Maybe you go a little too far. I agree that > 19% of kids encountering "unwanted sex talk" on the internet might be acceptable. But I wouldn't say that 1/1501 of kids actually having sex with adults they meet on the internet is per se an acceptable number, as you suggest when you say 'People who cite the study can't have their cake and eat it too, taking the "1 in 5" number as accurate but discounting the fact that none of the teens surveyed reported a sexual relationship with an adult they met online.' To me the margin for that particular category ought to be so small that this sample doesn't really measure it.
is the only interesting difference between brains and computers. Everything else (chess, language, meaning) is just calculation of more or less complexity. I predict there can be AI but no Artificial Consciousness. Anyone care to tell me they understand consciousness enough to predict it can be synthesized without biology?
And let's not play word games like "how can you prove it's not conscious." My question is "can it be done" not "how will we know."
As long as there's a market of people who are willing to pay for the value of helping the environment (or even pay for the perception that they are), of course car companies will charge whatever premium for it that they can. Basic supply and demand: They'll charge what the car is worth to people.
Just like when you buy an SUV you're paying for the feeling of driving a big safe tank thing, the satisfying sound of the doors closing, etc-- not just for the materials or whatever.
So don't expect hybrids to become cost effective, at least until they cease to be an "alternative" option (due to a gas tax or an oil crisis making SUVs either unaffordable or completely stigmatized), leading to more players and price competition -within- the fuel-efficient car market.
I Am Not An Expert, but aren't there other reasons why people are fixating on H5N1, besides the quantity of human deaths so far (which certainly is a red herring). For instance:
- It is spreading unusually widely among birds; which means a lot of birds with the virus inevitably coming in contact with humans and human DNA; which does create increased opportunities for either a genetic shift or random mutation in the virus that would make it human-to-human communicable.. at which point humans everywhere would in fact get it; and although we don't know the mortality of the virus post-mutation, it's at least even odds that the mortality will be bad.
- It is spreading among birds in places where culls -- the most effective method to prevent mutation -- are not likely to be successful: rural Asia and Africa. That is not just some kind of prejudice of fear, it's an actual public health difference between those places and Europe or North America.
- The flu virus in general, unlike other arbitrary viruses, is known both to mutate in the feared way (going from communicable within one species to communicable within another); and also to be highly communicable among humans.. so unlike "new" diseases like SARS and mad cow, in this case it is not actually speculation but learning from history.
Agreed, buying $99 worth of Tamiful is not necessarily a sane (nor ethical) solution. But I think you're a fool if you don't want your government, as well as pharmaceutical companies and universities, to devote vastly increased resources and competencies to this scenario. Sometimes you actually do need to plan for (or attempt to change) the future.
Apparently like a lot of other people, I haven't watched the network news in 10 years (due to schedule, then lately I haven't even bothered to own a tv, etc.) but I'm going to watch again now.
I miss that time-based, linear, experience that is shared with millions of other people-- people who I haven't even necessarily met, but whose existence is suggested by the linear nature of the news broadcast itself. I know everyone is being broadcast to in the same way; it becomes a shared experience we've had. Webpages are great in some ways, but not in every way.
I think this is a great, conceptually simple move of NBC's, and wish more mainstream, ad-sponsored American programming was made available in this way. The internet is a fine medium for TV news-- I don't think there's anything inherently so high bandwidth about a 4:3 TV news broadcast that necessitates a dedicated over-the-air channel or cable pipeline.. which I guess is why I haven't paid for cable.
Exactly, they sure make it seem like you're buying a product to own, not just a service, when you buy that phone. Furthermore, the article is misleading when it says
Cell phone companies sell you a phone at a discount, and then make up the difference by requiring you to sign a multi-year contract promising to pay monthly fees for mobile phone service or to fork over a hefty termination penalty if you break the deal.
since, in my experience with the late AT&T Wireless anyway, they also won't unlock the phone after you've fulfilled your 2-year contract (and in my case, plus also paid hundreds of additional dollars in international roaming fees after I moved abroad and waited awhile before buying a new phone.) These companies are interested in lock-in, not just spreading out the cost of the phone.
In shops in the U.S., they should just be clearer about your two choices. Instead of "Cost of phone with new service contract" and "Cost of phone without new service contract", it should be described as "Cost of phone locked to Cingular" and "Cost of phone unlocked." When you shop for a cellphone in Europe the understanding is a little more like that.
But when I bought that GSM phone from AT&T in the U.S., I actually believed I'd be able to insert a SIM from a European provider after I fulfilled my contract and moved. It's only in fine print that the contract says this is prevented. If you just broadly consider the idea that it is an "international GSM quad-band phone" with a "SIM card", you are tricked.
