Regulations designed to protect the incumbent status quo, rather than serving the needs of real users, is the kind of thing that has kept France out of the picture for innovation. France must import their innovation.
As someone who was a US based IT employee of a French company at one time, I totally agree with this. While in general my French colleagues were good people and I still have fond memories of them, the word "arrogance" doesn't begin to describe how they feel about everything. Honestly, you'd have thought they invented every computer technology there was from the way they acted in our company. And while they've got a plausible cover story about why they want to regulate Skype, I strongly suspect that in reality France Telecom complained about how Skype is sending calls "for free over our domestic network and costing us money" and this is the real reason for the sudden regulatory interest. The relationship between certain very large French businesses and the government is under the table and quite probably in violation of various EU laws, but that relationship exists nonetheless. This is just more evidence of it.
Just remember that under Napoleon, France got nationalized telegraph service and the ITU. Later, France got Minitel. It's not about importing innovation, it's more about having an orthogonal view on what needs to be innovated, and who the innovations are accountable to. Seems to me that France should really be embracing open source with open arms -- I bet the only thing holding them back is that so much open source material has already been created by dirty English speakers;)
should an appendectomy be considered mutilation? How about in a minor where there can't be informed consent? Tonsilectomy?
Are you seriously comparing two different surgeries where, if the person doesn't receive it, they will die, with circumcision?
Comparing? Definitely. Equating? Definitely not. I think you missed my point (which was to make people think about what they do and do not consider acceptable).
Ear piercing?
In the interests of consistency, this too should probably be disallowed unless the person receiving it consents. However, mutilation this is not. Because piercings heal. In fact, I know someone who was ok with their children getting all sorts of piercings, because if they later decide it was a mistake, they just take the piercing out and it heals up.
Circumcision heals too, although with bits missing. From my list, the only two I'd consider similar really are circumcision and tonsilectomy -- because in both cases in the last millennium, it became standard practice to have the surgery performed as a preventative measure -- just because it could stop possible medical complications down the road. These days, neither surgery is really useful except as a last-ditch effort, as it is now very rare for people to die from an infection to either area. Prior to penicillin, death from infection in either location was, well, a fact of life. It happened. Now it's so rare as to bring a medical malpractice suit when it DOES happen.
Or is the problem that copyright holders just don't like resale?
I don't think we need to look any further than this. Copyright holders have always hated the idea of resale of any kind; they think it loses them revenue.
Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong, I don't have any hard data in front of me. I can say that if I buy something and it's mine, then I should be able to do whatever I please with it.
I think you'll find that copyright holders (that's anyone who produces content -- most of us) fall on both sides of this fence. The people who have always hated the idea of resale of any kind are the _publishers_ who are currently in dominant market positions. Lack of resale of digital media has been their saving grace with the dwindling of their traditional analog market. Merge the two, and their role in the dissemination of copyrightable material dwindles to that of first sale marketing.
Good point... should an appendectomy be considered mutilation? How about in a minor where there can't be informed consent? Tonsilectomy? Ear piercing?
A doctor who performs unnecessary surgeries will be punished. Why does circumcision get a free pass?
Because it's considered an elective cosmetic surgery. Plastic surgeons also aren't punished. Circumcision is considered in the same category (albeit, people rarely choose it as consenting adults). Vasectomies are also in this category, although they're more than cosmetic.
Because... it's a cultural thing. It doesn't have to make sense! It's only mutilation if the other tribe does it. If we do the same, it's a perfectly respectable practice.
Good point... should an appendectomy be considered mutilation? How about in a minor where there can't be informed consent? Tonsilectomy? Ear piercing?
How about exposing your children to too much/too little sunlight? Is potty training considered violence (emotional, not physical)?
What about advertising on/via publicly funded structures? I've been assaulted by ads promoting the viewing/play-acting of violence on government property, where I have no choice but to view it.
Humans are by nature violent; it is in our nature to acquire things by force (of one type or another). It is up to the individual culture to decide when this is OK and when it's not. There will always be victims, and often they will be human.
Isn't the real issue the legal status, which can exist without marriage just as easily as with?
I would be all for the government giving civil unions only, and not touching marriage at all, hetero or homo. If marriage is such an important religious institution, why is the government involved in it when it doesn't really need to be? Why would religious people want the government touching and managing their religious institutions? Just let the government handle things in the minimal legal sense needed, e.g. default behavior of inheritance, taxes, etc., and leave marriage and its definition to churches.
Indeed. This would also clean up the mess we call immigration.
I think the problem is that there are many who consider the US to be a Christian country, based on Christian values, and both the Old Testament Jews and Paul (a Pharisee of the same order as aforementioned Old Testament Jews) in the New Testament speak out against single-sex pleasure acts as being destructive to the family units in a society. Of course, they also spoke out against women being actively involved in religious ritual, and state that women should keep their hair long and covered, and ask their fathers/husbands about any religious issues in the privacy of their own home and be silent in public.
And when you think about it, nuclear families have been on the decline with the re-working of the definitions of family, and a sense of familial continuity in the US is extremely low, so the outspoken proponents like Card probably have a point. However, as long as the majority in a representative democracy are choosing this change in social structure with a full understanding of what is changing, anyone who believes in a religion that promotes selfless love of others and freedom of choice needs the freedom to speak out warnings without dictating how people who don't share their beliefs govern their lives. Otherwise, they're being just as hypocritical as the Pharisees of the Jewish religion that they condemn. A separation of religious marriage and tax law would be an excellent starting point (followed by doing the same in immigration law, domestic disturbance law, sexual violence/abuse laws, etc.)
