but how would a rubber or plastic "cord runner" help?
same way that an extension cord cover prevents you from tripping over a cord and ripping it out of the socket. if the cable is lying flat against the ground then there's nothing for the anchor to catch on.
and i highly doubt that there are very many undersea cables that are broken by anchors being dropped directly on top of them. usually when the cables are cut it's due to an anchor being dragged along the seabed by an oil tanker or other large ships. that's how you end up with multiple parallel-lying cables being broken at the same time.
the guarantee i'm speaking of is democracy. in a democracy, the people have a say in public policy, which means they have a say in how public utilities are run. so if you don't like how the national telecom is managed, you can change it. under a privatized system the public has no voice in how a commercial utility is run.
i'd also point out that generally, public utilities are nationalized precisely because they're natural monopolies in addition to having inelastic demand. so consumers can't just go with a different company. and they also don't have the option of not drinking water.
if you want evidence that NTT is better managed, just look at FttH penetration in Japan compared to U.S. you can also look at broadband speeds and costs. residential broadband subscribers in Japan are paying about $54 for 1 Gbps symmetric broadband ($0.0527 per Mbps). contrast this with Comcast's 50 Mbps "wideband" service, which costs $150/month and doesn't provide symmetric bandwidth ($3.00 per Mbps).
heck, i live in the suburbs of L.A. and i still only have access to at most 7 Mbps, and they're upgrading from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps.
perhaps i didn't phrase my comment well enough. i don't mean that economics isn't useful or is purely about material greed. that part was more directed at the GGP's attributing "why we live better today" directly to "how wealth is generated."
ultimately, economics simply boils down to the study of any system by which a society's resources are distributed. that can include different flavors of communism as well as capitalism. and the lack of a sound economic system in Soviet Russia certainly contributed to lower quality of life. however, there have been many communal/tribal societies throughout history that have enjoyed greater quality of life (without a monetary economy or formal system of property ownership) than post-communist Russia or even the majority of Americans. this is in stark contrast with indigenous communities in America today that are forced to live in a capitalist society. it's no big secret that Native Americans have the highest incidence of alcoholism, abuse of inhalants/solvents, and suicide of any social group. so a monetary economy hasn't really done them much good culturally or socially.
there's also a growing movement in the U.S. and around the world that encourages people to reassess consumerism and our dependence on money for happiness. in France they discovered that shortening the work week had the effect of increasing job fulfillment. it also gave workers more time to spend with their families and increased their overall happiness and productivity. likewise, a lot of Americans too are realizing that they can improve their quality of life by spending less money and subsequently working less and having more free time.
that doesn't mean that money isn't important. we still live in a capitalist society; and short of abandoning the nation-states geopolitical system to form city-states or communes, capitalism (paired with a socialist democracy) is still the best economic system we have. but kids are already socialized from birth to view the accumulation of wealth and conspicuous consumption as the key to happiness/success. it's in the advertising we're bombarded with through TV/billboards/magazines/etc. it's embedded into middle school curricula with things like "consumer math." and these days most students see college as merely a means of gaining entrance to a high paying job.
i just think that kids should pursue learning for the sake of personal growth, not just the possibility making lots of money once they graduate. students should be encouraged to take courses in college that they enjoy and are interested in, not what will guarantee an affluent future. it's because students and parents view college as career training that even 4-year universities are becoming increasingly like trade schools or technical colleges. people no longer want a well-rounded education because that doesn't translate to earning potential. so instead of CS students being taught computational theory, they're simply being trained on the latest programming fads, which they could easily teach themselves using a textbook in 2-3 weeks' time.
exactly. i too played with simple implementations of those four concepts by my sophomore year in high school, which is why i gave them as examples. but i'm glad others have had similar experiences.
the image processing stuff i worked on was mostly to do with motion-detection/tracking using my webcam, using a simple XOR operation to detect changes between the current and previous frames of the video stream. when there was no motion in front of the camera, the filter would just produce a blank image, but any motions captured by the webcam would produce a negative gray scale image in the areas of movement--it looked almost like how the alien creatures see things in the movie Pitch Black. it wasn't a very useful application, but i had fun writing it and learning how to work with image filters and bitwise operations.
playing with different bitwise operators also helped me in writing a program to decrypt/recover saved AOL Instant Messenger passwords. of course, i didn't actually break the encryption myself; i simply implemented my own decryption algorithm based on the abundant documentation others had already written on the encryption scheme. but that experience also helped me write my own AIM client in VB. i also wrote an AIM bot in Perl that i automated with a cronjob on my shared hosting account so that i could display my own (or anyone else's) online status on a webpage using a simple CGI script--this was before AOL created their own online status widget.
i'd also implemented very rudimentary AI algorithms, for instance a single-player Tic-Tac-Toe game, by the time i was in high school. so these types of projects are definitely within the capabilities of high school students, especially if there is an instructor to guide them. kids aren't as stupid as adults often think. class assignments don't have to be dumbed down to the point where they no longer provide any sort of challenge. as long as teachers come up with creative projects to hold the students' interest, they will absorb new material like a sponge. conversely, if you just make students write simple Excel macros that are neither challenging nor fun, students will naturally get bored and lose the motivation to learn.
i don't think the profit motive guarantees good/efficient management. and even if it does, what good is it if the profits all go to foreign investors or a handful of rich billionaires?
at least with something like NTT, where the government owns a large share of the company and has a hand in its management, you can ensure that public interest is being protected. after all, what maximizes profit doesn't always coincide with what serves public good. and i think most would agree that the Japanese telecommunication/internet infrastructure is managed slightly better than its entirely privatized and minimally regulated U.S. counterpart.
isn't economics already taught as part of the social studies curriculum at most high schools? i know my high school offered AP Econ, which taught micro and macro economics. and i'm not sure but i think there was a college prep class as well.
in any case, i don't think economics is quite as essential as philosophy, which i would rank up there with math and English. you can apply philosophical logic to all fields of learning (including economics), whereas knowledge of economics can only be applied within the social studies curriculum. that's not to say that social studies aren't important, just that they're already adequately covered in the current high school curriculum; though perhaps civics isn't given as much attention in secondary education as it should be.
