Re:If I could do it all over again...
on
MIT's SAT Math Error
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I had good SAT scores. I chose an Ivy League school, which means needs based aid. I turned down 2 full-ride scholarships for what ended up being a marginal financial aid package that got progressively worse each year I was at school. Now I pay about 25% of my post-tax earnings to student loans.
That said, I didn't really do that well on the Math, my perfect Verbal score pulled my total score way up. So making a stupid money decision was well within character. I'll be sure to pass along this experience to my kids when/if they decide to got to college.
While "weaved" is a word, I have only heard it used in description of the movement of large bodies. To describe the past tense of weaving fabric "wove" or "woven" would be correct. "He weaved through traffic" would be acceptable where "He weaved a shirt" would just be downright odd. So in the context of a dragon flight game I believe "weaved" is probably ok.
I like my iPhone. In 3-5 months when they release a new model that has all the things I wish mine had I will still like my iPhone. I'll just wish I had waited to get the new one. But I'll still like my old, out of date, feature crippled Gen 1 iPhone.
So are all of us who show up in this guy's IP logs in danger of being "redacted" now? I probably shouldn't have clicked on that link (or posted this with out checking "post anon" for that matter).
I would think that if the coupon did not include a disclaimer stating that the terms of the coupon were subject to vendor participation that yes in fact they might be suddenly responsible for issuing a document entitling the holder to a free burger which no "burger supplier" would honor. At least, I assume so, because I've never seen nor heard of a "counterfeit coupon" before.
I don't know why developers can't just release different versions of a game. Just like "unrated" DVD versions of movies. It's not like they don't make a bundle of cash selling the same game multiple times with different packaging already.
Most likely the next time an act of terrorism occurs inside US borders it will be carried out by people who have applied for and received all the proper paperwork to identify themselves as legitimate residents and/or travelers within the country. REAL ID is just a means of tracking the American populace better. In no way does this apply to terrorism in anyway.
Think of it this way...
Either someone gets a REALID and commits an act of terrorism in which case whatever checks and security the application process entails for a REALID don't provide adequate protection (think poor police work).
OR, more likely, someone commits an act of terrorism using a forged REALID to gain access to their target. In this case the REALID actually makes the situation worse because having the proper identification which registers in the database gives security forces a false sense of, well, security.
Perhaps someone just sneaks into the US under the rader, sneaks into their target and commits said act of terrorism. Once again, REALID provides no help because AGAIN it is poor police work that would have provided a terrorist with an opening to attack a target. Poor police work that is only exacerbated by the false sense of infallibility some desk jockey feels in being able to troll through a big database of fingerprints 24-style.
Ok... now what would a national database be good for?
Susie gets on an airplane in Reno and flys to NYC, Uncle Sam knows what seat she's in and what hotel she's checking into because she made a credit card reservation. REALID provides big brother with the relative surety that the Susie who boarded flight 6767 is the Susie in said national database because Susie homemaker doesn't have the motivation or wherewithall to actually forge or circumvent the REALID system. REALID is only useful for tracking people who are committing no real crimes and who the government has point blank no business monitoring. This is like wiretapping all conversations and internet traffic for the purpose of datamining minus any real legitimate reason for doing so. One could at least suggest that illegally wiretapping all communications in the country would serve the purpose of uncovering at least some criminal or terrorist activity, there's bound to be something in there. REALID on the other hand is just a net thrown over all the people who the government is supposed to be protecting. By it's very nature it is most likely to fail it's supposed purpose when exactly that scenario comes about. Knowing that, I think you have to be suspicious about the program. Why would the government want license to spy without warrant on a constant basis on all their citizens? Nothing very wholesome comes to mind.
I think by "parent's basement" standards sleeping with THREE women is seriously pimping. Perhaps this explains the general notion that Kirk really got it on.
My parents are both educators (principle and music teacher). Both are very dedicated to what they do and care a great deal for the kids that they teach. Even after 25 years teaching they are both still passionate about it.