I'm amazed you had no reference to Samuel Clemens and Huckleberry Finn. It's been blacklisted as an education tool here and there over the last 130 years, first of all for portraying African Americans as people and using offensive vernacular language, and then later for for the offensive use of words no longer in the vernacular and for not portraying African Americans as people. Likewise, Clemens got flak from both sides of the political spectrum, although his bankruptcy was purely due to his own bad decisions.
" that's why this issue with Google Glass is odd; if they'd read all his research, they should have been aware of the problems and the fixes."
Doesn't really matter whether they know about the issues or not; it's that they obviously haven't designed for them, which is odd. Not worth calling them ignorant or saying their solution is inferior... it's just odd that they've ignored or intentionally rejected key studies in their initial design.
Yeah, people will not trust someone whose face they have forgotten. Of course unless their own device tells them who it is.
...at which point, they guys who bury people's online history will have a new way to turn a profit.
If everyone depends on Glass, that would make social engineering MUCH easier; I could pretend to be anyone with a bit of photoshop, a high ranking page, and a fakebook account.
What would airplane mode have to do with a wired interface?
He heard "airplay" and jumped to the conclusion that when you plug in the connector, what really happens is the video is sent out of the device via WiFi and picked up by the dongle, which then converts it to HDMI (plugging it in being to supply firmware and power).
I'm pretty sure what really happens is that Airplay, being Apple's own patented sauce, is being used as a compressed streaming method on the wire so that the signal is encrypted all the way from the device to the peripheral, and thus has more leeway in how it can be used on third party devices.
I'm just waiting to see this ad: "Level 10 city blocks. Costs very little with parts you can purchase at Home depot. Download the plans online."
Kill people just because you can is not a healthy attitude. Neither is making it easy for others to do it on a whim.
We should not have to make everything you should not do illegal.
So the question is how, short of making it illegal, do we stop cretins like this who think they have the right to do this sort of unhealthy social engineering?
If you don't like the "state" you live under then move or change it. It's okay to think subversive thoughts but there are lines.
While I wouldn't do what he's doing, I'll fight for his right to do it. I have no idea what killing people because you can has to do with being able to print your own firearm. Wake me when you can print your own ammunition too.
First off: plans for DIY fuel air explosives are already available online.
Second off: none of this stuff can be done "on a whim". First, you need the right 3D printer, then you need the right plastics, then you need the plans. Finally, you need to know enough about firearms to be able to print and assemble and test the thing. You're also going to need to get some ammunition.
We should never attempt to stop cretins from doing things we don't like -- we SHOULD make our society one in which doing things that are illegal is seen to be unappetizing.
Personally, I have fewer issues with someone providing plans to print a gun than I do with the entertainment industry -- every day on my way to work, I have to pass an ad for a TV show that depicts an attractive young woman in front of a chart of mugshots with "killed" stamped over them -- and huge letters saying "Murder is only the beginning." Think about that for a moment. This poster is MUCH more likely to result in someone committing a violent act than someone being able to make their own gun. I guess gangs and crime syndicates might like these guns because they're untraceable, but they've already got untraceable guns - being able to print and toss will just allow them to stop robbing people for their firearms and will deflate the prices for unmarked guns on the black market -- both of which are good things.
Of course, the first time a printed gun is proven to have been used in an actual crime, things will get nasty.
OK, I'll bite, even though I think using a Mini is silly for most enterprise server purposes.
Does a Mac Mini have a lights out console that lets you power cycle the system from ROM and view the system console remotely while you're doing it?
If you want it to; it has firmware-enabled USB and WiFi. No need for ROM (I know, this one's kinda weak). You can even set it up to cycle a rack of them at once.
Does It monitor temperature and environment and report on them remotely?
Yes; this is built in to all modern Macs. The desktop version of the OS just doesn't present a pretty console to manage this by default (the server OS does).
Does it monitor for hardware flaws and report to an Enterprise Management system if any errors are detected?
Sure thing; it supports a number of management systems and can do predictive failure on a number of hardware components. Just like any Mac.
Does it let you upgrade ROM and BIOS versions remotely and report on what versions it has--even before booting?
Thankfully, no. It uses EFI. You boot what you want to boot. Using ROM+BIOS in this day and age is crazy, due to the headache to keep everything synched correctly and the pain of upgrading.
Does it have multiple, hot-swappable drive bays with hardware RAID support?
Yes, they're called Mac Minis:D Actually, you've got lots of options here, as the Mini supports:
Thunderbolt port (up to 10 Gbps)
FireWire 800 port (up to 800 Mbps)
Four USB 3 ports (up to 5 Gbps)
SDXC card slot
Does it have error-correcting memory and dual power supplies?
Yeah, it supports ECC memory (although these days for most "hosting" services, that's a bit overkill) I'll give you the power supply. Not only does it not have dual power supplies, the one it has is built-in -- I mean REALLY built-in. Like not easily swappable built-in. Thankfully, they've got a really low failure rate, but stil... this is a big issue, and might be what prevents someone from using them as a server.
