Interestingly, a few years ago I had an iOS device that got dropped in water and no longer functioned. I took it apart and pulverized the electronics, as I figured there was no way I could guarantee the data on there was inaccessible.
I took the baggie of pulverized parts to the local cell phone drop for recycling; got a few odd looks as I dropped it in.
Then I took the case backing (the bit with the serial number engraved into it) to Apple for a $50 store credit. The same credit they would have given me had I given them the entire device. That's probably as good a deal as I would have got from anywhere, even if I had kept everything intact.
The best part? I kept the LCD screen, as it still worked just fine.
This is probably the biggest reason. Asia is the new big market for phones; any design made has to support multiple Asian character formats.
However, I have another question. The submitter stated he'd pay an extra $100-200 for a slide-out, and that he doesn't mind a bit of extra bulk.
So: why isn't someone making a *phone case* with a built-in Bluetooth or USB keyboard? It'd be aftermarket, but you could slap it on any phone of a specific form factor; you could even make it a snap-in for a line of cases, so the single keypad would work across multiple lines of phones. As an added benefit, you could do multiple international phones for the areas with the highest demand; and your coverage would be larger than any specific carrier/device.
So... anyone have any examples of this? Anyone want to kickstart it?
In my small company, we all use Linux on the desktop.
I really see no reason for using MS Office if you're a small company.
However, for large companies, collaboration tools, internationalization of documents, corporate-wide style hints, advanced spreadsheet macros, shareable diagram objects, integrated calendars, meeting room tracking, distribution policy enforcement, etc. are important, and just aren't quite there on most of the alternatives. Google Docs does a reasonable job at some of that, but not all.
This is a murky field. A polygraph does present useful information; it's just not necessarily whether the person is telling the truth. The major decision part of any polygraph system is the operator, and they need to have sp,e training in physical psychology to be predictably any good at using the equipment.
I disagree. As I stated, polygraph machines are NOT lie detectors; the fact that they've been popularized in this way is beside the point.
Polygraphs only work in the way that swinging a five dollar wrench at someone works. It convinces them to tell you what you want to know on their own because their afraid of it. That's it.
No; that's the way that polygraphs are usually used by government and law enforcement to get the answer they want. Polygraphs actually WORK by measuring your vitals and recording the information change over time. There's a huge difference there.
And pretty soon, those health bands everyone's starting to wear will be indistinguishable from polygraphs; the only real difference being application and interpretation.
The phrase "He failed/passed a polygraph" is the biggest load of shit in "law enforcement."
I disagree here too -- it is totally eclipsed by the phrases "he was obstructing justice!" and "that DNA evidence proves it."
These days, polygraphs are much more abused by government on government employees than they are on civilians by law enforcement. But the LE abuses are the worse of the two I agree, as they're performed against people who have no choice.
4 year degrees have a lot theory with big sides of fluff / filler classes.
While tech schools and community college have teachers who have been / still are working in a real work place doing IT work.
the 4 years places not so much.
Can't say for today, but my 4 year school I went through in 6 years (co-op programs spread things out); and near the end, most of my seminars were taught by either domain experts or people taking a sabbatical from their day job to teach what they had learned.
The theory courses were what has kept me employed since... there's a difference between a real CS degree (being able to do the math and work the concepts) and being a code jockey. The second has a much lower glass ceiling.
What makes it even more confusing is that last night, I was reading about the new features being added to Firefox 32 which is currently available to testers.
I've heard of sprints, but this is getting a bit silly.
This is a murky field. A polygraph does present useful information; it's just not necessarily whether the person is telling the truth. The major decision part of any polygraph system is the operator, and they need to have sp,e training in physical psychology to be predictably any good at using the equipment.
Seems to me that this new system falls into the same category. They'll be able to get some new data that would have been obscured before, but the interpretation of the data will still require an expert.
