This is based on the assumption that the reviewers knew what was supposed to happen. Sometimes they have an idea, but the most interesting advancements of science come from results that are surprising or counter intuitive. Try reading Serendipity: Accidental Discoveries in Science for some good examples of why this is not a good metric for detecting fabrication.
Not really. The peer review process isn't about catching fabricated data, but about editorial quality. It may not be obvious that the two are different, but they are.
Reviewers make sure that the experiment is described clearly and completely enough for it to be replicated, which is the best way to verify the dates authenticity/accuracy. They also strive to make sure that the methodology was sound, conclusions don't over reach what the data can support, and that the discussion was complete with regards to the pre-existing relevant literature. Those checks can find fabricated data, but aren't designed to necessarily.
Journals have no way to verify that you ran a trial, never mind that the data wasn't massaged or flat out replaced with fabricated data. That part is just taken on faith because it is the authors reputation that is on the line.
No, you are confusing communism with barbarism. For hundreds of thousands of years people had absolute freedom to do what every they wanted, so long as they were strong enough to do it. As now, many saw the advantages that communities provide over "lone wolfing" it, and created societies that supported the group to much greater prosperity at the expense of individual stand outs. However, Everyone had to do there part, and those in the community that were more valuable were given greater social standing, if nothing else.
In a "True" communist society there would be no ruling elite. The rulers would be equal in every way to the man pushing a broom at an elementary school. However, I know of no historical society that lacked some sort of ruling elite, which I believe is convincing evidence that there has never been a true communist society. Just as there is no "true capitalist" society because ideological purity, while attractive to simple minded people, is incompatible with the nuances of human nature.
That's why I hate the American Primary system for choosing presidential candidates. In order to win the primary they have to brag about their ideological purity (I'm more of Republican/Democrate/Libertarian/Green/insertPartyHere than my opponents), but neither ideological extreme will have the right answer to each and every situation and so the candidates are simultaniously bragging about how unqualified they are for such an important position. Some times you need to raise taxes, sometimes you need to cut spending, and sometimes you need to do BOTH (like right now IMHO). However, in order to win a primary you have to promise to only one or the other, regardless of which is the appropriate tool to use for the current problem
I don't like responding to my own post, but it turns out a later post answered the update question. It's monthly, but only the changed maps are updated. Currently pilots have to go through the paper binder, and swap the updated maps for the old maps.
I'd be surprised if large corporate airlines didn't have someone who gets far less than a pilots salary that is responsible for updating the map books for the pilots. OTOH, if the pilots are responsible for their own map updates that's still a lot of time over the year that the pilots save using a digitally distributed map book. And since Time = Money, that would need to be incorparted into the cost benefit analysis as well.
So the iPad costs money to buy, but the paper maps don't?
What about the logistics of printing 11,000 35lb paper map books, updating them periodically (presumably on an annual basis at least), and distributing them to their pilots. That all costs real money that would need to be included in the equation. Not saying it would necessarily work out to be break even year one, but I'd expect it to take only a year or two to pay for itself.
If the manipulation was so obvious, as all good inventions are in hindsight, then why wasn't it in use prior (not prior to the iPhone release, but prior to Apple's R&D) and why wasn't it patented by someone else? An alternative to the "Finger drags the screen" could be the "Finger drags the icons" as can be seen in this demo for the new Nokia N9's application launcher.
Is clicking and dragging with a mouse patented?
Not to my knowledge, but 1-click is patented, and I believe that the iOS's multitouch features are far more unique than Amazon's 1-click patent. You can argue that 1-click is simply a worse offender, but it has withstood Several USPTO reviews and even been used successfully against Barnes & Noble (settlement with undisclosed details).
As freakin' cool and impressive as Myron Krueger's technology was, it was a different method for achieving a similar task. He was quite obviously using different technology to capture the input, what he was doing with it was very different, and ultimately they are only superficially similar.
Similar end results can be achieved by very different methods resulting in 2 uniquely patentable ideas. To take the infamous car example out, the traditional piston powered engine is very different from the rotary engine. Both combust fuel to produce a driving force for a car, but the method is sufficiently different as to be distinctly unique from each other. Hell, I'd be surprised if the 1 stroke and 2 stroke engines are sufficiently different from each other to be separately patentable.
What are the chances that the implementations back in 1976 are the same as the one Apple received the patent for in 2011?
Patents are granted for novel METHODS, and can be fairly specific. If you and I both come up with novel ways of achieving the same task, then we can BOTH receive patents that to a layman appear to be for the same thing. It's not what your patent does, but how it does it that determines whether or not the patent is novel.
