Siri was developed from technology created at the SRI in Palo Alto. It was a company which used technology spun of from CALO and PAL, two major (and intertwined) research initiatives funded partially by public funds. Siri spun off and began developing for iOs, Android and the Blackberry.
Apple simply bought Siri and shut down development for Android and the Blackberry. The core technologies remain available at https://pal.sri.com/Plone - it is not a matter of Apple having developed anything original at all.
It is unconstitutional for Congress to make a law saying that they can't. Whether it is unconstitutional for a state or city authority to do so is another question.
You had some resources, clearly, to fall back on when you failed. You may diminish them or deny them here, to defend your ideology. But whenever one pokes at these Horatio Alger stories, one finds a network of social capital behind it: family members, spouses, friends, couches, investors taking irrational leaps of faith, etc.
And most importantly, you have the infrastructure of an entire society which makes the kind of business you have possible. You have an educated populace that can read; you have basic public health and transportation infrastructure; you have an economic system that produces money, protects investments, and so on. Without these things, you would be lucky to make it as a subsistence farmer. You are just so accustomed to the things that make your business possible - and will cover your ass if it fails (inc. limited liability) - that you take them as if they were part of the natural order.
You are being asked to give a bit more back not to those who never tried, but also to those who:
- tried and failed, and aren't getting hired.
- are too young to try anything, and need an education to get a chance to try.
- would try, but need a working infrastructure to do so.
- tried but are struggling due to lack of demand, due to the above three factors.
You are also being asked to pay back to a system that has given you the opportunity for the success you enjoyed: one that created infrastructure projects such as the interstate highway system, the internet, and a lot of higher education using marginal tax rates which historically have been much higher than those at the present. Your attitude is worse than "may be the best man win," it's "I got mine, screw you."
The availability of cheap household durables aside, being poor in the US sucks a lot. Which is why we outstrip the rest of the first world in homelessness, school drop-outs, incarceration of the poor, and people dying of treatable illnesses.
Causing distress is not in and itself the issue. There are many times we do have to cause distress to others: firing them, dumping them, etc. There is something more fundamental about the mourning of one's dead than something to be "distressed" about. It's pretty much a human universal - the fact that you're alienated from that understanding shows just how atomized and autistic our culture has become.
The idea that there are two separate realms - "speech" and reality - and the former can be completely free while the latter is regulated - is a fragile fiction. We use "speech" to do all sorts of real-world things: make promises and contracts, marry people, hire people, fire people, threaten people, give orders and commands, give warnings, besmirch the reputations of others, confess to crimes, etc. The troll was using "speech" to harass people for his personal amusement: he was not expressing a perspective or belief system. The kind of naive, simplistic "speech is just speech and should always be free" position comes from not understanding that speech is simply human activity, and not autonomous of other human activities.
Respect for the dead doesn't mean you respect the people, and, as I clarified above, it's really about respect for the loved ones of the dead. As much as we might have despised a Pol Pot, I would still honor his family's desire to bury and mourn him in peace. What is tragic about this whole story is that Saddam Hussein's family was given more respect to mourn him than the family of the girl who the troller was harassing.
Respect for the dead, especially loved ones, and the sensitivity that comes with that, is essential to human societies. The kind of thick-skinnedness you're calling for is neither desirable nor realistic, and I believe most people - those who aren't so alienated and misanthropic to not recognize it - would much rather prosecute people like the troll than have such an absolutist doctrine of "speech."
Morality has always been embodied in law. We just usually distinguish between the kinds of morality we can safely disagree about and still run a society, and the kinds of morality that, in practice at least, are not really up for discussion. I have to say, his behavior, for me, veers to the latter. I feel freer knowing that someone who trolls a tribute page for a deceased loved one will be punished than I would knowing that I was free to troll tribute pages for other peoples' deceased loved ones.
I like sandbox games, but I would describe them more as engaging creativity rather than true imagination. There are scales of grey, of course (e.g., machinima.) But even the sandboxiest of sandboxes does a lot more of the "imagining" work for you than, say, a box of crayons or paints... or a video camera.
"Reality is just an illusion" doesn't really abide when you are hungry, or ill, or the power goes out. Our minds need our bodies, and our bodies exist in a very specific world.
Why bother "imagining" something better if you can't make it real? (Especially insofar as playing a game that someone else made is really consuming someone else's imagination, rather than exercising your own.)
I have taught waves of college freshmen who pretty much had access to Wikipedia since they were grade schoolers, who don't know when the 1st or 2nd World Wars were, who fought them, and who won. They can quickly Google isolated facts, but they do not have a composite model or picture of history.