Honestly, growing up knowing many of my teachers first as my parents co-workers many of them treat their employment as a job, but can you really blame them? It's not as if teachers are paid terribly well. You do get several months of vacation during a year but that's several months you don't get paid during either. I hate to pull this tired line, but many parents are so apathetic it becomes almost impossible to do much with the kids. My father was an assistant principle for many years at an elementary school, so he handled disciplinary problems. Most of the time kids who had problems behaving had parents who just didn't seem to care what their children were doing. With no support outside school many teachers end up babysitting problem kids while other children get no attention. What with low salaries, bratty kids, and overcrowded classrooms who can blame some people for developing an apathetic approach to teaching.
That said, for the 10 terrible teachers I have had I have always had one or two teachers every year I was in school (sometimes teachers who I didn't even have classes with, perhaps someone who did afterschool programs) who made school a great experience. Sometimes that had little to do with learning "subject material" and more to do with being given the freedom and guidance to explore new things (physics experiments, sports, art, etc...). I think it's plain easy to stand outside someone else's job and throw rocks through their windows, or pitch out the fruit because 25% is rotten, but it completely misses the point. Every profession is full of people who just do their job, or just get by, but there are always those who are passionate about what they do and do a terrific job of it. It's far too easy to complain about "public schools" and apathetic teachers rather than looking at many of the larger issues at hand.
A lot of posts here follow the script
1. went to school, was interested in teaching
2. discovered how little teaching pays / how little administrators and entrenched union employees cared about their jobs and school system
3. decided to do something else
I think that pattern is really indicative of something; primarily that many passionate motivated people end up not teaching because school systems are underfunded, parents would rather complain about the problem than work to fix it, etc...
Since the above is really off-topic I'll just include something more relevant too.
I grew up in germany, did a few years in the german school system but mostly in military schools. Germany has a school system that makes you pick pretty early on whether you want to join a trade, do office work, or attend university ( wikipedia link). Pretty much in elementary school you decide if you want to go to college or not. Seems to work just fine for them, I never heard much in the way of complaints from friends.
I would say at least they are trying to engage kids more. We shouldn't just criticize it because it seems different to our own experiences. I would probably say that this whole "I'm 35 and I still don't know what I want to do" thing is a pretty new development of its own in our society. Maybe we're being overly permissive with people's career paths and decisions. You could say, not having to pay any real price for being indecisive makes it almost impossible to pick anything and stick with it. Which, ultimately results in people just always questioning their decisions and never being happy with what they do no matter what it is. I hate my job but I'm pretty sure after I put in 10-15 years of drudgery and underpaid work I hate I'll get to have one of the best jobs I could imagine, being the lead designer on a number of large scale building projects. Do I hat
Having worked in IT, as a programmer, and now as an architect I think pretty much any field is the same, not just programming. Some people are just worth a lot more because in general, the average person spends more time avoiding work than doing work. I don't think the premise of the article applies just to developers.
In h.s. I was a bit of an oddity, a geek who by some freak of nature was athletically talented. So I ended up having more "jock-like" success with the ladies (although I was certainly no competition for the school's varsity quarterback). Regardless, being a two sport star I can say, and it might surprise you, but the attention you attract really isn't all that enjoyable. Most of the girls that go after that type of guy are highly competitive with each other, typically possessive as hell, and unbelievably manipulative. I doubt most slashdotter's would be very happy having to deal with that kind of drama. By my senior year I just dated a girl I met through National Honor Society.
I wonder if a better metric for determining safety would be number of operator (driver/pilot) hours per crash rather than miles traveled per life lost. Or maybe operator hours per life lost. So one would take the number of hours someone operated a vehicle and sum the total hours for the total number of individual vehicle operators. Divide that number by the number of fatalities or crashes involving a particular vehicle type. I would imagine this would show that despite the much higher bar set for operator competency (pilot license) for an aircraft that flying is not really much safer than driving. Mostly since so many more people spend so much more time behind the wheel of a car than those than at the stick of an aircraft.
For lack of a better way of putting it, flying is probably a safer way to travel long distances, but only because it's a less common form of transportation than driving. Also, it's worth noting that you are MUCH more likely to survive a car crash than a plane crash. I don't know how that figures into the consideration.
(yeah... that was a contradictory post if I ever wrote one)
You have a timeline with two dependent events, A and B. B cannot happen without A. Therefore B does not happen until A has occurred. The problem and confusion in this case is simply that one perceives these events in reverse order, B before A. I think it is a faulty assumption to assume that the past is less malleable than the future and would imagine that the outcome would happen more like this...