i also wouldn't say that economics is the reason why we live better today than in the past--quite the contrary actually. social/cultural progress, scientific/technological progress, medical progress, etc. have all improved living conditions for society at large. better ways of accumulating wealth has, in contrast, only improved the quality of life of a rich minority while creating greater socioeconomic inequality that has harmed most of the population.
i mean, it's not bankers, stockbrokers, CEOs, or economists that are driving societal progress. it's the scientists, teachers, engineers, doctors, political reformers, social activists, etc. who are making the world a better place. if anything, our society needs fewer people obsessed with the accumulation of power and wealth, who have traditionally been the root cause of social problems like war, colonialism/imperialism, ecological/environmental destruction, social exploitation & inequity, etc.
teaching philosophy in middle school is no more unrealistic than teaching chemistry or biology in middle school, which is pretty much standard here in California. a 14-year-old is fully capable of grasping informal fallacies or the difference between kantianism and utilitarianism. and unlike learning about meiosis and mitosis, the rules of logic have very practical uses in the pursuit of knowledge by helping students distinguish truth from fallacy. being familiar with basic rules of logic also means students won't be so easily manipulated or misled by blatant sophistry--something which has great societal benefits.
and why is it so hard for you to reconcile teaching non-trivial programming with high school? perhaps if our school system weren't in a habit of always selling students short, you wouldn't have such a dim view of high school students. setting low standards is a sure-fire way of guarantying low performance.
throughout much of my K-12 education i was involved with mentorship & peer-tutoring programs. most of the students i worked with in high school were in ordinary prep classes or even remedial classes. my experiences have taught me that using the right teaching methods, almost any student can far exceed most people's expectations. even most kids in remedial classes aren't inherently stupid. and quite often the only difference between an honors/AP student and a college prep student is simply better motivation and more self-confidence--which is usually instilled into a child at a young age.
the genius myth has been thoroughly & repeatedly debunked by educational and developmental psychologists. studies show that giving a child a head start--whether in school or sports--early on gives them the lead they need to develop more self-confidence and become more self-motivated, which in turn causes them to practice more than their peers, turning their small lead into a huge skill disparity by the time they're in their 20's. so it reasons that setting higher expectations for students in middle school will cause them to become more accustomed to meeting higher academic standards later on.
cool. ibiblio.org is more of a digital archive & online library provided freely in the spirit of open information exchange (they're part of the University of North Carolina, i believe), but they also maintain a collection of open access journals and allow users to submit their own research papers to the collection.
hopefully these kinds of open access archives will catch on at more universities and convince academia that commercial journals aren't necessary.
i think it's definitely time for the public education system to update its K-12 curriculum. personally i'd also add philosophy/logic/ethics to middle school and high school curricula, but that's a discussion for another day.
regarding CS being added to math and science education, i think that's a pretty good approach. when i was a student (jr. high and high school) all of our math text books had little extra credit assignments at the end of each chapter that outlined how to implement the newly taught concepts in a BASIC program. usually it just gave you the source code outright and recommended that students try it out themselves. however, i don't think any of my math teachers knew how to program, so we never even looked at those code examples.
i think CS is one way to enrich existing curricula in addition to teach new and useful computer skills to students. students may find parametric equations boring because they can't see any immediate applications, but if students are given the task of using these equations in a computer program, then they might start seeing more practical uses of the material.
and while i think instructors should be qualified and well-trained, i would agree that sometimes having the instructor learn alongside students can benefit both the teacher and the student. i've always found tutoring others to be a great way of learning new material and making sure you have a solid grasp of the subject. so even if teachers aren't familiar with computer science right now, integrating CS into math and science classes will definitely force those teachers to become familiar with CS.
my biggest fear is that educators will underestimate students and will try to dilute the material. i've always found that programming becomes more interesting/fun as you move on to more advanced topics. likewise, the easiest programming classes are also the dullest. and, quite frankly, most high school students are probably more tech-savvy than their teachers. so if classes are taught at too slow a pace for students (like still having students use training-wheel languages like Logo or BASIC in high school) then you run the risk of their losing interest in CS.
in that respect, i think it's best to also have dedicated Computer Science classes on the side that are taught by knowledgeable instructors who have a minor in CS at the very least. i would love to see high school students tackling assignments or group projects like image processing, data encryption, socket programming, simple AI, etc. it'd certainly be funner for the kids than 12 years of "Hello World!" and ASCII graphics.
which is why academic publishing is seriously screwed up. the public pays taxes to fund most academic research, but then researchers have to pay journal publishers in order to get their papers published. and in return, the publishers retain the copyright to all public research, keeping it out of the hands of the tax payers who funded it (and charging Universities up the ass to have access to their own research).
people used to justify this commingling of academia with commercial interests by the peer-review process involved in journal publication, but the peer-review process provided by academic journals clearly isn't working here. at this point, it would be far better for Universities to publish their own research papers, allowing public research to be made freely available to students, researchers, and anyone else who might be interested in it.
research papers could be published in online databases where they would be archived for easy public access. it's easy enough for independent writers to self-publish and distribute their writings online. so it should be no problem for Universities to do the same. the peer-review process of papers submitted for publication could be handled either by the University itself, or different Universities could get together and form an agreement whereupon they would review one another's papers for free. this would keep academic research purely non-commercial and eliminate potential conflicts of interest.
eliminating/bypassing commercial publishing houses would also mean that societally beneficial projects like Google Book Search wouldn't be stonewalled by greed-driven publishers, and public good could be placed before corporate interests for once. Wikipedia is nice and all, but serious research would greatly benefit from all academic research being made freely available in a searchable online database for all to access. after all, public research isn't very useful if no one has access to it.
apparently your imagination is very lacking. if you put the cables underground, then there'd be nothing for the anchor to latch onto. likewise, if you build something similar to an extension cord cover over the cables, then they would be similarly protected. it doesn't have to be that strong. some kind of plastic or rubber that is saltwater-resistant would be fine.
no scientific breakthrough needed--just a little a common sense.
seriously. i mean, you might be able to argue that Sarbanes-Oxley is not the correct way to regulate publicly traded companies, but to say that deregulation is the solution is just incredibly stupid considering the history of corporate scandal/corruption we've had in this country.
