Local issues and positions can't be handled fairly from a central authority.
Well, then I guess it boils down to whether or not you believe things like slave ownership, women's suffrage, securities fraud, military defense, negotiation of foreign trade, and inspection of agriculture to be "local issues".
As to the myriad things that the central gov't has assumed governance, it seems to me that some of these could have been left to the states... except when it becomes clear that some of the states just haven't gotten the memo that they're being evil (like with slavery, women's suffrage, disregard of those with disabilities, etc.).
It's really no different from local government, just on a larger scale. By that I mean that... our local governments shouldn't need to have a law against clubbing your neighbor over the head with a baseball bat. Pretty obvious one, right? Buuuuuut... some douchebags didn't get the memo about that, so our local governments need to pass ordinances regarding assault, rape, murder, theft and a whole slew of things which wouldn't be an issue if we all had our heads out of our asses. It's the same on the national scale. There are some laws we shouldn't need (just like whites being allowed to marry blacks), but some states (like the local hoodlum who beats neighbors with baseball bats) just haven't clued in and need to be "persuaded" into joining modernity.
So you'd be here defending them if they had decided to order all fast food restaurants to be shut down, because "it's something"?
Well, no. I don't feel that shutting down all fast-food restaurants is on the same scale as merely requiring them to "unbundle" their toys from their food (like requiring Microsoft to unbundle their browser from their OS, say). If you feel that those two things are on the same level, then I don't see how we can make any more progress in this debate.
"I want the happy meal! With the toy!" But Billy, the happy meal doesn't come with a toy anymore.
"What's that Mummy? No toy with the happy mean? Well then, I'll have the chef salad, low cal dressing, a bag of apple slices, and decaf iced tea no sugar, please."
If you hear that conversation happening in any car in the drive up, you are hallucinating.
I agree; You're using an argument that has no basis in reality. Now, how about one that isn't so much of a hallucination:
Mother and child walk up to the counter. Mother is still deciding whether to order the kid the Happy Meal (with a burger, fries, and soda) or maybe a chicken-breast sandwich and some juice.
Then, the kid says: "OMG, mom! The Happy Meal comes with ultra-mega-mega man! Mom! Happy Meal! Happy Meal, Mom! MOM! I'LL DIE IF I DON'T GET THE HAPPY MEAL!!!! MMMMMMOMMMMMMMMMM!!"
Now, I've personally witnessed this kind of kid meltdown dozens of times in fast-food places. And Mom just rolls her eyes and decides that this isn't a battle she wants to fight. So, she caves and orders the Happy Meal.
Look. I'm not necessarily against the fast-food joints giving out toys. However, I think it's very underhanded of them trying to use things like this in order to gain extra influence over the consumer (and especially underhanded to try to do it my manipulating the less-shrewd children of the consumer). If that's not their intention, then why not give out the toy to every kid who gets food? You ordered the double-down artery stopper? Here's a toy! You ordered juice and carrot sticks? Here's a toy!
I also don't necessarily think that Santa Clara's approach is the best way, but at least it's something. I think it's marginally better than sitting around, complaining about how things "should" be. I agree, parents "shouldn't" be taking their kids to fast-food joints at all. Now, we can sit around all day and fret about why reality doesn't match our idea of how things should be, or we can face the reality and resolve to try something.
I don't even know if it's so much personal responsibility, as that means responsibility for one's self. This is about parental responsibility.
And Supervisor Donald Gage agrees with you. The problem is, we've tried that for decades and it isn't working. The "personal responsibility" people stamp their feet and complain "It's the parents' responsibility! It's the parents' responsibility! (stamp, stamp, stamp...)". Hey, why don't you stamp your feet a little harder? Maybe, then, all of those parents will suddenly take up an interest in pediatric nutrition.
Kids shouldn't have a say. If the parents are doing their jobs, it won't matter who the restaurants prey upon.
"(stamp, stamp, stamp!) Kids shouldn't... they shouldn't. Shouldn't, shouldn't, shouldn't!". Yeah, but you know what? They do. In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice but, in practice, there is. You can yell and complain about responsibility and the nanny state and all that jazz, but, ultimately, it fails to actually fix the problem. So, the county supervisors have decided to try this. And I think you have to admit that, regardless of whether you think that the county should have passed this ordinance, the restaurants are throwing the toys in there to help peddle a product which should probably be peddled on their merits of its nutrition.
This issue reminds me of the Simpsons episiode with "Mt. Splashmore", where a commercial for the water park teaches the kids the "Take me to Mt. Splashmore" song and then instructs the kids to go sing it to their parents over and over again. Or, in "The Corporation", I think it was, where the market research lady interviewed parents about their nagging children. The parents thought it was research into how to get kids to nag less but it was really studying how to get the kids to nag their parents more effectively so that the parents would cave in and buy more often. I think you're naive if you don't think these companies aren't pouring millions of dollars into ways of getting around this "personal responsibility" firewall, and the toys are just one part of their arsenal.
For example, even when kids don't really have a say, they do. You even admit "The toy is just a bonus to keep our child busy long enough so we can finish our meals with some level of peace.". So, the toy does help bring you in to that particular restaurant chain. Besides, I can use the "parental responsibility" argument on you. I know a couple that actually takes parenting seriously. When we all go out to dinner with their kid, their kid finishes first, and then knows to sit there, quietly, while we all chat a while. She knows that, if she starts getting fidgety or rambunctious, things are going to turn out worse for her in the long run. So, we can always finish our meals in peace... toy or no toy. But then, that's because they feel that they should be responsible parents.
I use code libraries and recode old stuff to new uses every day - is that cheating or just efficient coding?
Exactly. My first thought when I read this topic's header was "The reason they plagiarize is because that's what they do ALL the time in their discipline". Look at just about any source file and one of the first 2 or 3 lines will either start with "include", "import", "require", "use", etc..
I'm wondering if a prof would, at least, give partial credit for an answer like: "#include"
The stupid kind who isn't that fond of his fingers.
I was successfully using a table saw, unsupervised, with no blade guard, by 5th or 6th grade.
I love how everybody's got their own definition of "stupid" behavior. You seem to think that the dude in the lawsuit is an idiot, and then you boast about not using a blade-guard.
Blade guards aren't like training wheels. They're not something that you remove once you get good. In other words, working without them isn't an indicator of proficiency (as you seem to be implying with your comment). Tell me, when you got good at driving, did you disable the seatbelts and airbags in your car, too?
Also, getting your fingers near the blade isn't a simple function of stupidity. Reaching behind the blade to pull out a freshly-cut piece from between the blade and the rip-fence can cause the piece to bind against the blade and be yanked forward, pulling your hand with it, right into the blade. (It's why some woodworkers advise to never reach behind the blade). Or, there are ways where the piece you're cutting can bind against the blade and be shot back at you, hitting you in the mid-section, and getting your upper-body to quickly tilt forward, probably causing you to lose your balance and, in the faction of a second that it happens, possibly causing you to try to plant your hands somewhere on the saw table to regain your balance. Or... you might be working with a large piece of wood and have to lean toward the saw in order to manage the cut you're doing. If you step on a patch of sawdust, your foot could slip and you could pivot forward causing your head to start getting close to the blade. If that happens, I'm betting you're going to put your hands out in front of you to stop yourself... and, if you're lucky, the blade won't be where your hands come down.
