Slashing postdoc funding may reduce grad students and training, but is that the real goal here? The goal that I'm interested in is doing the most research and gaining the most understanding about biology, science, etc, etc. Postdocs in fact are the MOST PRODUCTIVE workers in research in terms of research output -- they are much cheaper than faculty, they are well-trained and do what they are doing in the lab, they don't have to worry about grants, admin, teaching, etc. The most productive labs are the ones that have the most postdocs. And from the point of view of the individual, one's BEST YEARS are the postdoc years, for these same reasons.
so if the goal is reducing trainees, fine, slash way. But if you actually want research RESULTS and productivity, you need to insure a healthy and plentiful stream of well-trained postdocs.
if anything, the LEAST effective people in the chain are the SENIOR faculty, they are the most expensive and do the least research. Cut there if you want to cut something... (which I don't, I'd rather cut bombs and missles... its ridiculous that the monies we are talking about saving and slashing amount to a couple of bombs and missles...)
The report cited is quite thoughtful and accurate in identifying trends, inefficiencies and recommends important solutions. Unfortunately the bulk of them cannot be implemented while maintaining US biomedical research excellence without a greater infusion of funds from Congress -- the system is the way it is partly because the research community is already being seriously squeezed for funding. If the Repubs/Romney have their way (Mitt has talked about a 20-30% slashing of NIH funding), then it really doesn't matter, as the whole system is headed for collapse and the US will truly fall behind and lose a decade or two at the least. The report is correct in looking at trends that span a decade, but even 4 years of a slashed budget would seriously cripple the system and drive away top talent. It is already happen even with the current NIH funding situation (very poor, less than 10% chance for any grant application to be funded).
I dont see MS benefiting for buying either. MS has gotten what it needs from its deal with Nokia. If WP doesnt do well under Nokia, RIM isnt going to help.
A kids trying hes damndest and getting a B is better then a kid getting an easy A.
Sorry, I want to reward the medical student or the mechanical engineer that gets the "easy A" because he/she truly knows the stuff rather than the student that "makes the most improvement"...
sad but true, kids, students, humans are not born equally endowed with smarts and ease of acquiring skills. The flaw of "No child gets left behind", is no child gets ahead. The best and brightest should be given every means to do as best they can and be rewarded.
the rest, sure educate them too, its important for democracy to work, but not at the expense of holding back or not rewarding true excellence, even if it comes easy to a student...
That's because you obviously haven't study or understood the survival value of societies, culture, altruism, cooperative behaviors, cultural memory and learning, etc.
On the flip side, the impact and extensiveness of cultural influences, societal behaviors, etc is far, far more intricate and developed than any original religious teachings have ever specified. So unless you are going to invoke the notion that God is surreptitiously guiding the life of every single individual, including all the "non-believers" (and I understand that many religions might claim this), including the believers of other religious traditions than your own, the overt ORIGINAL religious sources are insufficient to explain human cultural development and impact.
the granting of monopoly on an idea is the basis for a patent, not copyright, so the notion that copyrighting an API would allow for the monopolizing ideas is NOT a justification for allowing the copyrighting of APIs -- if anything it is an argument against it...
Yeah right. Those patents are, indirectly, the judge's source of income, or at least his raison d'etre.
That's silly... like arguing that a criminal judge shouldn't put away criminals or only give them minimal sentences because adjudicating criminal cases is "the judge's source of income", and the more crime there is, the better...
there is PLENTY of patent law cases and IP cases to have to deal with, so no need to bend over to help out software patent trolls just to keep "business"/income flowing...
The fact is that nobody is really going to win here... Fox and all of network TV will raises prices at least for Dish, so then customers will have to pay more. The cablecos will raise prices regardless, but will also cap their broadband ISP business, so Hulu and Netflix will be hurt, again hurting customers.
In the end, is all about media/content wanting more money than customers can afford... and the 5% of quality entertainment will suffering as the 95% of the junk also gets slashed (no loss there).
We should all go back to board games and local theatre...
I would LOVE to see a judge walk out, call the CEOs to the bench, grab them both by the ear and yell "PLAY NICE OR I'LL TAKE BOTH YOUR TOYS AWAY" and then dismiss these ridiculous lawsuits.
Dismissal? What the judge should do is take away both set of patents!
Any laptop.with an internal.webcam or a $10 usb webcam should be fine.