Personally, I think this is better than leaving it up to a human, as the human mind has known defects during the data acquisition phase -- these systems don't have those weaknesses, and while they can't draw any conclusions, they gather a different (and in some cases more complete) set of information than a human by themselves would gather.
The problem comes when people conflate the results of the tests with factual certainty -- both systems require interpretation, and as we all know, statistics lie 99.8% of the time.
We don't need it if we would quarantine the people that decided to get this virus. Other than a very few people that got it from blood transfusions in the 80's, nearly all of the people with it got it from something they intentionally did. Why can't we quarantine these morons like we used to do with other diseases? Why is GRIDS so different that we can't protect the public from these people? They've proven they'll intentionally spread it, or it would have died-out over twenty years ago. Instead, we let these people keep spreading it.
The majority of cases I know of these days are: Needle sharing with an HIV carrier Women who are victims of rape Men who raped women who were previously victims of rape Children who were born with it.
Most of the cases are in Africa.
The other issue is that testing is fully voluntary, and HIV can be dormant. Tracking the spread and infection of HIV/AIDS is inherently difficult as well, because along with discovery being voluntary, the people who have it also hear the "nearly all of the people with it got it from something they intentionally did" line. So they're not likely to admit to having intentionally done something if they can avoid it.
Compare that to SARS, where the victims could be anyone, West Nile, where prior to it going epidemic, the majority of victims were on cruise ships, or MMR, where the victims of those diseases are mostly children. Then there's Polio which is no longer eradicated, and Smallpox, which isn't much compared to the flu strains our bodies have to deal with on a regular basis these days.
Disease eradication, prevention and management is tricky. Isolating HIV carriers will prove trickier than convincing people to do annual inoculations for common viruses for which herd protection could easily wipe out the viruses in short order.
What worries me more is the HIV variant that subverts the gene therapy discussed here, creating a new immunovirus that can slice and dice our genes however it likes.
...but at 12V, resistance is decidedly non-futile. I presume your much as possible is in a single room, or you're going to be radiating a lot of your energy before it ever reaches your 12VDC devices. Unless you're dealing with high amperages, of course. Then the runoff, while still noticeable, will at least be a small fraction of the total.
The difference here is that the politicians know that votes are fickle, but money is money.
I just thought of another problem with this though: for money to really speak, it has to at least have the appearance of being a continual stream. That means that once this $12mil warchest is used up, there has to be assurances that there will be ANOTHER war chest lined up to keep supporting things. Otherwise, it's easier to go with the other PAC who wants to keep things as they are, but will only donate $3mil/year.... for the next 20 years.
Lessig has to ensure this thing stays funded not just until the PAC's goals are realized, but until the goals of those being funded are realized. Otherwise, other deeper-running money may speak louder.
No matter what you think of Lessig, I think that the experiment in and of itself is interesting.
It's something that hasn't been tried before. If it doesn't work, a bunch of people are out parts of $5mil. If by some miracle it DOES work... well, then what's the use of decrying it?
The only real downside I can see to this PAC is that people who might have put their time/money into some competing and more effective project put it into this one, pinning more hope on the strategy than maybe they should have.
But unless we see it attempted at least once, we won't really know what effect it will have on the political climate.
Personally, I see Google's position in K-12 as being about where Apple's was 20-25 years ago. As long as they don't try for any heavy-handed manipulation, the outcome should be as mutually beneficial as well.
The thing here is that with all the ways Google is involved, the districts have a choice, year to year, on whether to choose them again. There's no lock-in, just education and some influence on the direction of CS education.
If Facebook (cringe) happens to have better ideas in the next election cycle, they could easily supplant Google as the resource provider and decision maker. Or it could be Apple again. Or Microsoft. Or IBM.
That's the way the system is SUPPOSED to work, and I'm glad it hasn't been railroaded yet.
While I presume the parent is meant to be some sort of satire, it's interesting that throughout history, slaves and then servants have generally been accepted in all these locations doing the same looking and listening. And the slaves/servants talked to each other -- they just didn't talk that much to the upper class, so what they said wasn't considered an issue.
