I don't expect to see police officers in Tanks, or wearing flack jackets and kevlar helmets, wielding M-16s. At least not on a day to day basis. So what makes it even remotely ok to use the same level of tech/hardware in the skies? Just because we can't see it?? But for day to day business, make the cops walk their beat.
San Bernadino County has an area of 20,000 square miles. There are 106 counties in the US over 4,000 square miles each, almost all in the far West. That is a hell of a beat to walk. List of the largest counties in the United States by area
There is a hierarchy in American state and law enforcement that reflects local traditions and values. Places where the sheriff's deputy will be of no more consequence than Barney Fife. Others where you will want and expect him to take the lead.
If you aren't aware of distinctions like these you won't know what the hell is going on or where the really important decisions are being made.
Wouldn't it be great if the U.S. started a public works program (not unlike the Hoover Dam project) that provided unemployed Americans jobs building solar/battery systems?
Yeah. Great.
Soon after the dam was authorized, increasing numbers of unemployed converged on southern Nevada. Las Vegas, then a small city of some 5,000, saw between 10,000 and 20,000 unemployed descend on it. A government camp was established for surveyors and other personnel near the dam site; this soon became surrounded by a squatters' camp. Known as McKeeversville, the camp was home to men hoping for work on the project, together with their families. Another camp, on the flats along the Colorado River, was officially called Williamsville, but was known to its inhabitants as Ragtown.
Once construction began, Six Companies hired large numbers of workers, with more than 3,000 on the payroll by 1932 and with employment peaking at 5,251 in July 1934 "Mongolian" (Chinese) labor was forbidden by the construction contract, while the number of blacks employed by Six Companies never exceeded thirty, mostly lowest-pay-scale laborers in a segregated crew, who were issued separate water buckets.
The site of Hoover Dam endures extremely hot weather, and the summer of 1931 was especially torrid, with the daytime high averaging 119.9 F (48.8 C) Sixteen workers and other riverbank residents died of heat prostration between June 25 and July 26.
Hoover Dam had jobs to offer non-union labor able and to work under extremely harsh conditions for very little pay. The first question to ask then is what sort of labor force is available --- and needed --- to build solar power?
the computer illiterate would find things like cloud storage useful for when they kill their computers and don't have to copy everything over, but they're computer illiterate and can't take advantage of those features.
What is so difficult about using SkyDrive?
There is a market there, unfortunately Windows 8 is sufficiently terrible that I'm not sure anyone really wants windows 8 devices.
Windows 8 puts the application --- the task --- front and center.
Not the browser. Not the desktop.
That may be closer to the truth of how ordinary people are using their PCs and mobile devices --- and how they want to use them --- then the geek may be willing to accept.
For FOSS it means that the battle for placement on the desktop has ended and the battle for placement in the app store has begun.
People keep comparing the deaths per capita from nuclear to things like car and plane accidents and especially other methods of power generation. I would suggest its NOT A USEFUL METRIC.
Our society has the means to absorb the geographically dispersed individual and and handfuls of people lost in car wrecks each day all over the place. Even the the total number is large, its dilute and the long term loss of economic resources such as land is minimal. The odd air craft accident that claims a few hundred is more painful but still manageable.
You saw the same argument made here with respect to the WTC.
Without any understanding of the social and economic impact of an event on that scale even on a city the size of New York.
There is so much of accessible math theory locked behind the wall of algebra. Mathematics is BORING until you can show people WHY they are learning this. Most math classes i have taken are just total wrote calculation with no rhyme or reason.
This is more or less the kind of thinking that leads to the New Math.
In their haste to jump on the new-math bandwagon, school districts frequently forgot the expensive lesson that Beberman had learned: Teachers must be nurtured and retrained in new-math techniques. Many teachers balked. They didn't understand new math or why they were supposed to teach a roundabout way to answers that rules and procedures produced instantly. And for every first-grade teacher who introduced Cuisenaire rods --- colored blocks used for the tactile discovery of fractions and division ---a frightened traditionalist refused to budge.
