There are two mechanisms at work: one psychological, one institutional.
First of all, there are psychological factors. It's not the company that responds, it's certain individuals that do. Individual who set policy, or individuals who carry out said policy.
People who set policy, i.e. people at the top of the food chain in business usually didn't get there by being kind, timid, passive, open-minded, self-effacing and objective. Instead they tend to have much larger egos than the norm and also tend to be more much agressive towards others than usual (usually in the guise of being "effective" "goal-oriented", "focused", and "exercising management authority"). They obviously must be smart enough to get away with being agressive, or they won't be successful. Oh, and by the way, I'm extremely happy that Business offers such people a constructive outlet for their energy and aggression. Because otherwise it would go into Crime or Politics (or both).
As a result, while they are successful, life shows them on a daily basis that their thinking is correct, their opinions are valuable, and that their approach to life is the right one.
Now consider what happens when you contradict someone like that. Consider first what it means exactly to contradict someone like that. You and he (or she) are in a business setting, and both are vying for a "group position", i.e. who leads the thinking of whatever group is listening at that time on the issue at hand. And the subject under consideration isn't the weather either, it's (as in the case of the blog on Morgan Sachs) about company policy. Policy as set out and supported over a period of time by themselves.
With that in mind think of how this contradicting opinion (and the one doing the contradicting) will be perceived. There are no credits for answering that the perception will be that of a threat, if not a challenge.
So lets reformulate our original and fairly neutral description of "contradicting" a executive of a firm like that.
I believe the way to formulate it that does justice to the depth of emotion and self-interest would be: "you issue a public challenge to an executive, implying that he is at best incompetent and unethical, and at worst a crook"
Now about the institutional factors. Consider that high-ranking individuals impact their environment in various ways. First of all, they lead, and they can't do that without some authority. Only the very rarest of individuals can lead purely through their influence, and without exercising authority. The norm is that you shape your environment through selection (read hire-and-fire), rewards, promotions to support and protect your general ideas and the "image" of what you do and what you stand for. In its positive form it's called "Esprit de corps". It's what e.g. the Armed Forces insist on instilling in recruits. They do that because it makes the social coherence of the organization stronger. But in its negative form it can also degenerate into group think, bullying, and abuse (e.g. Nazism, Communism, Party doctrine, Scientology, and even religious abuse at the Airforce Acacdemy (see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4091956.stm)).
Now PR officials are a prime example of guards of a firm's public image (i.e. what others think of a firm and its actions). It's their job to be aware of the public image and to steer it in the way the firms wants it to be through propaganda. Lawyers are another example. Apart from their more mundane tasks of drawing up contracts they are specialists in the enforceable obligations in our society operates. Rules on topics like intellectual property, slander, defamation, torts, compensation for damages, etc..
Now do you understand the reaction of such companies? Their first-response mechanism is PR. Their secondary response are legal threats. Their tertiary response is litigation. All motivated by extremely aggressive and self-confident people who direct a lot of money and therefore wield a lot of power and who perceive the dissonant opinion as a threat to their personal position. Of course they get nasty!
As to where the parent post "should" have asked his question, the parent post asked an intelligent question on a forum that harbours a lot of people who can provide a good answer in under a minute. Slashdot.
There are lots and lots of applications like Jabber, Openfire and whatnot about. And yes, if you want you can create a great big (useless) list of them by Googling for a few minutes. And then what? What are the pros and cons of each app? Where can you find comparative tests? Are those tests any good? Has anyone got practical experience with the app? Any show-stoppers that aren't immediately apparent?
The point about most questions like this is that people who already know the answer consider them "easy". People who don't know the answer consider them hard, and will have to expend a lot of time finding out. Time that's wasted if you could simply have eliminated 90% of the options by asking. That's why you ask. At least if you'd rather get some useful work done instead of being the umpteeth person researching the same wheel.
It's a compliment to Slashdot that people ask such questions, and they do that because they even tend to get useful answers. It shows that Slashdot has value apart from serving as a forum for inane bickering.
"Plenty" of developers supposedly being "critical" of their code mean almost nothing in terms of user experience. And criticism which _has_ to be "constructive" has its teeth pulled and its hands tied behind its back.
All too often coders meet criticism along the lines of "the file selection box is awkward" (most programs using X-widgets instead of Qt), "the interface is hard to use (e.g. the Gimp and Blender)" with the retort: "You're free to code it yourself then.". Which is something the average user simply isn't prepared to do, even if he could, which is usually not the case.
Developers are always reluctant to throw away an entire approach (like switching to Qt from X widgets as opposed to ditching a few subroutines) and are never as critical of software usability as a gormless end-user who wants things to "just work" without hassle and especially without him having to so much glance at a manual.
Developers tend to write code that provides adequate functionality for people who are OK with reading documentation (even documentation as horrible as the average man page), and who are willing to lift their arms from the desktop in order to type a command.
In other words: such developers tend to write code that does not cater to the "average" (read: "dumb and lazy") end-user. Commercial software on the other hand tends to be written especially to cater for that category of user, and will therefore usually be more palatable to said end-user. After all, MS Windows doesn't owe its 90% market share *exclusively* to smart bundling and lock-in.
