You know what else works just as well as a credit card that is way smaller and lighter than a cell phone, never needs recharging, works literally everywhere and already has proven, well-established limited liability for theft?
Cash.
Plus, you have the benefit of not having your purchases become part of a massive database to be misused by powerful and evil forces.
I'd like to see some innovations in payment methods that still leave the shopper with a little bit of privacy protection.
Granted. However, I use my no-fee CC for most purchases and pay it off every month so using is like using cash but negates me having to carry/restock my wallet with much cash. I accept the privacy loss of using a CC for the additional theft protection and convenient. I'm sure Clinkle will charge comparable service fees and mine people's purchase data as well. (Shareholders gotta profit.)
Truth be told, I was more peeved about the "may or may not" in the summary. "May" implies "may not"... grrrr:-)
Don't get me started on the evils of debit cards though....
You know what else works just as well as a credit card that is way smaller and lighter than a cell phone, never needs recharging, works literally everywhere and already has proven, well-established limited liability for theft? A fucking credit card.
Oh, and nice analysis editor:
Clinkle, a new mobile payments start-up, may or may not have succeeded...
The 'MoodScope' system produced by researchers uses smartphone usage patterns to determine whether someone is happy, calm, excited, bored or stressed...
This should be easy to implement on a Windows Phone because whenever I use a Microsoft product, I generally end up "angry". To be fair, I had the same emotional result when I tried using Unity...
And when hindsight reveals that a killer had joked or made facebook posts or otherwise gave warning signs about the destruction to come, and police write it off as just some kid harmlessly blowing off steam, the public invariably crucifies them for failing to follow up on the warning signs.
Sure, some people often suffer from jerky-knee syndrome, but one (non-specific) joke/comment doesn't really constitute "warning signs".
Based on my experience (YMMV), corporations love consistency. Their recruiters are uncomfortable with varied background, because they don't think outside the box and don't understand that a person can do more than just the same thing for the entirety of their lives.
Agreed. I've spent 1/2 my career as (primarily) a system/application programmer and the other 1/2 as (primarily) a Unix system administrator - usually alternating between the two. Invariably, whenever I apply for one type of job, the recruiter/HR person only sees the other type of experience and/or can't seem to understand that one person can do both things, often at the same time. Fortunately, it hasn't kept me from being continuously employed for the past 25+ years - or, perhaps, I've just been lucky.
You can't run any other language than JS in the browser (practically anyways),
That's more a function of browsers bundling Javascript support than of the language itself. You could substitute Tcl/Tk, (or Perl, Python, etc...). Presently, there's a Tcl/Tk plugin for Mozilla and IE.
To put it bluntly, you underestimate kids and overestimate yourself
That's not it at all. I wasn't trying to be condescending (like you apparently are). Just stating a fact.
No one, including your brightest six-year-old, is capable of understanding something before their brain is sufficiently developed. To argue otherwise indicates that *your* brain is insufficiently developed. I love my god daughter a LOT (and she loves me a LOT) and I think she's really - really - smart, but Quantum Mechanics is beyond her grasp at this point, no matter how well explained.
Einstein was either over-simplifying or had never actually tried explaining something really complex to a six-year-old.
"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."
-- Albert Einstein (attributed)
Having recently spent time with a friend and her six-year-old daughter, I can honestly, accurately, say that is not true. The kid is really, really smart - for a six-year-old - but, like *all* six-year-old humans, her brain simply isn't developed enough to grasp many - many - concepts. This also applies, to a lesser extent, to gifted kids (my wife was a Gifted Education teacher). In either case, any parents (or Albert Einsteins) who say otherwise are fooling themselves.
If we can build capsules for space, why not do the same thing here...
You make good points for cases where the Earth in general becomes less/un-inhabitable - for whatever reason - but not for large asteroid strikes, gamma-ray bursts and eventual Sun death. Yes, those are very rare or far off in the future, but the long-term survival of those types of events requires us living somewhere else.
Hopefully, we'll evolve into a less stupid, petty, short-sighted, self-destructive species by the time we need to deal with those kind of things.
With even home Internet providers enforcing monthly caps, how will you fit your 3D 4K movies across a home Internet connection without having to take a week off surfing after streaming a single movie?
With this new technique, Netflix can just actually send you 1 disc with *all* the movies on it...
Electric cars are subsidized now by governments. As soon as they start being successful, the governments will start taxing them, too!
North Carolina, and at least 9 other states, are considering taxing hybrid and electric car owners (other sources available) to help make up for revenue those drivers aren't paying in gas taxes on their fuel-efficient vehicles. In addition:
New Jersey scrapped a plan to charge vehicles by miles traveled amid push back from media and legislators, opting instead for a flat fee on electric cars.
Personally, I can't stand the Google auto-complete "feature" - and all the traffic (and, I'm sure Google tracking) it generates - and have it switched off. Furthermore, my local proxy/filter is configured to ensure it stays off. I don't enable Javascript on Google pages either. I'm not a Luddite, but just want a simple search page w/o crap, Javascript, animations, etc... I'm sure I'd have the same (or more) concerns/complaints about Bing, if I ever used it.