Without that model, the overarching framework, access to data points is useless.
The use of simulations and games to teach complex models is excellent, but it's real stretch from that to a laptop-on-every-desk all-the-time. Part of learning is learning the management of one's attention.
A good parent will give their child the ability to learn, work and persevere even when things aren't fun and interesting. Teachers work with what they are given.
Learning can be fun, but much needs to be learned even when it isn't fun. And teachers shouldn't need to be entertainers (they should care about their material, and their care be apparent to the students. They shouldn't have to be some kind of Robin Williams-esque clown.)
Let's see how this is all working out, then: how our the generations who grew up in a media-soaked environment in the US competing globally against those with a more disciplined, rigorous and at times, yes, boring approach to learning, such as India, China, Korea, Japan, and even Finland?
There are hundreds of studies on the effects of television on children: I've read many of them, and heard others presented at conferences. I think your definition of a "good" study is one that cleanly aligns with your already-formed opinion.
Note that I don't agree with the Waldorf model. I think it goes too far, and I believe that computer literacy is cultural literacy. But your dismissal of it is far broader and less grounded than their concerns about media.
But to use a calculator, you need the foundational skills and understanding that underlie the problems they help solve. Computers are essentially media devices now: just like you don't need to know how TVs work to watch TV, you need understand nothing about computers to use them. And they are very distracting.
I think they have a role in the classroom. But I think that role is overemphasized and a lot of "I'm a hammer-expert, and that's a nail" thinking from people in the tech sector is wasting a lot of resources in education that could be spent much better.
Definitely not true now. I would recommend T-Mobile to anyone from almost any perspective. But as an analysis of the disadvantages facing it historically, I think the article is generally correct.
Slashdot Mirror
Siri was developed from technology created at the SRI in Palo Alto. It was a company which used technology spun of from CALO and PAL, two major (and intertwined) research initiatives funded partially by public funds. Siri spun off and began developing for iOs, Android and the Blackberry.
Apple simply bought Siri and shut down development for Android and the Blackberry. The core technologies remain available at https://pal.sri.com/Plone - it is not a matter of Apple having developed anything original at all.
And that's why your friends call you Wanky McChubster, the jogger with lung cancer.
I do not say this lightly or often: I wish I had mod points
Atari didn't actually use the elegant solution for reducing transistors that Woz came up with. They didn't design the game.
Jobs' main contribution was brokering the deal and then ripping off Woz.
It is unconstitutional for Congress to make a law saying that they can't. Whether it is unconstitutional for a state or city authority to do so is another question.
GIMP was the project of a couple of Berkeley CS students.
I think they may even have been undergraduates.
You had some resources, clearly, to fall back on when you failed. You may diminish them or deny them here, to defend your ideology. But whenever one pokes at these Horatio Alger stories, one finds a network of social capital behind it: family members, spouses, friends, couches, investors taking irrational leaps of faith, etc.
And most importantly, you have the infrastructure of an entire society which makes the kind of business you have possible. You have an educated populace that can read; you have basic public health and transportation infrastructure; you have an economic system that produces money, protects investments, and so on. Without these things, you would be lucky to make it as a subsistence farmer. You are just so accustomed to the things that make your business possible - and will cover your ass if it fails (inc. limited liability) - that you take them as if they were part of the natural order.
You are being asked to give a bit more back not to those who never tried, but also to those who:
- tried and failed, and aren't getting hired.
- are too young to try anything, and need an education to get a chance to try.
- would try, but need a working infrastructure to do so.
- tried but are struggling due to lack of demand, due to the above three factors.
You are also being asked to pay back to a system that has given you the opportunity for the success you enjoyed: one that created infrastructure projects such as the interstate highway system, the internet, and a lot of higher education using marginal tax rates which historically have been much higher than those at the present. Your attitude is worse than "may be the best man win," it's "I got mine, screw you."
The Heritage Foundation claim that the poor aren't really poor because you can buy a TV on Craigslist for 20 dollars has been thoroughly debunked:
http://front.moveon.org/the-craigslist-welfare-program-will-it-work/
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2011/07/19/272511/poverty-is-mostly-about-housing-health-care-and-education/
The availability of cheap household durables aside, being poor in the US sucks a lot. Which is why we outstrip the rest of the first world in homelessness, school drop-outs, incarceration of the poor, and people dying of treatable illnesses.
Causing distress is not in and itself the issue. There are many times we do have to cause distress to others: firing them, dumping them, etc. There is something more fundamental about the mourning of one's dead than something to be "distressed" about. It's pretty much a human universal - the fact that you're alienated from that understanding shows just how atomized and autistic our culture has become.