As I see it, Linux stands at a crossroads. Either it's happy to remain "command-line oriented as Linux ought to be" and "a power tool for people willing to read the manual", in which case it will remain a niche product on the desktop forever. Or it aims at achieving 80% market-share on the desktop within 10 years, in which case it needs to shed its attitude and pander to end-users who are as dumb as they are lazy.
I prefer the latter, but I'm not about to work up a sweat trying to bring that about. Except perhaps as a critic and reporter-of-bugs.
From a purely formal point of view I can understand your surprise, because paying attention to "strengths and weaknesses" of theories is something that should and (in the better Universities) does pervade any curriculum leading to a Masters degree.
From a more pragmatic point of view, it's a victory for religious fanatics for three reasons:
- (1) place
- (2) proportionality.
- (3) initiative
(1) Place
I am very sceptical of the implicit assumption that high-school is the place for a valid and meaningful examination of scientific debate and scientific evidence. Again for three reasons: (1a) level of passive cognitive ability of the attendants, (1b) level of active cognitive ability in attendants and (1.c) time constraints.
(1.a) Level of passive cognitive ability of the attendants
With passive cognitive ability I mean the ability to accurately and completely absorb new ideas and new information, and then to answer questions about what you have learned.
First of all it is my personal belief that high-schoolers are rarely able to think straight (often having trouble with elementary logic) while applying things they've learned, let alone that they could (under their own steam) critique a line of scientific reasoning. They ought to be able to follow a line of reasoning if it were presented to them, but only if it's a simple line of reasoning. But most tellingly, they should be able to reproduce what they've learned, and most of them cannot even do that. Anyone who doubts that is invited to spend a day or two reading actual high-school exam papers. If that sounds as if I look down on the cognitive abilities of the average high-schooler abilities, that's because I do. I've seen too many dimwits who couldn't even follow an elementary mathematical proof when it was put before them in writing and contained only elements they supposedly had been taught about. And too many stupid pupils who couldn't even reproduce the basic physical concept of what makes a reaction engine work (a rocket), although it was in their physics textbook. Or pupils who were unable to apply basic physics they had supposedly been taught about. There are always exceptions, and those exceptions tend to get a degree in Science or Mathematics. We're talking about a few percent of the population though.
(1.b) Level of active cognitive ability
With active cognitive ability I mean the ability to use what you've learned to solve problems about what you've learned which go one step beyond straightforward reproduction of knowledge. I found that high-shoolers typically aren't any good at this, and that those who are able to do this usually go straight on to College.
(1.b) Time constraints
From what I hear (I admit I don't have hands-on experience) an ordinary high-school curriculum contains just about everything teachers think that class attendants of median brightness can absorb. And that means straightforward presentation of existing science, maths, and what not. I don't see how you can fit e.g. a meaningful discussion about testing and verifying standard paradigms like evolution in anything less than 6 months with 4 hours of theory and 4 hours of experimental work (e.g. on fruit flies or bacteria) a week devoted to the subject. And even then it will be awfully sketchy. So a scientific discourse on the merits or demerits of a theory isn't going to happen, no matter what. The only thing that *can* be accommodated is reading of a load of (religiously inspired) propaganda.
(2) Proportionality
It's hard to impossible for lay people to have a sense of proportionality about what distinguishes Scientific hypotheses (we think there must have been life on Mars) from tentative scientific theories (we think that Global Warming is man-made because we have these computer models that lead is to believe that) to well-established scientific theories (like Plate tectonics, the role of DNA, the periodic table and Orbital Theory, Epidemiology, Evolution, t
It might be the perfect time to absolutely max out any credit card you can lay your hands on, start a Ponzi scheme and also to go short on a heap of stocks.
Unfortunately there is always the nagging possibility that tiny black holes will fail to devour us all... but that's a risk that can probably be insured. So you can't lose, right?
They are doing the world a real service by trying out low-brow network censorship and then lying about it.
Err... while on the subject of Aussies... I have a proposal to ban the sale of matches to all Australians over the age of five. In the interest of preventing conflagrations in the bush you see. How about it?
Some people might ask: why publish this? Isn't this weakness best covered up (read: exploitable only by the NSA and the like)? Well... the article itself answers this question:
Why release this
Many people, myself included are asking why publicize this? It seems that the researchers felt something needed to be done to motivate Intel into fixing the vulnerability. Rutkowska mentioned that Intel management was informed of this vulnerability in 2005 by its own employees. Rutkowska and Duflot both claim that they also informed Intel of the problem on numerous occasions
According to Rutkowska's Black Hat DC 09 presentation Intel informed CERT about this potential exploit, eventually receiving tracking number (VU#12784). It appears that's as far as Intel went[...].
Scary eh? How accurate is Dilbert really when it comes to managers? Or err... do we need to break out the tinfoil hats?
A single temperature measurement is boring, but a 48-hr timeseries of temperature, pressure, humidity, and light intensity measurements has lots of interesting features. And nowadays even the lowliest netbook is a datalogger of professional capability.