Beberman heard their distress and gamely spoke out on their behalf. He knew that if new math was taught badly because teachers were unprepared, and if drills were mistakenly abandoned as unnecessary, children would not learn basic computation.
Critics, generally ignored until now, began to find their way into the same newspaper and magazine articles that had once been so effusive. Morris Kline, chairman of the mathematics department at New York University, complained the loudest and longest, charging that new math was hopelessly abstract, elitist, confusing, and impractical. (His 1974 book Why Johnny Can't Add was considered by some to be new math's coup de grace.) The satirist Art Buchwald joined the fray with an essay titled ''Why Parents Can't Add.'' Tom Lehrer wrote a song about new-math subtraction --- a song Beberman good-naturedly previewed to make sure it was mathematically correct --- with lines like ''The important thing is to understand what you're doing, not get the right answer.''
While no critic advocated a return to the old days, each of the barbs had just enough truth to wound.
Distance learning programs are as old as broadcast radio.
Correspondence programs (with meaningful academic credentials) are at least as old as the University of London's Extremal Programme which began in 1858.
The geek seems to think that something magical happens when he waves his wand online.
That past experience offers no guide to what works and what doesn't.
I think that's great and I'll seek out such advice and take it into considerations; making me legally bound to adhere to every jot and tittle of that advice goes beyond helping me make my home safe and becomes an unreasonable intrusion into my private life.
It is not advice.
It is a legal requirement.
It is about everyone who enters your house.
If the only thing you give a damn about is the pay out from the lawsuit, you are not going to be welcomed as a neighbor.
It is about every one who has a financial stake in your house.
Today, with great tablets, like the Nexus 7, so inexpense, why bother with proprietary, crippled, vendor-locked devices?
For a many of the people who shop Amazon.com, the Kindle fits comfortably into place --- it meets their needs ---- and they don't give a damn about the geek.
Rosa Parks accepted the risks and the consequences of being arrested.
She did not know nor could she have known that the NAACP would chose her as their test case. There were other candidates.
Think about that for a moment. The ones who were left on their own.
Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job as a seamstress in a local department store. Eventually, she moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she briefly found similar work.
First off Grannies barely know how to use a computer at all. How would they find this site?
If Gran is 65 now, she was 48 when Win 7 was released and 34 when the IBM PC was released.
In 1971, a third of all working women in the United States were secretaries, and they could see that word processing would have an impact on their careers. Some manufacturers, according to a Times article, urged that "the concept of 'word processing' could be the answer to Women's Lib advocates' prayers. Word processing will replace the 'traditional' secretary and give women new administrative roles in business and industry."
The rudimentary Wang 1200 machine was the precursor of the Wang Office Information System (OIS), introduced in 1976. It was a true office machine, affordable by organizations such as medium-sized law firms, and easily learned and operated by secretarial staff.
The idea that you could use color filters to record color images on stable black and white media is as old as photography itself. The difficulty was always in maintaining alignment and color balance in print or projection.
The color photograph can change the way you look at an entire era:
On the plus side, you're absolutely correct: getting the gas-guzzlers to improve MPG is vastly better (more effective) than getting another 10% out of a Prius.
That depends on the number of SUVs on the road, the mileage they travel, and the purposes they serve.
The heavy truck used only on the weekends is not going the impact the numbers very much. The commuter car on the road two hours a day, six times a week, will.
It was intended as a joke, not as an insult. And while it really was said as a joke, it is sadly true that many people use their vehicles as a way to overcome or overcompensate some of their inadequacies.
Others have people to move. Cargo to move. They need a rugged, reliable, all-weather, all-terrain, vehicle. That's your market.
The author did some quick calculations and found that at the current rate of growth of traffic that by the year 1920, the streets of NY would be 6' deep in horse manure. Their solution was that the city needed to hire more people to clean the streets.
The Times was more likely to have been backing mass transit, the truck and the automobile. Horses produce enormous amounts of liquid and solid waste for their numbers. Disease was a problem. Rats were a problem. Simply clearing the streets of dead animals was a problem.
I don't know the specifics about why this guy has a camera attached to his head, but it's a part of his day to day life and has medical documentation confirming that the device is attached to his head.