A blade guard would save you in all three of those scenarios. But, I'm sure you knew that because, by your own self-assessment, you're not an idiot.
I'm conflicted about this. As a woodworker, I've known about the SawStop for about 5 years and have been following its development and deployment into the marketplace. From a woodworker's perspective, this device is revolutionary... at total game-changer in the area of safety, so I could see why some people would consider this to be either mandatory equipment or that it would be negligence on the part of the manufacturer if they left this component off.
However, like the summary said, it's chilling that a patented piece of tech would be made de-facto mandatory due to the fact that, if you leave it off of your product, you get sued. I guess it depends upon how much the patent-holder was asking for their license. All I ever heard was that talks had fallen through with all of the manufacturers, so SawStop had to start making their own saws. If SawStop was asking for some huge license fee, then... yeah... they're being unreasonable. However, if SawStop was asking for some reasonable amount (and I'd consider anything under $50 per saw to be "reasonable"), then I'd surely consider casting my vote for the plaintiff if I were on the jury.
Kaspersky ascribes it to Apple wanting to "control everything", but Apple already doesn't mind turning over control of about 100,000 apps to other developers already.
I think it's something else. Well, two things, actually:
First, I think that Apple wants to keep the word "virus" and the word "iPhone" from being any more linked in the consumer's mind than they have to be. If a range of anti-virus tools becomes available for the iPhone, then it implicitly says that viruses are something you need to be concerned about if you purchase an iPhone. For example, imagine you went to a singles bar and, right at the door, there were a bunch of dispensers doling out free condoms. That suddenly changes what you think about the moral fortitude of the individuals found within, as well as their venereal state.
Secondly, if anti-virus apps are available for the iPhone, then that adds a layer of protection for people who get their apps from less-reputable sources. I'm speaking, of course, about Cydia and the whole jailbreaking scene. I can only speak for myself, but I can tell you that the primary reason I haven't jailbroken my iPhone and availed myself of all of the Cydia apps is because I can't be assured of their source and that they don't have some "new special ingredient" added by the packager. The money I pay to Apple's app-store is paying for Apple to vet the apps I'm downloading.
Anti-virus tools for the iPhone would tend to "level the playing field", as it were, between the security of using legitimate apps versus using Cydia apps.
I was a little incredulous when I discovered that I could take photos with my 10MP camera in macro mode and approach the quality of my flatbed scanner.
If you can find a friend with a good digital SLR, and if you get your lighting all set right, you can probably just snap some pictures of it. MUCH faster than scanning. Then, you can use a stitching program like Hugin to bring all of the pics together and correct for distortion around the edges of the picture.
If they're that old, then you might not need the quality afforded by a really good large-format scanner.
I'm not sure I grok this notion of not storing the key with the source machine. I mean... if I can get to the machine you backed up... I don't really need to get to the backup, do I? I've got fresher data right there in front of me.
Now, if you're really trying to protect some kind of historical record of how your data has progressed over time, then that would be a reason why access to the source computer still didn't get the intruder access to what you're trying to protect... but that's a very special case.
You see, this is why the republicans are opposed to the principle of universal health-care. If you didn't have to keep working for a corporation in order to have suitable health coverage, then you'd be able to leave your job to strike out on your own and start your own business; giving your bright ideas a chance to thrive in the open marketplace. Something like this runs counter to the "rags to riches through hard work" that the republicans like to hold up as a fundamental principle... oh, wait!
e) IF YOU ARE A SCHOOL OFFICIAL PEEKING AT KIDS' PRIVATE MOMENTS, HOW MUCH OF A FREAKIN' BONEHEAD DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO CONFRONT THEM WITH EVIDENCE OBTAINED BY SUCH QUESTIONABLE MEANS?
Exactly! That's why I think the suitable punishment is to have this person's reproductive equipment deactivated. Someone this stupid just shouldn't breed.
This reminds me of a story about England's cracking of the German enigma codes during WW-II. Apparently, Churchill had ordered that, if any action were to be taken based upon information gleaned from the enigma intercepts, that they'd first have to have some other plausible reason for taking that action. For example, when they intercepted the location of a U-boat through the enigma messages, they couldn't just send a bunch of destroyers out there to sink it, because the Germans would have deduced that there was only one way the English could have found out. So, instead, the English arranged to have a reconnaissance aircraft just "happen" to be patrolling the area... spot the U-boat... and then they send the destroyers.
Okay, so back to the brain-dead school official. So, you decide to start surveillance on your students. Okay, I get that. You're a douchebag, but whatever. You discover some student doing something that you don't like and decide that you can't let that go unchecked. Okay. So, what you do then, is concoct some other way to accidentally and legally, "discover" what the student did, and then nail them with that evidence. So, to summarize: do the illegal snooping to discover where to go to "accidentally" discover what you already know. Jesus... how do you not know this? Don't you know any cops?!?!
Most of the posts have focused on what you'll be able or unable to see with your telescope. I'm going to suggest something different which, I think, can add to their overall understanding of astronomy. Get a plastic Davis Mark 3 sextant. They go on eBay for about $30 or so. With it, you can measure the distances between objects in the sky. Even without a telescope, there are a lot of eye-opening things you'll notice about the heavens once you start paying close attention. For example, you can measure the angle between the moon and some celestial object along it's path. You'll be stunned at how much the moon moves relative to the stars and planets from one evening to the next. You'll wonder how you never noticed that before. By calculating how many degrees it moves in 24 hours (or even in just a few hours), you can figure out how many days it would take to go 360 degrees and return to it's original position... and you'll find it comes to about 28 days... the time it takes for the moon to go through all of it's phases. Note, however, you need to do it with some star along the moon's path. Easiest to pick one very adjacent (to the east or west) to the moon on your first night of sighting.
Also, with a sextant, you can sight the north star and know you latitude at any time of night. Once you're able to do that, you could sail a ship to the latitude of your destination and then sail directly east or west, along that latitude, until you made landfall. If you also know the exact time it is (whereupon you can discuss the huge reward the English parliament offered for an accurate ship-board timepiece), you can sight the sun when it's directly overhead and know your longitude as well. It would take some very careful explaining in order to get 9th graders to understand the gist of it, but then they'd realize why all of those scientists in the renaissance concerned themselves with the motions of the planets, stars, and moon. Celestial navigation was GPS before we had GPS. Even as recently as world war II, this is how the ships and aircraft figured out where they were. Because of this, the motion of the heavens, and their impact upon maritime navigation, we a seriously big deal for centuries.