Personally, I can't stand the Google auto-complete "feature" - and all the traffic (and, I'm sure Google tracking) it generates - and have it switched off. Furthermore, my local proxy/filter is configured to ensure it stays off. I don't enable Javascript on Google pages either. I'm not a Luddite, but just want a simple search page w/o crap, Javascript, animations, etc... I'm sure I'd have the same (or more) concerns/complaints about Bing, if I ever used it.
However, the BIG difference I saw between the two schools was hiring:...
Perhaps that more an artifact of short-sighted managers and HR people. I got inconsistent grades in school (always working part-time) and have a BSCS from Old Dominion University (from 1987, yes I'm old) and have never had a problem getting a well-paying job. During the interview for my first job, the company president (it was a small software development firm) remarked than he especially like that my college experience involved more than just taking classes and such. In addition to being a grader for (under)graduate CS classes and assisted with professors' research papers as part of my financial aid, I was a research assistant on an AI project in LISP and PROLOG, funded by NASA - focusing on automatic analysis and evaluation using abstract data types. (The Xerox 1108 Dandelion system running InterLISP-D at my desk was amazing, especially for 1985 - I still have the InterLISP-D manual.)
It's not where you go to school, but what you do while you're there...
Pretty soon, we're going to have a repeat of the fall of the Roman Empire, where specialization of labor goes right out the window because no one sees any real value to specializing, and pretty soon no one remembers how to do anything terribly complex and needing of a lot of domain knowledge.
Why is it sexist when that is what most women respond to? In the fashion industry, it has been established that women are more interested, spend more time, effort and money on fashion than men do.
Without arguing your point, because it's silly and sexist, why not just reward the women with more - money - with which they can buy their own high-fashion clothes, if they choose (or not).
Slashdot Mirror
How Should We Treat Texters and Talkers at Movie Theaters?
Paraphrasing Shepherd Book (Firefly):
They'll burn in a very special level of hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.
Cash.
Plus, you have the benefit of not having your purchases become part of a massive database to be misused by powerful and evil forces.
I'd like to see some innovations in payment methods that still leave the shopper with a little bit of privacy protection.
Granted. However, I use my no-fee CC for most purchases and pay it off every month so using is like using cash but negates me having to carry/restock my wallet with much cash. I accept the privacy loss of using a CC for the additional theft protection and convenient. I'm sure Clinkle will charge comparable service fees and mine people's purchase data as well. (Shareholders gotta profit.)
Truth be told, I was more peeved about the "may or may not" in the summary. "May" implies "may not" ... grrrr :-)
Don't get me started on the evils of debit cards though....
You know what else works just as well as a credit card that is way smaller and lighter than a cell phone, never needs recharging, works literally everywhere and already has proven, well-established limited liability for theft? A fucking credit card.
Oh, and nice analysis editor:
Clinkle, a new mobile payments start-up, may or may not have succeeded ...
The 'MoodScope' system produced by researchers uses smartphone usage patterns to determine whether someone is happy, calm, excited, bored or stressed ...
This should be easy to implement on a Windows Phone because whenever I use a Microsoft product, I generally end up "angry". To be fair, I had the same emotional result when I tried using Unity...
And when hindsight reveals that a killer had joked or made facebook posts or otherwise gave warning signs about the destruction to come, and police write it off as just some kid harmlessly blowing off steam, the public invariably crucifies them for failing to follow up on the warning signs.
Sure, some people often suffer from jerky-knee syndrome, but one (non-specific) joke/comment doesn't really constitute "warning signs".
Based on my experience (YMMV), corporations love consistency. Their recruiters are uncomfortable with varied background, because they don't think outside the box and don't understand that a person can do more than just the same thing for the entirety of their lives.
Agreed. I've spent 1/2 my career as (primarily) a system/application programmer and the other 1/2 as (primarily) a Unix system administrator - usually alternating between the two. Invariably, whenever I apply for one type of job, the recruiter/HR person only sees the other type of experience and/or can't seem to understand that one person can do both things, often at the same time. Fortunately, it hasn't kept me from being continuously employed for the past 25+ years - or, perhaps, I've just been lucky.
You can't run any other language than JS in the browser (practically anyways),
That's more a function of browsers bundling Javascript support than of the language itself. You could substitute Tcl/Tk, (or Perl, Python, etc...). Presently, there's a Tcl/Tk plugin for Mozilla and IE.
To put it bluntly, you underestimate kids and overestimate yourself
That's not it at all. I wasn't trying to be condescending (like you apparently are). Just stating a fact.
No one, including your brightest six-year-old, is capable of understanding something before their brain is sufficiently developed. To argue otherwise indicates that *your* brain is insufficiently developed. I love my god daughter a LOT (and she loves me a LOT) and I think she's really - really - smart, but Quantum Mechanics is beyond her grasp at this point, no matter how well explained.
Einstein was either over-simplifying or had never actually tried explaining something really complex to a six-year-old.