However a simpler solution is a $200 Samsung Galaxy Tab or other cheapo Android tablet.
Your post amply shows exactly why we *do* need CS depts. You have obviously no clue what CS is about, you think it is just math+engr with "a little" software thrown in. You think that "a computer is a very specific electronic tool". How quaint...
The SCIENCE of computING, of creating ever more intelligent machines, of how to build better ARCHITECTED machines based on a better understand of the nature of data, its inherent structure, and methods to transform its usefulness (algorithms, etc) is far, far from "just math+engr" with a little software. It is definitely a field of its own that has continued and will continue to grow in importance to our lives, economy and survival.
Computing is a very specific form of math and computing engineer is mostly about implementation, not the underlying theory of computing and information representation and processing. Every university has separate (and powerful, well-developed) Economics depts as well even though a major fraction of economic is also "just math". Same with Statistics depts... Same with much of theoretical physics, "just math"....
“As many of you know, the proposal has been met with overwhelming negative response, much of which I believe has been based on misunderstanding. Nonetheless, it is clear that the University of Florida must figure out a way to make it through these financially difficult times in a productive manner. I am optimistic we can do that.”
That statement sounds like contentless spin. I would like to know just what the misunderstanding is. Yes there still will be a CS *program*, but my (mis)understanding is that the university has started a restructuring that will drive away the best CS researchers and experts, leaving only perfunctory instructors. And it is quite likely that the damage has been done. The best, well-funded CS researchers have now gotten the message of the lack of institutional support and are by now seeking jobs elsewhere -- the best always have somewhere else to go. The rest will comprise a CS program based on mediocrity.
I didnt hear the prez or dean take a stand against mediocrity in cutting edge CS research.
well the Pocket PCs such as the HP 100/200LX had CGA screen with full 80x25 text and graphics and could run for at least 30 hours, with almost any DOS program you wish, include TCP clients (browsers, telnet, ftp, etc).
In 1991, HP introduced the HP95 palmtop PC, a small pocketable computer running DOS. Within a few years they would also release the HP100 and HP200lx. These units were quite popular and did much of what smartphones do today, except of course the phone part. They could do email, spreadsheets, WP, etc, and wince they ran DOS, could do just about anything available, include running Windows 2/3, Word, even web browsers, Usenet clients, Telnet, FTP, etc.
They were an important forerunner to the PDAs, Psions (Symbian), Palms, etc which in turn gave rise to the first real smartphones. They also themselves mutated from DOS palmtops to run MS WinCE, which were the forerunners of Windows Mobile PDAs and smartphones.
I sure hope the FCC makes the carriers distinguish between truly stolen and phones that the carrier considers "bad" because they believe the contract is unfulfilled (or there is a balance on the final bill). In the latter case, it is often a dispute between customer and carrier and the carrier should NOT have the upper hand or leverage to threaten "bricking" the phone (declare "stolen") just because they think the customer owes them something.
Similarly, there needs to be a mechanism to UN-blacklist a phone. Quite often a phone is thought to be lost or stolen but then later turns up, is found or is returned by an honest finder, etc. Such phones need to be restored to usability.
Also the issue of transfer of ownership, and therefore transfer of the right to declare a phone "stolen", needs to be very carefully designed. Supposing I buy a used phone from CL or ebay. Somehow the ownership needs to transfer to me such that the seller CANNOT now declare that phone to be "stolen". However requiring that that newly sold phone be activated by a carrier to transfer ownership is NOT a good mechanism -- I shouldn't have to do that and it can cause all sorts of problems.
I still don't understand why a "use tax" is constitutional, but a sales tax for out-of-state purchases is not.
Sales tax on out of state purchases are unconstitutional because no state can impede interstate commerce.
But just renaming an out-of-state sales tax as a "use tax" doesn't make it any less unconstitutional. Why is a "use" tax NOT a sales tax? They look the same, smell the same, etc...
If a use tax is REALLY a use tax then:
Why don't you have to pay the use tax for ALL newly acquired items, both those WITHIN state and those obtain from out of state? You can't argue that the sales tax takes care of in state use since the sales tax is for SALES, not USE. If you apply the use tax only to out-of-state purchases, then that unfairly and unconstitutionally impedes inter-state commerce.
