When we all have "Kindle DX2" devices in the classroom for digital copies of our textbooks... what is stopping them from "gently changing" some of the wording over time, over a few years, to permanently alter the way our youth views the history of times they never lived through?
What makes you believe this isn't already occuring with paper textbooks? I can't speak for the current crop (as new editions are pushed on schools practically every year) but when I was in middle / high school our social studies and history textbooks were so full of misleading half truths and flat out lies that I had become so thoroughly disenfranchised with the public school system I dropped out the day I turned 16.
Hell, the way things are right now you could pay me $10,000 a month and I'll gladly clap my hands 40 hours a week in whatever venue you deem most appropriate.
Hell, if it's on a Kindle, we lose yesterday's newspaper - so how will we wrap today's fish?
Phone books? I can't seem to find any other use for them other than kindling for my fireplace, and yet I continue to receive about 6 or 7 of them a year.
One possibility comes to mind that might assuage the tempers of these libraries. If Google were to prominently display the name of the library the book was scanned from, even adding functionality to browse by libraries and collections, and regularly spotlighted exceptional collections on the front page libraries might start competing to have their name appear on the marquee of the modern library of alexandria by getting their rare and thorough collections scanned and submitted to the service as quickly as possible.
This is probably why they have Feng Hsu, NASA's head of Risk Management for Safety and Mission Assurance, at the top of the list of experts they have helping advise the project. While I'll agree with what another poster said, most of the website reads like marketing towards investors, they do at least have some real experts involved and are serious about attempting this.
Personally I hope they succeed (and that they're hiring when I finish school).
This absurdity I would assume stems from what's called "resist, obstruct or delay" around here, but similar statues are common across the country. Basically this gem of the legal system makes it illegal to lie to a cop, or not give them any information they ask for. Apparently the right to remain silent doesn't apply until you're actually under arrest.
I personally have had the misfortune to be arrested and charged with this. I was at a friends house, and was taking a nap on the couch while they had gone out to the store. They came home while I was asleep and didn't wake me. I awoke to a loud pounding on the door right next to the couch. I got up and opened the door to see a cop standing there. They asked if my friend was home. I said "I don't think so" and looked over my shoulder. While my head was turned the cop said "I'm going to look around" and walked right past me into the house and into my friends bedroom. They found him laying on the bed and arrested him (he had a warrant for a failure to appear), and then walked back into the living room, looked at me and said "I'm arresting you for resist obstruct or delay" and handcuffed me and took me to jail where I spent the next 2 days.
I got the charge dropped after shelling $600 out on a lawyer and doing 24 hours of community service, all for saying "I don't think so."
Here lies the beauty however, most people really DON'T WANT TO DRIVE when you're too high to do so safely. I'm not saying you can't get too high to drive, I've just never really seen anybody get too high to drive, and then decide to do it anyway. By the time you're high enough to dangerously impair your coordination and reaction time, the paranoia and laziness associated with high doses have kicked in and getting off your nice safe couch and speeding around town (where all those cops are) just doesn't seem like too good of an idea.
Wait until it gets released for PC, which according to the game's site will happen sometime this quarter. I'm sure after that it will be approximately 6 hours before a cracked copy starts making the rounds on the torrent sites.
I signed up for an "intro to computers" course this semester thinking "I can handle this at 8am, sleep through it and still get an A probably." Of course I have now come to find out that I got the worst instructor for it, who's an attendance nazi and assigns several research papers throughout the course.
Ironically I'm going to end up spending more time doing work for my "mickey mouse" class than my other two classes: archaeology and engineering graphics (SolidWorks) which both have very laid back professors. My Solidworks prof. even told us yesterday that if we install the software at home (thank you mininova!) we can come in to class an hour late every day from now on.
Of course, there is no protection from the DHS-installed transmitter in your CPU.
Faraday cage? Only bringing data to and from the computer via sneakernet?
Of course I'm not that paranoid. I don't bother with encrypting my files or anything like that. The most sensitive info on my computers is some MAFIAA content I could get sued over. Anything I really don't want getting out (Ideas for grant proposals, passwords I can't be bothered to memorize, etc.) goes straight from my brain to a little book (that I handmade from a cigarette pack, reflective tape, and old computer paper) which I keep in my wallet that's never more then a couple yards away from me.
This especially works for me because I'm a bit OCD about keeping track of my stuff. I'd still be on a 12 year old wallet if I hadn't decided to finally replace it a few weeks ago (and I still kept the old one in my arts and crafts drawer to be reincarnated as part of something else).
Fortunately the rest of the world isn't as crazy as you. If we required photographers to get the consent of every person in their shots before publishing then journalism as we know it would practically be outlawed. There is a reason these are called public places.