Scientist waits to record Event B, no sign of Event B is evident. Scientist proceeds with experiment (Event A) and now has data and memory of Event B having already happened. The scientist would simply cease to be aware of any alternate timeline in which Event B did not occur. Probably through some destructive mechanism in which this timeline was destroyed... which would hint that this type of event would cause the destruction of our universe as we know it.
That kind of thinking simply brings into question the notion of existence and continuity relative to human perception and various metaphysical musings on the human soul and whether it exists or not.
That's probably why this sort of thing is so interesting, it has so many implications to the real nature of our universe.
Forgive me for even mentioning this but I expect that Microsoft already pays 100s of thousands of dollars every year for exploits in the form of salaries and overhead for the employees who work in their security division. Whether or not it would be more cost effective to buy exploits on the open market is more an issue for debate than whether Microsoft should pay to improve the security of their product.
Well... considering the way Verizon likes to have access to all the low level code for a phone so they can turn off all the default features and charge you to reactivate them I would bet that you won't be seeing an Apple iPhone at your local Verizon store in the near or far off future. I can't see Apple letting anyone get into their product and monetize all the features that sets their software and hardware apart from the competition.
I'd say "vote with your money" but really... who's going to do that. I have Verizon and I think they have the worst service and customer attitude possible, every day I feel ripped off by what I feel are utterly predatory business practices. But, at the end of the day they have to only decent coverage of any cell phone provider. Case open and shut. A cell phone is for keeping in contact, and whatever other features it has, if you have to walk down the block from your apt or stand in the "coverage corner" of your living room to make a call the phone just isn't even worth free.
There are definitely a lot of people who just buy shiny gadgets. The iPhone launch should probably be pretty good and they'll most likely hit their sales targets. My guess is that Apple really misfired on this one however when it comes to the market segment they are targeting. The shiny device crowd is fickle and will turn on Apple whether the phone is good or not. In fact, the better the phone the more likely shiny device dude is to complain about lack of other features (no fusion power pack, etc...). It's this irrational fanboy backlash that could really help kill the device in the cradle.
Of course, it's likely that Apple didn't really miss the target. You could probably blame uber-corp AT&T's marketing department for insisting that they target the douche-bag uber-gadget user segment because those are the only people stupid enough to sign the contracts that AT&T wants to sell with the iPhone. In other words, the product suffers greatly because at the end of the day the carrier only cares to sell the service. The device is just the bait for the trap. The iPhone is bait for a particular kind of user... which is definitely not geeks (unfortunately for us).
Google is saying that desktop search today should be treated as a 3rd party application which is no longer part of the OS. Because Microsoft themselves have a desktop search application it's hard to argue against this. I believe Google's complaint centers around the fact that Microsoft has tied their desktop search appliance in directly to Vista in a way that makes it difficult to run Google's desktop search app. In a sense, I think Google is suggesting that you should be able to select your "desktop search provider." In other words, "search" like Internet Explorer is nearly impossible to remove from any copy of Windows so consumers simply use it because using a competitor is unreasonably difficult. Google is saying that Microsoft is leveraging their monopoly in the OS market to gain undue influence in a different market segment; a behavior that has commonly been perceived to be grounds for antitrust regulation in the past.
One is tempted to draw analogies here between this situation and that with Internet Explorer which has already been covered both in the US and the EU (whether those analogies be appropriate is the legal question at hand).
The flaw I see in this line of thinking is that it is often predicated on the notion that economies of scale require that we have ONE means of energy or powering vehicles. There's no reason to crown a successor to the gas powered car when we could instead replace it with 4-5 viable alternatives each of which is dependent on a source of energy derived in a different fashion. This generates 4-5 new fuel production industries each of which competes with the other driving down costs and driving innovation. In turn this helps to improve the efficiency of each method which helps to protect our environment and improve that methods ability to scale, etc, etc, etc...
Stop thinking that we need to replace Big Oil with Big (insert fuel of choice here) and this whole "scaling" argument breaks down. It's not like we won't need to replace gas as a fuel of choice sometime in the future anyway.
Digg does tend to push some viewpoints to an extreme over others. Lately legalization of marijuana has really been one of the things that I've noticed most (pot cures cancer, etc...).