Why don't you have to pay the use tax for ALL items brought INTO the state? If the use tax is really a use tax, and NOT a sales tax, then ALL items brought into the state should be subject to the use tax, e.g. I bring in a new camera that I bought elsewhere, or I bring in a sweater that my mom in another state made for me. Again, if the use tax is a USE tax, not a sales tax, then it should apply to ALL items newly being USED within the state, REGARDLESS of it was purchased or not. Even here, it still would seem to apply to inter-state commerce, hence unconstitutional.
It seems obvious that the use tax *IS* a sales tax on out of state purchases and just calling it something else doesn't mean that it is constitutional... Apply whatever test you which and see if you can truly distinguish the use tax from a sales tax on out-of-state purchases... I don't think it will pass the test...
"WiFi on a phone is like an electric car. Its cheap to run, its great within a short distance to your home, but if you go any further you can be SOL if you can't find a place to charge it."
maybe, although many people (not everyone), spends 98% of their time in two places: home and work. So if both places have WiFi, then at least 98% of your wireless data needs are met. The other 2% might include 1% at airports, hotels, Starbucks, etc where there also is WiFi. So, not quite like an electric car for many, though, agreed, if you are not in WiFi territory you are sorta SOL (hardly SOL though, not like you are in a dead electric car with no way to leave)...
"Kind of like Volkswagon giving free Mountain Bikes with their Jetta's?"
More like Volkswagon encouraging you to use public transportation in order to cut down on the wear and tear on your VW during the warrantee period where VW would have to pay for the maintenance and service costs...
Or even more like VW requiring you to buy an extended warrantee service package but then encouraging you to use public transportation during the extended warrantee period...
and w.r.t. to the carriers, given their WiFi Encouragement programs, you learn that its true, you CAN replace 80-90% of your 3G/4G data usage with Wifi and it chews up less battery and is faster too...(if you didn't know this already). So you find out that most people actually DON'T really need 3G/4G enough to make it worth the money... yet you are still forced to buy the data service.
I love this current approach, taken by at least AT&T and Sprint, where they show you and sell you on how wonderful having wireless (3G/4G) data is... but then ACTIVELY promote using WiFi whenever possible. Sprint even has a specific "educational" program designed to show you how to make using WiFi on your smartphone as easy as possible, all the while they try to sell you their wireless 3G/4G service.
Its obvious that JetBlue's poor on-time performance can be tied directly to its hub being JFK, in the busiest, most congestion airspace in the country. Comparing it to Hawaiian Air for on-time performance is kinda silly. Even airlines with Chicago as a major hub (e.g. American, United), can dilute those bad performances with flights from other of their hubs, but not JetBlue whose only hub is JFK.
I think I would have given up the password "under duress". Then sued the school when the account is accessed, since it is a felony to access another's computer account (fraud). The Feds would also have grounds to go after the school officials.
Without giving up the password, if the account was not accessed, then there wouldn't be as strong grounds to sue...
Kinda of a silly question really. Fantasies for US consumption that tied with the past, medievel, sword/sorcery, etc are of course going to have an English/British bent to them --- it is our country's past and yet is a language we still can understand. The Tolkien stuff is all too obvious as is Harry Potter, written by English authors. Obviously fantasies for Chinese or Spanish audiences will not have English accents.
Future fantasies apparently belong to Americans, at least for now, having the lead in space travel, technology, etc (FOR NOW), particularly as targeted for American audiences (Hollywood). Still, there are Spanish future fantasies, Japanese, etc, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
so if the goal is reducing trainees, fine, slash way. But if you actually want research RESULTS and productivity, you need to insure a healthy and plentiful stream of well-trained postdocs.
if anything, the LEAST effective people in the chain are the SENIOR faculty, they are the most expensive and do the least research. Cut there if you want to cut something... (which I don't, I'd rather cut bombs and missles... its ridiculous that the monies we are talking about saving and slashing amount to a couple of bombs and missles...)
The report cited is quite thoughtful and accurate in identifying trends, inefficiencies and recommends important solutions. Unfortunately the bulk of them cannot be implemented while maintaining US biomedical research excellence without a greater infusion of funds from Congress -- the system is the way it is partly because the research community is already being seriously squeezed for funding. If the Repubs/Romney have their way (Mitt has talked about a 20-30% slashing of NIH funding), then it really doesn't matter, as the whole system is headed for collapse and the US will truly fall behind and lose a decade or two at the least. The report is correct in looking at trends that span a decade, but even 4 years of a slashed budget would seriously cripple the system and drive away top talent. It is already happen even with the current NIH funding situation (very poor, less than 10% chance for any grant application to be funded).
