Companies are right now racing to get to space. They're doing this for a number of reasons, some for industrial and scientific purposes (putting satellites in orbit, sticking experiments up there without paying the fees to get stuff on the space shuttle), some for commercial purposes (for only $500,000 you too can experience zero gravity).
Since most rocket launches produce a ridiculous amount of noise, heat and damage to the surrounding environment, they can't launch from airports or private land (unless it's very very big private land far away from cities). Therefore they need a space port, and Cape Canaveral is pretty badly over-booked.
Companies want to put stuff in the air using rockets, and they're willing to pay for the privilege of doing so.
This is no different than building an airport at the dawn of aviation - sure there may be no widespread commercial use for it right now, but companies need a place to do their thing in order that there can be a commercial use for it in the future.
For the most part they rabidly oppose any abridgement of any freedom whatsoever - whether the freedom they're protecting is a "right" or not.
The EFF would most likely support a system where there was no copyright over a tough but just copyright system on the grounds that it might abridge freedom of speech at some nebulous and unnamed future time.
I think recent (the last decade) legislation has shown that Congress is hardly qualified to make that kind of determination.
Copyright lawyers seem to be on one side or the other of the "bribed by content creators" fence.
The EFF is hardly a nonpartisan source of opinion.
So that leaves the question, who is qualified to make these sort of determinations as to what form copyright laws should take?
A good number of/. readers would probably say that there should be no copyright laws (mostly those who have no IP worth exploiting), and others would say that ultimately copyright should be left up to individual license, but honestly, how much does the government really need to intervene with this?
Honestly I think there should be a collection of strong prohibitions which indicate what IP holders are NOT allowed to prohibit, and then let individual licenses go on from there.
A company like Adobe is probably going to want to have their fingers in as many pies as possible, and if they make Apollo into an attractive enough package for delivering video content on embedded devices, they're probably going to charge a premium for the right to do just that.
Not too many, thankfully. Most of my friends and family have a healthy level of skepticism about the word "free" and are pretty intolerant of poor performance.
Typically what happened would be they'd install some "freeware" notice their computer running like hell, uninstall it, notice it still running like hell, then call me and ask me what to download to fix it.
1. Definitions. "Software" means (a) (i) all of the contents of the files (provided either by electronic download, on physical media or any other method of distribution), disk(s), CD-ROM(s) or other media with which this agreement is provided; (ii) related explanatory written materials or files
("Documentation"); and (iii) fonts; and (b) upgrades, modified versions, updates, additions, and copies of the the foregoing, if any, licensed to you by Adobe (collectively, "Updates").
"Software" doesn't mean products that you've created using Apollo, this EULA is explicitly referring to the Windows runtime of Apollo.
This is the standard sort of CYA EULA put out by just about any company that releases a platform-specific runtime. Not saying that Adobe won't attempt to restrict creative use of the Apollo framework, just saying that this EULA does not mean what you think it means.
Further, it's not always dumbing it down when you simplify a problem - Mathematics is a subject in which simplification is vital to proceedings, Engineering of all kinds involves simplifying a complicated problem into components small enough to address, most Computer Science problems require simplifying a process in order to understand its parts, etc.
I challenge you to call any of those three fields "dumb" or to suggest that they can't be fun to learn.
As far as coasting along in school, I know that my chief problem with high school in the early 90s was that it had in fact been dumbed down to a frustratingly slow pace in order to afford unmotivated students the most opportunity to not fail, rather than attempting to make the material more engaging and challenging in order to encourage them to succeed.
That really should have read "...which requires learning a skill or collection of facts to resolve..."
Since I'm bothering to take the time to correct that, I'd like to also mention that as a child with rather severe and obvious ADHD in the early 80s, I had my interest piqued by gaming in quite a few subjects that I would have otherwise overlooked as too wordy or deep to spend the tremendous amount of effort required to focus on.
Children on the whole have a fairly short attention span for anything which fails to capture their imagination, and gaming does that quite well. Even if the games aren't being used as a primary means of instruction, they at least serve the purpose of piquing interest in some subjects which superficially appear dull and rigid.
A perfect example of a game which takes a seemingly dull subject and turns it fun would be the Bridge Builder series of games, which essentially teaches basic civil engineering skills and the physics of arches and breaking strain, but it does it by the rather fun mechanic of freeing you to fail in spectacularly destructive fashions - watching the graceful descent of a structure of steel and wire crash into a ravine.
While civil engineering would be a tough pill to shove down the throat of the average 6th grader, I imagine that a game like that could cause a serious increase in the number of interested kids.
Any problem which can be defined as a conflict which requires learning a skill or collection of facts can be made into a game. The question isn't how good can a game be at teaching, but how fun can a good teaching game be made?
The Carmen Sandiego games for instance were exceptionally good at providing trivial geographic and historical knowledge, but poor at providing a comprehensive amount of information about any one problem. However, they encouraged initiative in problem solving, proper time management, attention to minute detail, and improved short term memory. These are things which many people are seriously lacking by the time they reach their senior year in High School.