Also, set up a little sighting post in the middle of a circle... kind of like a big sundial. At sunrise and sunset, look at the sun over the post and mark the direction on the perimeter of the circle. The idea is to make a little "Stonehenge", whereupon you record the directions to the rise/set of the sun (and moon, if you want). You don't have to do it every day... maybe just once per week. That will be enough for you to see that the sun rise/set doesmove and you can even tell when the equinox is (when the rise and set are directly opposite each other on the circle) and when the solstice is (when the rise/set positions stop moving in one direction and start moving back the other way).
So, I guess to summarize, I'd focus on the stuff that makes (or, at least, made) astronomy useful. Sure, we can look through monsterous telescopes and see fantastic nebulae and clusters... and that makes for a great desktop wallpaper (yes, yes, I know... it also tells us things about their composition and about the origin of the universe and may expand our understanding of physics someday. I mean "useful" in the sense of being able to help a plain ol' person in the world do something they'd have trouble doing otherwise, like sail across an ocean, or plant their crops at the right time).
Now, as to what to do with the telescope... you might want to turn it on Jupiter and start recording the positions of the moons. I guess I'm a kind of a "know your roots" guy. Galileo first thought they were stars... finding it curious that there were so many right next to it. Then, he noticed that they moved, and sometimes disappeared. Later, he had the epiphany that they must be moons, and the "disappearing" was when they went behind or in front of Jupiter. This revelation is what caused him to realize th
I suspected this kind of thing when I started noticing those election-day photos of the rally headquarters for the various candidates. "All of the chicks in the Republican audience are always smokin' hot babes", I'd think to myself.
And then it dawned on me. If there is a correlation between appearance and political leanings, how would any causal relationship work? I think the causation of politics determining appearance is the easier one to spot. Most conservatives I know seem to place more of an emphasis on appearance, while the liberals I know place more of an emphasis on ideas; feeling that ideas will stand or fall on their own merit, regardless of the appearance of the messenger. So, liberals don't see as much need for dressing up before trying to pitch their ideas.
Now, the causation from appearance to politics is a little more subtle. My suspicion is that the people who are "less beautiful" are the ones who spend more of their time on the outside of popularity. They're they people who never made the ballot for prom queen, didn't get asked to the school dance, didn't have as many romantic opportunities. They got more of a taste of what it's like to be a "have not" or to be outside of the majority. This experience, I believe, can cause them to have the increased empathy and tendency to "look out for others" that seems to characterize liberal thought.
On the other hand, the people are very attractive or physically gifted had an easier time of things. Athletic success came easier to the "natural born athletes", and the pretty or charismatic people had an easier time getting others to back their ideas or plans. Things just went a little easier for them. Because we can only experience the world through our own eyes, I can see how the "beautiful people" could believe that (as it was for them) one only needs to apply themselves to a goal and it'll work out. This could give rise to the "anybody willing to work hard will find success" mindset that we tend to see in conservatives.
Well, this test comes closer to my personal experiences with AT&T. Frankly, I've been pretty baffled by all of the iPhone users who bag on AT&T like it was the scourge of god. I live in a semi-rural area between San Francisco and Los Angeles and I've gotta say that I get voice and data (not always 3G, but so what?) service on all but the back roads that snake through canyons. My previous provider, T-Mobile, actually did have coverage out there but hey... it's a back-road... I considered coverage there to be a "bonus".
Now, don't get me wrong... I'm ready to bolt from AT&T as much as the next guy when Apple gets some contracts with other providers, but my reasons are because of pricing (I got more minutes, same unlimited data, for $20 less per month under T-Mobile) and because AT&T isn't offering tethering and they dragged their heels on MMS messaging. But to get that worked up because you don't get 3G everywhere... just seems like your expectations are a little high. Anyway, like I said, at least report is a little more congruent with my personal experiences with AT&T, so I don't feel all that crazy anymore.
I agree. Basically, all you can really do is just CYA. Type up a letter or email to your boss which doesn't necessarily state what you think the company should do. Just have it detail your findings. Something to the effect of "I have only been able to find X legitimate licenses for software 'xyzzy', yet we have Y copies installed. Whether or not we actually purchased Y licenses at some point, we would not be able to demonstrate this if we were ever audited. It would cost $Z to bring us into full compliance with software 'xyzzy'".
In doing this, you're not taking a position on the matter. You're merely letting the boss know about a potential problem, so you're stand less of a chance of appearing as an anti-piracy crusader. The boss can either act on your information or not. Either way, you'll have documentation that they know and, if funds aren't made available to bring the company into compliance, then I think you'll be less "on the hook".
Still, your boss probably isn't an idiot. He/she will probably see your letter/e-mail for what it really is: an attempt by you to put them on the hook for this instead of you. (There's a great example of something like this in the Watergate scandal where John Dean was telling Nixon about how the situation was getting very dicey. Nixon then asked Dean to type up a full synopsis of the situation for him in writing. Dean realized that Nixon was going to use that written report to claim that he was unaware of the entire situation until initially receiving the report. THe lesson here is that, any time someone sends a written synopsis of a situation after a history of discussing it informally, there's a good chance that it's being done to have legal evidence that the recipient was aware... in anticipation of the sh*t really hitting the fan). So, I doubt your boss will appreciate your attempt to put them in the crosshairs. So, keep your resume up-to-date.
Google's auto-complete is a great source of idle amusement. Just type in "Why does" and peruse the questions from people whose vote counts just as much as yours in every election. (My favorite is "Why does my vag smell". Something about the slang term used... it's just... I dunno).
In fact, in the category of typing just part of a phrase and letting it take you where it will, I'd have to say that typing "why does" or "how does" into google comes in second only to typing in "goes wrong" in YouTube.
But to answer your original question about what it tells us about humanity: It tells us that most of them are pretty dumb.
From watching the video, it looks like they presuppose quite a high degree of dexterity on the part of the user. To resize an app window in the video, they touched three fingers to the pad, held two of them still while pinch-zooming with the third. Now, you probably don't have to hold two of the fingers still relative to each other, but this still sets the bar quite high in its requirements for independent control of your digits.
This would exclude a lot of users, and not just those who are missing a few fingers. About 10 years ago, I helped set up some web-browsing PC's in a community-college library. One of the things I hadn't anticipated was that some of the older users were lacking in coordination to the extent that it made it difficult for them to use the PC effectively. Even the task of trying to double-click fast enough to get it to register as a double-click would cause these users to twitch some of their arm muscles, causing the mouse to scoot a couple of inches in the middle of the double-click. They'd try several times to get it right, but the mouse always ended up moving off of the targeted icon before the double-click was complete.
What we eventually had to do was to provide trackballs, so that the user could move the mouse pointer to where they wanted it and then, taking their hand off of the ball part of the trackball, double-click the buttons. So, that is the level of dexterity that some users are at. So, this three-finger-pinch-zooming idea... I could see this being extremely frustrating for them.
When you buy mutual funds, in addition to any annual fees they may charge, different funds may charge you a percentage of your invested capital at the time you purchase and/or at the time you sell shares of the fund. If they charge you when you purchase, we say you're paying on the "Front-end" and, if you pay when you sell, you're paying on the "Back-end".