Also, it's exceedingly difficult to present any view in an unbiased fashion. After all I think most of us accept our viewpoint as centrist and every other viewpoint as skewing to some other extreme of that. Even people who might be as far to one side of a political spectrum as you can get view all other political viewpoints as biased. They just don't think anyone has a more extreme take on their own personal beliefs than they do. I think there is some merit to at least making an effort to present an unbiased, but editorialized, view on a particular topic. It just gets to a point where recognizing bias means you have to yourself become well educated on an issue. Unfortunately most people don't see the value in educating themselves about much of anything and would rather be fed a viewpoint. People like this tend to find being exposed to differing viewpoints to be highly distateful and hence they never realize the merit in differing beliefs or the bias in their own.
Lets assume however that you sit down 4 people who would label themselves republicans I don't doubt that all 4 would be the type who find any exposure to divergent beliefs to be offensive and uncomfortable. The political spectrum in this country has shifted so far right (perhaps because many far-left "liberals" are so unbearably smug and frankly, plain stupid) that many "liberal" values are really more centrist and hence should have a broader appeal. A good thing to look for in "unbiased" political commentary is whether the particular stance on an issue suggests a clear benefit to one group of people or another (end obvious). "Unbiased" political platforms tend to emphasize the good of society or civilization at their core. Another good indicator of "unbiased" political commentary is when it comes from someone who is generally regarded as an individual of high integrity. While they might have a right or left leaning viewpoint they tend to maintain their stance rather than flapping in the wind so to speak.
My personal bias is that preserving the environment, practicing sound fiscal policies, setting low tax rates that have an equal benefit for all social classes, and comprehensive social benefits (non-monetized healthcare, affordable college education, and robust civil liberties) are all policies which benefit the country as the whole because they are forward looking and hint at a responsibility towards the future of our country. And in that sense I think I have a fairly "unbiased" view of politics that simply doesn't permit me to even stomach any of the "Main" presidential candidates on either party's ballot.
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I had good SAT scores. I chose an Ivy League school, which means needs based aid. I turned down 2 full-ride scholarships for what ended up being a marginal financial aid package that got progressively worse each year I was at school. Now I pay about 25% of my post-tax earnings to student loans.
That said, I didn't really do that well on the Math, my perfect Verbal score pulled my total score way up. So making a stupid money decision was well within character. I'll be sure to pass along this experience to my kids when/if they decide to got to college.
While "weaved" is a word, I have only heard it used in description of the movement of large bodies. To describe the past tense of weaving fabric "wove" or "woven" would be correct. "He weaved through traffic" would be acceptable where "He weaved a shirt" would just be downright odd. So in the context of a dragon flight game I believe "weaved" is probably ok.
I like my iPhone. In 3-5 months when they release a new model that has all the things I wish mine had I will still like my iPhone. I'll just wish I had waited to get the new one. But I'll still like my old, out of date, feature crippled Gen 1 iPhone.
So are all of us who show up in this guy's IP logs in danger of being "redacted" now? I probably shouldn't have clicked on that link (or posted this with out checking "post anon" for that matter).
I would think that if the coupon did not include a disclaimer stating that the terms of the coupon were subject to vendor participation that yes in fact they might be suddenly responsible for issuing a document entitling the holder to a free burger which no "burger supplier" would honor. At least, I assume so, because I've never seen nor heard of a "counterfeit coupon" before.
I don't know why developers can't just release different versions of a game. Just like "unrated" DVD versions of movies. It's not like they don't make a bundle of cash selling the same game multiple times with different packaging already.
Most likely the next time an act of terrorism occurs inside US borders it will be carried out by people who have applied for and received all the proper paperwork to identify themselves as legitimate residents and/or travelers within the country. REAL ID is just a means of tracking the American populace better. In no way does this apply to terrorism in anyway.
Think of it this way...
Either someone gets a REALID and commits an act of terrorism in which case whatever checks and security the application process entails for a REALID don't provide adequate protection (think poor police work).
OR, more likely, someone commits an act of terrorism using a forged REALID to gain access to their target. In this case the REALID actually makes the situation worse because having the proper identification which registers in the database gives security forces a false sense of, well, security.