That's one of the original reasons patents exist, so that methods are not lost when the tradesman that developed them dies. In exchange for a detailed explanation of how your technology works, you get a temporary monopoly on your technology, and the ability to sue the pants off of anyone that tries to copy you without paying a licensing fee.
More specifically to the Apple patent... There is nothing stoping other phone and tablet makers from developing non-infringing technology that achieves the same task, other than their own inertia/incompetence. I'd like to see more approaches to the multitouch interface than I've seen. I find it hard to believe that Apple came up with the absolute best possible implementation, and impossible to believe that they've come up with the only reasonably usable one.
Actually, they don't. A perusal of the Apple Litigation page on wikipedia gives the impression that they are the recipient of as many lawsuits as they file. Now I'm sure this isn't an exhaustive list, but remember Apple is not a Patent Troll. They actually release products based on the patents they get into lawsuits over. Competitors can license their patents or come up with a novel way to achieve the same end. Remember, patents are not for "what you do", but "How you do it". I doubt that Apple has just recieved a patent for the ONLY way to make multitouch work on a phone or tablet. Quite possibly it is the easiest, but probably not even the best.
Because talking about something in public first, does not mean that you were the first to work on it.
Apple probably has prior art that preceedes the TED talk that just wasn't public (they are infamous for their secrecy after all). I haven't looked at the patent in question, but if Apple had evidence that they were working on this prior to the TED talk in 2006, and Han didn't already have his own patent application in to the patent office, then the patent office missed nothing.
From what I've read earlier, Apple's original patent application is dated December of 2007, and incorporates some provisional applications that date back to January of 2007. That suggests that they had R&D documentation from at least 2006. Plus they purchased Fingerworks and all of it's IP back in 2005 and it would be surprising if the patent in question was not based, at least in part, on that IP, which most definitely predates a 2006 presentation at TED. Now, Han's company may have even older R&D documentation, but that would be an issue for the patent court to sort out.
It is far from clear who worked in this technology first. All that is clear is that Apple was the first to get their ducks in a row and file a patent.
No, the corn subsidies have everything to do with price control. They are on a sliding scale, and while corn prices are high (as they have been for the last 8-10 years), corn subsidies go way down with the more profitable operations not making anything off of the subsidies. Now, you can argue that an ethanol subsidy is essentially a corn subsidy, I won't even disagree with you much. However, the reasoning behind the existance of corn subsidies existance is sound.
Agricultural commodities markets fluctuate dramatically, but in a generally cyclical maner. Production is high and prices start to drop, then the market and farmers respond too slowly and prices bottem out and many farmers go out of business. This curtails supply, prices rise, but the market and farmers respond too slowly and prices rocket up out of the reach of the poor. More acres are planted, production rises... rinse and repeate.
The corn subsidy sets a floor for corn prices so that farmers don't go out of business (mostly the smaller farmers that liberals orgasim at the thought of) when supply/demand work to decrease prices below production costs. It is supposed to be structured such that it is far better for the farmer to turn a profit on his own that to rely on the subsidy, and it can also be argued that congress has failed to structure it properly in the last couple of farm bills, but the impetus behind the existance of corn subsidies is sound.
The impetus behind the ethanol subsidy on the other hand is on far more shakey ground. It supports higher corn prices, but does so by decreasing supply, and creates an antagonism between food and fuel that has not previously existed. The fact that ethanol is far less suitable than gasoline to fuel even flex fuel cars based on performance per $ or per Gallon shows that it was a pipe dream. Ethanol can be *Part* of the new energy plan, but shouldn't *Be* the new plan. Especially if it is made from food. Cellulosic ethanol (that glorious unicorn) could be excellent, but is perpetually 10 years away from being viable (and I've been watching it for the last 12 years or so).
Unfortunately, this particular front in their ongoing competition is VERY one sided. I visited Amazon's Mac software store and it is depressing. 80 to 90% of what they had for sale were "learn a second language" programs. I could see using one or two of them, but the vast majority of what I saw looks like filler, not compelling titles.
I hope their selection gets better. Competition is always preferable from a consumer perspective.
the vast majority of what they currently offer are language learning programs. Something like 70 to 80% of what I saw in their store (and I looked at every single page of it) were language learning software. I'd like to learn another language, but I can't imagine needing more than one or two of them. Especially since a lot of them are duplicates just offered by different companies.
Hopefully they can flesh out their selection now that the store is getting a little press.
Some of the earlier comments were along the lines that Apple would try to block the site out of fear of competition. See this one for an example here on/. 36261510.
I also saw several "Serves Apple Right" comments on other sites. I think the majority of people will see this as the good sign that it is, but there are always those willing to believe that every corporation is as monopolistic as say MS. Apple makes the lions share of their per user profit when said users buys the machine itself. The software money is gravy. Everyone likes gravy, but mashed potatoes are good without it too.