Back-ended funds are alluring because you get to defer the pain of paying until later, so a back-ended fund with a certain fee structure can compete with a front-ended fund with lower overall fees than the back-ended one. When the higher cost is way out there in the future, it doesn't seem so bad (one reason people buy so much crap they don't really need on credit-cards).
If you look at some of the huge costs to the U.S. these days (like dependence upon foreign oil and the cost of health-care), you realize that these are heavily back-ended arrangements.
With foreign oil, we're able to buy cheap SUV's and land-yachts. Initially, this increases demand for oil, so gas prices go up. But also... because of this need for oil, as Bill Maher says, we've got to go find other oil deposits and then kill the people living atop them. So, that means a large military, which is a huge cost which is passed on to us in taxes. (Imagine, for a moment, if we didn't need any of that middle-east oil and could afford to let the whole region just go to hell in a handbasket. Think of how much military we would not need). Now, imagine if there were a "military tax" on cars where, depending upon what the mileage of the car was, you'd be taxed some amount which would be proportional to the amount that your car would increase military spending in the future in order to ensure a supply of fuel for it. It would move those costs from the back-end to the front-end and cause people to think a little harder about purchasing vehicles which, when all costs are weighed, probably aren't as "good for you" as a more fuel-efficient one.
So, on to this notion of the snack taxes and soda taxes. This is another case of back-end payment. The fast-food establishments engineer their foods to give us instant gratification, be easy to eat a lot of ("boneless wings", anyone?), and be cheap, without much attention given to nutritional quality. The "payment" for this low nutritional quality happens on the back-end, when we're obese and have adult-onset diabetes and/or heart-disease. The path that brought us to our unhealthy condition wasn't clearly laid out, because we didn't feel that we were eating fast-food that often... and we only order the super-sized fries half the time... etc.
Now, if some of these costs were moved to the front-end, our wallets would show us that we're eating fast-food and supersizing a lot more often than we think and might get us to make some different choices. Or, if we make the same choices, at least some of the payment for our bypass surgery is being made over decades, so we won't suffer so much "sticker shock" when we get the bill for the surgery.
I know people bellyache about this being another part of the "nanny state", but we already front-end a lot of other things in our life without giving it any thought. When you visit, say, a national park... you may pay an entrance or visitor's fee. This fee goes to repair the wear and tear that you're going to put on the park by walking, riding, or driving around in it. In many cases, you're even charged proportionally to the amount of effect you're going to have (like large motor-homes being charged more than a small car, say).
I, for one, welcome our new soda-taxing overlords....
First, they graded people based on physical capabilities...
I'm not convinced they're using it for grading.
My first suspicion is that they're using to keep from being sued if some kid drops dead during dodge-ball. Never ascribe to malice what can be attributed to good, old-fashioned CYA.
The other possibility that occurred to me was that they're doing it to properly push each kid. I remember back when I was in PE, and the coach would have us all run a mile or something. "Brock Jockmore" would be done in about 6 minutes... and then he'd run another mile just to lap more people and because he was bored waiting for everyone else to finish. Meanwhile, myself and my other friends who knew 6502 and Z80 assembly language, would be walking after 200m.
Clearly, there was a wide spectrum of cardio-vascular fitness represented in the class.
It seems a shame that the coach couldn't really push the Brocks to their limit because that level of exertion would kill the other kids (or they'd puke all over the locker room or they'd just run away and take the unexcused absence on their record).
So, the optimist in me wants to believe that this is an attempt to allow the coach to see who's "sandbagging" it and who is being pushed beyond what they really should be. I envision the coach having the kids running laps or doing jumping-jacks or burpees or something and hearing the coach shout out: "Jacobs! I want you to slow down a little bit... at least for a minute. Davis! Pick up the pace a bit. Your heart-rate is only 130!". (Of course, this assumes that the heart-rate info would be immediately available on some laptop or something while the exercise is being done).
However, with today's economy, it seems a far-fetched that a school district would dole out that kind of money merely for something as seemingly trivial as maximizing individual workouts in a group setting. Again, like I said, it's more likely that some school-district attorney found some case where some school ran a kid to his/her death in PE class and concluded that it's much cheaper insurance to buy these monitors than to get sued for $xyz million.
But the notion of the school district being in cahoots with the insurance companies? No way. First off, schools are typically populated with left-leaning, corporation-disdaining types... probably more so as you go down in grades from high-school, to middle-school, to kindergarten. So, getting the faculty to sit still for this would be an uphill battle. Next, this seems like it would be a whole lot of cash for the insurance company to have to spend in order to do this on a large scale. Granted, in this economy, school districts will listen to any revenue-generating offer, but, even if they're cheap, there is an *assload* of public schools out there. So, buying off (and supplying the heart-rate monitors) to all of them would probably be more money than it's worth. Lastly, Congress is gradually moving toward passing legislation which is going to largely prohibit the insurance companies from discriminating based upon pre-existing conditions anyway, so, in a few years, they won't even be allowed to act on any of this data.
So, in conclusion, I think your tinfoil hat is too big. It's cutting off the blood supply to your brain. Trim it.
I didn't watch the whole demo, but it strikes me that the integration with the video camera is pure fluff. It knows where you are through the GPS, and, when you point your phone at the ground, it uses the compass to figure out which way to point the arrows. The app, itself, does not seem to be gleaning any location/orientation info from whatever the camera is seeing. So, the camera integration is just for an interesting "backdrop" to the info... because it's more snazzy that just a black background.
And, once you realize that it's just a program that knows the GPS locations of the metro stations... there are already plenty of apps for that for any major city for the iPhone. Next contestant, please...
Trying to force some sort of return to the "good old days" is doomed. The things that aren't going to work need to die.
Hear, hear!
I had the same reaction when McCain/Palin were yelling "Drill, Baby, Drill!". I was waiting for someone to jump up and say "Look! This is last century's technology. The writing is on the wall. To try to redouble our efforts to bring in more oil makes a little more sense than redoubling our efforts to catch more whales for their oil... or our efforts to breed bigger and more horses to pull our carriages. We're sucking on a cigarette that has already been smoked all the way down to the filter...."
Where in the constitution would be the mandate for the feds to promote something like this?
There's not necessarily a mandate, but there's an opportunity for common good.
I look at it this way. If there were a human disease which was causing as much lost productivity and recovery costs as many computer viruses, the CDC and FEMA would be on red-alert. If vandals (like, the E.L.F., say) were sabotaging so much business infrastructure as to approach the losses due to computer viruses, then the FBI would have it as one of their top priorities.
In other words, the gov't doesn't react with this kind of ambivalence when real-dollar and productivity losses of this scale happen via other means. So, why shouldn't they treat it as an important "public health" issue when it's the health of their PC's and data that are involved?
Now, what I'd like to see is for the gov't to actually start providing an anti-virus product themselves... for free. It would have to be open-source, to ensure they weren't using it to snoop on citizens. But, at the mere cost of $10 million or so, the gov't could probably provide rock-solid anti-virus products, with daily signature updates and all. At a cost of about 3 cents per citizen.