Is it a standard 1U (or multiple U) form factor?
1U comes in 19" x 1.75" x 17.7", 19" x 1.75" x 19.7" and 19" x 1.75" x 21.5" Minis come in 7.7" x 1.4" x 7.7". This means that you can fit 4 of them in a 1U rack with room for ventilation, control panels, extra storage devices and cabling. People even sell 4-Mini 1U frames that simplify this -- even allowing for hot-swappable Minis in the rack (if you're clustering).
Does it have multiple network interfaces (at least 4)? Can you easily add cards for more network ports and other functions?
Cards? What millennium are you living in? It has internally: 1 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet (RJ-45 connector) 1 Bluetooth 4.0 radio 1 802.11n Wi-Fi wireless radio (some may consider this a negative in a server environment)
And for adding more externally: 1 Thunderbolt port (up to 40 Gbps, up to 10Gbps per lane) (up to 6 devices) 1 FireWire 800 port (up to 800 Mbps) (up to 63 devices) Four USB 3 ports (up to 5 Gbps per port) (you know how USB can be chained, not reliably on a server)
If the answer to any of the above is no, than it's NOT an Enterprise-class server. And it's not likely to be used in a professional data center. For Dell, HP, IBM and X86 Sun servers, all of the above are a big Yes.
I don't think anyone ever called it enterprise-class. However there are others who want servers more lightweight than the big iron. And as I think I've shown, the answer is actually yes to pretty much everything you said other than the stuff that's useless these days and the power supply issue. Better to just hot swap a mini
You obviously haven't read the other slashdot articles on him; he figured out the solutions years ago; that's why this issue with Google Glass is odd; if they'd read all his research, they should have been aware of the problems and the fixes.
no, I don't doubt it. Maybe you should explain what gathering public data and making it available is a bad thing?
The singkle best defence the people in the US have against abuse from police is cameras. The only people who shoud be conerned are 'UFO' watchers, and conspiracy theorist. Becasue the expansion of cameras is killing that nonsense.
Imagine looking at a constable and being able to bring up everything the public record has on him, almost instantly. Imagine walking into a crowded room, "tagging" the best looking person there, and then doing an in-depth query on their back story. The next time you see them, appropriate info is fed to you to be able to act like you're someone they should know and like.
Both things have positive points, but can be used for great evil as well as great good.
Now imagine if Google mounted a laser on the glasses....
There are times that *bold* and/italic/ are _pretty much necessary_. So basically something between Notepad and Wordpad would be sorta perfect for most writing. Kate, gedit, and the like on Linux would be good to me.
FTFY:D
Believe it or not, there are even programs that'll take standard ascii markup like that and print it with proper formatting to PDF or a printer. Even MS Outlook will autoconvert those for you;)
When kids learn to use a calculator, they lean to use a calculator in general. They don't learn a particular one true brand.
Unfortunately, I'm useless with an HP calculator. I can do anything you want with a TI calculator though. Been this way since I got my first TI calculator* in grade 8. Don't even get me started on business vs scientific calculators.
I guess these days it's a moot point though, as most kids just use their smartphones.
* actually, I rebuilt a TI hardbutton/LED calculator when I was 6, but that one didn't promote vendor lock-in. A basic calculator is to calculators what Notepad is to word processors. MS Word is more like a graphing calculator, where we DO learn "one true brand".
Learning how to make professional looking documents that communicate well to people is a valuable skill
so teach them LaTeX then?
Oh yeah? How do you create professional business looking documents with LaTeX, ones that don't look like thesis dissertations?
I rarely see professional business looking documents. The ones that I do see are often written in MS Publisher or some in-house locked-down template via web UI (where the person adding the content doesn't get to touch the presentation). The only thing stopping people from using LaTeX for business documents is the lack of template libraries -- and since any business should have a single set of templates anyway, they just need someone to write them up.
I might have been a good lawyer, but I never even considered that career, as it had a social stigma associated with it that I could not identify with
I don't think the phrase "social stigma" means what you think it means, unless your social circle consists of revolutionary anarchists. If you're a well paid programmer working for a big corporation, you're hardly in a position to look down on lawyers.
When I was a teenager, I was a teenager, not a well paid programmer. Hence the past tense. I could have quoted "social stigma", but I figured that since we are talking about educating teenagers, that would be obvious:) When you're a teenager, almost all your friends are revolutionary anarchists of one type or another. Eventually we grow up, but by then we've often left school and the opportunity to learn. My whole point was that as teenagers, we tend to look down on all sorts of things, whether we're in a position to do so or not. As I said, I might have been a good lawyer, and enjoyed it. At this point I'm not going back to law school to start a new career though. If there had been a "codices.org" BBS or something back in the day, maybe I would have looked at what the legal profession was all about, taken the law elective in highschool, and then gone on to law school. Same goes for computer programming. I was attracted to the vocation I had access to and knew about.
Your comments assume that schools are designed to be trade schools, where you learn to use the tools for the job. Schools do have this function, and it's useful, but they are also supposed to be teaching students how to think, how to manage abstract thought, and how to understand the world around them.
If a student has been trained how to draw a circle in Word, maybe sort a list or do a mail merge, they'll later attempt to create a spreadsheet object in Word in which they store all their data, and use mail merge to query/fill the cells and otherwise manipulate the data. Trust me -- this happens constantly in the "real world".