Granted, that's a difference that might steer a customer to one or the other store, but they are both software stores. The Mac App Store just offers more ancillary features (automated updating, centralized authentication, easy installation on all of your computers, some amount of vetting, etc.). Some like those features, and others do not. The important thing here is that you now have 2 big vendors (arguably trustworthy) selling mac software through a highly visible virtual storefront. It's a win for consumers that want choice, or software that isn't compatible with the App Store restrictions. Nobody looses in this situation from my perspective.
I find it funny that some think Apple will feel threatened by this. The Mac App Store is a recent addition, before that the vast majority of Apple software was not purchased through Apple. Outside if Apple titles (iWork, iLife, etc.), I've only purchased 3 programs through Apple's website or Mac App Store. The rest are purchased from individual vendor's websites, or someplace like Amazon. As the Mac installed base grows, there will be more than enough sales to go around for both of these stores to exist. Especially since some of the titles on the Amazon store cannot be sold through the Mac App Store due to incompatibility with the stores limits on what the app can do (Office comes to mind).
According to some reports, Amazon has been selling these downloads for a while, but has only recently decided to create a sub-store to highlight their availability. Kudo's to them, because I didn't even know they offered downloads of Mac software! This is a big win for consumers because competition breeds better services, lower prices, and greater visibility for the platform. Most mac fanbois, especially those from the dark pre-OSX days, will applaud this as a "Good Thing TM".
building ANY new powerplant is expensive. That's why Carbon trading was supposed to be so great, it would make the cost of building a new (read "More Efficient") Coal plant more attractive by way of increasing the operating costs for a plant that is 60 years old and far less efficient. 40 year old reactors are still around for a variety of reasons, including the fact that fear has made the regulatory process for getting a new nuclear plant approved impossible. It is far easier to build a couple of coal plants in the middle of a residential area than it is to build a nuclear plant in the middle of nowhere, even if you completely disregard the differences in actual construction costs.
Newer reactor designs are simpler, which means fewer points of failure, and safer. Newer designs are also less expensive to build than older designs, otherwise power companies would still be building the older designs. Power companies don't try to build newer designs just becuase they are new (much like a/.er buying a new computer, just to have a new computer), the ROI prospectives need to be better or else they'll go with a proven design that brings in greater profit.
Yeah I can't argue with that to much. While I believe that I've got a better than average grasp of statistics for my field (animal science) I had to spend 10 min just this morning explaining the differences between least square mean and a simple mean to a co-worker. However, every grad student in the animal sciences (where I've gone to school at least) has had to take at least 3 stats courses (intro, design, and regression), whereas I don't know of any MD's (doing most of the human biomedical research) who've taken a formal statistics class at the graduate level.
MD's in my opinion are like biological mechanics. They have a deep understanding of the machine they are trained to maintain, but that does not make them trained researchers. They can be amazingly competent and insightful in their own specialty, but just as ignorant as anyone else when they venture outside of that specialty. And research IS a special field IMO.
Frankly, I'm astonished that medical science has progressed as much as it has, given the horrible experimental methodology. What passes for "data" in medicine would barely qualify as noise in most engineering disciplines.
My guess is that the advances are in spite of human trials to some extent. Those using animal models instead of humans frequently have a much better grasp of statistics (although not perfect). Human trials are frequently done to verify that what the animal models are saying translates. If the difficult weeding out of erronious results is already done, then medical researchers can frequently get away with shoddy stats.
iOS wasn't "designed from the ground up" for anything; iOS is a derivative of OS X, which is a derivative of NeXT, which is a derivative Mach, Stepstone, and GNU tools, and incorporates some ideas and designs from Smalltalk-80 libraries. iOS is a slight variant of a old workstation operating system.
By that reasoning, no device is ever designed for it's specific task if any significant portion of code is reused. You are free to that opinion, but it is not one I share. Doing what Microsoft does, which is try and shoehorn desktop windows into a tablet with a minimum of new UI additions is very different from what Apple did. I've used both, I'm not basing this on "conventional wisdom" of the ignorant masses. It is my opinion that a close perusal of the underlying code with an eye for what can be removed, what should be removed, what should be rewritten, and what should be added is part and parcel of good design. Writing new code is fine, but eliminating the need for code is just as important.
Except that a 4-5 year old Apple device will have serious limitations and incompatibilities compared to current versions of iOS. Realistically, Apple users need to upgrade every 1-2 years, just like everybody else, and then the higher price very much matters.