Given the explosive growth of uploading videos and people watching them, what other new understandings and popular misconceptions will be proven or disproved due to this emerging media?
Umm... that it's safe to launch bottle-rockets from your ass?
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Local issues and positions can't be handled fairly from a central authority.
Well, then I guess it boils down to whether or not you believe things like slave ownership, women's suffrage, securities fraud, military defense, negotiation of foreign trade, and inspection of agriculture to be "local issues".
As to the myriad things that the central gov't has assumed governance, it seems to me that some of these could have been left to the states... except when it becomes clear that some of the states just haven't gotten the memo that they're being evil (like with slavery, women's suffrage, disregard of those with disabilities, etc.).
It's really no different from local government, just on a larger scale. By that I mean that... our local governments shouldn't need to have a law against clubbing your neighbor over the head with a baseball bat. Pretty obvious one, right? Buuuuuut... some douchebags didn't get the memo about that, so our local governments need to pass ordinances regarding assault, rape, murder, theft and a whole slew of things which wouldn't be an issue if we all had our heads out of our asses. It's the same on the national scale. There are some laws we shouldn't need (just like whites being allowed to marry blacks), but some states (like the local hoodlum who beats neighbors with baseball bats) just haven't clued in and need to be "persuaded" into joining modernity.
Well, no. I don't feel that shutting down all fast-food restaurants is on the same scale as merely requiring them to "unbundle" their toys from their food (like requiring Microsoft to unbundle their browser from their OS, say). If you feel that those two things are on the same level, then I don't see how we can make any more progress in this debate.
"I want the happy meal! With the toy!" But Billy, the happy meal doesn't come with a toy anymore. "What's that Mummy? No toy with the happy mean? Well then, I'll have the chef salad, low cal dressing, a bag of apple slices, and decaf iced tea no sugar, please."
If you hear that conversation happening in any car in the drive up, you are hallucinating.
I agree; You're using an argument that has no basis in reality. Now, how about one that isn't so much of a hallucination:
Mother and child walk up to the counter. Mother is still deciding whether to order the kid the Happy Meal (with a burger, fries, and soda) or maybe a chicken-breast sandwich and some juice.
Then, the kid says: "OMG, mom! The Happy Meal comes with ultra-mega-mega man! Mom! Happy Meal! Happy Meal, Mom! MOM! I'LL DIE IF I DON'T GET THE HAPPY MEAL!!!! MMMMMMOMMMMMMMMMM!!"
Now, I've personally witnessed this kind of kid meltdown dozens of times in fast-food places. And Mom just rolls her eyes and decides that this isn't a battle she wants to fight. So, she caves and orders the Happy Meal.
Look. I'm not necessarily against the fast-food joints giving out toys. However, I think it's very underhanded of them trying to use things like this in order to gain extra influence over the consumer (and especially underhanded to try to do it my manipulating the less-shrewd children of the consumer). If that's not their intention, then why not give out the toy to every kid who gets food? You ordered the double-down artery stopper? Here's a toy! You ordered juice and carrot sticks? Here's a toy!
I also don't necessarily think that Santa Clara's approach is the best way, but at least it's something. I think it's marginally better than sitting around, complaining about how things "should" be. I agree, parents "shouldn't" be taking their kids to fast-food joints at all. Now, we can sit around all day and fret about why reality doesn't match our idea of how things should be, or we can face the reality and resolve to try something.
And Supervisor Donald Gage agrees with you. The problem is, we've tried that for decades and it isn't working. The "personal responsibility" people stamp their feet and complain "It's the parents' responsibility! It's the parents' responsibility! (stamp, stamp, stamp...)". Hey, why don't you stamp your feet a little harder? Maybe, then, all of those parents will suddenly take up an interest in pediatric nutrition.
"(stamp, stamp, stamp!) Kids shouldn't... they shouldn't. Shouldn't, shouldn't, shouldn't!". Yeah, but you know what? They do. In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice but, in practice, there is. You can yell and complain about responsibility and the nanny state and all that jazz, but, ultimately, it fails to actually fix the problem. So, the county supervisors have decided to try this. And I think you have to admit that, regardless of whether you think that the county should have passed this ordinance, the restaurants are throwing the toys in there to help peddle a product which should probably be peddled on their merits of its nutrition.
This issue reminds me of the Simpsons episiode with "Mt. Splashmore", where a commercial for the water park teaches the kids the "Take me to Mt. Splashmore" song and then instructs the kids to go sing it to their parents over and over again. Or, in "The Corporation", I think it was, where the market research lady interviewed parents about their nagging children. The parents thought it was research into how to get kids to nag less but it was really studying how to get the kids to nag their parents more effectively so that the parents would cave in and buy more often. I think you're naive if you don't think these companies aren't pouring millions of dollars into ways of getting around this "personal responsibility" firewall, and the toys are just one part of their arsenal.
For example, even when kids don't really have a say, they do. You even admit "The toy is just a bonus to keep our child busy long enough so we can finish our meals with some level of peace.". So, the toy does help bring you in to that particular restaurant chain. Besides, I can use the "parental responsibility" argument on you. I know a couple that actually takes parenting seriously. When we all go out to dinner with their kid, their kid finishes first, and then knows to sit there, quietly, while we all chat a while. She knows that, if she starts getting fidgety or rambunctious, things are going to turn out worse for her in the long run. So, we can always finish our meals in peace... toy or no toy. But then, that's because they feel that they should be responsible parents.
Exactly. My first thought when I read this topic's header was "The reason they plagiarize is because that's what they do ALL the time in their discipline". Look at just about any source file and one of the first 2 or 3 lines will either start with "include", "import", "require", "use", etc..
I'm wondering if a prof would, at least, give partial credit for an answer like: "#include"
I love how everybody's got their own definition of "stupid" behavior. You seem to think that the dude in the lawsuit is an idiot, and then you boast about not using a blade-guard.
Blade guards aren't like training wheels. They're not something that you remove once you get good. In other words, working without them isn't an indicator of proficiency (as you seem to be implying with your comment). Tell me, when you got good at driving, did you disable the seatbelts and airbags in your car, too?
Also, getting your fingers near the blade isn't a simple function of stupidity. Reaching behind the blade to pull out a freshly-cut piece from between the blade and the rip-fence can cause the piece to bind against the blade and be yanked forward, pulling your hand with it, right into the blade. (It's why some woodworkers advise to never reach behind the blade). Or, there are ways where the piece you're cutting can bind against the blade and be shot back at you, hitting you in the mid-section, and getting your upper-body to quickly tilt forward, probably causing you to lose your balance and, in the faction of a second that it happens, possibly causing you to try to plant your hands somewhere on the saw table to regain your balance. Or... you might be working with a large piece of wood and have to lean toward the saw in order to manage the cut you're doing. If you step on a patch of sawdust, your foot could slip and you could pivot forward causing your head to start getting close to the blade. If that happens, I'm betting you're going to put your hands out in front of you to stop yourself... and, if you're lucky, the blade won't be where your hands come down.