A smaller, lower-tech version of this watch could also be useful.
I've got moderate asthma, and choosing the best prophylactic drug depends on knowing my overall trend over several weeks or months (i.e. at a checkup, a doctor can't know what's the best medicine for me or how I'm really doing, just by listening to my breathing at that moment).
At least for me it's not that easy to keep track of trends like that, for example I forget if I was wheezing a little yesterday morning or how many times I took my rescue inhaler last week or during the past month. I'm sure the information I tell my doctor, is not very accurate. I suspect I tend to be too optimistic, and as a result end up using a too-weak prophylactic medicine and consequently slightly over-using the rescue inhaler.
It would be great to have a device that made recording day-to-day data about my health, as easy as using the rescue inhaler itself. A solution would a chip in the inhaler, but that might not be economical. Something like a small wristwatch with very easy-to-use data-logging software would be reusable and more versatile, and would be useful for other people's health issues besides asthma.
Sure you can write it down, but when each event is small and they only become meaningful in aggregate, it's easy to not do it.
What do other people do to keep track of long-term trends in their lives, that are difficult to memorize?
PHP for teaching
on
A Decade of PHP
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
So here it is 2005, and I need to teach the "interactive" part of the graphic design curriculum to college- and graduate-level art students. Is PHP appropriate for this today?
In a semester, I'd like my students to learn some fundamentals of programming. Like, what a variable is.
I find that when "interactive" classes are taught in environments like Flash or Director, design students wind up cobbling together bits and pieces of things without really knowing how the pieces work, and then they get frustrated when the whole thing doesn't work. Plus the environment itself becomes confusing (there is really no logic to Flash). Therefore I'm thinking I'd like to go "back to basics" for a semester. Just as design students know a lot about how printing works, they should know how code works.
The Processing environment was designed for teaching-- a kind of simplified Java. But while its graphics support is sort of strong, it doesn't have great network connectivity, with the result that things you make in Processing tend to feel a bit self-contained, like science experiments.
Going the opposite way, what do people think about PHP as a teaching language? It has syntactic similarity to C or Java, for learning "if then" and whatnot, in a way which could be applicable to other languages later on; has a lot of functionality in the core language; and maybe unparalleled online documentation. There is no development environment to learn other than a text editor and SFTP. And even though the idea of your code running exclusively on a server might be confusing, I think there could also be value for design students to learn the difference between server and client since it's a fundamental relationship in a lot of graphic design problems.
Remember also that these are design students not comp sci students, which partially determines the kinds of programming issues these students need to be versed in.
Thoughts from about PHP as a teaching language for non-programmers?
Yeah this is my experience too. I'm a graphic designer, and when we moved abroad for a year we got what I thought was a fairly decent 17" Samsung LCD to take with us.. payed more than $600 for it anyway. Admittedly that was 12 months ago, but at the time people also said the color was a good as CRT, etc., etc. And it does look ok overall (at least the definition is great), but subtle colors and grays (including anti-aliased edges) often don't look the -same- at the top and bottom of the screen because of the different angle of vision. (And of course the problem is even worse when one of us is standing and looking at the screen.) Off-angle parts of the screen don't necessarily look faded or wrong, just a tiny bit different. "Color calibration" of anything is overrated in my opinion, but inconsistency within the same screen makes it pretty annoying for graphic design work.
Actually in my mind this Dashboard security hole, while perhaps minor, is one of the most disappointing things Apple has ever done. The line continues to blur between surfing and running code -- or between documents and executables -- and this trend, while important, of course presents serious, inherent security challenges, since it places the user in a passive position with respect to the code being executed on their computer. It's disturbing that Apple apparently didn't think much at all about that very well-known issue, before creating an auto-install, auto-execute system for Javascript apps with file system access.
Isn't this the same major (and irrevocable) mistake that Microsoft made when they let the ActiveX genie out of the bottle? If Apple is going to walk into the same traps that Microsoft walked into years ago, it makes me question the purpose of OS X. Plus as an invention Dashboard isn't even as useful as ActiveX.
See, this is what I'm talking about, creative thinking. How come the discussion in the Times -- and mostly on Slashdot too -- is all about NIMBY vs. cellphone coverage. What an overhashed (and somehow American) debate that is: the individual vs. the group, private property vs. regulation, etc., etc.
As parent notes, if U.S. cellphone co's worked a little harder they could surely come up with more subtle and equally functional approaches, as in Europe (hide them in steeples, in existing signage, on existing structures, proliferate smaller units, etc.)