If a student has been trained how to do the same things in Scheme, they'll never use Scheme in the real world -- which means they'll be forced to use the skills they learned and apply them in new situations. They'll likely look at Word and at Postgres and decide that the second is a better tool for database operations. They'll be able to look at a DB program and figure out how it works and have the vision to say "I need something like this, but it also has to be able to do THAT" -- and either find the alternative they're looking for, or create it/get someone to create it.
Teaching computer programming isn't about learning a programming language; it's about learning problem solving skills and critical thinking -- that can be applied in any other aspect of life; even writing a properly put together purchase invoice or office memo. The reverse is not true, unless the teacher is REALLY good.
I have no problem with teaching kids how to create professional looking documents. However, professional documents are best created by software that separates the content from the layout, and preserves both. The only reason that Word creates professional looking documents is that we've suffered a generation of professionals who have used Word to create documents. Badly. The result is that "learning Word" is often "learning how to use the word processor everyone in the business world is using, and learning how to massage it to create meaningful output that will resemble what the person you're sharing it with is seeing". This is the equivalent of teaching knot tying because it's standard business practice to tie knots around everything being shared with someone else. Why not just teach them how to do it correctly, and leave Word as an elective course for people who actually need to use it to get something done?
I was composing thoughts on a computer before Office existed. Word teaches bad writing habits -- people confuse the content of a document with the look of a document, and spend way too much time tweaking the look instead of efficiently creating the content, arranging it, and then deciding how best to present it.
I recall being in classes that asked for a 5-paged somethingorother. While others were tweaking their wording to fit in/fill up 5 pages, I was writing the assignment up, revising it, and then at the end, spending a few minutes to make it fit the page as required.
I'd be happier if schools taught the skills and then let you apply them using the popular tools (with some instruction). What often seems to often happen (and be lobbied for by non-educators) is that schools teach how to use a limited set of tools, and assume the students will figure out the skills and any other tools needed on their own time. Remember, to someone with a hammer who's never seen a screwdriver, a screw is just a fancy nail.
Learning how to use a word processor is useful, if they're taught correctly. Word/LibreOffice are great in that if you've been trained how to write and use document markup, they can create elegant documents. However, if you're taught how to use them without first being taught about content, style and markup, most people will default to using a combination of tabs, spaces, and whatever markup looks closest to what they want to tweak their content as they go. This detracts from the teaching instead of enhancing it. It doesn't help that most of the teachers have never been trained in how to properly use a word processor either.
Starting with Notepad and then moving to LaTeX before being exposed to Word would be extremely useful in ensuring the proper DTP skills are learned instead of faked by students.
They actually did a study in which kids were paid for good grades. There was zero positive impact. It simply isn't a motivating factor.
Kids need problems to solve. Hobbies. And if they see that a computer can be used to solve their problem, they'll use it.
I didn't learn programming because it was "fun" when I was 8 or so. I learned programming because it solved problems I was interested in. Namely, making games and creating animation. I made some pretty lengthy ASCII animations back in the day. I was interested in animation and computers were a way to solve the problem since I didn't have an 8mm camera and money to spend on developing film as would be required if I tried to use stop motion as the means to solve the problem.
I still use programming primarily to solve problems. I just solve different problems and get paid more to do it now.
Exactly this! I learned to program because I needed to make a bunch of labels and we had this printer and computer sitting there. So I learned my pushes and pokes, how to do repeat loops and set up a bitmask, how to push it out the serial cable in a way the dot matrix printer could understand, and set it to work. After a few wasted pages, I got the couple hundred labels printed, and was left wondering what else I could use a computer for, as most of the steps needed to print labels seemed to have myriads of other obvious uses.
Next thing I wrote was a racecar game, using pixels printed to the screen instead of dots printed to a serial device. I understood at that point that the screen was just another peripheral, exactly like a printer, but able to re-use the same material over and over again.
I'd say these are the types of testimonials we should be sharing with teens, except that these days, people have already done all the fun stuff at this level; they can find free apps for their phones that do everything we learned how to do via programming.
But whatever the solution, presenting computer coding as a tool to make something easier for them is definitely the best way to go. Let them use the tool to scribble, and eventually they'll be inspired to create a masterpiece -- or not.
The same goes for any market segment. However, just like for every actor who makes it big in the movie industry there are hundreds of thousands who are "crowd person #7" in a 30 second shot of a TV commercial, for every superstar programmer who can architect, design, implement and maintain stellar code, we need the code monkeys who just do documentation, UI, DB I/O improvements, testing, etc.
Not all programmers need to be passionate about their jobs, although it sure helps (just like in any other field). This site seems to be about getting the eyeballs of those who may become passionate if exposed to coding, and who may otherwise not even consider it (I might have been a good lawyer, but I never even considered that career, as it had a social stigma associated with it that I could not identify with).
Slashdot Mirror
The same MS who collude with the Chinese government to enable monitoring of dissidents on skype?
You need to read The Sneetches -- Microsoft's just a company of "fix-it-up chappies." Note that both the US and China have stars upon thars :D
Regulations designed to protect the incumbent status quo, rather than serving the needs of real users, is the kind of thing that has kept France out of the picture for innovation. France must import their innovation.