Perhaps someone just sneaks into the US under the rader, sneaks into their target and commits said act of terrorism. Once again, REALID provides no help because AGAIN it is poor police work that would have provided a terrorist with an opening to attack a target. Poor police work that is only exacerbated by the false sense of infallibility some desk jockey feels in being able to troll through a big database of fingerprints 24-style.
Ok... now what would a national database be good for?
Susie gets on an airplane in Reno and flys to NYC, Uncle Sam knows what seat she's in and what hotel she's checking into because she made a credit card reservation. REALID provides big brother with the relative surety that the Susie who boarded flight 6767 is the Susie in said national database because Susie homemaker doesn't have the motivation or wherewithall to actually forge or circumvent the REALID system. REALID is only useful for tracking people who are committing no real crimes and who the government has point blank no business monitoring. This is like wiretapping all conversations and internet traffic for the purpose of datamining minus any real legitimate reason for doing so. One could at least suggest that illegally wiretapping all communications in the country would serve the purpose of uncovering at least some criminal or terrorist activity, there's bound to be something in there. REALID on the other hand is just a net thrown over all the people who the government is supposed to be protecting. By it's very nature it is most likely to fail it's supposed purpose when exactly that scenario comes about. Knowing that, I think you have to be suspicious about the program. Why would the government want license to spy without warrant on a constant basis on all their citizens? Nothing very wholesome comes to mind.
I think by "parent's basement" standards sleeping with THREE women is seriously pimping. Perhaps this explains the general notion that Kirk really got it on.
My parents are both educators (principle and music teacher). Both are very dedicated to what they do and care a great deal for the kids that they teach. Even after 25 years teaching they are both still passionate about it.
Honestly, growing up knowing many of my teachers first as my parents co-workers many of them treat their employment as a job, but can you really blame them? It's not as if teachers are paid terribly well. You do get several months of vacation during a year but that's several months you don't get paid during either. I hate to pull this tired line, but many parents are so apathetic it becomes almost impossible to do much with the kids. My father was an assistant principle for many years at an elementary school, so he handled disciplinary problems. Most of the time kids who had problems behaving had parents who just didn't seem to care what their children were doing. With no support outside school many teachers end up babysitting problem kids while other children get no attention. What with low salaries, bratty kids, and overcrowded classrooms who can blame some people for developing an apathetic approach to teaching.
That said, for the 10 terrible teachers I have had I have always had one or two teachers every year I was in school (sometimes teachers who I didn't even have classes with, perhaps someone who did afterschool programs) who made school a great experience. Sometimes that had little to do with learning "subject material" and more to do with being given the freedom and guidance to explore new things (physics experiments, sports, art, etc...). I think it's plain easy to stand outside someone else's job and throw rocks through their windows, or pitch out the fruit because 25% is rotten, but it completely misses the point. Every profession is full of people who just do their job, or just get by, but there are always those who are passionate about what they do and do a terrific job of it. It's far too easy to complain about "public schools" and apathetic teachers rather than looking at many of the larger issues at hand.
A lot of posts here follow the script
1. went to school, was interested in teaching
2. discovered how little teaching pays / how little administrators and entrenched union employees cared about their jobs and school system
3. decided to do something else
I think that pattern is really indicative of something; primarily that many passionate motivated people end up not teaching because school systems are underfunded, parents would rather complain about the problem than work to fix it, etc...
Since the above is really off-topic I'll just include something more relevant too.
I grew up in germany, did a few years in the german school system but mostly in military schools. Germany has a school system that makes you pick pretty early on whether you want to join a trade, do office work, or attend university ( wikipedia link). Pretty much in elementary school you decide if you want to go to college or not. Seems to work just fine for them, I never heard much in the way of complaints from friends.
I would say at least they are trying to engage kids more. We shouldn't just criticize it because it seems different to our own experiences. I would probably say that this whole "I'm 35 and I still don't know what I want to do" thing is a pretty new development of its own in our society. Maybe we're being overly permissive with people's career paths and decisions. You could say, not having to pay any real price for being indecisive makes it almost impossible to pick anything and stick with it. Which, ultimately results in people just always questioning their decisions and never being happy with what they do no matter what it is. I hate my job but I'm pretty sure after I put in 10-15 years of drudgery and underpaid work I hate I'll get to have one of the best jobs I could imagine, being the lead designer on a number of large scale building projects. Do I hat
Having worked in IT, as a programmer, and now as an architect I think pretty much any field is the same, not just programming. Some people are just worth a lot more because in general, the average person spends more time avoiding work than doing work. I don't think the premise of the article applies just to developers.