If somebody singles out a specific person and follows them around all the time taking their picture, many places have stalking laws you can charge them under, or get a restraining order.
It's a very slippery slope trying to regulate who, what, and where in public you can take photos, that can easily go from "you cant photograph people x doing y" to "you can't photograph anyone" to "possessing a camera is illegal."
Well in that case we need to come up with a national standard rail type, and then they could churn out thousands of pieces of track and rail cars. Obviously certain places would need custom shaped rails, but certainly miles and miles of it are going to be standard straight lengths and curves.
I'm not saying we should force it upon the automakers. Simply come up with the specs, start taking bids for manufacturing quantities of rail track and cars, and gently suggest to the automakers that while we don't think we can just give them money so they stay in business, we will gladly hire them to build our trains.
Here's an interesting thought, what if the ISPs billed the RIAA ridiculous rates, and then turned around and passed on enough of that cash for an excellent lawyer (or to pay the fines if they lose the case) to anybody they handed over to the RIAA? Here you go, we'll give you plenty of court cases.. that you'll lose.
Not going to happen I know, but still a funny thought.
We could put the collecting satellites into a dawn/dusk sun-synchronous orbit and get near 100% light collecting time. Just stick relay satellites in geosynchronous orbit over the U.S. (or any other country we want to sell power to). In space we don't have this messy atmosphere diffusing our transmissions so we can bounce the power around a bit if we need to without too much loss.
Not to mention, anybody who makes a website just to point out in big bold letters "I AM A HUMANITARIAN" is probably overcompensating for something really evil...
This is way off topic I know, but I just found it interesting that the GP misspelled 'by' as 'bay' and you misspelled it as 'buy'. Not trying to be a pain or pick on you, just thought it was a neat coincidence that you both typo'd the same word in different ways.
Well we certainly wouldn't want private companies running our postal service, why think of all the unsolicited advertisements we'd end up with crammed into our mailboxes every day! oh, wait...
While I think the AC may be overstating this a bit, I do think the term 'infamous' is being a bit overused here. Ask any random person on the street about this issue and you're probably going to get a response along the lines of "What's MySQL?"
It seems to me, that our jobs as geeks should then be to provide easy to use tools to the computer illiterate masses, so that they might continue communicating unobstructed with one another.
Slashdot Mirror
What makes you believe this isn't already occuring with paper textbooks? I can't speak for the current crop (as new editions are pushed on schools practically every year) but when I was in middle / high school our social studies and history textbooks were so full of misleading half truths and flat out lies that I had become so thoroughly disenfranchised with the public school system I dropped out the day I turned 16.
Hell, the way things are right now you could pay me $10,000 a month and I'll gladly clap my hands 40 hours a week in whatever venue you deem most appropriate.
The fact that an idea is old has no direct correlation on whether it is good or not.
Phone books? I can't seem to find any other use for them other than kindling for my fireplace, and yet I continue to receive about 6 or 7 of them a year.
One possibility comes to mind that might assuage the tempers of these libraries. If Google were to prominently display the name of the library the book was scanned from, even adding functionality to browse by libraries and collections, and regularly spotlighted exceptional collections on the front page libraries might start competing to have their name appear on the marquee of the modern library of alexandria by getting their rare and thorough collections scanned and submitted to the service as quickly as possible.
Neat, I didn't know there were tools available to do that. What do you use?
-Insert long rant about everything being a felony and the current travesty of our justice system creating a separate class of (non-?)citizens.-
If it wasn't almost 3am I would actually type this out, but I'm tired and just felt like letting everybody know this pisses me off.
This is probably why they have Feng Hsu, NASA's head of Risk Management for Safety and Mission Assurance, at the top of the list of experts they have helping advise the project. While I'll agree with what another poster said, most of the website reads like marketing towards investors, they do at least have some real experts involved and are serious about attempting this.
Personally I hope they succeed (and that they're hiring when I finish school).
This absurdity I would assume stems from what's called "resist, obstruct or delay" around here, but similar statues are common across the country. Basically this gem of the legal system makes it illegal to lie to a cop, or not give them any information they ask for. Apparently the right to remain silent doesn't apply until you're actually under arrest.
I personally have had the misfortune to be arrested and charged with this. I was at a friends house, and was taking a nap on the couch while they had gone out to the store. They came home while I was asleep and didn't wake me. I awoke to a loud pounding on the door right next to the couch. I got up and opened the door to see a cop standing there. They asked if my friend was home. I said "I don't think so" and looked over my shoulder. While my head was turned the cop said "I'm going to look around" and walked right past me into the house and into my friends bedroom. They found him laying on the bed and arrested him (he had a warrant for a failure to appear), and then walked back into the living room, looked at me and said "I'm arresting you for resist obstruct or delay" and handcuffed me and took me to jail where I spent the next 2 days.