As someone who was a US based IT employee of a French company at one time, I totally agree with this. While in general my French colleagues were good people and I still have fond memories of them, the word "arrogance" doesn't begin to describe how they feel about everything. Honestly, you'd have thought they invented every computer technology there was from the way they acted in our company. And while they've got a plausible cover story about why they want to regulate Skype, I strongly suspect that in reality France Telecom complained about how Skype is sending calls "for free over our domestic network and costing us money" and this is the real reason for the sudden regulatory interest. The relationship between certain very large French businesses and the government is under the table and quite probably in violation of various EU laws, but that relationship exists nonetheless. This is just more evidence of it.
Just remember that under Napoleon, France got nationalized telegraph service and the ITU. Later, France got Minitel. It's not about importing innovation, it's more about having an orthogonal view on what needs to be innovated, and who the innovations are accountable to. Seems to me that France should really be embracing open source with open arms -- I bet the only thing holding them back is that so much open source material has already been created by dirty English speakers ;)
(fun sidebar: the word "Canpire" autocorrects to "Vampire" on my phone)
Even more fun sidebar: 'Canpire' is wrong, too. This is Montreal, ergo, french.
'Canipre'....it would be pronounced something like...'Can-ee-pray'...
I prefer Can-ee-prey
should an appendectomy be considered mutilation? How about in a minor where there can't be informed consent? Tonsilectomy?
Are you seriously comparing two different surgeries where, if the person doesn't receive it, they will die, with circumcision?
Comparing? Definitely. Equating? Definitely not. I think you missed my point (which was to make people think about what they do and do not consider acceptable).
Ear piercing?
In the interests of consistency, this too should probably be disallowed unless the person receiving it consents. However, mutilation this is not. Because piercings heal. In fact, I know someone who was ok with their children getting all sorts of piercings, because if they later decide it was a mistake, they just take the piercing out and it heals up.
Circumcision heals too, although with bits missing. From my list, the only two I'd consider similar really are circumcision and tonsilectomy -- because in both cases in the last millennium, it became standard practice to have the surgery performed as a preventative measure -- just because it could stop possible medical complications down the road. These days, neither surgery is really useful except as a last-ditch effort, as it is now very rare for people to die from an infection to either area. Prior to penicillin, death from infection in either location was, well, a fact of life. It happened. Now it's so rare as to bring a medical malpractice suit when it DOES happen.
You, sir, are a moron.
moron /môrän/
Noun
A stupid person.
Synonyms
imbecile - fool - cretin
You write with such authority -- because someone asked an open-ended question that you misunderstood as pointed rhetoric?
Or were you meaning to answer my final question:
Is tolerance a good thing, or a bad thing?
I don't think we need to look any further than this. Copyright holders have always hated the idea of resale of any kind; they think it loses them revenue.
Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong, I don't have any hard data in front of me. I can say that if I buy something and it's mine, then I should be able to do whatever I please with it.
I think you'll find that copyright holders (that's anyone who produces content -- most of us) fall on both sides of this fence. The people who have always hated the idea of resale of any kind are the _publishers_ who are currently in dominant market positions. Lack of resale of digital media has been their saving grace with the dwindling of their traditional analog market. Merge the two, and their role in the dissemination of copyrightable material dwindles to that of first sale marketing.
Good point... should an appendectomy be considered mutilation? How about in a minor where there can't be informed consent? Tonsilectomy? Ear piercing?
A doctor who performs unnecessary surgeries will be punished. Why does circumcision get a free pass?
Because it's considered an elective cosmetic surgery. Plastic surgeons also aren't punished. Circumcision is considered in the same category (albeit, people rarely choose it as consenting adults). Vasectomies are also in this category, although they're more than cosmetic.
Because... it's a cultural thing. It doesn't have to make sense! It's only mutilation if the other tribe does it. If we do the same, it's a perfectly respectable practice.
Good point... should an appendectomy be considered mutilation? How about in a minor where there can't be informed consent? Tonsilectomy? Ear piercing?
How about exposing your children to too much/too little sunlight? Is potty training considered violence (emotional, not physical)?
What about advertising on/via publicly funded structures? I've been assaulted by ads promoting the viewing/play-acting of violence on government property, where I have no choice but to view it.
Humans are by nature violent; it is in our nature to acquire things by force (of one type or another). It is up to the individual culture to decide when this is OK and when it's not. There will always be victims, and often they will be human.
Is tolerance a good thing, or a bad thing?
Isn't the real issue the legal status, which can exist without marriage just as easily as with?
I would be all for the government giving civil unions only, and not touching marriage at all, hetero or homo. If marriage is such an important religious institution, why is the government involved in it when it doesn't really need to be? Why would religious people want the government touching and managing their religious institutions? Just let the government handle things in the minimal legal sense needed, e.g. default behavior of inheritance, taxes, etc., and leave marriage and its definition to churches.
Indeed. This would also clean up the mess we call immigration.
I think the problem is that there are many who consider the US to be a Christian country, based on Christian values, and both the Old Testament Jews and Paul (a Pharisee of the same order as aforementioned Old Testament Jews) in the New Testament speak out against single-sex pleasure acts as being destructive to the family units in a society. Of course, they also spoke out against women being actively involved in religious ritual, and state that women should keep their hair long and covered, and ask their fathers/husbands about any religious issues in the privacy of their own home and be silent in public.