You could very well be correct, but that very much remains to be seen. From their laptop line I have an old Powerbook G4 that was my wife's primary computer until the video card started acting up. That machine had been purchased 9 years earlier off of the then equivalent of their refurbished page (making it's initial release closer to 10 or 11 years earlier). Now my wife and I share my 1st gen Macbook Pro. I won't be running Lion based on the current reports, but I have no real need of the features in Lion for my home computer (desire for is a different issue). I don't expect to get a decade out of my 3GS, but who's to say how long a life span it will have.
Just because you and I have a deep seated desire to have the latest and greatest software/hardware doesn't mean the rest of the population does. There are about a dozen apple computers in active use by my immediate family, and the majority of them are more than 5 years old. My wife's cell phone is a 6 year old Motorola that works just fine for her. All hardware eventually becomes unsupported by the manufacturer. Apple's got a decent track record when you compare it with most of the Android licensees. Most Android phones are not officially supported (ie get software updates) by the manufacturer ever, never mind support for 2-3 years. That's not a fault of the OS, but inseparable from the cost/benefit analysis of the entire device.
Besides, discussion of the price of the phone are silly when you consider the TCO, a la 2 years of service charges. The price of the device ends up looking like a rounding error in many cases.
"Designed from the ground up" != "Entirely new code"
There is the (in)famous sentiment that the hard part of design is not figuring out what to add, but what to remove/leave out. They did a lot of engineering work to remove unnecessary code so that the battery performance was optimal. I remember when people first started discovering the underlying OS (back when it was called the iPhone OS). There was a lot of talk about entire segments of Mac OS X having been removed or in some cases replaced with new, mobile specific libraries and APIs. You may be correct, that the majority of the iOS code is also in Mac OS X, but I doubt that the reverse could also be said to be true. There is much in Mac OS X that is completely missing, or replaced in iOS. The differences are probably shrinking again, Lion is supposed to have a lot of technology originally developed for iOS, but that is iOS tech filtering back to the Mac.
1. Shooting HD video (front facing camera is probably not HD or convenient for shooting video of anyone other than yourself)
2. Video chatting with a toddler on the other end that keeps walking away from the camera. You can see her while the other camera shows her a cat chasing a string (which she is fascinated by) instead of her grand father (which she is not). [we had to do this with my daughter and father a couple of weeks ago when he got his new iPhone 4 for Verizon]
3. Augmented reality apps like the one for naming all of the constellations in the night sky.
4. Barcode scanning (easier if you can see what the scanner is seeing)
5. do i really need to go on???
YMMV, but I didn't get a first gen iPad BecauseI was waiting for one with 2 cameras. I have an iPhone 3GS and could afford to wait for the iPad that fit my needs. If this one is not a good deal for what you want, and at your price then don't buy it. Hopefully an Android will come along that does suit you better.
After a year or 2 your Ipad2 is going to have a battery life of an hour or two and you're not going to be able to replace the battery
That remains to be seen. My old Motorola RAZR's battery never aged noticeably, even after 3 years. My 18 month old iPhone, which is on 24/7, has not lost battery capacity to any noticeable extent. I can still get through my whole day, and sometimes go as long as 24 hours between charges. Unlike a laptop OS like Snow Leopard or WIndows 7, iOS was designed from the ground up for a mobile, battery dependent device. I won't argue that the batter will NEVER go bad, but the time frame remains to be seen. Could be that the combination of battery tech, and OS thriftiness will get you 4 or 5 years before the battery needs to be replaced. At that point the cost of Apple's service is not really that bad, Especially if you consider the design costs in weight and materials required for a user replaceable battery.
I may know why, but not be able to do anything to prevent the original problem. I'd try to find out the "Why" of it, but at the end of the day their attendance is not optional, and if the school is willing to help me ensure they attend, I'd be more than willing to take it. I have anecdotal experience with a sibling that tried cutting school for a while. He did it to be Cool, not for any other discernible reason. My mother took to randomly stopping by the school or home to check on him, and the uncertainty proved too much for him and he stopped cutting class. She had a job where she spent a lot of time driving through our home town, so brief stops were easy to fit into her schedule, I do not have that luxury. I don't expect to NEED this service, but would have no problem accepting the help should it prove necessary.
Oh, I don't expect it to ever be an issue. I was raised in the "More scared of parents than the teacher's" school of child rearing. I have no problem taking away everything fun and if necessary removing bedroom doors (no slamming MY doors because you are mad). I'm not even opposed to a little corporal punishment from time to time. However, if despite my best efforts one child was willful enough to decide truancy is worth the punishment, then I wouldn't have a problem fitting them with a lo-Jack, whether from the school or one I bought myself.