I got the charge dropped after shelling $600 out on a lawyer and doing 24 hours of community service, all for saying "I don't think so."
Here lies the beauty however, most people really DON'T WANT TO DRIVE when you're too high to do so safely. I'm not saying you can't get too high to drive, I've just never really seen anybody get too high to drive, and then decide to do it anyway. By the time you're high enough to dangerously impair your coordination and reaction time, the paranoia and laziness associated with high doses have kicked in and getting off your nice safe couch and speeding around town (where all those cops are) just doesn't seem like too good of an idea.
Wait until it gets released for PC, which according to the game's site will happen sometime this quarter. I'm sure after that it will be approximately 6 hours before a cracked copy starts making the rounds on the torrent sites.
Theoretically? Yes.
Would it actually happen? Not bloody likely.
I signed up for an "intro to computers" course this semester thinking "I can handle this at 8am, sleep through it and still get an A probably." Of course I have now come to find out that I got the worst instructor for it, who's an attendance nazi and assigns several research papers throughout the course.
Ironically I'm going to end up spending more time doing work for my "mickey mouse" class than my other two classes: archaeology and engineering graphics (SolidWorks) which both have very laid back professors. My Solidworks prof. even told us yesterday that if we install the software at home (thank you mininova!) we can come in to class an hour late every day from now on.
Faraday cage? Only bringing data to and from the computer via sneakernet?
Of course I'm not that paranoid. I don't bother with encrypting my files or anything like that. The most sensitive info on my computers is some MAFIAA content I could get sued over. Anything I really don't want getting out (Ideas for grant proposals, passwords I can't be bothered to memorize, etc.) goes straight from my brain to a little book (that I handmade from a cigarette pack, reflective tape, and old computer paper) which I keep in my wallet that's never more then a couple yards away from me.
This especially works for me because I'm a bit OCD about keeping track of my stuff. I'd still be on a 12 year old wallet if I hadn't decided to finally replace it a few weeks ago (and I still kept the old one in my arts and crafts drawer to be reincarnated as part of something else).
Burma Shave.
Fortunately the rest of the world isn't as crazy as you. If we required photographers to get the consent of every person in their shots before publishing then journalism as we know it would practically be outlawed. There is a reason these are called public places.
If somebody singles out a specific person and follows them around all the time taking their picture, many places have stalking laws you can charge them under, or get a restraining order.
It's a very slippery slope trying to regulate who, what, and where in public you can take photos, that can easily go from "you cant photograph people x doing y" to "you can't photograph anyone" to "possessing a camera is illegal."
Well in that case we need to come up with a national standard rail type, and then they could churn out thousands of pieces of track and rail cars. Obviously certain places would need custom shaped rails, but certainly miles and miles of it are going to be standard straight lengths and curves.
I'm not saying we should force it upon the automakers. Simply come up with the specs, start taking bids for manufacturing quantities of rail track and cars, and gently suggest to the automakers that while we don't think we can just give them money so they stay in business, we will gladly hire them to build our trains.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Here's an interesting thought, what if the ISPs billed the RIAA ridiculous rates, and then turned around and passed on enough of that cash for an excellent lawyer (or to pay the fines if they lose the case) to anybody they handed over to the RIAA? Here you go, we'll give you plenty of court cases.. that you'll lose.
Not going to happen I know, but still a funny thought.
We could put the collecting satellites into a dawn/dusk sun-synchronous orbit and get near 100% light collecting time. Just stick relay satellites in geosynchronous orbit over the U.S. (or any other country we want to sell power to). In space we don't have this messy atmosphere diffusing our transmissions so we can bounce the power around a bit if we need to without too much loss.
Not to mention, anybody who makes a website just to point out in big bold letters "I AM A HUMANITARIAN" is probably overcompensating for something really evil...
This is way off topic I know, but I just found it interesting that the GP misspelled 'by' as 'bay' and you misspelled it as 'buy'. Not trying to be a pain or pick on you, just thought it was a neat coincidence that you both typo'd the same word in different ways.
Well we certainly wouldn't want private companies running our postal service, why think of all the unsolicited advertisements we'd end up with crammed into our mailboxes every day! oh, wait...
While I think the AC may be overstating this a bit, I do think the term 'infamous' is being a bit overused here. Ask any random person on the street about this issue and you're probably going to get a response along the lines of "What's MySQL?"
It seems to me, that our jobs as geeks should then be to provide easy to use tools to the computer illiterate masses, so that they might continue communicating unobstructed with one another.