And when you think about it, nuclear families have been on the decline with the re-working of the definitions of family, and a sense of familial continuity in the US is extremely low, so the outspoken proponents like Card probably have a point. However, as long as the majority in a representative democracy are choosing this change in social structure with a full understanding of what is changing, anyone who believes in a religion that promotes selfless love of others and freedom of choice needs the freedom to speak out warnings without dictating how people who don't share their beliefs govern their lives. Otherwise, they're being just as hypocritical as the Pharisees of the Jewish religion that they condemn. A separation of religious marriage and tax law would be an excellent starting point (followed by doing the same in immigration law, domestic disturbance law, sexual violence/abuse laws, etc.)
I'm amazed you had no reference to Samuel Clemens and Huckleberry Finn. It's been blacklisted as an education tool here and there over the last 130 years, first of all for portraying African Americans as people and using offensive vernacular language, and then later for for the offensive use of words no longer in the vernacular and for not portraying African Americans as people. Likewise, Clemens got flak from both sides of the political spectrum, although his bankruptcy was purely due to his own bad decisions.
" that's why this issue with Google Glass is odd; if they'd read all his research, they should have been aware of the problems and the fixes."
Doesn't really matter whether they know about the issues or not; it's that they obviously haven't designed for them, which is odd. Not worth calling them ignorant or saying their solution is inferior... it's just odd that they've ignored or intentionally rejected key studies in their initial design.
Yeah, people will not trust someone whose face they have forgotten. Of course unless their own device tells them who it is.
...at which point, they guys who bury people's online history will have a new way to turn a profit.
If everyone depends on Glass, that would make social engineering MUCH easier; I could pretend to be anyone with a bit of photoshop, a high ranking page, and a fakebook account.
What would airplane mode have to do with a wired interface?
He heard "airplay" and jumped to the conclusion that when you plug in the connector, what really happens is the video is sent out of the device via WiFi and picked up by the dongle, which then converts it to HDMI (plugging it in being to supply firmware and power).
I'm pretty sure what really happens is that Airplay, being Apple's own patented sauce, is being used as a compressed streaming method on the wire so that the signal is encrypted all the way from the device to the peripheral, and thus has more leeway in how it can be used on third party devices.
I'm just waiting to see this ad: "Level 10 city blocks. Costs very little with parts you can purchase at Home depot. Download the plans online."
Kill people just because you can is not a healthy attitude. Neither is making it easy for others to do it on a whim.
We should not have to make everything you should not do illegal.
So the question is how, short of making it illegal, do we stop cretins like this who think they have the right to do this sort of unhealthy social engineering?
If you don't like the "state" you live under then move or change it. It's okay to think subversive thoughts but there are lines.
While I wouldn't do what he's doing, I'll fight for his right to do it. I have no idea what killing people because you can has to do with being able to print your own firearm. Wake me when you can print your own ammunition too.
First off: plans for DIY fuel air explosives are already available online.
Second off: none of this stuff can be done "on a whim". First, you need the right 3D printer, then you need the right plastics, then you need the plans. Finally, you need to know enough about firearms to be able to print and assemble and test the thing. You're also going to need to get some ammunition.
We should never attempt to stop cretins from doing things we don't like -- we SHOULD make our society one in which doing things that are illegal is seen to be unappetizing.
Personally, I have fewer issues with someone providing plans to print a gun than I do with the entertainment industry -- every day on my way to work, I have to pass an ad for a TV show that depicts an attractive young woman in front of a chart of mugshots with "killed" stamped over them -- and huge letters saying "Murder is only the beginning." Think about that for a moment. This poster is MUCH more likely to result in someone committing a violent act than someone being able to make their own gun. I guess gangs and crime syndicates might like these guns because they're untraceable, but they've already got untraceable guns - being able to print and toss will just allow them to stop robbing people for their firearms and will deflate the prices for unmarked guns on the black market -- both of which are good things.
Of course, the first time a printed gun is proven to have been used in an actual crime, things will get nasty.
I think he meant POSIX :D
I say this as an OpenVMS fanboy who spent a fair bit of time tolerating IRIX and loving the time slots I got on DEC's Alpha systems back in the day.
OK, I'll bite, even though I think using a Mini is silly for most enterprise server purposes.
Does a Mac Mini have a lights out console that lets you power cycle the system from ROM and view the system console remotely while you're doing it?
If you want it to; it has firmware-enabled USB and WiFi. No need for ROM (I know, this one's kinda weak). You can even set it up to cycle a rack of them at once.
Does It monitor temperature and environment and report on them remotely?
Yes; this is built in to all modern Macs. The desktop version of the OS just doesn't present a pretty console to manage this by default (the server OS does).
Does it monitor for hardware flaws and report to an Enterprise Management system if any errors are detected?
Sure thing; it supports a number of management systems and can do predictive failure on a number of hardware components. Just like any Mac.
Does it let you upgrade ROM and BIOS versions remotely and report on what versions it has--even before booting?
Thankfully, no. It uses EFI. You boot what you want to boot. Using ROM+BIOS in this day and age is crazy, due to the headache to keep everything synched correctly and the pain of upgrading.
Does it have multiple, hot-swappable drive bays with hardware RAID support?