I dont see MS benefiting for buying either. MS has gotten what it needs from its deal with Nokia. If WP doesnt do well under Nokia, RIM isnt going to help.
Sorry, I want to reward the medical student or the mechanical engineer that gets the "easy A" because he/she truly knows the stuff rather than the student that "makes the most improvement"...
sad but true, kids, students, humans are not born equally endowed with smarts and ease of acquiring skills. The flaw of "No child gets left behind", is no child gets ahead. The best and brightest should be given every means to do as best they can and be rewarded.
the rest, sure educate them too, its important for democracy to work, but not at the expense of holding back or not rewarding true excellence, even if it comes easy to a student...
That's because you obviously haven't study or understood the survival value of societies, culture, altruism, cooperative behaviors, cultural memory and learning, etc.
On the flip side, the impact and extensiveness of cultural influences, societal behaviors, etc is far, far more intricate and developed than any original religious teachings have ever specified. So unless you are going to invoke the notion that God is surreptitiously guiding the life of every single individual, including all the "non-believers" (and I understand that many religions might claim this), including the believers of other religious traditions than your own, the overt ORIGINAL religious sources are insufficient to explain human cultural development and impact.
the granting of monopoly on an idea is the basis for a patent, not copyright, so the notion that copyrighting an API would allow for the monopolizing ideas is NOT a justification for allowing the copyrighting of APIs -- if anything it is an argument against it...
That's silly... like arguing that a criminal judge shouldn't put away criminals or only give them minimal sentences because adjudicating criminal cases is "the judge's source of income", and the more crime there is, the better...
there is PLENTY of patent law cases and IP cases to have to deal with, so no need to bend over to help out software patent trolls just to keep "business"/income flowing...
The fact is that nobody is really going to win here... Fox and all of network TV will raises prices at least for Dish, so then customers will have to pay more. The cablecos will raise prices regardless, but will also cap their broadband ISP business, so Hulu and Netflix will be hurt, again hurting customers. In the end, is all about media/content wanting more money than customers can afford... and the 5% of quality entertainment will suffering as the 95% of the junk also gets slashed (no loss there). We should all go back to board games and local theatre...
Dismissal? What the judge should do is take away both set of patents!
I guess neither is going particularly well... maybe they should have sent Tony Stark to mop up the Taliban since he didn't finish that job...
Any laptop.with an internal.webcam or a $10 usb webcam should be fine. However a simpler solution is a $200 Samsung Galaxy Tab or other cheapo Android tablet.
The SCIENCE of computING, of creating ever more intelligent machines, of how to build better ARCHITECTED machines based on a better understand of the nature of data, its inherent structure, and methods to transform its usefulness (algorithms, etc) is far, far from "just math+engr" with a little software. It is definitely a field of its own that has continued and will continue to grow in importance to our lives, economy and survival.
Computing is a very specific form of math and computing engineer is mostly about implementation, not the underlying theory of computing and information representation and processing. Every university has separate (and powerful, well-developed) Economics depts as well even though a major fraction of economic is also "just math". Same with Statistics depts... Same with much of theoretical physics, "just math"....
That statement sounds like contentless spin. I would like to know just what the misunderstanding is. Yes there still will be a CS *program*, but my (mis)understanding is that the university has started a restructuring that will drive away the best CS researchers and experts, leaving only perfunctory instructors. And it is quite likely that the damage has been done. The best, well-funded CS researchers have now gotten the message of the lack of institutional support and are by now seeking jobs elsewhere -- the best always have somewhere else to go. The rest will comprise a CS program based on mediocrity. I didnt hear the prez or dean take a stand against mediocrity in cutting edge CS research.
well the Pocket PCs such as the HP 100/200LX had CGA screen with full 80x25 text and graphics and could run for at least 30 hours, with almost any DOS program you wish, include TCP clients (browsers, telnet, ftp, etc).
Bring new meaning to running so hot you cook your CPU. Wheres the soy sauce?
In 1991, HP introduced the HP95 palmtop PC, a small pocketable computer running DOS. Within a few years they would also release the HP100 and HP200lx. These units were quite popular and did much of what smartphones do today, except of course the phone part. They could do email, spreadsheets, WP, etc, and wince they ran DOS, could do just about anything available, include running Windows 2/3, Word, even web browsers, Usenet clients, Telnet, FTP, etc. They were an important forerunner to the PDAs, Psions (Symbian), Palms, etc which in turn gave rise to the first real smartphones. They also themselves mutated from DOS palmtops to run MS WinCE, which were the forerunners of Windows Mobile PDAs and smartphones.