Currently the EyeTap consists of the eyepiece used to display the images, the keypad with which the user can interface with the EyeTap getting it to perform the desired tasks, a CPU which can be attached to most articles of clothing and in some cases even a WiFi device so the user can access the internet and online data.
This is a prosthetic sight and memory augmentation device he wears due to a medical condition !
What medical condition?
The general impression I have of Steve Mann is that is he is capable of spectacular self promotion.
Steve Mann can sound strange."For two years, I had 30,000 people inside my head, watching what I did every day, altering my reality, offering suggestions on what I should do next," recalls the University of Toronto professor. "I finally had to shut it down, though. My head space got a little too crowded."No, Mann's not crazy. From 1994 to 1996, while a grad student at MIT in Boston, he streamed live video directly. 2000-03-26.
Mann, a 41-year-old engineering professor at the University of Toronto, spends hours every day viewing the world through that little monitor in front of his eye -- so much so that going without the apparatus often leaves him feeling nauseous, unsteady, naked.
Mann has created performance art by shooting video in stores that prohibit it, using handheld cameras more noticeable than the "EyeTap" ocular computing system he normally wears. When employees tell him filming isn't allowed, Mann points to the stores' own surveillance cameras behind darkened domes in the ceiling.
Then he tells the employees that "HIS manager" makes him film public places for HIS security -- how does he know, he tells them, that the fire exits aren't chained shut? -- and that they'll have to talk to HIS manager.
His behavior in such showdowns generally provokes hostility, confusion or resigned shrugs.
I worked at Dulles airport in the 80's when the Enterprise was just setting out in the woods at the back of the airport property.
Air & Space at Dulles
The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles International Airport is the companion facility to the Museum on the National Mall. The building opened in December, 2003, and provides enough space for the Smithsonian to display the thousands of aviation and space artifacts that cannot be exhibited on the National Mall. The two sites together showcase the largest collection of aviation and space artifacts in the world.
The James S. McDonnell Space Hangar opened in November 2004 and displays hundreds of famous spacecraft, rockets, satellites and space-related small artifacts. The centerpiece of the space hangar is the Space Shuttle Discovery. Other space artifacts include the Gemini VII space capsule; the Mobile Quarantine Unit used upon the return of the Apollo 11 crew; and a Redstone rocket.
Between the Discovery and the overlook is the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest jet ever built.
Other unique artifacts exhibited in the Boeing Aviation Hangar include:
the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay.
the Boeing 367-80 or Dash 80, the prototype 707, America's first jet airliner.
the Aichi Seiran Japanese WWII bomber, the only remaining Seiran.
the Boeing 307 Stratoliner Clipper Flying Cloud, the first airliner with a pressurized cabin.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't expect to see police officers in Tanks, or wearing flack jackets and kevlar helmets, wielding M-16s. At least not on a day to day basis. So what makes it even remotely ok to use the same level of tech/hardware in the skies? Just because we can't see it?? But for day to day business, make the cops walk their beat.
New York City police had a volunteer air service in 1918. Police Aviation - a chronology
The geek has no sense of geography.
San Bernadino County has an area of 20,000 square miles. There are 106 counties in the US over 4,000 square miles each, almost all in the far West. That is a hell of a beat to walk. List of the largest counties in the United States by area
There is a hierarchy in American state and law enforcement that reflects local traditions and values. Places where the sheriff's deputy will be of no more consequence than Barney Fife. Others where you will want and expect him to take the lead.
If you aren't aware of distinctions like these you won't know what the hell is going on or where the really important decisions are being made.
People that want sites like Demonoid to survive and therefore support them by viewing ads?
The geek sees an add that helps pay the bills. The judge sees a profit-making web site.
Wouldn't it be great if the U.S. started a public works program (not unlike the Hoover Dam project) that provided unemployed Americans jobs building solar/battery systems?
Yeah. Great.