But U.S. cell co's are quite happy for the debate to be continuously framed as NIMBY vs. cellphone coverage since they know that majorities will favor cellphone coverage in that debate, and then they can just erect a big old antenna.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe you go a little too far. I agree that > 19% of kids encountering "unwanted sex talk" on the internet might be acceptable. But I wouldn't say that 1/1501 of kids actually having sex with adults they meet on the internet is per se an acceptable number, as you suggest when you say 'People who cite the study can't have their cake and eat it too, taking the "1 in 5" number as accurate but discounting the fact that none of the teens surveyed reported a sexual relationship with an adult they met online.' To me the margin for that particular category ought to be so small that this sample doesn't really measure it.
So basically it's a CD that you can't play in your car. Sounds like a winner.
is the only interesting difference between brains and computers. Everything else (chess, language, meaning) is just calculation of more or less complexity. I predict there can be AI but no Artificial Consciousness. Anyone care to tell me they understand consciousness enough to predict it can be synthesized without biology?
And let's not play word games like "how can you prove it's not conscious." My question is "can it be done" not "how will we know."
As long as there's a market of people who are willing to pay for the value of helping the environment (or even pay for the perception that they are), of course car companies will charge whatever premium for it that they can. Basic supply and demand: They'll charge what the car is worth to people.
Just like when you buy an SUV you're paying for the feeling of driving a big safe tank thing, the satisfying sound of the doors closing, etc-- not just for the materials or whatever.
So don't expect hybrids to become cost effective, at least until they cease to be an "alternative" option (due to a gas tax or an oil crisis making SUVs either unaffordable or completely stigmatized), leading to more players and price competition -within- the fuel-efficient car market.
I Am Not An Expert, but aren't there other reasons why people are fixating on H5N1, besides the quantity of human deaths so far (which certainly is a red herring). For instance:
- It is spreading unusually widely among birds; which means a lot of birds with the virus inevitably coming in contact with humans and human DNA; which does create increased opportunities for either a genetic shift or random mutation in the virus that would make it human-to-human communicable.. at which point humans everywhere would in fact get it; and although we don't know the mortality of the virus post-mutation, it's at least even odds that the mortality will be bad.
- It is spreading among birds in places where culls -- the most effective method to prevent mutation -- are not likely to be successful: rural Asia and Africa. That is not just some kind of prejudice of fear, it's an actual public health difference between those places and Europe or North America.
- The flu virus in general, unlike other arbitrary viruses, is known both to mutate in the feared way (going from communicable within one species to communicable within another); and also to be highly communicable among humans.. so unlike "new" diseases like SARS and mad cow, in this case it is not actually speculation but learning from history.
Agreed, buying $99 worth of Tamiful is not necessarily a sane (nor ethical) solution. But I think you're a fool if you don't want your government, as well as pharmaceutical companies and universities, to devote vastly increased resources and competencies to this scenario. Sometimes you actually do need to plan for (or attempt to change) the future.
Apparently like a lot of other people, I haven't watched the network news in 10 years (due to schedule, then lately I haven't even bothered to own a tv, etc.) but I'm going to watch again now.
I miss that time-based, linear, experience that is shared with millions of other people-- people who I haven't even necessarily met, but whose existence is suggested by the linear nature of the news broadcast itself. I know everyone is being broadcast to in the same way; it becomes a shared experience we've had. Webpages are great in some ways, but not in every way.
I think this is a great, conceptually simple move of NBC's, and wish more mainstream, ad-sponsored American programming was made available in this way. The internet is a fine medium for TV news-- I don't think there's anything inherently so high bandwidth about a 4:3 TV news broadcast that necessitates a dedicated over-the-air channel or cable pipeline.. which I guess is why I haven't paid for cable.
Cell phone companies sell you a phone at a discount, and then make up the difference by requiring you to sign a multi-year contract promising to pay monthly fees for mobile phone service or to fork over a hefty termination penalty if you break the deal.
since, in my experience with the late AT&T Wireless anyway, they also won't unlock the phone after you've fulfilled your 2-year contract (and in my case, plus also paid hundreds of additional dollars in international roaming fees after I moved abroad and waited awhile before buying a new phone.) These companies are interested in lock-in, not just spreading out the cost of the phone.
In shops in the U.S., they should just be clearer about your two choices. Instead of "Cost of phone with new service contract" and "Cost of phone without new service contract", it should be described as "Cost of phone locked to Cingular" and "Cost of phone unlocked." When you shop for a cellphone in Europe the understanding is a little more like that.