if companies are being driven out of the U.S. to the U.K., it's certainly not due to the London Stock Exchange being less-regulated. the FSMA 2000, passed by British Parliament two years prior to Sarbanes-Oxley being passed in the U.S., established equally extensive business regulations designed to promote responsible corporate governance and protect consumer interests. and even before the FSMA 2000 the U.K. had one of the best regulatory systems in the world.
if anything, it was the lack of sound business regulations in the U.S. in the first place and the corruption which this unregulated environment created that caused such a public backlash forcing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to be passed. if U.S. policy makers and industry lobbies hadn't been pushing for deregulation all these years, and had instead adopted the principle-based regulations that have long been employed in the U.K. and the rest of Europe, then there would have been no need for the strict rule-based regulation U.S. companies are now faced with.
ignoring the need for sound business regulations is ignoring the realities of capitalist industries. if you resist sensible regulations that are necessary to protect public interest and societal well-being (with minimal enforcement action), then you invite corporate malfeasance and risk repeating mistakes of the past; at best there will be a public scandal and at worst an economic disaster, either of which will cause politicians to overcompensate for the lack of progressive regulations with reactionary ones like Sarbanes-Oxley. so the author's attitude is exactly what got us into the current situation.
of course, then the author goes on to suggest that we return to Reaganomics, as if tax cuts for the rich have never been tried before (or have ever worked in the past).
then it might be worthwhile to invest in an underground tunnel or at least some kind of protective shielding under which the cables can sit. if it's a large network hub where 5-6 cables meet, then the cost of a little physical protection might be cheaper than the cost of losing huge segments of the network in addition to having to repair all those broken cables.
or, if the cables remain relatively stationary, you could install a radio beacon or GPS marker over the cable bundles so that large ships know not to set anchor there.
i'm not a volcanologist, but this seems like it could be done by:
using seismic surveys and land-based surface measurements to determine when the volcano approaching its eruptive phase and only work when there is minimal activity.
use ground penetrating sonar or seismic survey data, locate the exact position of the magma chamber(s).
drill towards the magma chamber at an angle so that you're not working directly above the volcanic system.
use unmanned or remotely-operated drilling machines for the last mile of the tunnel.
i mean, we have the technology to operate machinery remotely using video feeds and radio communication. and wasn't there a recent story about some deep sea drilling operation hitting a pocket of magma on accident? i know in 2005 a geothermal drilling site in Hawaii also came upon a magma chamber on accident. seems like if they could tunnel into a magma chamber on accident without problem, then they can certain do so safely with prior planning.
the tunnel at Puna site was 1.5 miles deep, which is about half as deep as the ceiling of Montserrat's magma chamber; add to that another ~41% if you're tunneling in at a 45 degree angle, and it'll take quite a bit longer, but it's still feasible. i think the bigger probably might be keeping the magma flowing rather than cooling down and clogging the channel, but perhaps this won't be a problem for an active volcanic system.
Either you're a troll, or you're completely clueless as to what Citrix is. Citrix allows you to stream applications (remote desktop streaming is probably the least used feature) at extremely high speeds across a LAN or WAN. As in a user clicks a program icon from their start menu and it launches a program and they have no idea it's not running on their computer. Or they click a link on a webpage and it launches a program that appears to be running locally. Like, you're running Linux or OSX and you click a link and a window pops up and there is Excel 2007 at almost full speed. Maybe I'm not up with the times, but I'm pretty sure VNC can't approach that.
that's exactly what VNC does. remote desktop streaming doesn't just mean you're staring at the desktop and can't run any programs or open other windows. whether the remote applications are rendered inside of the VNC window or not is merely a UI design choice. "VNC" is just any remote desktop client/server that uses the RFB protocol, which, like RDP, doesn't care how you lay out your application windows. if you want the remote programs to sit directly on your desktop (not exactly a feat engineering) you can run something like MetaVNC.
and the RFB protocol also happens to be extensible, so even if the original VNC wasn't directory-aware, there are certainly clients/servers out now that are. in fact, RealVNC has supported LDAP for quite a while.
hey, i agree that it's not good to be serious all the time, but there are a lot of different ways to unwind. just as there are books/music/tv programs of different quality, so too are there news sources of different caliber, and Valleywag just happens to be the bottom of the barrel. and i wouldn't put comic books, gaming, and role-playing on the same level as Britney Spears or celebrity gossip. surely in the age of information geeks can find better ways of passing their time than slandering people they've never met and encroaching on the privacy of others (especially non-public-figures).
i know that celebrity worship exists in some form in every culture or subculture, but in general geeks seem less infected by this morbid curiosity to gawk at the human wreckage of other people's lives. the kind of attitude exemplified by Valleywag's persistent rumormongering goes beyond voyeurism; it's downright schadenfreude. even if you're just looking for some mindless diversion, that doesn't mean you can't have some standards.
and i honestly don't think real geeks are interested in reading some gossipy blogger prattle on about the latest celebrity scandal. but i guess there are grown men who act like teenage girls even outside of IRC.
that may not be the interest of the actual situation, but Valleywag certainly seems to be trying to portray Google as mistreating their employees with statements like:
This is what has become of the company that was once deemed the best place in the world to work: Cancelled bonuses and unpaid labor.
why the hell is/. even posting stories from Vallywag anyway? they're a freaking tabloid written by the silicon valley analog of paparazzi reporters. this is supposed to be news for nerds, not gossip rag for "fashionable" venture capitalists. if i wanted to read unsubstantiated rumors or find out about who Kevin Rose is dating, i'll visit digg.
slashdot needs to go back to posting stories on technology and real tech/science issues, not sensationalist drivel from Vallywag or, worse yet, The Sun. please don't prove to the world that geeks are just as mentally vacuous as the britney-spears-fawning, paris-hilton-obsessed, access-hollywood-watching masses.
while i've never heard of E'Prime Aerospace, but if you want to look at an example of privatization hurting society, then look up info on water privatization in El Salvador. i first read about this issue about 5-6 years ago (when the water supply was first privatized), but the problem doesn't seem to have gotten any better over the years.