In h.s. I was a bit of an oddity, a geek who by some freak of nature was athletically talented. So I ended up having more "jock-like" success with the ladies (although I was certainly no competition for the school's varsity quarterback). Regardless, being a two sport star I can say, and it might surprise you, but the attention you attract really isn't all that enjoyable. Most of the girls that go after that type of guy are highly competitive with each other, typically possessive as hell, and unbelievably manipulative. I doubt most slashdotter's would be very happy having to deal with that kind of drama. By my senior year I just dated a girl I met through National Honor Society.
I wonder if a better metric for determining safety would be number of operator (driver/pilot) hours per crash rather than miles traveled per life lost. Or maybe operator hours per life lost. So one would take the number of hours someone operated a vehicle and sum the total hours for the total number of individual vehicle operators. Divide that number by the number of fatalities or crashes involving a particular vehicle type. I would imagine this would show that despite the much higher bar set for operator competency (pilot license) for an aircraft that flying is not really much safer than driving. Mostly since so many more people spend so much more time behind the wheel of a car than those than at the stick of an aircraft. For lack of a better way of putting it, flying is probably a safer way to travel long distances, but only because it's a less common form of transportation than driving. Also, it's worth noting that you are MUCH more likely to survive a car crash than a plane crash. I don't know how that figures into the consideration. (yeah... that was a contradictory post if I ever wrote one)
I would suggest the following scenerio
You have a timeline with two dependent events, A and B. B cannot happen without A. Therefore B does not happen until A has occurred. The problem and confusion in this case is simply that one perceives these events in reverse order, B before A. I think it is a faulty assumption to assume that the past is less malleable than the future and would imagine that the outcome would happen more like this...
Scientist waits to record Event B, no sign of Event B is evident. Scientist proceeds with experiment (Event A) and now has data and memory of Event B having already happened. The scientist would simply cease to be aware of any alternate timeline in which Event B did not occur. Probably through some destructive mechanism in which this timeline was destroyed... which would hint that this type of event would cause the destruction of our universe as we know it.
That kind of thinking simply brings into question the notion of existence and continuity relative to human perception and various metaphysical musings on the human soul and whether it exists or not.
That's probably why this sort of thing is so interesting, it has so many implications to the real nature of our universe.
Forgive me for even mentioning this but I expect that Microsoft already pays 100s of thousands of dollars every year for exploits in the form of salaries and overhead for the employees who work in their security division. Whether or not it would be more cost effective to buy exploits on the open market is more an issue for debate than whether Microsoft should pay to improve the security of their product.
I thought this is what lawyers did.
Well... considering the way Verizon likes to have access to all the low level code for a phone so they can turn off all the default features and charge you to reactivate them I would bet that you won't be seeing an Apple iPhone at your local Verizon store in the near or far off future. I can't see Apple letting anyone get into their product and monetize all the features that sets their software and hardware apart from the competition.
I'd say "vote with your money" but really... who's going to do that. I have Verizon and I think they have the worst service and customer attitude possible, every day I feel ripped off by what I feel are utterly predatory business practices. But, at the end of the day they have to only decent coverage of any cell phone provider. Case open and shut. A cell phone is for keeping in contact, and whatever other features it has, if you have to walk down the block from your apt or stand in the "coverage corner" of your living room to make a call the phone just isn't even worth free.
There are definitely a lot of people who just buy shiny gadgets. The iPhone launch should probably be pretty good and they'll most likely hit their sales targets. My guess is that Apple really misfired on this one however when it comes to the market segment they are targeting. The shiny device crowd is fickle and will turn on Apple whether the phone is good or not. In fact, the better the phone the more likely shiny device dude is to complain about lack of other features (no fusion power pack, etc...). It's this irrational fanboy backlash that could really help kill the device in the cradle.
Of course, it's likely that Apple didn't really miss the target. You could probably blame uber-corp AT&T's marketing department for insisting that they target the douche-bag uber-gadget user segment because those are the only people stupid enough to sign the contracts that AT&T wants to sell with the iPhone. In other words, the product suffers greatly because at the end of the day the carrier only cares to sell the service. The device is just the bait for the trap. The iPhone is bait for a particular kind of user... which is definitely not geeks (unfortunately for us).