Similarly, there needs to be a mechanism to UN-blacklist a phone. Quite often a phone is thought to be lost or stolen but then later turns up, is found or is returned by an honest finder, etc. Such phones need to be restored to usability.
Also the issue of transfer of ownership, and therefore transfer of the right to declare a phone "stolen", needs to be very carefully designed. Supposing I buy a used phone from CL or ebay. Somehow the ownership needs to transfer to me such that the seller CANNOT now declare that phone to be "stolen". However requiring that that newly sold phone be activated by a carrier to transfer ownership is NOT a good mechanism -- I shouldn't have to do that and it can cause all sorts of problems.
Sales tax on out of state purchases are unconstitutional because no state can impede interstate commerce. But just renaming an out-of-state sales tax as a "use tax" doesn't make it any less unconstitutional. Why is a "use" tax NOT a sales tax? They look the same, smell the same, etc...
If a use tax is REALLY a use tax then:
Why don't you have to pay the use tax for ALL newly acquired items, both those WITHIN state and those obtain from out of state? You can't argue that the sales tax takes care of in state use since the sales tax is for SALES, not USE. If you apply the use tax only to out-of-state purchases, then that unfairly and unconstitutionally impedes inter-state commerce.
Why don't you have to pay the use tax for ALL items brought INTO the state? If the use tax is really a use tax, and NOT a sales tax, then ALL items brought into the state should be subject to the use tax, e.g. I bring in a new camera that I bought elsewhere, or I bring in a sweater that my mom in another state made for me. Again, if the use tax is a USE tax, not a sales tax, then it should apply to ALL items newly being USED within the state, REGARDLESS of it was purchased or not. Even here, it still would seem to apply to inter-state commerce, hence unconstitutional.
It seems obvious that the use tax *IS* a sales tax on out of state purchases and just calling it something else doesn't mean that it is constitutional... Apply whatever test you which and see if you can truly distinguish the use tax from a sales tax on out-of-state purchases... I don't think it will pass the test...
maybe, although many people (not everyone), spends 98% of their time in two places: home and work. So if both places have WiFi, then at least 98% of your wireless data needs are met. The other 2% might include 1% at airports, hotels, Starbucks, etc where there also is WiFi. So, not quite like an electric car for many, though, agreed, if you are not in WiFi territory you are sorta SOL (hardly SOL though, not like you are in a dead electric car with no way to leave)...
More like Volkswagon encouraging you to use public transportation in order to cut down on the wear and tear on your VW during the warrantee period where VW would have to pay for the maintenance and service costs...
Or even more like VW requiring you to buy an extended warrantee service package but then encouraging you to use public transportation during the extended warrantee period...
and w.r.t. to the carriers, given their WiFi Encouragement programs, you learn that its true, you CAN replace 80-90% of your 3G/4G data usage with Wifi and it chews up less battery and is faster too...(if you didn't know this already). So you find out that most people actually DON'T really need 3G/4G enough to make it worth the money... yet you are still forced to buy the data service.
I love this current approach, taken by at least AT&T and Sprint, where they show you and sell you on how wonderful having wireless (3G/4G) data is... but then ACTIVELY promote using WiFi whenever possible. Sprint even has a specific "educational" program designed to show you how to make using WiFi on your smartphone as easy as possible, all the while they try to sell you their wireless 3G/4G service.
Its obvious that JetBlue's poor on-time performance can be tied directly to its hub being JFK, in the busiest, most congestion airspace in the country. Comparing it to Hawaiian Air for on-time performance is kinda silly. Even airlines with Chicago as a major hub (e.g. American, United), can dilute those bad performances with flights from other of their hubs, but not JetBlue whose only hub is JFK.
Without giving up the password, if the account was not accessed, then there wouldn't be as strong grounds to sue...
Future fantasies apparently belong to Americans, at least for now, having the lead in space travel, technology, etc (FOR NOW), particularly as targeted for American audiences (Hollywood). Still, there are Spanish future fantasies, Japanese, etc, etc.
not going to make a starship out of water or gases... so to even invade with starships, they have to already have found sources of metal...