Soon after the dam was authorized, increasing numbers of unemployed converged on southern Nevada. Las Vegas, then a small city of some 5,000, saw between 10,000 and 20,000 unemployed descend on it. A government camp was established for surveyors and other personnel near the dam site; this soon became surrounded by a squatters' camp. Known as McKeeversville, the camp was home to men hoping for work on the project, together with their families. Another camp, on the flats along the Colorado River, was officially called Williamsville, but was known to its inhabitants as Ragtown.
Once construction began, Six Companies hired large numbers of workers, with more than 3,000 on the payroll by 1932 and with employment peaking at 5,251 in July 1934 "Mongolian" (Chinese) labor was forbidden by the construction contract, while the number of blacks employed by Six Companies never exceeded thirty, mostly lowest-pay-scale laborers in a segregated crew, who were issued separate water buckets.
The site of Hoover Dam endures extremely hot weather, and the summer of 1931 was especially torrid, with the daytime high averaging 119.9 F (48.8 C) Sixteen workers and other riverbank residents died of heat prostration between June 25 and July 26.
Hoover Dam
Hoover Dam had jobs to offer non-union labor able and to work under extremely harsh conditions for very little pay. The first question to ask then is what sort of labor force is available --- and needed --- to build solar power?
the computer illiterate would find things like cloud storage useful for when they kill their computers and don't have to copy everything over, but they're computer illiterate and can't take advantage of those features.
What is so difficult about using SkyDrive?
There is a market there, unfortunately Windows 8 is sufficiently terrible that I'm not sure anyone really wants windows 8 devices.
Windows 8 puts the application --- the task --- front and center.
Not the browser. Not the desktop.
That may be closer to the truth of how ordinary people are using their PCs and mobile devices --- and how they want to use them --- then the geek may be willing to accept.
For FOSS it means that the battle for placement on the desktop has ended and the battle for placement in the app store has begun.
Time to switch to something where we actually know what the software is doing.
Now all have to do is convince friends, family, business and professional contacts to abandon Skpe. Something which is not going to happen.
People keep comparing the deaths per capita from nuclear to things like car and plane accidents and especially other methods of power generation. I would suggest its NOT A USEFUL METRIC.
Our society has the means to absorb the geographically dispersed individual and and handfuls of people lost in car wrecks each day all over the place. Even the the total number is large, its dilute and the long term loss of economic resources such as land is minimal. The odd air craft accident that claims a few hundred is more painful but still manageable.
You saw the same argument made here with respect to the WTC.
Without any understanding of the social and economic impact of an event on that scale even on a city the size of New York.
There is so much of accessible math theory locked behind the wall of algebra. Mathematics is BORING until you can show people WHY they are learning this. Most math classes i have taken are just total wrote calculation with no rhyme or reason.
This is more or less the kind of thinking that leads to the New Math.
In their haste to jump on the new-math bandwagon, school districts frequently forgot the expensive lesson that Beberman had learned: Teachers must be nurtured and retrained in new-math techniques. Many teachers balked. They didn't understand new math or why they were supposed to teach a roundabout way to answers that rules and procedures produced instantly. And for every first-grade teacher who introduced Cuisenaire rods --- colored blocks used for the tactile discovery of fractions and division ---a frightened traditionalist refused to budge.
Beberman heard their distress and gamely spoke out on their behalf. He knew that if new math was taught badly because teachers were unprepared, and if drills were mistakenly abandoned as unnecessary, children would not learn basic computation.
Critics, generally ignored until now, began to find their way into the same newspaper and magazine articles that had once been so effusive. Morris Kline, chairman of the mathematics department at New York University, complained the loudest and longest, charging that new math was hopelessly abstract, elitist, confusing, and impractical. (His 1974 book Why Johnny Can't Add was considered by some to be new math's coup de grace.) The satirist Art Buchwald joined the fray with an essay titled ''Why Parents Can't Add.'' Tom Lehrer wrote a song about new-math subtraction --- a song Beberman good-naturedly previewed to make sure it was mathematically correct --- with lines like ''The important thing is to understand what you're doing, not get the right answer.''
While no critic advocated a return to the old days, each of the barbs had just enough truth to wound.
Whatever Happened To New Math?
Online education is in its infancy.