A blade guard would save you in all three of those scenarios. But, I'm sure you knew that because, by your own self-assessment, you're not an idiot.
I'm conflicted about this. As a woodworker, I've known about the SawStop for about 5 years and have been following its development and deployment into the marketplace. From a woodworker's perspective, this device is revolutionary... at total game-changer in the area of safety, so I could see why some people would consider this to be either mandatory equipment or that it would be negligence on the part of the manufacturer if they left this component off.
However, like the summary said, it's chilling that a patented piece of tech would be made de-facto mandatory due to the fact that, if you leave it off of your product, you get sued. I guess it depends upon how much the patent-holder was asking for their license. All I ever heard was that talks had fallen through with all of the manufacturers, so SawStop had to start making their own saws. If SawStop was asking for some huge license fee, then... yeah... they're being unreasonable. However, if SawStop was asking for some reasonable amount (and I'd consider anything under $50 per saw to be "reasonable"), then I'd surely consider casting my vote for the plaintiff if I were on the jury.
Kaspersky ascribes it to Apple wanting to "control everything", but Apple already doesn't mind turning over control of about 100,000 apps to other developers already.
I think it's something else. Well, two things, actually:
First, I think that Apple wants to keep the word "virus" and the word "iPhone" from being any more linked in the consumer's mind than they have to be. If a range of anti-virus tools becomes available for the iPhone, then it implicitly says that viruses are something you need to be concerned about if you purchase an iPhone. For example, imagine you went to a singles bar and, right at the door, there were a bunch of dispensers doling out free condoms. That suddenly changes what you think about the moral fortitude of the individuals found within, as well as their venereal state.
Secondly, if anti-virus apps are available for the iPhone, then that adds a layer of protection for people who get their apps from less-reputable sources. I'm speaking, of course, about Cydia and the whole jailbreaking scene. I can only speak for myself, but I can tell you that the primary reason I haven't jailbroken my iPhone and availed myself of all of the Cydia apps is because I can't be assured of their source and that they don't have some "new special ingredient" added by the packager. The money I pay to Apple's app-store is paying for Apple to vet the apps I'm downloading.
Anti-virus tools for the iPhone would tend to "level the playing field", as it were, between the security of using legitimate apps versus using Cydia apps.
I was a little incredulous when I discovered that I could take photos with my 10MP camera in macro mode and approach the quality of my flatbed scanner.
If you can find a friend with a good digital SLR, and if you get your lighting all set right, you can probably just snap some pictures of it. MUCH faster than scanning. Then, you can use a stitching program like Hugin to bring all of the pics together and correct for distortion around the edges of the picture.
If they're that old, then you might not need the quality afforded by a really good large-format scanner.
I'm not sure I grok this notion of not storing the key with the source machine. I mean... if I can get to the machine you backed up... I don't really need to get to the backup, do I? I've got fresher data right there in front of me.
Now, if you're really trying to protect some kind of historical record of how your data has progressed over time, then that would be a reason why access to the source computer still didn't get the intruder access to what you're trying to protect... but that's a very special case.
Dunno. Maybe I'm just missing the point.
The solution is to not leave your corporate job.
You see, this is why the republicans are opposed to the principle of universal health-care. If you didn't have to keep working for a corporation in order to have suitable health coverage, then you'd be able to leave your job to strike out on your own and start your own business; giving your bright ideas a chance to thrive in the open marketplace. Something like this runs counter to the "rags to riches through hard work" that the republicans like to hold up as a fundamental principle... oh, wait!
e) IF YOU ARE A SCHOOL OFFICIAL PEEKING AT KIDS' PRIVATE MOMENTS, HOW MUCH OF A FREAKIN' BONEHEAD DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO CONFRONT THEM WITH EVIDENCE OBTAINED BY SUCH QUESTIONABLE MEANS?
Exactly! That's why I think the suitable punishment is to have this person's reproductive equipment deactivated. Someone this stupid just shouldn't breed.
This reminds me of a story about England's cracking of the German enigma codes during WW-II. Apparently, Churchill had ordered that, if any action were to be taken based upon information gleaned from the enigma intercepts, that they'd first have to have some other plausible reason for taking that action. For example, when they intercepted the location of a U-boat through the enigma messages, they couldn't just send a bunch of destroyers out there to sink it, because the Germans would have deduced that there was only one way the English could have found out. So, instead, the English arranged to have a reconnaissance aircraft just "happen" to be patrolling the area... spot the U-boat... and then they send the destroyers.
Okay, so back to the brain-dead school official. So, you decide to start surveillance on your students. Okay, I get that. You're a douchebag, but whatever. You discover some student doing something that you don't like and decide that you can't let that go unchecked. Okay. So, what you do then, is concoct some other way to accidentally and legally, "discover" what the student did, and then nail them with that evidence. So, to summarize: do the illegal snooping to discover where to go to "accidentally" discover what you already know. Jesus... how do you not know this? Don't you know any cops?!?!
Most of the posts have focused on what you'll be able or unable to see with your telescope. I'm going to suggest something different which, I think, can add to their overall understanding of astronomy. Get a plastic Davis Mark 3 sextant. They go on eBay for about $30 or so. With it, you can measure the distances between objects in the sky. Even without a telescope, there are a lot of eye-opening things you'll notice about the heavens once you start paying close attention. For example, you can measure the angle between the moon and some celestial object along it's path. You'll be stunned at how much the moon moves relative to the stars and planets from one evening to the next. You'll wonder how you never noticed that before. By calculating how many degrees it moves in 24 hours (or even in just a few hours), you can figure out how many days it would take to go 360 degrees and return to it's original position... and you'll find it comes to about 28 days... the time it takes for the moon to go through all of it's phases. Note, however, you need to do it with some star along the moon's path. Easiest to pick one very adjacent (to the east or west) to the moon on your first night of sighting.
Also, with a sextant, you can sight the north star and know you latitude at any time of night. Once you're able to do that, you could sail a ship to the latitude of your destination and then sail directly east or west, along that latitude, until you made landfall. If you also know the exact time it is (whereupon you can discuss the huge reward the English parliament offered for an accurate ship-board timepiece), you can sight the sun when it's directly overhead and know your longitude as well. It would take some very careful explaining in order to get 9th graders to understand the gist of it, but then they'd realize why all of those scientists in the renaissance concerned themselves with the motions of the planets, stars, and moon. Celestial navigation was GPS before we had GPS. Even as recently as world war II, this is how the ships and aircraft figured out where they were. Because of this, the motion of the heavens, and their impact upon maritime navigation, we a seriously big deal for centuries.