What we're doing here is making our electronics replace those people, which is a good thing. The bad thing is that while we accept the devices in our lives, and consider their "conversation" meaningless to us, that conversation can be manipulated by anyone with some smarts and a network connection. So insead of slaves escaping or this month's maid getting fed up and moving on, you have devices that can leak all your personal information they have access to (lights tend to know when you're home) to the benefit of someone else.
1) If you think Google leans to the right, you arent paying any attention to politics, their donations, or their policies. Like most tech sector companies, they lean to the left.
I think in this case you need to ask "Of what?"
In the US, Google obviously leans to the left of the political spectrum. But the US spectrum is skewed heavily to the right, so that's not saying much.
In the EU, which includes true socialist countries, I'd say Google is a bit right of centre. However, I'm not sure of who Google has been donating to in the EU; the EU doesn't tend to take as kindly to political bribery as the US (not to say that they don't do it, but it's not usually so blatant).
Slashdot Mirror
Interestingly, a few years ago I had an iOS device that got dropped in water and no longer functioned. I took it apart and pulverized the electronics, as I figured there was no way I could guarantee the data on there was inaccessible.
I took the baggie of pulverized parts to the local cell phone drop for recycling; got a few odd looks as I dropped it in.
Then I took the case backing (the bit with the serial number engraved into it) to Apple for a $50 store credit. The same credit they would have given me had I given them the entire device. That's probably as good a deal as I would have got from anywhere, even if I had kept everything intact.
The best part? I kept the LCD screen, as it still worked just fine.
This is probably the biggest reason. Asia is the new big market for phones; any design made has to support multiple Asian character formats.
However, I have another question. The submitter stated he'd pay an extra $100-200 for a slide-out, and that he doesn't mind a bit of extra bulk.
So: why isn't someone making a *phone case* with a built-in Bluetooth or USB keyboard? It'd be aftermarket, but you could slap it on any phone of a specific form factor; you could even make it a snap-in for a line of cases, so the single keypad would work across multiple lines of phones. As an added benefit, you could do multiple international phones for the areas with the highest demand; and your coverage would be larger than any specific carrier/device.
So... anyone have any examples of this? Anyone want to kickstart it?
In my small company, we all use Linux on the desktop.
I really see no reason for using MS Office if you're a small company.
However, for large companies, collaboration tools, internationalization of documents, corporate-wide style hints, advanced spreadsheet macros, shareable diagram objects, integrated calendars, meeting room tracking, distribution policy enforcement, etc. are important, and just aren't quite there on most of the alternatives. Google Docs does a reasonable job at some of that, but not all.
Whoosh....
This is a murky field. A polygraph does present useful information; it's just not necessarily whether the person is telling the truth. The major decision part of any polygraph system is the operator, and they need to have sp,e training in physical psychology to be predictably any good at using the equipment.
That's nice bullshit sandwich wrapped in pseudo-science bread you've got there.
I disagree. As I stated, polygraph machines are NOT lie detectors; the fact that they've been popularized in this way is beside the point.
Polygraphs only work in the way that swinging a five dollar wrench at someone works. It convinces them to tell you what you want to know on their own because their afraid of it. That's it.
No; that's the way that polygraphs are usually used by government and law enforcement to get the answer they want. Polygraphs actually WORK by measuring your vitals and recording the information change over time. There's a huge difference there.
And pretty soon, those health bands everyone's starting to wear will be indistinguishable from polygraphs; the only real difference being application and interpretation.
The phrase "He failed/passed a polygraph" is the biggest load of shit in "law enforcement."
I disagree here too -- it is totally eclipsed by the phrases "he was obstructing justice!" and "that DNA evidence proves it."
These days, polygraphs are much more abused by government on government employees than they are on civilians by law enforcement. But the LE abuses are the worse of the two I agree, as they're performed against people who have no choice.