it just seems ridiculous to me that public assets should be auctioned off to the rich at 1/1000th their market value while public institutions like schools, hospitals, transportation infrastructure, etc. remain chronically underfunded. and certain things like the water supply and other public utilities serve a more important purpose than creating lucrative profits for transnational conglomerates, especially in countries where people can barely afford to eat.
asking a valid question isn't fear mongering. it wasn't that long ago that match manufacturers were still using white/yellow phosphorous despite its known health hazards and red phosphorous being known to be just as effective while not being lethally toxic to factory workers.
while i'm sure this technology can probably be employed without significant health risks to human beings, it's rather foolish to speak as if worker exploitation and endangerment never happens. heck, i think there was a story on/. just a few months ago about a chemical powder use for adding butter-flavor to microwave popcorn causing lung-disease in factory workers (it's only hazardous when inhaled, not when eaten).
i'm the first person to support the need for the U.S. to switch to an electric-powered transportation infrastructure, but that's no reason to be reckless and accept new and untested technologies unquestioningly. after all, a lot of American companies specifically open overseas factories in places like China to capitalize on their lax environmental and work place safety regulations. the days of corporate irresponsibility are not yet in the past.
while being classified as a non-profit doesn't guarantee impartiality, it does eliminate the primary source of media bias. after all, even the non-profits that are extremely biased are generally so because they are backed by commercial industries--a prime example of this is the Global Climate Coalition. there's no magic bullet against media bias (every news source has its biases), but we can try our best to minimize bias by, for instance, eliminating potential conflicts of interest. i mean, just because a political official can be corrupt without being given a bribe doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to combat bribery.
as for Google, yes, i would say that their integrity as a company is a large reason for their success. but you have to realize how rare this is in the business world. that's the whole reason Google is such a remarkable company. also, Google is not a news source. the primary service they provide to the public is web search. the quality of a search engine is judged by how accurate/relevant their search results are (how much spam and cruft they filter out) and how quickly & easily one is able to find the information they are looking for. how effective Google is at locating the information users are looking for determines how much traffic they get, and how much advertising revenue they make.
the case is quite different with the news media. the fourth estate performs a vitally important role in a democratic society. a democracy cannot function unless the public is well educated and well informed. so, like academic institutions, the media has a civic duty that they need to carry out. that is the reason why freedom of press is so important. however, the commercial success of a media corporation depends, not on the accuracy of their reporting nor their journalistic integrity, but instead how big of an audience they attract, which unlike web search does not correlate with quality or accuracy. that's why the two most successful news network in the U.S. are Fox News and CNN, both of which covered the death of Anna Nicole Smith more heavily than they covered the fact that the Bush administration blatantly lied to the U.N. and the American public, or the human rights violations committed at Guantanamo Bay, or the corruption scandal surrounding the military's LCAP contractors like Halliburton KBR. the state of the U.S. media demonstrates how sensationalism trumps journalistic integrity when it comes to commercial success.
also, while Google is in a position of trust and power, if they were to betray that trust, there's a big chance that the news media would report it. however, if the media is the one betraying public trust, then there's no one but the media to reveal their own corruption. and if you have a heavily consolidated media climate like we have in the U.S., then the corruption is not likely to ever be exposed. the last major distinction between Google and the mainstream media is that Google does not belong to a corporate conglomerate. they don't have corporate ties to other industries that create a blatant conflict of interest. if they did, then they too would be susceptible to corruption. if Google's shareholders are also part of the MIC, and they could make more money from defense contracts than the money they'd make simply by running an honest search engine, then logic indicates a "good" capitalist would try to skew search results to help them land those defense contracts. luckily, search engines don't yet have that kind of political influence, and Google does have commercial ties to outside industries that could introduce a conflict of interest.
if you want to call the existence of NASA "government obstructionism" then, sure. but that hasn't stopped companies like Sea Launch or FedEx from competing with government services.
that same argument has pretty much been used to lobby for the privatization of all kinds of public infrastructure, which is generally at a detriment to society. you want NASA to stop launching satellites just so an uncompetitive commercial company can have a chance to profit unobstructed, or do you want the government to push technological progress (including commercial technology as well as vital public infrastructure) forward?
the Toyota Prius is hardly fundamental research or cutting-edge technology. however, the Japanese government did invest in Toyota's hybrid gas-electric technology, purportedly subsidizing 100% of its development cost.
so while there's no Toyota Government Agency, Japan does however have:
MEXT (the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology)
METI (the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry)
and their government actively funds science and public research through these organizations. the Japanese government also owns a large (1/3rd) share of their national ISP/telecom, NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone). and this kind of active support and funding of technology is why Japan has become a global technology leader. it's also why Japan is leading the world in FttH deployment and its citizens have access to 1 Gbps symmetric broadband connections for $0.057 per Mbps, whereas Comcast is charging $3.00 per Mbps for asymmetric "wideband" connections.
from the day ICANN was created it was pretty much bound to become a corrupt puppet-organization for commercial interests. that's why it's been headed by economists, businessmen, and corporate consultants rather than IT professionals and computer scientists/researchers. the lack of transparency/openness, community dialog, and international input has guaranteed that ICANN's policies serve the interests of corporations like InterNIC rather than the global online community.
it's very tragic that we have such an undemocratic and profit-motivated organization running the internet rather than a more civic-minded and open organization like the W3C, which is actually run by technically competent individuals who are more interested in technological progress than giving kick-backs to their corporate buddies.
so true. the private sector won't invest in fundamental research or new and yet unproven technology. that's why you need public research to do these things that push society forward.
nothing has prevented private companies from investing in space research/travel in the past 4-5 decades. they just chose not to because it wasn't seen as "financially viable." and if we'd simply waited for the private sector to develop space technology then we would never have gotten GPS, communications satellites, interplanetary probes, the Hubble Space Telescope, etc.
but now that public research has paved the way for commercial space travel, companies like Virgin Galactic can use public research and the technology developed through public funding in order to commercialize space.
i guess that's the reason why you should do research on your prospective hardware components online. i'll admit i'm not a hardware geek. i haven't had to assemble my own PC in quite a few years, so i'm not very up to date regarding the latest hardware. but, luckily, the web is an endless resource for technical specs, benchmark data, professional reviews, anecdotal experiences, price comparisons, etc. it's really the only way to ensure that you don't get burned.