Also, set up a little sighting post in the middle of a circle... kind of like a big sundial. At sunrise and sunset, look at the sun over the post and mark the direction on the perimeter of the circle. The idea is to make a little "Stonehenge", whereupon you record the directions to the rise/set of the sun (and moon, if you want). You don't have to do it every day... maybe just once per week. That will be enough for you to see that the sun rise/set doesmove and you can even tell when the equinox is (when the rise and set are directly opposite each other on the circle) and when the solstice is (when the rise/set positions stop moving in one direction and start moving back the other way).
So, I guess to summarize, I'd focus on the stuff that makes (or, at least, made) astronomy useful. Sure, we can look through monsterous telescopes and see fantastic nebulae and clusters... and that makes for a great desktop wallpaper (yes, yes, I know... it also tells us things about their composition and about the origin of the universe and may expand our understanding of physics someday. I mean "useful" in the sense of being able to help a plain ol' person in the world do something they'd have trouble doing otherwise, like sail across an ocean, or plant their crops at the right time).
Now, as to what to do with the telescope... you might want to turn it on Jupiter and start recording the positions of the moons. I guess I'm a kind of a "know your roots" guy. Galileo first thought they were stars... finding it curious that there were so many right next to it. Then, he noticed that they moved, and sometimes disappeared. Later, he had the epiphany that they must be moons, and the "disappearing" was when they went behind or in front of Jupiter. This revelation is what caused him to realize th
I suspected this kind of thing when I started noticing those election-day photos of the rally headquarters for the various candidates. "All of the chicks in the Republican audience are always smokin' hot babes", I'd think to myself.
And then it dawned on me. If there is a correlation between appearance and political leanings, how would any causal relationship work? I think the causation of politics determining appearance is the easier one to spot. Most conservatives I know seem to place more of an emphasis on appearance, while the liberals I know place more of an emphasis on ideas; feeling that ideas will stand or fall on their own merit, regardless of the appearance of the messenger. So, liberals don't see as much need for dressing up before trying to pitch their ideas.
Now, the causation from appearance to politics is a little more subtle. My suspicion is that the people who are "less beautiful" are the ones who spend more of their time on the outside of popularity. They're they people who never made the ballot for prom queen, didn't get asked to the school dance, didn't have as many romantic opportunities. They got more of a taste of what it's like to be a "have not" or to be outside of the majority. This experience, I believe, can cause them to have the increased empathy and tendency to "look out for others" that seems to characterize liberal thought.
On the other hand, the people are very attractive or physically gifted had an easier time of things. Athletic success came easier to the "natural born athletes", and the pretty or charismatic people had an easier time getting others to back their ideas or plans. Things just went a little easier for them. Because we can only experience the world through our own eyes, I can see how the "beautiful people" could believe that (as it was for them) one only needs to apply themselves to a goal and it'll work out. This could give rise to the "anybody willing to work hard will find success" mindset that we tend to see in conservatives.
Well, this test comes closer to my personal experiences with AT&T. Frankly, I've been pretty baffled by all of the iPhone users who bag on AT&T like it was the scourge of god. I live in a semi-rural area between San Francisco and Los Angeles and I've gotta say that I get voice and data (not always 3G, but so what?) service on all but the back roads that snake through canyons. My previous provider, T-Mobile, actually did have coverage out there but hey... it's a back-road... I considered coverage there to be a "bonus".
Now, don't get me wrong... I'm ready to bolt from AT&T as much as the next guy when Apple gets some contracts with other providers, but my reasons are because of pricing (I got more minutes, same unlimited data, for $20 less per month under T-Mobile) and because AT&T isn't offering tethering and they dragged their heels on MMS messaging. But to get that worked up because you don't get 3G everywhere... just seems like your expectations are a little high. Anyway, like I said, at least report is a little more congruent with my personal experiences with AT&T, so I don't feel all that crazy anymore.
I agree. Basically, all you can really do is just CYA. Type up a letter or email to your boss which doesn't necessarily state what you think the company should do. Just have it detail your findings. Something to the effect of "I have only been able to find X legitimate licenses for software 'xyzzy', yet we have Y copies installed. Whether or not we actually purchased Y licenses at some point, we would not be able to demonstrate this if we were ever audited. It would cost $Z to bring us into full compliance with software 'xyzzy'".
In doing this, you're not taking a position on the matter. You're merely letting the boss know about a potential problem, so you're stand less of a chance of appearing as an anti-piracy crusader. The boss can either act on your information or not. Either way, you'll have documentation that they know and, if funds aren't made available to bring the company into compliance, then I think you'll be less "on the hook".
Still, your boss probably isn't an idiot. He/she will probably see your letter/e-mail for what it really is: an attempt by you to put them on the hook for this instead of you. (There's a great example of something like this in the Watergate scandal where John Dean was telling Nixon about how the situation was getting very dicey. Nixon then asked Dean to type up a full synopsis of the situation for him in writing. Dean realized that Nixon was going to use that written report to claim that he was unaware of the entire situation until initially receiving the report. THe lesson here is that, any time someone sends a written synopsis of a situation after a history of discussing it informally, there's a good chance that it's being done to have legal evidence that the recipient was aware... in anticipation of the sh*t really hitting the fan). So, I doubt your boss will appreciate your attempt to put them in the crosshairs. So, keep your resume up-to-date.
Google's auto-complete is a great source of idle amusement. Just type in "Why does" and peruse the questions from people whose vote counts just as much as yours in every election. (My favorite is "Why does my vag smell". Something about the slang term used... it's just... I dunno).
In fact, in the category of typing just part of a phrase and letting it take you where it will, I'd have to say that typing "why does" or "how does" into google comes in second only to typing in "goes wrong" in YouTube.
But to answer your original question about what it tells us about humanity: It tells us that most of them are pretty dumb.
From watching the video, it looks like they presuppose quite a high degree of dexterity on the part of the user. To resize an app window in the video, they touched three fingers to the pad, held two of them still while pinch-zooming with the third. Now, you probably don't have to hold two of the fingers still relative to each other, but this still sets the bar quite high in its requirements for independent control of your digits.
This would exclude a lot of users, and not just those who are missing a few fingers. About 10 years ago, I helped set up some web-browsing PC's in a community-college library. One of the things I hadn't anticipated was that some of the older users were lacking in coordination to the extent that it made it difficult for them to use the PC effectively. Even the task of trying to double-click fast enough to get it to register as a double-click would cause these users to twitch some of their arm muscles, causing the mouse to scoot a couple of inches in the middle of the double-click. They'd try several times to get it right, but the mouse always ended up moving off of the targeted icon before the double-click was complete.
What we eventually had to do was to provide trackballs, so that the user could move the mouse pointer to where they wanted it and then, taking their hand off of the ball part of the trackball, double-click the buttons. So, that is the level of dexterity that some users are at. So, this three-finger-pinch-zooming idea... I could see this being extremely frustrating for them.
When you buy mutual funds, in addition to any annual fees they may charge, different funds may charge you a percentage of your invested capital at the time you purchase and/or at the time you sell shares of the fund. If they charge you when you purchase, we say you're paying on the "Front-end" and, if you pay when you sell, you're paying on the "Back-end".