I'm not getting one.
100% I will get one if I can write my own apps for the phone.
100% I will not get on if I can't write my own apps for the phone.
Easy decision for me thanks to the price.
Google is saying that desktop search today should be treated as a 3rd party application which is no longer part of the OS. Because Microsoft themselves have a desktop search application it's hard to argue against this. I believe Google's complaint centers around the fact that Microsoft has tied their desktop search appliance in directly to Vista in a way that makes it difficult to run Google's desktop search app. In a sense, I think Google is suggesting that you should be able to select your "desktop search provider." In other words, "search" like Internet Explorer is nearly impossible to remove from any copy of Windows so consumers simply use it because using a competitor is unreasonably difficult. Google is saying that Microsoft is leveraging their monopoly in the OS market to gain undue influence in a different market segment; a behavior that has commonly been perceived to be grounds for antitrust regulation in the past.
One is tempted to draw analogies here between this situation and that with Internet Explorer which has already been covered both in the US and the EU (whether those analogies be appropriate is the legal question at hand).
What's better is that when I viewed this story the ad was for Microsoft Visual Studio. Irony makes itself.
I'm guessing the article is for business users also given the lack of any images of the device.
The flaw I see in this line of thinking is that it is often predicated on the notion that economies of scale require that we have ONE means of energy or powering vehicles. There's no reason to crown a successor to the gas powered car when we could instead replace it with 4-5 viable alternatives each of which is dependent on a source of energy derived in a different fashion. This generates 4-5 new fuel production industries each of which competes with the other driving down costs and driving innovation. In turn this helps to improve the efficiency of each method which helps to protect our environment and improve that methods ability to scale, etc, etc, etc...
Stop thinking that we need to replace Big Oil with Big (insert fuel of choice here) and this whole "scaling" argument breaks down. It's not like we won't need to replace gas as a fuel of choice sometime in the future anyway.
Pizza with Dark Chocolate?!
Digg does tend to push some viewpoints to an extreme over others. Lately legalization of marijuana has really been one of the things that I've noticed most (pot cures cancer, etc...).
Also, it's exceedingly difficult to present any view in an unbiased fashion. After all I think most of us accept our viewpoint as centrist and every other viewpoint as skewing to some other extreme of that. Even people who might be as far to one side of a political spectrum as you can get view all other political viewpoints as biased. They just don't think anyone has a more extreme take on their own personal beliefs than they do. I think there is some merit to at least making an effort to present an unbiased, but editorialized, view on a particular topic. It just gets to a point where recognizing bias means you have to yourself become well educated on an issue. Unfortunately most people don't see the value in educating themselves about much of anything and would rather be fed a viewpoint. People like this tend to find being exposed to differing viewpoints to be highly distateful and hence they never realize the merit in differing beliefs or the bias in their own.
Lets assume however that you sit down 4 people who would label themselves republicans I don't doubt that all 4 would be the type who find any exposure to divergent beliefs to be offensive and uncomfortable. The political spectrum in this country has shifted so far right (perhaps because many far-left "liberals" are so unbearably smug and frankly, plain stupid) that many "liberal" values are really more centrist and hence should have a broader appeal. A good thing to look for in "unbiased" political commentary is whether the particular stance on an issue suggests a clear benefit to one group of people or another (end obvious). "Unbiased" political platforms tend to emphasize the good of society or civilization at their core. Another good indicator of "unbiased" political commentary is when it comes from someone who is generally regarded as an individual of high integrity. While they might have a right or left leaning viewpoint they tend to maintain their stance rather than flapping in the wind so to speak.
My personal bias is that preserving the environment, practicing sound fiscal policies, setting low tax rates that have an equal benefit for all social classes, and comprehensive social benefits (non-monetized healthcare, affordable college education, and robust civil liberties) are all policies which benefit the country as the whole because they are forward looking and hint at a responsibility towards the future of our country. And in that sense I think I have a fairly "unbiased" view of politics that simply doesn't permit me to even stomach any of the "Main" presidential candidates on either party's ballot.
Even water!