Yes, they're called Mac Minis :D
Actually, you've got lots of options here, as the Mini supports:
Thunderbolt port (up to 10 Gbps)
FireWire 800 port (up to 800 Mbps)
Four USB 3 ports (up to 5 Gbps)
SDXC card slot
Does it have error-correcting memory and dual power supplies?
Yeah, it supports ECC memory (although these days for most "hosting" services, that's a bit overkill)
I'll give you the power supply. Not only does it not have dual power supplies, the one it has is built-in -- I mean REALLY built-in. Like not easily swappable built-in. Thankfully, they've got a really low failure rate, but stil... this is a big issue, and might be what prevents someone from using them as a server.
Is it a standard 1U (or multiple U) form factor?
1U comes in 19" x 1.75" x 17.7", 19" x 1.75" x 19.7" and 19" x 1.75" x 21.5"
Minis come in 7.7" x 1.4" x 7.7". This means that you can fit 4 of them in a 1U rack with room for ventilation, control panels, extra storage devices and cabling. People even sell 4-Mini 1U frames that simplify this -- even allowing for hot-swappable Minis in the rack (if you're clustering).
Does it have multiple network interfaces (at least 4)? Can you easily add cards for more network ports and other functions?
Cards? What millennium are you living in?
It has internally:
1 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet (RJ-45 connector)
1 Bluetooth 4.0 radio
1 802.11n Wi-Fi wireless radio (some may consider this a negative in a server environment)
And for adding more externally:
1 Thunderbolt port (up to 40 Gbps, up to 10Gbps per lane) (up to 6 devices)
1 FireWire 800 port (up to 800 Mbps) (up to 63 devices)
Four USB 3 ports (up to 5 Gbps per port) (you know how USB can be chained, not reliably on a server)
If the answer to any of the above is no, than it's NOT an Enterprise-class server. And it's not likely to be used in a professional data center. For Dell, HP, IBM and X86 Sun servers, all of the above are a big Yes.
I don't think anyone ever called it enterprise-class. However there are others who want servers more lightweight than the big iron.
And as I think I've shown, the answer is actually yes to pretty much everything you said other than the stuff that's useless these days and the power supply issue. Better to just hot swap a mini
You obviously haven't read the other slashdot articles on him; he figured out the solutions years ago; that's why this issue with Google Glass is odd; if they'd read all his research, they should have been aware of the problems and the fixes.
no, I don't doubt it. Maybe you should explain what gathering public data and making it available is a bad thing?
The singkle best defence the people in the US have against abuse from police is cameras.
The only people who shoud be conerned are 'UFO' watchers, and conspiracy theorist. Becasue the expansion of cameras is killing that nonsense.
Imagine looking at a constable and being able to bring up everything the public record has on him, almost instantly.
Imagine walking into a crowded room, "tagging" the best looking person there, and then doing an in-depth query on their back story. The next time you see them, appropriate info is fed to you to be able to act like you're someone they should know and like.
Both things have positive points, but can be used for great evil as well as great good.
Now imagine if Google mounted a laser on the glasses....
There are times that *bold* and /italic/ are _pretty much necessary_. So basically something between Notepad and Wordpad would be sorta perfect for most writing. Kate, gedit, and the like on Linux would be good to me.
FTFY :D
Believe it or not, there are even programs that'll take standard ascii markup like that and print it with proper formatting to PDF or a printer. Even MS Outlook will autoconvert those for you ;)
When kids learn to use a calculator, they lean to use a calculator in general. They don't learn a particular one true brand.
Unfortunately, I'm useless with an HP calculator. I can do anything you want with a TI calculator though. Been this way since I got my first TI calculator* in grade 8. Don't even get me started on business vs scientific calculators.
I guess these days it's a moot point though, as most kids just use their smartphones.
* actually, I rebuilt a TI hardbutton/LED calculator when I was 6, but that one didn't promote vendor lock-in. A basic calculator is to calculators what Notepad is to word processors. MS Word is more like a graphing calculator, where we DO learn "one true brand".
Oh yeah? How do you create professional business looking documents with LaTeX, ones that don't look like thesis dissertations?
I rarely see professional business looking documents. The ones that I do see are often written in MS Publisher or some in-house locked-down template via web UI (where the person adding the content doesn't get to touch the presentation). The only thing stopping people from using LaTeX for business documents is the lack of template libraries -- and since any business should have a single set of templates anyway, they just need someone to write them up.
I might have been a good lawyer, but I never even considered that career, as it had a social stigma associated with it that I could not identify with
I don't think the phrase "social stigma" means what you think it means, unless your social circle consists of revolutionary anarchists. If you're a well paid programmer working for a big corporation, you're hardly in a position to look down on lawyers.
When I was a teenager, I was a teenager, not a well paid programmer. Hence the past tense. I could have quoted "social stigma", but I figured that since we are talking about educating teenagers, that would be obvious :) When you're a teenager, almost all your friends are revolutionary anarchists of one type or another. Eventually we grow up, but by then we've often left school and the opportunity to learn. My whole point was that as teenagers, we tend to look down on all sorts of things, whether we're in a position to do so or not. As I said, I might have been a good lawyer, and enjoyed it. At this point I'm not going back to law school to start a new career though. If there had been a "codices.org" BBS or something back in the day, maybe I would have looked at what the legal profession was all about, taken the law elective in highschool, and then gone on to law school. Same goes for computer programming. I was attracted to the vocation I had access to and knew about.