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same way that an extension cord cover prevents you from tripping over a cord and ripping it out of the socket. if the cable is lying flat against the ground then there's nothing for the anchor to catch on.
and i highly doubt that there are very many undersea cables that are broken by anchors being dropped directly on top of them. usually when the cables are cut it's due to an anchor being dragged along the seabed by an oil tanker or other large ships. that's how you end up with multiple parallel-lying cables being broken at the same time.
the guarantee i'm speaking of is democracy. in a democracy, the people have a say in public policy, which means they have a say in how public utilities are run. so if you don't like how the national telecom is managed, you can change it. under a privatized system the public has no voice in how a commercial utility is run.
i'd also point out that generally, public utilities are nationalized precisely because they're natural monopolies in addition to having inelastic demand. so consumers can't just go with a different company. and they also don't have the option of not drinking water.
if you want evidence that NTT is better managed, just look at FttH penetration in Japan compared to U.S. you can also look at broadband speeds and costs. residential broadband subscribers in Japan are paying about $54 for 1 Gbps symmetric broadband ($0.0527 per Mbps). contrast this with Comcast's 50 Mbps "wideband" service, which costs $150/month and doesn't provide symmetric bandwidth ($3.00 per Mbps).
heck, i live in the suburbs of L.A. and i still only have access to at most 7 Mbps, and they're upgrading from 100 Mbps to 1 Gbps.
perhaps i didn't phrase my comment well enough. i don't mean that economics isn't useful or is purely about material greed. that part was more directed at the GGP's attributing "why we live better today" directly to "how wealth is generated."
ultimately, economics simply boils down to the study of any system by which a society's resources are distributed. that can include different flavors of communism as well as capitalism. and the lack of a sound economic system in Soviet Russia certainly contributed to lower quality of life. however, there have been many communal/tribal societies throughout history that have enjoyed greater quality of life (without a monetary economy or formal system of property ownership) than post-communist Russia or even the majority of Americans. this is in stark contrast with indigenous communities in America today that are forced to live in a capitalist society. it's no big secret that Native Americans have the highest incidence of alcoholism, abuse of inhalants/solvents, and suicide of any social group. so a monetary economy hasn't really done them much good culturally or socially.
there's also a growing movement in the U.S. and around the world that encourages people to reassess consumerism and our dependence on money for happiness. in France they discovered that shortening the work week had the effect of increasing job fulfillment. it also gave workers more time to spend with their families and increased their overall happiness and productivity. likewise, a lot of Americans too are realizing that they can improve their quality of life by spending less money and subsequently working less and having more free time.
that doesn't mean that money isn't important. we still live in a capitalist society; and short of abandoning the nation-states geopolitical system to form city-states or communes, capitalism (paired with a socialist democracy) is still the best economic system we have. but kids are already socialized from birth to view the accumulation of wealth and conspicuous consumption as the key to happiness/success. it's in the advertising we're bombarded with through TV/billboards/magazines/etc. it's embedded into middle school curricula with things like "consumer math." and these days most students see college as merely a means of gaining entrance to a high paying job.
i just think that kids should pursue learning for the sake of personal growth, not just the possibility making lots of money once they graduate. students should be encouraged to take courses in college that they enjoy and are interested in, not what will guarantee an affluent future. it's because students and parents view college as career training that even 4-year universities are becoming increasingly like trade schools or technical colleges. people no longer want a well-rounded education because that doesn't translate to earning potential. so instead of CS students being taught computational theory, they're simply being trained on the latest programming fads, which they could easily teach themselves using a textbook in 2-3 weeks' time.
exactly. i too played with simple implementations of those four concepts by my sophomore year in high school, which is why i gave them as examples. but i'm glad others have had similar experiences.
the image processing stuff i worked on was mostly to do with motion-detection/tracking using my webcam, using a simple XOR operation to detect changes between the current and previous frames of the video stream. when there was no motion in front of the camera, the filter would just produce a blank image, but any motions captured by the webcam would produce a negative gray scale image in the areas of movement--it looked almost like how the alien creatures see things in the movie Pitch Black. it wasn't a very useful application, but i had fun writing it and learning how to work with image filters and bitwise operations.
playing with different bitwise operators also helped me in writing a program to decrypt/recover saved AOL Instant Messenger passwords. of course, i didn't actually break the encryption myself; i simply implemented my own decryption algorithm based on the abundant documentation others had already written on the encryption scheme. but that experience also helped me write my own AIM client in VB. i also wrote an AIM bot in Perl that i automated with a cronjob on my shared hosting account so that i could display my own (or anyone else's) online status on a webpage using a simple CGI script--this was before AOL created their own online status widget.
i'd also implemented very rudimentary AI algorithms, for instance a single-player Tic-Tac-Toe game, by the time i was in high school. so these types of projects are definitely within the capabilities of high school students, especially if there is an instructor to guide them. kids aren't as stupid as adults often think. class assignments don't have to be dumbed down to the point where they no longer provide any sort of challenge. as long as teachers come up with creative projects to hold the students' interest, they will absorb new material like a sponge. conversely, if you just make students write simple Excel macros that are neither challenging nor fun, students will naturally get bored and lose the motivation to learn.
i don't think the profit motive guarantees good/efficient management. and even if it does, what good is it if the profits all go to foreign investors or a handful of rich billionaires?
at least with something like NTT, where the government owns a large share of the company and has a hand in its management, you can ensure that public interest is being protected. after all, what maximizes profit doesn't always coincide with what serves public good. and i think most would agree that the Japanese telecommunication/internet infrastructure is managed slightly better than its entirely privatized and minimally regulated U.S. counterpart.
isn't economics already taught as part of the social studies curriculum at most high schools? i know my high school offered AP Econ, which taught micro and macro economics. and i'm not sure but i think there was a college prep class as well.
in any case, i don't think economics is quite as essential as philosophy, which i would rank up there with math and English. you can apply philosophical logic to all fields of learning (including economics), whereas knowledge of economics can only be applied within the social studies curriculum. that's not to say that social studies aren't important, just that they're already adequately covered in the current high school curriculum; though perhaps civics isn't given as much attention in secondary education as it should be.