4 year degrees have a lot theory with big sides of fluff / filler classes.
While tech schools and community college have teachers who have been / still are working in a real work place doing IT work.
the 4 years places not so much.
Can't say for today, but my 4 year school I went through in 6 years (co-op programs spread things out); and near the end, most of my seminars were taught by either domain experts or people taking a sabbatical from their day job to teach what they had learned.
The theory courses were what has kept me employed since... there's a difference between a real CS degree (being able to do the math and work the concepts) and being a code jockey. The second has a much lower glass ceiling.
Some places want them to fill lower-level rolls
you'd actually want a kaiser for that, I think. no?
I'd love to fill a lower-level Rolls -- as it is, I have to settle for my compact....
What makes it even more confusing is that last night, I was reading about the new features being added to Firefox 32 which is currently available to testers.
I've heard of sprints, but this is getting a bit silly.
I picture breaking five legs and having it hop around on the sixth like a pogo stick.
It wouldn't even reply with "'Tis but a flesh wound...."
Yes; we have learned much from the Daleks.
Eventually these hexapods will realize that they are sometimes more efficient when flying. Watch out.
This is a murky field. A polygraph does present useful information; it's just not necessarily whether the person is telling the truth. The major decision part of any polygraph system is the operator, and they need to have sp,e training in physical psychology to be predictably any good at using the equipment.
Seems to me that this new system falls into the same category. They'll be able to get some new data that would have been obscured before, but the interpretation of the data will still require an expert.
Personally, I think this is better than leaving it up to a human, as the human mind has known defects during the data acquisition phase -- these systems don't have those weaknesses, and while they can't draw any conclusions, they gather a different (and in some cases more complete) set of information than a human by themselves would gather.
The problem comes when people conflate the results of the tests with factual certainty -- both systems require interpretation, and as we all know, statistics lie 99.8% of the time.
How do you pronounce that again?
say alms
say pal
say palm
o.O
I didn't expect the Ninjas.
We don't need it if we would quarantine the people that decided to get this virus. Other than a very few people that got it from blood transfusions in the 80's, nearly all of the people with it got it from something they intentionally did. Why can't we quarantine these morons like we used to do with other diseases? Why is GRIDS so different that we can't protect the public from these people? They've proven they'll intentionally spread it, or it would have died-out over twenty years ago. Instead, we let these people keep spreading it.
The majority of cases I know of these days are:
Needle sharing with an HIV carrier
Women who are victims of rape
Men who raped women who were previously victims of rape
Children who were born with it.
Most of the cases are in Africa.
The other issue is that testing is fully voluntary, and HIV can be dormant. Tracking the spread and infection of HIV/AIDS is inherently difficult as well, because along with discovery being voluntary, the people who have it also hear the "nearly all of the people with it got it from something they intentionally did" line. So they're not likely to admit to having intentionally done something if they can avoid it.
Compare that to SARS, where the victims could be anyone, West Nile, where prior to it going epidemic, the majority of victims were on cruise ships, or MMR, where the victims of those diseases are mostly children. Then there's Polio which is no longer eradicated, and Smallpox, which isn't much compared to the flu strains our bodies have to deal with on a regular basis these days.
Disease eradication, prevention and management is tricky. Isolating HIV carriers will prove trickier than convincing people to do annual inoculations for common viruses for which herd protection could easily wipe out the viruses in short order.
What worries me more is the HIV variant that subverts the gene therapy discussed here, creating a new immunovirus that can slice and dice our genes however it likes.
...but at 12V, resistance is decidedly non-futile. I presume your much as possible is in a single room, or you're going to be radiating a lot of your energy before it ever reaches your 12VDC devices. Unless you're dealing with high amperages, of course. Then the runoff, while still noticeable, will at least be a small fraction of the total.
The difference here is that the politicians know that votes are fickle, but money is money.