Back-ended funds are alluring because you get to defer the pain of paying until later, so a back-ended fund with a certain fee structure can compete with a front-ended fund with lower overall fees than the back-ended one. When the higher cost is way out there in the future, it doesn't seem so bad (one reason people buy so much crap they don't really need on credit-cards).
If you look at some of the huge costs to the U.S. these days (like dependence upon foreign oil and the cost of health-care), you realize that these are heavily back-ended arrangements.
With foreign oil, we're able to buy cheap SUV's and land-yachts. Initially, this increases demand for oil, so gas prices go up. But also... because of this need for oil, as Bill Maher says, we've got to go find other oil deposits and then kill the people living atop them. So, that means a large military, which is a huge cost which is passed on to us in taxes. (Imagine, for a moment, if we didn't need any of that middle-east oil and could afford to let the whole region just go to hell in a handbasket. Think of how much military we would not need). Now, imagine if there were a "military tax" on cars where, depending upon what the mileage of the car was, you'd be taxed some amount which would be proportional to the amount that your car would increase military spending in the future in order to ensure a supply of fuel for it. It would move those costs from the back-end to the front-end and cause people to think a little harder about purchasing vehicles which, when all costs are weighed, probably aren't as "good for you" as a more fuel-efficient one.
So, on to this notion of the snack taxes and soda taxes. This is another case of back-end payment. The fast-food establishments engineer their foods to give us instant gratification, be easy to eat a lot of ("boneless wings", anyone?), and be cheap, without much attention given to nutritional quality. The "payment" for this low nutritional quality happens on the back-end, when we're obese and have adult-onset diabetes and/or heart-disease. The path that brought us to our unhealthy condition wasn't clearly laid out, because we didn't feel that we were eating fast-food that often... and we only order the super-sized fries half the time... etc.
Now, if some of these costs were moved to the front-end, our wallets would show us that we're eating fast-food and supersizing a lot more often than we think and might get us to make some different choices. Or, if we make the same choices, at least some of the payment for our bypass surgery is being made over decades, so we won't suffer so much "sticker shock" when we get the bill for the surgery.
I know people bellyache about this being another part of the "nanny state", but we already front-end a lot of other things in our life without giving it any thought. When you visit, say, a national park... you may pay an entrance or visitor's fee. This fee goes to repair the wear and tear that you're going to put on the park by walking, riding, or driving around in it. In many cases, you're even charged proportionally to the amount of effect you're going to have (like large motor-homes being charged more than a small car, say).
I, for one, welcome our new soda-taxing overlords....
I'm not convinced they're using it for grading.
My first suspicion is that they're using to keep from being sued if some kid drops dead during dodge-ball. Never ascribe to malice what can be attributed to good, old-fashioned CYA.
The other possibility that occurred to me was that they're doing it to properly push each kid. I remember back when I was in PE, and the coach would have us all run a mile or something. "Brock Jockmore" would be done in about 6 minutes... and then he'd run another mile just to lap more people and because he was bored waiting for everyone else to finish. Meanwhile, myself and my other friends who knew 6502 and Z80 assembly language, would be walking after 200m.
Clearly, there was a wide spectrum of cardio-vascular fitness represented in the class.
It seems a shame that the coach couldn't really push the Brocks to their limit because that level of exertion would kill the other kids (or they'd puke all over the locker room or they'd just run away and take the unexcused absence on their record).
So, the optimist in me wants to believe that this is an attempt to allow the coach to see who's "sandbagging" it and who is being pushed beyond what they really should be. I envision the coach having the kids running laps or doing jumping-jacks or burpees or something and hearing the coach shout out: "Jacobs! I want you to slow down a little bit... at least for a minute. Davis! Pick up the pace a bit. Your heart-rate is only 130!". (Of course, this assumes that the heart-rate info would be immediately available on some laptop or something while the exercise is being done).
However, with today's economy, it seems a far-fetched that a school district would dole out that kind of money merely for something as seemingly trivial as maximizing individual workouts in a group setting. Again, like I said, it's more likely that some school-district attorney found some case where some school ran a kid to his/her death in PE class and concluded that it's much cheaper insurance to buy these monitors than to get sued for $xyz million.
But the notion of the school district being in cahoots with the insurance companies? No way. First off, schools are typically populated with left-leaning, corporation-disdaining types... probably more so as you go down in grades from high-school, to middle-school, to kindergarten. So, getting the faculty to sit still for this would be an uphill battle. Next, this seems like it would be a whole lot of cash for the insurance company to have to spend in order to do this on a large scale. Granted, in this economy, school districts will listen to any revenue-generating offer, but, even if they're cheap, there is an *assload* of public schools out there. So, buying off (and supplying the heart-rate monitors) to all of them would probably be more money than it's worth. Lastly, Congress is gradually moving toward passing legislation which is going to largely prohibit the insurance companies from discriminating based upon pre-existing conditions anyway, so, in a few years, they won't even be allowed to act on any of this data.
So, in conclusion, I think your tinfoil hat is too big. It's cutting off the blood supply to your brain. Trim it.
By "no solution", you mean that the readout is completely crystallized? Ba-dump-bump!
I didn't watch the whole demo, but it strikes me that the integration with the video camera is pure fluff. It knows where you are through the GPS, and, when you point your phone at the ground, it uses the compass to figure out which way to point the arrows. The app, itself, does not seem to be gleaning any location/orientation info from whatever the camera is seeing. So, the camera integration is just for an interesting "backdrop" to the info... because it's more snazzy that just a black background.
And, once you realize that it's just a program that knows the GPS locations of the metro stations... there are already plenty of apps for that for any major city for the iPhone. Next contestant, please...
Hear, hear!
I had the same reaction when McCain/Palin were yelling "Drill, Baby, Drill!". I was waiting for someone to jump up and say "Look! This is last century's technology. The writing is on the wall. To try to redouble our efforts to bring in more oil makes a little more sense than redoubling our efforts to catch more whales for their oil... or our efforts to breed bigger and more horses to pull our carriages. We're sucking on a cigarette that has already been smoked all the way down to the filter...."
There's not necessarily a mandate, but there's an opportunity for common good.
I look at it this way. If there were a human disease which was causing as much lost productivity and recovery costs as many computer viruses, the CDC and FEMA would be on red-alert. If vandals (like, the E.L.F., say) were sabotaging so much business infrastructure as to approach the losses due to computer viruses, then the FBI would have it as one of their top priorities.
In other words, the gov't doesn't react with this kind of ambivalence when real-dollar and productivity losses of this scale happen via other means. So, why shouldn't they treat it as an important "public health" issue when it's the health of their PC's and data that are involved?
Now, what I'd like to see is for the gov't to actually start providing an anti-virus product themselves... for free. It would have to be open-source, to ensure they weren't using it to snoop on citizens. But, at the mere cost of $10 million or so, the gov't could probably provide rock-solid anti-virus products, with daily signature updates and all. At a cost of about 3 cents per citizen.
Umm... that it's safe to launch bottle-rockets from your ass?