i also wouldn't say that economics is the reason why we live better today than in the past--quite the contrary actually. social/cultural progress, scientific/technological progress, medical progress, etc. have all improved living conditions for society at large. better ways of accumulating wealth has, in contrast, only improved the quality of life of a rich minority while creating greater socioeconomic inequality that has harmed most of the population.
i mean, it's not bankers, stockbrokers, CEOs, or economists that are driving societal progress. it's the scientists, teachers, engineers, doctors, political reformers, social activists, etc. who are making the world a better place. if anything, our society needs fewer people obsessed with the accumulation of power and wealth, who have traditionally been the root cause of social problems like war, colonialism/imperialism, ecological/environmental destruction, social exploitation & inequity, etc.
teaching philosophy in middle school is no more unrealistic than teaching chemistry or biology in middle school, which is pretty much standard here in California. a 14-year-old is fully capable of grasping informal fallacies or the difference between kantianism and utilitarianism. and unlike learning about meiosis and mitosis, the rules of logic have very practical uses in the pursuit of knowledge by helping students distinguish truth from fallacy. being familiar with basic rules of logic also means students won't be so easily manipulated or misled by blatant sophistry--something which has great societal benefits.
and why is it so hard for you to reconcile teaching non-trivial programming with high school? perhaps if our school system weren't in a habit of always selling students short, you wouldn't have such a dim view of high school students. setting low standards is a sure-fire way of guarantying low performance.
throughout much of my K-12 education i was involved with mentorship & peer-tutoring programs. most of the students i worked with in high school were in ordinary prep classes or even remedial classes. my experiences have taught me that using the right teaching methods, almost any student can far exceed most people's expectations. even most kids in remedial classes aren't inherently stupid. and quite often the only difference between an honors/AP student and a college prep student is simply better motivation and more self-confidence--which is usually instilled into a child at a young age.
the genius myth has been thoroughly & repeatedly debunked by educational and developmental psychologists. studies show that giving a child a head start--whether in school or sports--early on gives them the lead they need to develop more self-confidence and become more self-motivated, which in turn causes them to practice more than their peers, turning their small lead into a huge skill disparity by the time they're in their 20's. so it reasons that setting higher expectations for students in middle school will cause them to become more accustomed to meeting higher academic standards later on.
cool. ibiblio.org is more of a digital archive & online library provided freely in the spirit of open information exchange (they're part of the University of North Carolina, i believe), but they also maintain a collection of open access journals and allow users to submit their own research papers to the collection.
hopefully these kinds of open access archives will catch on at more universities and convince academia that commercial journals aren't necessary.
i think it's definitely time for the public education system to update its K-12 curriculum. personally i'd also add philosophy/logic/ethics to middle school and high school curricula, but that's a discussion for another day.
regarding CS being added to math and science education, i think that's a pretty good approach. when i was a student (jr. high and high school) all of our math text books had little extra credit assignments at the end of each chapter that outlined how to implement the newly taught concepts in a BASIC program. usually it just gave you the source code outright and recommended that students try it out themselves. however, i don't think any of my math teachers knew how to program, so we never even looked at those code examples.
i think CS is one way to enrich existing curricula in addition to teach new and useful computer skills to students. students may find parametric equations boring because they can't see any immediate applications, but if students are given the task of using these equations in a computer program, then they might start seeing more practical uses of the material.
and while i think instructors should be qualified and well-trained, i would agree that sometimes having the instructor learn alongside students can benefit both the teacher and the student. i've always found tutoring others to be a great way of learning new material and making sure you have a solid grasp of the subject. so even if teachers aren't familiar with computer science right now, integrating CS into math and science classes will definitely force those teachers to become familiar with CS.
my biggest fear is that educators will underestimate students and will try to dilute the material. i've always found that programming becomes more interesting/fun as you move on to more advanced topics. likewise, the easiest programming classes are also the dullest. and, quite frankly, most high school students are probably more tech-savvy than their teachers. so if classes are taught at too slow a pace for students (like still having students use training-wheel languages like Logo or BASIC in high school) then you run the risk of their losing interest in CS.
in that respect, i think it's best to also have dedicated Computer Science classes on the side that are taught by knowledgeable instructors who have a minor in CS at the very least. i would love to see high school students tackling assignments or group projects like image processing, data encryption, socket programming, simple AI, etc. it'd certainly be funner for the kids than 12 years of "Hello World!" and ASCII graphics.
which is why academic publishing is seriously screwed up. the public pays taxes to fund most academic research, but then researchers have to pay journal publishers in order to get their papers published. and in return, the publishers retain the copyright to all public research, keeping it out of the hands of the tax payers who funded it (and charging Universities up the ass to have access to their own research).
people used to justify this commingling of academia with commercial interests by the peer-review process involved in journal publication, but the peer-review process provided by academic journals clearly isn't working here. at this point, it would be far better for Universities to publish their own research papers, allowing public research to be made freely available to students, researchers, and anyone else who might be interested in it.
research papers could be published in online databases where they would be archived for easy public access. it's easy enough for independent writers to self-publish and distribute their writings online. so it should be no problem for Universities to do the same. the peer-review process of papers submitted for publication could be handled either by the University itself, or different Universities could get together and form an agreement whereupon they would review one another's papers for free. this would keep academic research purely non-commercial and eliminate potential conflicts of interest.
eliminating/bypassing commercial publishing houses would also mean that societally beneficial projects like Google Book Search wouldn't be stonewalled by greed-driven publishers, and public good could be placed before corporate interests for once. Wikipedia is nice and all, but serious research would greatly benefit from all academic research being made freely available in a searchable online database for all to access. after all, public research isn't very useful if no one has access to it.
apparently your imagination is very lacking. if you put the cables underground, then there'd be nothing for the anchor to latch onto. likewise, if you build something similar to an extension cord cover over the cables, then they would be similarly protected. it doesn't have to be that strong. some kind of plastic or rubber that is saltwater-resistant would be fine.
no scientific breakthrough needed--just a little a common sense.