There are some subjects which will probably never translate well into a pure video game context, but other subjects (such as chemistry, biology, ecology, and miscellaneous cognitive skills) do in fact translate quite well into a video game environment.
Is a child going to memorize his phosphates and salts because he has to in order to pass an exam? Or will he memorize them because they're important building blocks for more complicated chemicals which s/he can use for various uses in some cleverly designed sandbox-style game?
Say what one will about the historicity of what children brought from Oregon Trail, but it was useful for learning resource management, thrift, rationing, and learning a bit of how ridiculously hard it was to cross the USA before motor vehicles and a good interstate freeway system.
It's not useful to dismiss gaming as being worthless for education merely because some subjects don't translate well into a gaming-based lesson. Children have been participating in role playing games and board games as part of their school curriculum for decades, and learning social dynamics and leadership through playground games for centuries. Games are unquestionably useful for training - the only problem lies in identifying the proper way to implement learning games in order to maximize learning value without making the experience tedious.
Great, I can finally search for the chemical formula for C14L11S, which honestly has been puzzling me for some time.
Apparently it affects the molecule P3N1S.
If the bloated corporations abusing intellectual property law started suing each other into bankrupcy, the downside would be... what, exactly? The total unavailability of professional-grade software.
Seriously here. The companies behind innovation in non-operating system applications are the ones backed by millions of customers - Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Corel, Microsoft... Admittedly, most of the improvement that isn't incremental comes from just hiring the best and brightest from tech schools, but that's always been the way it has worked.
These companies are, if one bothered to investigate the patents, no doubt violating each other's IP by the flimsy definitions of the US software patent system left and right. Technology has always been built on the back of somebody else's good work - that's the key to improvement.
When the guy who invents the wheel sues the furs off of the guy who invented the wagon, everybody loses.
We (the customers of these huge companies) pay premium dollar to get software which works as advertised out of the box without much tinkering. We buy the upgrades because they have new features we think we need, and when you're making money using a product, it's not that onerous to have to buy it again to get more features and better interoperability. They're the same product as before - our people know how to use them.
We're not paying just for the features - we're paying because retraining our employees on how to use 5-10 open source alternatives (which combined do what one commercial product does) is just too expensive in both time and money.
I'm not saying that these companies couldn't do with some serious humbling on the pricing front, and I agree that a commercial airline-grade price war would be a beautiful thing, but an all-out knock-down drag-out patent war between these huge companies would be devastating to every industry which uses the products that these companies put out.
For people who live in highrises, the day either ends or begins a hell of a lot earlier or later than for most people, as you seldom have a window on more than one side of your block. An apartment in this place apparently will get the first rays of sunrise and the last touch of sunlight at sunset.
Due to the proximity of Dubai to the tropics, the days are extremely long there, 10:34 being the minimum this winter and 13:42 being the maximum this last summerhttp://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astron omy.html?n=7761http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclo ck/astronomy.html?n=776&month=6&year=2006&obj=sun& afl=-11&day=12.
Circadian rhythms are tied very strongly to sunlight exposure. According to Wikipedia:
"Starting about two hours before bedtime, exposure to bright light will delay the circadian phase, causing later wake-up time and later sleep onset." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_response_curvep hase response curve
So if you're at home winding down from a long day doing whatever filthy rich people in Dubai do, and your building is shining the last rays of daylight into your building, chances are it's delayed your sleep cycle by a couple of hours.
Now take into account the fact that you've been waking up earlier because you've been catching rays...
I imagine the effect would rather be like sleeping outside without shelter much of the time.
Slashdot Mirror
It's worth noting that airports, despite being used almost exclusively by commercial interests, are built using taxpayer funds as well.
Companies are right now racing to get to space. They're doing this for a number of reasons, some for industrial and scientific purposes (putting satellites in orbit, sticking experiments up there without paying the fees to get stuff on the space shuttle), some for commercial purposes (for only $500,000 you too can experience zero gravity).
Since most rocket launches produce a ridiculous amount of noise, heat and damage to the surrounding environment, they can't launch from airports or private land (unless it's very very big private land far away from cities). Therefore they need a space port, and Cape Canaveral is pretty badly over-booked.
Companies want to put stuff in the air using rockets, and they're willing to pay for the privilege of doing so.
This is no different than building an airport at the dawn of aviation - sure there may be no widespread commercial use for it right now, but companies need a place to do their thing in order that there can be a commercial use for it in the future.
That's it, I'm forming a band.
For the most part they rabidly oppose any abridgement of any freedom whatsoever - whether the freedom they're protecting is a "right" or not.
The EFF would most likely support a system where there was no copyright over a tough but just copyright system on the grounds that it might abridge freedom of speech at some nebulous and unnamed future time.
At least that's my personal take on matters.
I think recent (the last decade) legislation has shown that Congress is hardly qualified to make that kind of determination.
/. readers would probably say that there should be no copyright laws (mostly those who have no IP worth exploiting), and others would say that ultimately copyright should be left up to individual license, but honestly, how much does the government really need to intervene with this?