The ultimate flaw I see in this approach is that the parents most likely to approve are those least likely to need it.
Slashdot Mirror
This is based on the assumption that the reviewers knew what was supposed to happen. Sometimes they have an idea, but the most interesting advancements of science come from results that are surprising or counter intuitive. Try reading Serendipity: Accidental Discoveries in Science for some good examples of why this is not a good metric for detecting fabrication.
How long before we see a TV show or mystery novelist use an intentional puncturing of a battery to kill someone weeks later?
I give it two years, any other guesses?
Not really. The peer review process isn't about catching fabricated data, but about editorial quality. It may not be obvious that the two are different, but they are.
Reviewers make sure that the experiment is described clearly and completely enough for it to be replicated, which is the best way to verify the dates authenticity/accuracy. They also strive to make sure that the methodology was sound, conclusions don't over reach what the data can support, and that the discussion was complete with regards to the pre-existing relevant literature. Those checks can find fabricated data, but aren't designed to necessarily.
Journals have no way to verify that you ran a trial, never mind that the data wasn't massaged or flat out replaced with fabricated data. That part is just taken on faith because it is the authors reputation that is on the line.
No, you are confusing communism with barbarism. For hundreds of thousands of years people had absolute freedom to do what every they wanted, so long as they were strong enough to do it. As now, many saw the advantages that communities provide over "lone wolfing" it, and created societies that supported the group to much greater prosperity at the expense of individual stand outs. However, Everyone had to do there part, and those in the community that were more valuable were given greater social standing, if nothing else.
In a "True" communist society there would be no ruling elite. The rulers would be equal in every way to the man pushing a broom at an elementary school. However, I know of no historical society that lacked some sort of ruling elite, which I believe is convincing evidence that there has never been a true communist society. Just as there is no "true capitalist" society because ideological purity, while attractive to simple minded people, is incompatible with the nuances of human nature.
That's why I hate the American Primary system for choosing presidential candidates. In order to win the primary they have to brag about their ideological purity (I'm more of Republican/Democrate/Libertarian/Green/insertPartyHere than my opponents), but neither ideological extreme will have the right answer to each and every situation and so the candidates are simultaniously bragging about how unqualified they are for such an important position. Some times you need to raise taxes, sometimes you need to cut spending, and sometimes you need to do BOTH (like right now IMHO). However, in order to win a primary you have to promise to only one or the other, regardless of which is the appropriate tool to use for the current problem
I don't like responding to my own post, but it turns out a later post answered the update question. It's monthly, but only the changed maps are updated. Currently pilots have to go through the paper binder, and swap the updated maps for the old maps.
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I'd be surprised if large corporate airlines didn't have someone who gets far less than a pilots salary that is responsible for updating the map books for the pilots. OTOH, if the pilots are responsible for their own map updates that's still a lot of time over the year that the pilots save using a digitally distributed map book. And since Time = Money, that would need to be incorparted into the cost benefit analysis as well.
So the iPad costs money to buy, but the paper maps don't?
What about the logistics of printing 11,000 35lb paper map books, updating them periodically (presumably on an annual basis at least), and distributing them to their pilots. That all costs real money that would need to be included in the equation. Not saying it would necessarily work out to be break even year one, but I'd expect it to take only a year or two to pay for itself.
Is clicking and dragging with a mouse patented?
Not to my knowledge, but 1-click is patented, and I believe that the iOS's multitouch features are far more unique than Amazon's 1-click patent. You can argue that 1-click is simply a worse offender, but it has withstood Several USPTO reviews and even been used successfully against Barnes & Noble (settlement with undisclosed details).
As freakin' cool and impressive as Myron Krueger's technology was, it was a different method for achieving a similar task. He was quite obviously using different technology to capture the input, what he was doing with it was very different, and ultimately they are only superficially similar.
Similar end results can be achieved by very different methods resulting in 2 uniquely patentable ideas. To take the infamous car example out, the traditional piston powered engine is very different from the rotary engine. Both combust fuel to produce a driving force for a car, but the method is sufficiently different as to be distinctly unique from each other. Hell, I'd be surprised if the 1 stroke and 2 stroke engines are sufficiently different from each other to be separately patentable.
What kind of multitouch existed back in 1976?
What are the chances that the implementations back in 1976 are the same as the one Apple received the patent for in 2011?
Patents are granted for novel METHODS, and can be fairly specific. If you and I both come up with novel ways of achieving the same task, then we can BOTH receive patents that to a layman appear to be for the same thing. It's not what your patent does, but how it does it that determines whether or not the patent is novel.