Your comments assume that schools are designed to be trade schools, where you learn to use the tools for the job. Schools do have this function, and it's useful, but they are also supposed to be teaching students how to think, how to manage abstract thought, and how to understand the world around them.
If a student has been trained how to draw a circle in Word, maybe sort a list or do a mail merge, they'll later attempt to create a spreadsheet object in Word in which they store all their data, and use mail merge to query/fill the cells and otherwise manipulate the data. Trust me -- this happens constantly in the "real world".
If a student has been trained how to do the same things in Scheme, they'll never use Scheme in the real world -- which means they'll be forced to use the skills they learned and apply them in new situations. They'll likely look at Word and at Postgres and decide that the second is a better tool for database operations. They'll be able to look at a DB program and figure out how it works and have the vision to say "I need something like this, but it also has to be able to do THAT" -- and either find the alternative they're looking for, or create it/get someone to create it.
Teaching computer programming isn't about learning a programming language; it's about learning problem solving skills and critical thinking -- that can be applied in any other aspect of life; even writing a properly put together purchase invoice or office memo. The reverse is not true, unless the teacher is REALLY good.
I have no problem with teaching kids how to create professional looking documents. However, professional documents are best created by software that separates the content from the layout, and preserves both. The only reason that Word creates professional looking documents is that we've suffered a generation of professionals who have used Word to create documents. Badly. The result is that "learning Word" is often "learning how to use the word processor everyone in the business world is using, and learning how to massage it to create meaningful output that will resemble what the person you're sharing it with is seeing". This is the equivalent of teaching knot tying because it's standard business practice to tie knots around everything being shared with someone else. Why not just teach them how to do it correctly, and leave Word as an elective course for people who actually need to use it to get something done?
I was composing thoughts on a computer before Office existed. Word teaches bad writing habits -- people confuse the content of a document with the look of a document, and spend way too much time tweaking the look instead of efficiently creating the content, arranging it, and then deciding how best to present it.
I recall being in classes that asked for a 5-paged somethingorother. While others were tweaking their wording to fit in/fill up 5 pages, I was writing the assignment up, revising it, and then at the end, spending a few minutes to make it fit the page as required.
I'd be happier if schools taught the skills and then let you apply them using the popular tools (with some instruction). What often seems to often happen (and be lobbied for by non-educators) is that schools teach how to use a limited set of tools, and assume the students will figure out the skills and any other tools needed on their own time. Remember, to someone with a hammer who's never seen a screwdriver, a screw is just a fancy nail.
Learning how to use a word processor is useful, if they're taught correctly. Word/LibreOffice are great in that if you've been trained how to write and use document markup, they can create elegant documents. However, if you're taught how to use them without first being taught about content, style and markup, most people will default to using a combination of tabs, spaces, and whatever markup looks closest to what they want to tweak their content as they go. This detracts from the teaching instead of enhancing it. It doesn't help that most of the teachers have never been trained in how to properly use a word processor either.
Starting with Notepad and then moving to LaTeX before being exposed to Word would be extremely useful in ensuring the proper DTP skills are learned instead of faked by students.
They actually did a study in which kids were paid for good grades. There was zero positive impact. It simply isn't a motivating factor.
Kids need problems to solve. Hobbies. And if they see that a computer can be used to solve their problem, they'll use it.
I didn't learn programming because it was "fun" when I was 8 or so. I learned programming because it solved problems I was interested in. Namely, making games and creating animation. I made some pretty lengthy ASCII animations back in the day. I was interested in animation and computers were a way to solve the problem since I didn't have an 8mm camera and money to spend on developing film as would be required if I tried to use stop motion as the means to solve the problem.
I still use programming primarily to solve problems. I just solve different problems and get paid more to do it now.
Exactly this! I learned to program because I needed to make a bunch of labels and we had this printer and computer sitting there. So I learned my pushes and pokes, how to do repeat loops and set up a bitmask, how to push it out the serial cable in a way the dot matrix printer could understand, and set it to work. After a few wasted pages, I got the couple hundred labels printed, and was left wondering what else I could use a computer for, as most of the steps needed to print labels seemed to have myriads of other obvious uses.
Next thing I wrote was a racecar game, using pixels printed to the screen instead of dots printed to a serial device. I understood at that point that the screen was just another peripheral, exactly like a printer, but able to re-use the same material over and over again.
I'd say these are the types of testimonials we should be sharing with teens, except that these days, people have already done all the fun stuff at this level; they can find free apps for their phones that do everything we learned how to do via programming.
But whatever the solution, presenting computer coding as a tool to make something easier for them is definitely the best way to go. Let them use the tool to scribble, and eventually they'll be inspired to create a masterpiece -- or not.
The same goes for any market segment. However, just like for every actor who makes it big in the movie industry there are hundreds of thousands who are "crowd person #7" in a 30 second shot of a TV commercial, for every superstar programmer who can architect, design, implement and maintain stellar code, we need the code monkeys who just do documentation, UI, DB I/O improvements, testing, etc.
Not all programmers need to be passionate about their jobs, although it sure helps (just like in any other field). This site seems to be about getting the eyeballs of those who may become passionate if exposed to coding, and who may otherwise not even consider it (I might have been a good lawyer, but I never even considered that career, as it had a social stigma associated with it that I could not identify with).