Copyright lawyers seem to be on one side or the other of the "bribed by content creators" fence.
The EFF is hardly a nonpartisan source of opinion.
So that leaves the question, who is qualified to make these sort of determinations as to what form copyright laws should take?
A good number of
Honestly I think there should be a collection of strong prohibitions which indicate what IP holders are NOT allowed to prohibit, and then let individual licenses go on from there.
That's probably a reasonable guess.
A company like Adobe is probably going to want to have their fingers in as many pies as possible, and if they make Apollo into an attractive enough package for delivering video content on embedded devices, they're probably going to charge a premium for the right to do just that.
Not too many, thankfully. Most of my friends and family have a healthy level of skepticism about the word "free" and are pretty intolerant of poor performance.
Typically what happened would be they'd install some "freeware" notice their computer running like hell, uninstall it, notice it still running like hell, then call me and ask me what to download to fix it.
I'm just lucky, I guess.
The Apollo SDK EULA is considerably less draconian.
"Software" doesn't mean products that you've created using Apollo, this EULA is explicitly referring to the Windows runtime of Apollo.
This is the standard sort of CYA EULA put out by just about any company that releases a platform-specific runtime. Not saying that Adobe won't attempt to restrict creative use of the Apollo framework, just saying that this EULA does not mean what you think it means.
Caveat: IANAL.
You're either an alarmist or a realist. Only time will tell.
That's one of the first reactions to any new technology on Slashdot it seems, however - "What evil can it be used for?"
Well, that and "Can it run Linux?"
"Dumbed down" and "fun" are not synonymous.
Further, it's not always dumbing it down when you simplify a problem - Mathematics is a subject in which simplification is vital to proceedings, Engineering of all kinds involves simplifying a complicated problem into components small enough to address, most Computer Science problems require simplifying a process in order to understand its parts, etc.
I challenge you to call any of those three fields "dumb" or to suggest that they can't be fun to learn.
As far as coasting along in school, I know that my chief problem with high school in the early 90s was that it had in fact been dumbed down to a frustratingly slow pace in order to afford unmotivated students the most opportunity to not fail, rather than attempting to make the material more engaging and challenging in order to encourage them to succeed.
That really should have read "...which requires learning a skill or collection of facts to resolve..."
Since I'm bothering to take the time to correct that, I'd like to also mention that as a child with rather severe and obvious ADHD in the early 80s, I had my interest piqued by gaming in quite a few subjects that I would have otherwise overlooked as too wordy or deep to spend the tremendous amount of effort required to focus on.
Children on the whole have a fairly short attention span for anything which fails to capture their imagination, and gaming does that quite well. Even if the games aren't being used as a primary means of instruction, they at least serve the purpose of piquing interest in some subjects which superficially appear dull and rigid.
A perfect example of a game which takes a seemingly dull subject and turns it fun would be the Bridge Builder series of games, which essentially teaches basic civil engineering skills and the physics of arches and breaking strain, but it does it by the rather fun mechanic of freeing you to fail in spectacularly destructive fashions - watching the graceful descent of a structure of steel and wire crash into a ravine.
While civil engineering would be a tough pill to shove down the throat of the average 6th grader, I imagine that a game like that could cause a serious increase in the number of interested kids.
Any problem which can be defined as a conflict which requires learning a skill or collection of facts can be made into a game. The question isn't how good can a game be at teaching, but how fun can a good teaching game be made?
The Carmen Sandiego games for instance were exceptionally good at providing trivial geographic and historical knowledge, but poor at providing a comprehensive amount of information about any one problem. However, they encouraged initiative in problem solving, proper time management, attention to minute detail, and improved short term memory. These are things which many people are seriously lacking by the time they reach their senior year in High School.
There are some subjects which will probably never translate well into a pure video game context, but other subjects (such as chemistry, biology, ecology, and miscellaneous cognitive skills) do in fact translate quite well into a video game environment.
Is a child going to memorize his phosphates and salts because he has to in order to pass an exam? Or will he memorize them because they're important building blocks for more complicated chemicals which s/he can use for various uses in some cleverly designed sandbox-style game?
Say what one will about the historicity of what children brought from Oregon Trail, but it was useful for learning resource management, thrift, rationing, and learning a bit of how ridiculously hard it was to cross the USA before motor vehicles and a good interstate freeway system.
It's not useful to dismiss gaming as being worthless for education merely because some subjects don't translate well into a gaming-based lesson. Children have been participating in role playing games and board games as part of their school curriculum for decades, and learning social dynamics and leadership through playground games for centuries. Games are unquestionably useful for training - the only problem lies in identifying the proper way to implement learning games in order to maximize learning value without making the experience tedious.
Yes, eat a hash brownie, then go swimming...
Just don't forget to wait 30 minutes.
Your brain will cramp up.
Great, I can finally search for the chemical formula for C14L11S, which honestly has been puzzling me for some time. Apparently it affects the molecule P3N1S.