That's one of the original reasons patents exist, so that methods are not lost when the tradesman that developed them dies. In exchange for a detailed explanation of how your technology works, you get a temporary monopoly on your technology, and the ability to sue the pants off of anyone that tries to copy you without paying a licensing fee.
More specifically to the Apple patent... There is nothing stoping other phone and tablet makers from developing non-infringing technology that achieves the same task, other than their own inertia/incompetence. I'd like to see more approaches to the multitouch interface than I've seen. I find it hard to believe that Apple came up with the absolute best possible implementation, and impossible to believe that they've come up with the only reasonably usable one.
Actually, they don't. A perusal of the Apple Litigation page on wikipedia gives the impression that they are the recipient of as many lawsuits as they file. Now I'm sure this isn't an exhaustive list, but remember Apple is not a Patent Troll. They actually release products based on the patents they get into lawsuits over. Competitors can license their patents or come up with a novel way to achieve the same end. Remember, patents are not for "what you do", but "How you do it". I doubt that Apple has just recieved a patent for the ONLY way to make multitouch work on a phone or tablet. Quite possibly it is the easiest, but probably not even the best.
Because talking about something in public first, does not mean that you were the first to work on it.
Apple probably has prior art that preceedes the TED talk that just wasn't public (they are infamous for their secrecy after all). I haven't looked at the patent in question, but if Apple had evidence that they were working on this prior to the TED talk in 2006, and Han didn't already have his own patent application in to the patent office, then the patent office missed nothing.
From what I've read earlier, Apple's original patent application is dated December of 2007, and incorporates some provisional applications that date back to January of 2007. That suggests that they had R&D documentation from at least 2006. Plus they purchased Fingerworks and all of it's IP back in 2005 and it would be surprising if the patent in question was not based, at least in part, on that IP, which most definitely predates a 2006 presentation at TED. Now, Han's company may have even older R&D documentation, but that would be an issue for the patent court to sort out.
It is far from clear who worked in this technology first. All that is clear is that Apple was the first to get their ducks in a row and file a patent.
No, the corn subsidies have everything to do with price control. They are on a sliding scale, and while corn prices are high (as they have been for the last 8-10 years), corn subsidies go way down with the more profitable operations not making anything off of the subsidies. Now, you can argue that an ethanol subsidy is essentially a corn subsidy, I won't even disagree with you much. However, the reasoning behind the existance of corn subsidies existance is sound.
Agricultural commodities markets fluctuate dramatically, but in a generally cyclical maner. Production is high and prices start to drop, then the market and farmers respond too slowly and prices bottem out and many farmers go out of business. This curtails supply, prices rise, but the market and farmers respond too slowly and prices rocket up out of the reach of the poor. More acres are planted, production rises... rinse and repeate.
The corn subsidy sets a floor for corn prices so that farmers don't go out of business (mostly the smaller farmers that liberals orgasim at the thought of) when supply/demand work to decrease prices below production costs. It is supposed to be structured such that it is far better for the farmer to turn a profit on his own that to rely on the subsidy, and it can also be argued that congress has failed to structure it properly in the last couple of farm bills, but the impetus behind the existance of corn subsidies is sound.
The impetus behind the ethanol subsidy on the other hand is on far more shakey ground. It supports higher corn prices, but does so by decreasing supply, and creates an antagonism between food and fuel that has not previously existed. The fact that ethanol is far less suitable than gasoline to fuel even flex fuel cars based on performance per $ or per Gallon shows that it was a pipe dream. Ethanol can be *Part* of the new energy plan, but shouldn't *Be* the new plan. Especially if it is made from food. Cellulosic ethanol (that glorious unicorn) could be excellent, but is perpetually 10 years away from being viable (and I've been watching it for the last 12 years or so).
Unfortunately, this particular front in their ongoing competition is VERY one sided. I visited Amazon's Mac software store and it is depressing. 80 to 90% of what they had for sale were "learn a second language" programs. I could see using one or two of them, but the vast majority of what I saw looks like filler, not compelling titles.
I hope their selection gets better. Competition is always preferable from a consumer perspective.
the vast majority of what they currently offer are language learning programs. Something like 70 to 80% of what I saw in their store (and I looked at every single page of it) were language learning software. I'd like to learn another language, but I can't imagine needing more than one or two of them. Especially since a lot of them are duplicates just offered by different companies.
Hopefully they can flesh out their selection now that the store is getting a little press.
Some of the earlier comments were along the lines that Apple would try to block the site out of fear of competition. See this one for an example here on /. 36261510.
I also saw several "Serves Apple Right" comments on other sites. I think the majority of people will see this as the good sign that it is, but there are always those willing to believe that every corporation is as monopolistic as say MS. Apple makes the lions share of their per user profit when said users buys the machine itself. The software money is gravy. Everyone likes gravy, but mashed potatoes are good without it too.