Distance learning programs are as old as broadcast radio.
Correspondence programs (with meaningful academic credentials) are at least as old as the University of London's Extremal Programme which began in 1858.
The geek seems to think that something magical happens when he waves his wand online.
That past experience offers no guide to what works and what doesn't.
I think that's great and I'll seek out such advice and take it into considerations; making me legally bound to adhere to every jot and tittle of that advice goes beyond helping me make my home safe and becomes an unreasonable intrusion into my private life.
It is not advice.
It is a legal requirement.
It is about everyone who enters your house.
If the only thing you give a damn about is the pay out from the lawsuit, you are not going to be welcomed as a neighbor.
It is about every one who has a financial stake in your house.
The mortgage lender. The insurance company.
Whereas you kept 100% revenues before, now you get to pay us 30% off the top....
You can be a very good programmer and a very bad salesman.
To move your Windows product you had to place it where people would see it. Where it would stand out from the crowd. Places like Download,com
You wanted entry into big box retail? Think 60 percent off the top and you'll be closer to the truth, .
Today, with great tablets, like the Nexus 7, so inexpense, why bother with proprietary, crippled, vendor-locked devices?
For a many of the people who shop Amazon.com, the Kindle fits comfortably into place --- it meets their needs ---- and they don't give a damn about the geek.
The bus driver said to Rosa Parks.
Rosa Parks accepted the risks and the consequences of being arrested.
She did not know nor could she have known that the NAACP would chose her as their test case. There were other candidates.
Think about that for a moment. The ones who were left on their own.
Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job as a seamstress in a local department store. Eventually, she moved to Detroit, Michigan, where she briefly found similar work.
Rosa Parks
8 meg of RAM was the minimum requirement to run Win95, not typical, which I would say was closer to 32 meg.
The price of 32 MB of RAM in 1996 --- as advertised in BYTE was --- $550. Memory Prices (1957-2012)
$756, adjusted for inflation (2010) The Inflation Calculator
I would be enormously surprised if the mass market Win 95 PC averaged more that 8 MB of RAM.
Were these people on US soil when they performed these acts?
In the simplest of cases, jurisdiction lies where the body falls.
Triggering your infernal device from across a state or international border is not a get out of jail free card.
First off Grannies barely know how to use a computer at all. How would they find this site?
If Gran is 65 now, she was 48 when Win 7 was released and 34 when the IBM PC was released.
In 1971, a third of all working women in the United States were secretaries, and they could see that word processing would have an impact on their careers. Some manufacturers, according to a Times article, urged that "the concept of 'word processing' could be the answer to Women's Lib advocates' prayers. Word processing will replace the 'traditional' secretary and give women new administrative roles in business and industry."
The rudimentary Wang 1200 machine was the precursor of the Wang Office Information System (OIS), introduced in 1976. It was a true office machine, affordable by organizations such as medium-sized law firms, and easily learned and operated by secretarial staff.
Word processor
Allow the user to design their own product.
Apple profits from the simple fact that users are more than willing to pay designers to design things.
Familiarity breeds content.
The device that can be shared --- the device thar everyone knows how to use.
That won't trip up the temp that has to cover for you on the days you call in sick with the flu.
Black and white prints are the safest picture types.
The LOC has restored color photographs from the Czarist Russia of 1910. The Empire That Was Russia
The idea that you could use color filters to record color images on stable black and white media is as old as photography itself. The difficulty was always in maintaining alignment and color balance in print or projection.
The color photograph can change the way you look at an entire era:
"Color Photographs From The New Deal (1939-1943)" , Bound for Glory: America in Colour 1939-1943
The details can be telling:
in the thirties, bulk flour and seed was sold in sacks printed in floral patterns and prints suitable for dress making, as you will see here,
He's floating on over a million dollars in sales. The crazy-high cost of certification is extortion,
When you are looking at a million dollar return to the developer, the price of certification scarcely seems extortionate.
On the plus side, you're absolutely correct: getting the gas-guzzlers to improve MPG is vastly better (more effective) than getting another 10% out of a Prius.