But when I bought that GSM phone from AT&T in the U.S., I actually believed I'd be able to insert a SIM from a European provider after I fulfilled my contract and moved. It's only in fine print that the contract says this is prevented. If you just broadly consider the idea that it is an "international GSM quad-band phone" with a "SIM card", you are tricked.
A smaller, lower-tech version of this watch could also be useful.
I've got moderate asthma, and choosing the best prophylactic drug depends on knowing my overall trend over several weeks or months (i.e. at a checkup, a doctor can't know what's the best medicine for me or how I'm really doing, just by listening to my breathing at that moment).
At least for me it's not that easy to keep track of trends like that, for example I forget if I was wheezing a little yesterday morning or how many times I took my rescue inhaler last week or during the past month. I'm sure the information I tell my doctor, is not very accurate. I suspect I tend to be too optimistic, and as a result end up using a too-weak prophylactic medicine and consequently slightly over-using the rescue inhaler.
It would be great to have a device that made recording day-to-day data about my health, as easy as using the rescue inhaler itself. A solution would a chip in the inhaler, but that might not be economical. Something like a small wristwatch with very easy-to-use data-logging software would be reusable and more versatile, and would be useful for other people's health issues besides asthma.
Sure you can write it down, but when each event is small and they only become meaningful in aggregate, it's easy to not do it.
What do other people do to keep track of long-term trends in their lives, that are difficult to memorize?
So here it is 2005, and I need to teach the "interactive" part of the graphic design curriculum to college- and graduate-level art students. Is PHP appropriate for this today?
In a semester, I'd like my students to learn some fundamentals of programming. Like, what a variable is.
I find that when "interactive" classes are taught in environments like Flash or Director, design students wind up cobbling together bits and pieces of things without really knowing how the pieces work, and then they get frustrated when the whole thing doesn't work. Plus the environment itself becomes confusing (there is really no logic to Flash). Therefore I'm thinking I'd like to go "back to basics" for a semester. Just as design students know a lot about how printing works, they should know how code works.
The Processing environment was designed for teaching-- a kind of simplified Java. But while its graphics support is sort of strong, it doesn't have great network connectivity, with the result that things you make in Processing tend to feel a bit self-contained, like science experiments.
Going the opposite way, what do people think about PHP as a teaching language? It has syntactic similarity to C or Java, for learning "if then" and whatnot, in a way which could be applicable to other languages later on; has a lot of functionality in the core language; and maybe unparalleled online documentation. There is no development environment to learn other than a text editor and SFTP. And even though the idea of your code running exclusively on a server might be confusing, I think there could also be value for design students to learn the difference between server and client since it's a fundamental relationship in a lot of graphic design problems.
Remember also that these are design students not comp sci students, which partially determines the kinds of programming issues these students need to be versed in.
Thoughts from about PHP as a teaching language for non-programmers?
Yeah this is my experience too. I'm a graphic designer, and when we moved abroad for a year we got what I thought was a fairly decent 17" Samsung LCD to take with us.. payed more than $600 for it anyway. Admittedly that was 12 months ago, but at the time people also said the color was a good as CRT, etc., etc. And it does look ok overall (at least the definition is great), but subtle colors and grays (including anti-aliased edges) often don't look the -same- at the top and bottom of the screen because of the different angle of vision. (And of course the problem is even worse when one of us is standing and looking at the screen.) Off-angle parts of the screen don't necessarily look faded or wrong, just a tiny bit different. "Color calibration" of anything is overrated in my opinion, but inconsistency within the same screen makes it pretty annoying for graphic design work.
Actually in my mind this Dashboard security hole, while perhaps minor, is one of the most disappointing things Apple has ever done. The line continues to blur between surfing and running code -- or between documents and executables -- and this trend, while important, of course presents serious, inherent security challenges, since it places the user in a passive position with respect to the code being executed on their computer. It's disturbing that Apple apparently didn't think much at all about that very well-known issue, before creating an auto-install, auto-execute system for Javascript apps with file system access.
Isn't this the same major (and irrevocable) mistake that Microsoft made when they let the ActiveX genie out of the bottle? If Apple is going to walk into the same traps that Microsoft walked into years ago, it makes me question the purpose of OS X. Plus as an invention Dashboard isn't even as useful as ActiveX.
As parent notes, if U.S. cellphone co's worked a little harder they could surely come up with more subtle and equally functional approaches, as in Europe (hide them in steeples, in existing signage, on existing structures, proliferate smaller units, etc.)
But U.S. cell co's are quite happy for the debate to be continuously framed as NIMBY vs. cellphone coverage since they know that majorities will favor cellphone coverage in that debate, and then they can just erect a big old antenna.