Granted, that's a difference that might steer a customer to one or the other store, but they are both software stores. The Mac App Store just offers more ancillary features (automated updating, centralized authentication, easy installation on all of your computers, some amount of vetting, etc.). Some like those features, and others do not. The important thing here is that you now have 2 big vendors (arguably trustworthy) selling mac software through a highly visible virtual storefront. It's a win for consumers that want choice, or software that isn't compatible with the App Store restrictions. Nobody looses in this situation from my perspective.
I find it funny that some think Apple will feel threatened by this. The Mac App Store is a recent addition, before that the vast majority of Apple software was not purchased through Apple. Outside if Apple titles (iWork, iLife, etc.), I've only purchased 3 programs through Apple's website or Mac App Store. The rest are purchased from individual vendor's websites, or someplace like Amazon. As the Mac installed base grows, there will be more than enough sales to go around for both of these stores to exist. Especially since some of the titles on the Amazon store cannot be sold through the Mac App Store due to incompatibility with the stores limits on what the app can do (Office comes to mind).
According to some reports, Amazon has been selling these downloads for a while, but has only recently decided to create a sub-store to highlight their availability. Kudo's to them, because I didn't even know they offered downloads of Mac software! This is a big win for consumers because competition breeds better services, lower prices, and greater visibility for the platform. Most mac fanbois, especially those from the dark pre-OSX days, will applaud this as a "Good Thing TM".
building ANY new powerplant is expensive. That's why Carbon trading was supposed to be so great, it would make the cost of building a new (read "More Efficient") Coal plant more attractive by way of increasing the operating costs for a plant that is 60 years old and far less efficient. 40 year old reactors are still around for a variety of reasons, including the fact that fear has made the regulatory process for getting a new nuclear plant approved impossible. It is far easier to build a couple of coal plants in the middle of a residential area than it is to build a nuclear plant in the middle of nowhere, even if you completely disregard the differences in actual construction costs.
/.er buying a new computer, just to have a new computer), the ROI prospectives need to be better or else they'll go with a proven design that brings in greater profit.
Newer reactor designs are simpler, which means fewer points of failure, and safer. Newer designs are also less expensive to build than older designs, otherwise power companies would still be building the older designs. Power companies don't try to build newer designs just becuase they are new (much like a
Yeah I can't argue with that to much. While I believe that I've got a better than average grasp of statistics for my field (animal science) I had to spend 10 min just this morning explaining the differences between least square mean and a simple mean to a co-worker. However, every grad student in the animal sciences (where I've gone to school at least) has had to take at least 3 stats courses (intro, design, and regression), whereas I don't know of any MD's (doing most of the human biomedical research) who've taken a formal statistics class at the graduate level.
MD's in my opinion are like biological mechanics. They have a deep understanding of the machine they are trained to maintain, but that does not make them trained researchers. They can be amazingly competent and insightful in their own specialty, but just as ignorant as anyone else when they venture outside of that specialty. And research IS a special field IMO.
Frankly, I'm astonished that medical science has progressed as much as it has, given the horrible experimental methodology. What passes for "data" in medicine would barely qualify as noise in most engineering disciplines.
My guess is that the advances are in spite of human trials to some extent. Those using animal models instead of humans frequently have a much better grasp of statistics (although not perfect). Human trials are frequently done to verify that what the animal models are saying translates. If the difficult weeding out of erronious results is already done, then medical researchers can frequently get away with shoddy stats.
iOS wasn't "designed from the ground up" for anything; iOS is a derivative of OS X, which is a derivative of NeXT, which is a derivative Mach, Stepstone, and GNU tools, and incorporates some ideas and designs from Smalltalk-80 libraries. iOS is a slight variant of a old workstation operating system.
By that reasoning, no device is ever designed for it's specific task if any significant portion of code is reused. You are free to that opinion, but it is not one I share. Doing what Microsoft does, which is try and shoehorn desktop windows into a tablet with a minimum of new UI additions is very different from what Apple did. I've used both, I'm not basing this on "conventional wisdom" of the ignorant masses. It is my opinion that a close perusal of the underlying code with an eye for what can be removed, what should be removed, what should be rewritten, and what should be added is part and parcel of good design. Writing new code is fine, but eliminating the need for code is just as important.
Except that a 4-5 year old Apple device will have serious limitations and incompatibilities compared to current versions of iOS. Realistically, Apple users need to upgrade every 1-2 years, just like everybody else, and then the higher price very much matters.