I just thought of another problem with this though: for money to really speak, it has to at least have the appearance of being a continual stream. That means that once this $12mil warchest is used up, there has to be assurances that there will be ANOTHER war chest lined up to keep supporting things. Otherwise, it's easier to go with the other PAC who wants to keep things as they are, but will only donate $3mil/year.... for the next 20 years.
Lessig has to ensure this thing stays funded not just until the PAC's goals are realized, but until the goals of those being funded are realized. Otherwise, other deeper-running money may speak louder.
If you take the bait, and this ends up getting funded, do not be surprised when we replace one "ocracy" with another "ocracy."
That's all this guy is after - putting power in his own court by using the government to oppress people who do not agree with his point of view.
At least Lessig has a track record and is putting his name and reputation to this.
Then again, AC has a track record and , er, oh well.
43986
pledges
$4,762,949
pledged of $5,000,000 goal
11 hours left
You know, they might just do it.
But isn't this only phase 2 of 3? It'll be interesting to see how far that $12mil actually goes.
I just can't support someone whose idea of freedom is allegedly protecting the rights of one group by oppressing another group.
Are you a US citizen? If so, you're likely supporting the current government structure by paying taxes. Just saying.
If you can get similar momentum behind some solution that has a chance of making any difference, and doesn't oppress anyone, go for it.
43651
pledges
$4,744,105
pledged of $5,000,000 goal
11 hours left
time remaining to pledge
Interesting... averaging at $100/pledge.
Oh, and:
$4,738,863
pledged of $5,000,000 goal
11 hours left
time remaining to pledge
No matter what you think of Lessig, I think that the experiment in and of itself is interesting.
It's something that hasn't been tried before. If it doesn't work, a bunch of people are out parts of $5mil. If by some miracle it DOES work... well, then what's the use of decrying it?
The only real downside I can see to this PAC is that people who might have put their time/money into some competing and more effective project put it into this one, pinning more hope on the strategy than maybe they should have.
But unless we see it attempted at least once, we won't really know what effect it will have on the political climate.
So go for it, Larry & Gang! I hope it works.
Personally, I see Google's position in K-12 as being about where Apple's was 20-25 years ago. As long as they don't try for any heavy-handed manipulation, the outcome should be as mutually beneficial as well.
The thing here is that with all the ways Google is involved, the districts have a choice, year to year, on whether to choose them again. There's no lock-in, just education and some influence on the direction of CS education.
If Facebook (cringe) happens to have better ideas in the next election cycle, they could easily supplant Google as the resource provider and decision maker. Or it could be Apple again. Or Microsoft. Or IBM.
That's the way the system is SUPPOSED to work, and I'm glad it hasn't been railroaded yet.
While I presume the parent is meant to be some sort of satire, it's interesting that throughout history, slaves and then servants have generally been accepted in all these locations doing the same looking and listening. And the slaves/servants talked to each other -- they just didn't talk that much to the upper class, so what they said wasn't considered an issue.
What we're doing here is making our electronics replace those people, which is a good thing. The bad thing is that while we accept the devices in our lives, and consider their "conversation" meaningless to us, that conversation can be manipulated by anyone with some smarts and a network connection. So insead of slaves escaping or this month's maid getting fed up and moving on, you have devices that can leak all your personal information they have access to (lights tend to know when you're home) to the benefit of someone else.
1) If you think Google leans to the right, you arent paying any attention to politics, their donations, or their policies. Like most tech sector companies, they lean to the left.
I think in this case you need to ask "Of what?"
In the US, Google obviously leans to the left of the political spectrum. But the US spectrum is skewed heavily to the right, so that's not saying much.
In the EU, which includes true socialist countries, I'd say Google is a bit right of centre. However, I'm not sure of who Google has been donating to in the EU; the EU doesn't tend to take as kindly to political bribery as the US (not to say that they don't do it, but it's not usually so blatant).