Frankly, I was a little disappointed in this article. His arguments seems a bit - for lack of a better term: simple.
Well... Any idiot can make a complex argument. :-)
"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."
-- Albert Einstein (attributed)
Having recently spent time with a friend and her six-year-old daughter, I can honestly, accurately, say that is not true. The kid is really, really smart - for a six-year-old - but, like *all* six-year-old humans, her brain simply isn't developed enough to grasp many - many - concepts. This also applies, to a lesser extent, to gifted kids (my wife was a Gifted Education teacher). In either case, any parents (or Albert Einsteins) who say otherwise are fooling themselves.
There is no resistance but the mass of the ship and the cargo will increase with the speed.
Or does the mass of the Universe decrease?
If you have a ship big enough to hold heavy people with heavier supplies that is a lot of momentum to fight all the time.
Only send skinny people - duh.
they'd have to be specially selected with the idea that everyone back on Earth that they knew would be dead by the time they arrived
Heck, I'd go with understanding that just certain people would be dead back on Earth... :-)
If we can build capsules for space, why not do the same thing here ...
You make good points for cases where the Earth in general becomes less/un-inhabitable - for whatever reason - but not for large asteroid strikes, gamma-ray bursts and eventual Sun death. Yes, those are very rare or far off in the future, but the long-term survival of those types of events requires us living somewhere else.
Hopefully, we'll evolve into a less stupid, petty, short-sighted, self-destructive species by the time we need to deal with those kind of things.
Can we get plate with code to delete the database?"
Coincidentally, the alt text for that xkcd image is: "Her daughter is named Help I'm trapped in a driver's license factory."
Is "tried to conclusion" lawyer speak for "lost at trail and had his appeals rejected"?
Either that or it means "Happy Ending" ...
With even home Internet providers enforcing monthly caps, how will you fit your 3D 4K movies across a home Internet connection without having to take a week off surfing after streaming a single movie?
With this new technique, Netflix can just actually send you 1 disc with *all* the movies on it...
Electric cars are subsidized now by governments. As soon as they start being successful, the governments will start taxing them, too!
North Carolina, and at least 9 other states, are considering taxing hybrid and electric car owners (other sources available) to help make up for revenue those drivers aren't paying in gas taxes on their fuel-efficient vehicles. In addition:
New Jersey scrapped a plan to charge vehicles by miles traveled amid push back from media and legislators, opting instead for a flat fee on electric cars.
Just for a start why the heck would you put an air intake at the rear of the bird?
I'm not an aviation engineer, but wouldn't a rear-facing inlet reduce the likely hood of something, like an actual bird, getting sucked in?
Personally, I can't stand the Google auto-complete "feature" - and all the traffic (and, I'm sure Google tracking) it generates - and have it switched off. Furthermore, my local proxy/filter is configured to ensure it stays off. I don't enable Javascript on Google pages either. I'm not a Luddite, but just want a simple search page w/o crap, Javascript, animations, etc... I'm sure I'd have the same (or more) concerns/complaints about Bing, if I ever used it.
P.S. The same goes for Google "Instant" - sigh.
Personally, I can't stand the Google auto-complete "feature" - and all the traffic (and, I'm sure Google tracking) it generates - and have it switched off. Furthermore, my local proxy/filter is configured to ensure it stays off. I don't enable Javascript on Google pages either. I'm not a Luddite, but just want a simple search page w/o crap, Javascript, animations, etc... I'm sure I'd have the same (or more) concerns/complaints about Bing, if I ever used it.
The stations will allow a user to fill a smartphone in two hours, or grab a 30 percent charge in 30 minutes.
That's a long time to have to hang around an open-air charging station.
However, the BIG difference I saw between the two schools was hiring: ...
Perhaps that more an artifact of short-sighted managers and HR people. I got inconsistent grades in school (always working part-time) and have a BSCS from Old Dominion University (from 1987, yes I'm old) and have never had a problem getting a well-paying job. During the interview for my first job, the company president (it was a small software development firm) remarked than he especially like that my college experience involved more than just taking classes and such. In addition to being a grader for (under)graduate CS classes and assisted with professors' research papers as part of my financial aid, I was a research assistant on an AI project in LISP and PROLOG, funded by NASA - focusing on automatic analysis and evaluation using abstract data types. (The Xerox 1108 Dandelion system running InterLISP-D at my desk was amazing, especially for 1985 - I still have the InterLISP-D manual.)
It's not where you go to school, but what you do while you're there...
Pretty soon, we're going to have a repeat of the fall of the Roman Empire, where specialization of labor goes right out the window because no one sees any real value to specializing, and pretty soon no one remembers how to do anything terribly complex and needing of a lot of domain knowledge.
Idiocracy?
Why is it sexist when that is what most women respond to? In the fashion industry, it has been established that women are more interested, spend more time, effort and money on fashion than men do.
Without arguing your point, because it's silly and sexist, why not just reward the women with more - money - with which they can buy their own high-fashion clothes, if they choose (or not).