You could very well be correct, but that very much remains to be seen. From their laptop line I have an old Powerbook G4 that was my wife's primary computer until the video card started acting up. That machine had been purchased 9 years earlier off of the then equivalent of their refurbished page (making it's initial release closer to 10 or 11 years earlier). Now my wife and I share my 1st gen Macbook Pro. I won't be running Lion based on the current reports, but I have no real need of the features in Lion for my home computer (desire for is a different issue). I don't expect to get a decade out of my 3GS, but who's to say how long a life span it will have.
Just because you and I have a deep seated desire to have the latest and greatest software/hardware doesn't mean the rest of the population does. There are about a dozen apple computers in active use by my immediate family, and the majority of them are more than 5 years old. My wife's cell phone is a 6 year old Motorola that works just fine for her. All hardware eventually becomes unsupported by the manufacturer. Apple's got a decent track record when you compare it with most of the Android licensees. Most Android phones are not officially supported (ie get software updates) by the manufacturer ever, never mind support for 2-3 years. That's not a fault of the OS, but inseparable from the cost/benefit analysis of the entire device.
Besides, discussion of the price of the phone are silly when you consider the TCO, a la 2 years of service charges. The price of the device ends up looking like a rounding error in many cases.
"Designed from the ground up" != "Entirely new code"
There is the (in)famous sentiment that the hard part of design is not figuring out what to add, but what to remove/leave out. They did a lot of engineering work to remove unnecessary code so that the battery performance was optimal. I remember when people first started discovering the underlying OS (back when it was called the iPhone OS). There was a lot of talk about entire segments of Mac OS X having been removed or in some cases replaced with new, mobile specific libraries and APIs. You may be correct, that the majority of the iOS code is also in Mac OS X, but I doubt that the reverse could also be said to be true. There is much in Mac OS X that is completely missing, or replaced in iOS. The differences are probably shrinking again, Lion is supposed to have a lot of technology originally developed for iOS, but that is iOS tech filtering back to the Mac.
1. Shooting HD video (front facing camera is probably not HD or convenient for shooting video of anyone other than yourself)
2. Video chatting with a toddler on the other end that keeps walking away from the camera. You can see her while the other camera shows her a cat chasing a string (which she is fascinated by) instead of her grand father (which she is not). [we had to do this with my daughter and father a couple of weeks ago when he got his new iPhone 4 for Verizon]
3. Augmented reality apps like the one for naming all of the constellations in the night sky.
4. Barcode scanning (easier if you can see what the scanner is seeing) 5. do i really need to go on???
YMMV, but I didn't get a first gen iPad BecauseI was waiting for one with 2 cameras. I have an iPhone 3GS and could afford to wait for the iPad that fit my needs. If this one is not a good deal for what you want, and at your price then don't buy it. Hopefully an Android will come along that does suit you better.
After a year or 2 your Ipad2 is going to have a battery life of an hour or two and you're not going to be able to replace the battery
That remains to be seen. My old Motorola RAZR's battery never aged noticeably, even after 3 years. My 18 month old iPhone, which is on 24/7, has not lost battery capacity to any noticeable extent. I can still get through my whole day, and sometimes go as long as 24 hours between charges. Unlike a laptop OS like Snow Leopard or WIndows 7, iOS was designed from the ground up for a mobile, battery dependent device. I won't argue that the batter will NEVER go bad, but the time frame remains to be seen. Could be that the combination of battery tech, and OS thriftiness will get you 4 or 5 years before the battery needs to be replaced. At that point the cost of Apple's service is not really that bad, Especially if you consider the design costs in weight and materials required for a user replaceable battery.
I may know why, but not be able to do anything to prevent the original problem. I'd try to find out the "Why" of it, but at the end of the day their attendance is not optional, and if the school is willing to help me ensure they attend, I'd be more than willing to take it. I have anecdotal experience with a sibling that tried cutting school for a while. He did it to be Cool, not for any other discernible reason. My mother took to randomly stopping by the school or home to check on him, and the uncertainty proved too much for him and he stopped cutting class. She had a job where she spent a lot of time driving through our home town, so brief stops were easy to fit into her schedule, I do not have that luxury. I don't expect to NEED this service, but would have no problem accepting the help should it prove necessary.
Oh, I don't expect it to ever be an issue. I was raised in the "More scared of parents than the teacher's" school of child rearing. I have no problem taking away everything fun and if necessary removing bedroom doors (no slamming MY doors because you are mad). I'm not even opposed to a little corporal punishment from time to time. However, if despite my best efforts one child was willful enough to decide truancy is worth the punishment, then I wouldn't have a problem fitting them with a lo-Jack, whether from the school or one I bought myself.
The ultimate flaw I see in this approach is that the parents most likely to approve are those least likely to need it.