The idea that there are two separate realms - "speech" and reality - and the former can be completely free while the latter is regulated - is a fragile fiction. We use "speech" to do all sorts of real-world things: make promises and contracts, marry people, hire people, fire people, threaten people, give orders and commands, give warnings, besmirch the reputations of others, confess to crimes, etc. The troll was using "speech" to harass people for his personal amusement: he was not expressing a perspective or belief system. The kind of naive, simplistic "speech is just speech and should always be free" position comes from not understanding that speech is simply human activity, and not autonomous of other human activities.
But really, you're grasping at straws.
Respect for the dead doesn't mean you respect the people, and, as I clarified above, it's really about respect for the loved ones of the dead. As much as we might have despised a Pol Pot, I would still honor his family's desire to bury and mourn him in peace. What is tragic about this whole story is that Saddam Hussein's family was given more respect to mourn him than the family of the girl who the troller was harassing.
You don't need to respect the dead. But, to a certain point, you need to respect other peoples' respect for the dead.
You don't understand, at all, the role of affect in human society and social cohesion. You may be autistic, in which case, I pity you,
Essentially, you will lose this cultural war in almost any arena you fight it. And I think that's a good thing.
Respect for the dead, especially loved ones, and the sensitivity that comes with that, is essential to human societies. The kind of thick-skinnedness you're calling for is neither desirable nor realistic, and I believe most people - those who aren't so alienated and misanthropic to not recognize it - would much rather prosecute people like the troll than have such an absolutist doctrine of "speech."
Morality has always been embodied in law. We just usually distinguish between the kinds of morality we can safely disagree about and still run a society, and the kinds of morality that, in practice at least, are not really up for discussion. I have to say, his behavior, for me, veers to the latter. I feel freer knowing that someone who trolls a tribute page for a deceased loved one will be punished than I would knowing that I was free to troll tribute pages for other peoples' deceased loved ones.
I like sandbox games, but I would describe them more as engaging creativity rather than true imagination. There are scales of grey, of course (e.g., machinima.) But even the sandboxiest of sandboxes does a lot more of the "imagining" work for you than, say, a box of crayons or paints ... or a video camera.
"Reality is just an illusion" doesn't really abide when you are hungry, or ill, or the power goes out. Our minds need our bodies, and our bodies exist in a very specific world.
Why bother "imagining" something better if you can't make it real? (Especially insofar as playing a game that someone else made is really consuming someone else's imagination, rather than exercising your own.)
I have taught waves of college freshmen who pretty much had access to Wikipedia since they were grade schoolers, who don't know when the 1st or 2nd World Wars were, who fought them, and who won. They can quickly Google isolated facts, but they do not have a composite model or picture of history.
Without that model, the overarching framework, access to data points is useless.
The use of simulations and games to teach complex models is excellent, but it's real stretch from that to a laptop-on-every-desk all-the-time. Part of learning is learning the management of one's attention.
A good parent will give their child the ability to learn, work and persevere even when things aren't fun and interesting. Teachers work with what they are given.
Learning can be fun, but much needs to be learned even when it isn't fun. And teachers shouldn't need to be entertainers (they should care about their material, and their care be apparent to the students. They shouldn't have to be some kind of Robin Williams-esque clown.)
Let's see how this is all working out, then: how our the generations who grew up in a media-soaked environment in the US competing globally against those with a more disciplined, rigorous and at times, yes, boring approach to learning, such as India, China, Korea, Japan, and even Finland?
There are hundreds of studies on the effects of television on children: I've read many of them, and heard others presented at conferences. I think your definition of a "good" study is one that cleanly aligns with your already-formed opinion.
Note that I don't agree with the Waldorf model. I think it goes too far, and I believe that computer literacy is cultural literacy. But your dismissal of it is far broader and less grounded than their concerns about media.
It is fascinating to me that the executive VP in charge of Apple's efforts to get Macs into schools sends her children to a Waldorf School: http://www.sanfranmag.com/story/tech-gets-a-time-out
But to use a calculator, you need the foundational skills and understanding that underlie the problems they help solve. Computers are essentially media devices now: just like you don't need to know how TVs work to watch TV, you need understand nothing about computers to use them. And they are very distracting.
I think they have a role in the classroom. But I think that role is overemphasized and a lot of "I'm a hammer-expert, and that's a nail" thinking from people in the tech sector is wasting a lot of resources in education that could be spent much better.
Definitely not true now. I would recommend T-Mobile to anyone from almost any perspective. But as an analysis of the disadvantages facing it historically, I think the article is generally correct.