seriously. i mean, you might be able to argue that Sarbanes-Oxley is not the correct way to regulate publicly traded companies, but to say that deregulation is the solution is just incredibly stupid considering the history of corporate scandal/corruption we've had in this country.
if companies are being driven out of the U.S. to the U.K., it's certainly not due to the London Stock Exchange being less-regulated. the FSMA 2000, passed by British Parliament two years prior to Sarbanes-Oxley being passed in the U.S., established equally extensive business regulations designed to promote responsible corporate governance and protect consumer interests. and even before the FSMA 2000 the U.K. had one of the best regulatory systems in the world.
if anything, it was the lack of sound business regulations in the U.S. in the first place and the corruption which this unregulated environment created that caused such a public backlash forcing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act to be passed. if U.S. policy makers and industry lobbies hadn't been pushing for deregulation all these years, and had instead adopted the principle-based regulations that have long been employed in the U.K. and the rest of Europe, then there would have been no need for the strict rule-based regulation U.S. companies are now faced with.
ignoring the need for sound business regulations is ignoring the realities of capitalist industries. if you resist sensible regulations that are necessary to protect public interest and societal well-being (with minimal enforcement action), then you invite corporate malfeasance and risk repeating mistakes of the past; at best there will be a public scandal and at worst an economic disaster, either of which will cause politicians to overcompensate for the lack of progressive regulations with reactionary ones like Sarbanes-Oxley. so the author's attitude is exactly what got us into the current situation.
of course, then the author goes on to suggest that we return to Reaganomics, as if tax cuts for the rich have never been tried before (or have ever worked in the past).
then it might be worthwhile to invest in an underground tunnel or at least some kind of protective shielding under which the cables can sit. if it's a large network hub where 5-6 cables meet, then the cost of a little physical protection might be cheaper than the cost of losing huge segments of the network in addition to having to repair all those broken cables.
or, if the cables remain relatively stationary, you could install a radio beacon or GPS marker over the cable bundles so that large ships know not to set anchor there.
i'm not a volcanologist, but this seems like it could be done by:
i mean, we have the technology to operate machinery remotely using video feeds and radio communication. and wasn't there a recent story about some deep sea drilling operation hitting a pocket of magma on accident? i know in 2005 a geothermal drilling site in Hawaii also came upon a magma chamber on accident. seems like if they could tunnel into a magma chamber on accident without problem, then they can certain do so safely with prior planning.
the tunnel at Puna site was 1.5 miles deep, which is about half as deep as the ceiling of Montserrat's magma chamber; add to that another ~41% if you're tunneling in at a 45 degree angle, and it'll take quite a bit longer, but it's still feasible. i think the bigger probably might be keeping the magma flowing rather than cooling down and clogging the channel, but perhaps this won't be a problem for an active volcanic system.
that's exactly what VNC does. remote desktop streaming doesn't just mean you're staring at the desktop and can't run any programs or open other windows. whether the remote applications are rendered inside of the VNC window or not is merely a UI design choice. "VNC" is just any remote desktop client/server that uses the RFB protocol, which, like RDP, doesn't care how you lay out your application windows. if you want the remote programs to sit directly on your desktop (not exactly a feat engineering) you can run something like MetaVNC.
and the RFB protocol also happens to be extensible, so even if the original VNC wasn't directory-aware, there are certainly clients/servers out now that are. in fact, RealVNC has supported LDAP for quite a while.
hey, i agree that it's not good to be serious all the time, but there are a lot of different ways to unwind. just as there are books/music/tv programs of different quality, so too are there news sources of different caliber, and Valleywag just happens to be the bottom of the barrel. and i wouldn't put comic books, gaming, and role-playing on the same level as Britney Spears or celebrity gossip. surely in the age of information geeks can find better ways of passing their time than slandering people they've never met and encroaching on the privacy of others (especially non-public-figures).
i know that celebrity worship exists in some form in every culture or subculture, but in general geeks seem less infected by this morbid curiosity to gawk at the human wreckage of other people's lives. the kind of attitude exemplified by Valleywag's persistent rumormongering goes beyond voyeurism; it's downright schadenfreude. even if you're just looking for some mindless diversion, that doesn't mean you can't have some standards.
and i honestly don't think real geeks are interested in reading some gossipy blogger prattle on about the latest celebrity scandal. but i guess there are grown men who act like teenage girls even outside of IRC.
that may not be the interest of the actual situation, but Valleywag certainly seems to be trying to portray Google as mistreating their employees with statements like:
why the hell is /. even posting stories from Vallywag anyway? they're a freaking tabloid written by the silicon valley analog of paparazzi reporters. this is supposed to be news for nerds, not gossip rag for "fashionable" venture capitalists. if i wanted to read unsubstantiated rumors or find out about who Kevin Rose is dating, i'll visit digg.
slashdot needs to go back to posting stories on technology and real tech/science issues, not sensationalist drivel from Vallywag or, worse yet, The Sun. please don't prove to the world that geeks are just as mentally vacuous as the britney-spears-fawning, paris-hilton-obsessed, access-hollywood-watching masses.
while i've never heard of E'Prime Aerospace, but if you want to look at an example of privatization hurting society, then look up info on water privatization in El Salvador. i first read about this issue about 5-6 years ago (when the water supply was first privatized), but the problem doesn't seem to have gotten any better over the years.
other examples of this include India, where the World Bank is also pushing the government to privatize Delhi's water supply, as well as Pakistan, where the WTO and other IFIs are pushing for privatization of health care against the protest of doctors and other medical professionals. Pakistanis have also recently been swindled by foreign investors when Pakistan Steel Mill was privatized at far below the market price. likewise, there is strong public opposition against the privatization of Pakistan's Oil & Gas Development Company. however, all of this is just the latest episode in a string corrupt privatization dealings by the Pakistani dictator which has cost the Pakistani people over $23.8 billion in national income and domestic resources.
another example of the harm of privatization can be seen in post-soviet Russia, where the privatization of national assets have made a handful of people disgustingly rich while the rest of society bears the cost of this ransacking of public infrastructure and lack of industry regulation.