That depends on the number of SUVs on the road, the mileage they travel, and the purposes they serve. The heavy truck used only on the weekends is not going the impact the numbers very much. The commuter car on the road two hours a day, six times a week, will.
It was intended as a joke, not as an insult. And while it really was said as a joke, it is sadly true that many people use their vehicles as a way to overcome or overcompensate some of their inadequacies.
Others have people to move. Cargo to move. They need a rugged, reliable, all-weather, all-terrain, vehicle. That's your market.
The author did some quick calculations and found that at the current rate of growth of traffic that by the year 1920, the streets of NY would be 6' deep in horse manure. Their solution was that the city needed to hire more people to clean the streets.
The Times was more likely to have been backing mass transit, the truck and the automobile. Horses produce enormous amounts of liquid and solid waste for their numbers. Disease was a problem. Rats were a problem. Simply clearing the streets of dead animals was a problem.
Lokalization/translation and tax can not explain the whole difference.
But population may.
China 1.3 billion. US 312 million. Australia 23 million. Denmark 6 million
I don't know the specifics about why this guy has a camera attached to his head, but it's a part of his day to day life and has medical documentation confirming that the device is attached to his head.
He has never worn these glasses all the time.
They are not attached to his head. Computer's eye view
Currently the EyeTap consists of the eyepiece used to display the images, the keypad with which the user can interface with the EyeTap getting it to perform the desired tasks, a CPU which can be attached to most articles of clothing and in some cases even a WiFi device so the user can access the internet and online data.
EyeTap
This is a prosthetic sight and memory augmentation device he wears due to a medical condition !
What medical condition?
The general impression I have of Steve Mann is that is he is capable of spectacular self promotion.
Steve Mann can sound strange."For two years, I had 30,000 people inside my head, watching what I did every day, altering my reality, offering suggestions on what I should do next," recalls the University of Toronto professor. "I finally had to shut it down, though. My head space got a little too crowded."No, Mann's not crazy. From 1994 to 1996, while a grad student at MIT in Boston, he streamed live video directly. 2000-03-26.
EyeTap
Mann, a 41-year-old engineering professor at the University of Toronto, spends hours every day viewing the world through that little monitor in front of his eye -- so much so that going without the apparatus often leaves him feeling nauseous, unsteady, naked.
Mann has created performance art by shooting video in stores that prohibit it, using handheld cameras more noticeable than the "EyeTap" ocular computing system he normally wears. When employees tell him filming isn't allowed, Mann points to the stores' own surveillance cameras behind darkened domes in the ceiling.
Then he tells the employees that "HIS manager" makes him film public places for HIS security -- how does he know, he tells them, that the fire exits aren't chained shut? -- and that they'll have to talk to HIS manager.
His behavior in such showdowns generally provokes hostility, confusion or resigned shrugs.
Computer's eye view
I worked at Dulles airport in the 80's when the Enterprise was just setting out in the woods at the back of the airport property.
Air & Space at Dulles
The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington Dulles International Airport is the companion facility to the Museum on the National Mall. The building opened in December, 2003, and provides enough space for the Smithsonian to display the thousands of aviation and space artifacts that cannot be exhibited on the National Mall. The two sites together showcase the largest collection of aviation and space artifacts in the world.
The James S. McDonnell Space Hangar opened in November 2004 and displays hundreds of famous spacecraft, rockets, satellites and space-related small artifacts. The centerpiece of the space hangar is the Space Shuttle Discovery. Other space artifacts include the Gemini VII space capsule; the Mobile Quarantine Unit used upon the return of the Apollo 11 crew; and a Redstone rocket.
Between the Discovery and the overlook is the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest jet ever built.
Other unique artifacts exhibited in the Boeing Aviation Hangar include:
the Boeing B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay.
the Boeing 367-80 or Dash 80, the prototype 707, America's first jet airliner.
the Aichi Seiran Japanese WWII bomber, the only remaining Seiran.
the Boeing 307 Stratoliner Clipper Flying Cloud, the first airliner with a pressurized cabin.
a Concorde supersonic airliner.
National Air & Space Museum The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center