doe' warrant to search all records for evidence. Better yet just find some other specific criteria that is likely to pull up your aliased individuals records - such as a data, address, etc. that will properly narrow your results so as to exclude as many false matches as possible.
As in Certificate of Deposit. Get one with a 17 year maturity date for about $1000 or whatever the minimum is. She will thank you with tears in her eyes when she finds out she can get that car or prom dress she was wanting (or if she's smart it will pay for college when her parents are broke from the 18 year financial cycle).
Wow... someone who feels the same way about medical science as I do. Butchers indeed, albeit highly skilled butchers - still I second the opinion that other than more advanced tools and drugs, the treatments for injury and natural decay seem really really outdated compared to the other technologies we employ on a daily basis.
I disagree that this won't be available in our lifetime (we being the 30 somethings, who are having children now). We may be in our 50s before it's a normal procedure but hey that still leaves a good 20 years to appreciate it. Sorry if you're already in your 50s... yeah, it's probably too late for any real quality of life change but it could make life more comfortable (grow new corneas for better vision, grow new cochlear hairs to combat Presbycusis for hearing loss).
Question. Did you grow up somewhere drinking naturally non-fluoridated water? Did your land have a well rather than a hookup to city / county water supply?
I also have horrid teeth (not as bad as yours sound but still bad enough) and I grew up without fluoride treatments or fluoridated water - just wondering if there is a correlation at least. Hopefully it is also causation and I can worry less about dental bills for my kids as they grow up (even with replacement teeth, keeping the original teeth in good shape is still cheaper).
thanks
That plugin was always slow and only supported a very limited subset of svg.
On a mac it picks the fastest network automatically (well it at least picks ethernet over wifi). It does not turn off Wifi automatically though as people sometimes share their ethernet connection via wifi as an adhoc wireless access point.
If I for some reason was plugged into ethernet but still on battery power I would turn WiFi off manually to save juice but otherwise it's nice to just unplug and seamlessly switch over to WiFi (well kind of seamlessly, mounted drives don't survive the transition due to the change in IP).
My set up for right click is to put two fingers down then click with the thumb.