it just seems ridiculous to me that public assets should be auctioned off to the rich at 1/1000th their market value while public institutions like schools, hospitals, transportation infrastructure, etc. remain chronically underfunded. and certain things like the water supply and other public utilities serve a more important purpose than creating lucrative profits for transnational conglomerates, especially in countries where people can barely afford to eat.
asking a valid question isn't fear mongering. it wasn't that long ago that match manufacturers were still using white/yellow phosphorous despite its known health hazards and red phosphorous being known to be just as effective while not being lethally toxic to factory workers.
while i'm sure this technology can probably be employed without significant health risks to human beings, it's rather foolish to speak as if worker exploitation and endangerment never happens. heck, i think there was a story on /. just a few months ago about a chemical powder use for adding butter-flavor to microwave popcorn causing lung-disease in factory workers (it's only hazardous when inhaled, not when eaten).
i'm the first person to support the need for the U.S. to switch to an electric-powered transportation infrastructure, but that's no reason to be reckless and accept new and untested technologies unquestioningly. after all, a lot of American companies specifically open overseas factories in places like China to capitalize on their lax environmental and work place safety regulations. the days of corporate irresponsibility are not yet in the past.
while being classified as a non-profit doesn't guarantee impartiality, it does eliminate the primary source of media bias. after all, even the non-profits that are extremely biased are generally so because they are backed by commercial industries--a prime example of this is the Global Climate Coalition. there's no magic bullet against media bias (every news source has its biases), but we can try our best to minimize bias by, for instance, eliminating potential conflicts of interest. i mean, just because a political official can be corrupt without being given a bribe doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to combat bribery.
as for Google, yes, i would say that their integrity as a company is a large reason for their success. but you have to realize how rare this is in the business world. that's the whole reason Google is such a remarkable company. also, Google is not a news source. the primary service they provide to the public is web search. the quality of a search engine is judged by how accurate/relevant their search results are (how much spam and cruft they filter out) and how quickly & easily one is able to find the information they are looking for. how effective Google is at locating the information users are looking for determines how much traffic they get, and how much advertising revenue they make.
the case is quite different with the news media. the fourth estate performs a vitally important role in a democratic society. a democracy cannot function unless the public is well educated and well informed. so, like academic institutions, the media has a civic duty that they need to carry out. that is the reason why freedom of press is so important. however, the commercial success of a media corporation depends, not on the accuracy of their reporting nor their journalistic integrity, but instead how big of an audience they attract, which unlike web search does not correlate with quality or accuracy. that's why the two most successful news network in the U.S. are Fox News and CNN, both of which covered the death of Anna Nicole Smith more heavily than they covered the fact that the Bush administration blatantly lied to the U.N. and the American public, or the human rights violations committed at Guantanamo Bay, or the corruption scandal surrounding the military's LCAP contractors like Halliburton KBR. the state of the U.S. media demonstrates how sensationalism trumps journalistic integrity when it comes to commercial success.
also, while Google is in a position of trust and power, if they were to betray that trust, there's a big chance that the news media would report it. however, if the media is the one betraying public trust, then there's no one but the media to reveal their own corruption. and if you have a heavily consolidated media climate like we have in the U.S., then the corruption is not likely to ever be exposed. the last major distinction between Google and the mainstream media is that Google does not belong to a corporate conglomerate. they don't have corporate ties to other industries that create a blatant conflict of interest. if they did, then they too would be susceptible to corruption. if Google's shareholders are also part of the MIC, and they could make more money from defense contracts than the money they'd make simply by running an honest search engine, then logic indicates a "good" capitalist would try to skew search results to help them land those defense contracts. luckily, search engines don't yet have that kind of political influence, and Google does have commercial ties to outside industries that could introduce a conflict of interest.
if you want to call the existence of NASA "government obstructionism" then, sure. but that hasn't stopped companies like Sea Launch or FedEx from competing with government services.
that same argument has pretty much been used to lobby for the privatization of all kinds of public infrastructure, which is generally at a detriment to society. you want NASA to stop launching satellites just so an uncompetitive commercial company can have a chance to profit unobstructed, or do you want the government to push technological progress (including commercial technology as well as vital public infrastructure) forward?
the Toyota Prius is hardly fundamental research or cutting-edge technology. however, the Japanese government did invest in Toyota's hybrid gas-electric technology, purportedly subsidizing 100% of its development cost.
so while there's no Toyota Government Agency, Japan does however have:
and their government actively funds science and public research through these organizations. the Japanese government also owns a large (1/3rd) share of their national ISP/telecom, NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone). and this kind of active support and funding of technology is why Japan has become a global technology leader. it's also why Japan is leading the world in FttH deployment and its citizens have access to 1 Gbps symmetric broadband connections for $0.057 per Mbps, whereas Comcast is charging $3.00 per Mbps for asymmetric "wideband" connections.
from the day ICANN was created it was pretty much bound to become a corrupt puppet-organization for commercial interests. that's why it's been headed by economists, businessmen, and corporate consultants rather than IT professionals and computer scientists/researchers. the lack of transparency/openness, community dialog, and international input has guaranteed that ICANN's policies serve the interests of corporations like InterNIC rather than the global online community.
it's very tragic that we have such an undemocratic and profit-motivated organization running the internet rather than a more civic-minded and open organization like the W3C, which is actually run by technically competent individuals who are more interested in technological progress than giving kick-backs to their corporate buddies.
so true. the private sector won't invest in fundamental research or new and yet unproven technology. that's why you need public research to do these things that push society forward.
nothing has prevented private companies from investing in space research/travel in the past 4-5 decades. they just chose not to because it wasn't seen as "financially viable." and if we'd simply waited for the private sector to develop space technology then we would never have gotten GPS, communications satellites, interplanetary probes, the Hubble Space Telescope, etc.
but now that public research has paved the way for commercial space travel, companies like Virgin Galactic can use public research and the technology developed through public funding in order to commercialize space.
i guess that's the reason why you should do research on your prospective hardware components online. i'll admit i'm not a hardware geek. i haven't had to assemble my own PC in quite a few years, so i'm not very up to date regarding the latest hardware. but, luckily, the web is an endless resource for technical specs, benchmark data, professional reviews, anecdotal experiences, price comparisons, etc. it's really the only way to ensure that you don't get burned.