Students can use these sensors to e.g. study the thermal characteristics of their own home or the school or perhaps a shop or restaurant and correlate them with outside temperature, sunlight, humidity, etc.. Rapid temperature changes can potentially identify inadequate insulation, and temperature fluctuations per se can point to substandard heating control.
You can also build (or buy) a compact solid-state temperature and accelerometer logger and mail those around the country to see what the ambient conditions of mail and parcels are. Once you show that this works, students (even in the range of 14-18) could conceivably land an internship with a local company to introduce a system that tracks conditions of their shipments. You can get USB-key sized temperature and humidity dataloggers for about 60$ from http://www.signatrol.com/ Too expensive for a classroom project perhaps, but potentially very interesting for commercial use.
Attach those to a low-power radio transmitter, and add a transceiver to the USB port of a netbook and you get an interesting wireless sensor network.
Basic ready-made dataloggers can be had for as little as $25 (see http://www.dataq.com/products/startkit/di194rs.htm) and you can get ready made chart display software for them plus APIs in Visual Basic, C++ etc.. They also give away one of those per month, but I consider that a publicity stunt I wouldn't want to expose kids to. An alternative is a microcontroller board can be found for $40 (see http://al-williams.com/app4kit.htm).
Building and testing the sensors from components could be a 1-semester project. Dataloggers are a more complicated proposition, and require some more electronics knowhow, but even that can be done by 15-18 year olds in one semester. Otherwise writing the data-capture software is an option too, but I'd add a full semester for that.
For giving credit I have no other suggestions than to ask for either a final report upon completion or (for additional credit) bi-weekly reports (for preference in Open Office of course, with photographs of the equipment, the measurement setup, and spreadsheet graphs showing the data) for which you provide a template.
I'm a believer in letting students submit bi-weekly progress reports in memo form (so you can see what they're doing, help them where needed, and prevent them from wasting time on dead ends and blind alleys), and then asking them to use these memos when preparing a final report. That way students learn to what progress reports are, why it's important to be able to state clearly what you've done, and how such memos can be used to spread the burden of reporting across the project. Besides which, this is how it's done in professional practice too.
As to the final report: if you provide, say, three templates with varying levels of complexity (from a 2-page leaflet to a full report with problem definition, background physics (with proper references), measurement setup, data description (data in an appendix of course), summary and conclusions, you can provide a different amount of credit for each type of report.
Because nowadays, to the majority of customers, PC and laptops are just commodities?
They all run MS Windows, and therefore practically any software any ordinary customer is likely to use. So they can concentrate on essentials like: "Do I like the screen and the keyboard?".
With commodities it doesn't matter where you buy them; you shop on price and to some extent on features (like "Does it come with speakers? Are there USB and headphone jacks at the front?")and "extras" (like: "Do they throw in a free inkjet printer?").
Only nerds want to know things about processor type (let alone stepping), memory timing, motherboard make, BIOS make, extensibility, make and type of HDD, do I get a Windows install CD, can I downgrade to XP, right?
Nice for people who like to shoot lasers at problems in the hope that they will vanish. Not so helpful for people who wish to extract power from controlled nuclear fusion. Inertial confinement might be fine for producing a series of pellets that go boom, but I haven't seen any real plans on how to extract energy from that, let alone on how to build a powerplant using frozen Helium pellets going boom.
For all the hoopla about inertial confinement, my money is on magnetic confinement as in ITER (see http://www.iter.org/).
I'm becoming sick of it. Every commercial Tom Dick and Harry seems to take it onto himself to "share" (read "sell") whatever part of our personal data they can lay their hands on with absolutely anyone (who pays enough to become an "affiliate").
And this isn't about name, address, age, gender information either. It's everything an ISP can figure out about you without actually reading your email.
Who needs this ? (except companies selling off your details and other companies using it to spam you and/or to flood your mailbox with advertising junk). How about introducing some EU-style dataprotection?
In Australia timetables from Government-operated companies *can* be copyrighted mate. Read the article. "Crown Copyright" it's called. Says it all really.
It seems that they had a report advocating a relaxation of certain provisions in the Crown copyright act "to allow for more easy access to public interest information, but those changes have yet to be implemented".
So for the time being Railcorp can sue the pants of anyone who publishes any part of their railway timetables. And they will since they're planning to bring out an app that does the same thing that this app does. Probably within the next 5 years or so, so "no worries mate".
The parent post is an excellent example of a manager attempting to think. Methodologically speaking, web presence is of course a very poor indicator of people's performance on the job.
How so?
Well, the people posting silly stuff about themselves tend to do so while thinking of a certain context and/or being in a particular state of mind (at home, relaxed, with friends, feeling in the mood for some snarkiness). So... more often than not, context is half the message (if not more). But all and any context is lost in transmission via the Internet, thus loosing about half the message.
Suppose on the other hand that someone *really* has something to hide. They would take exceptionally good care not to leave tracks that are easily available for a hiring manager with some time on his hands and itchy keyboard fingers. They would even change their name if necessary.
Therefore Internet presence is likely to give false positives while false negatives are all but guaranteed. Whilst there might be some justification for Googling to see if people are "a Nazi child molester on the no-fly list", it's really unlikely that you'll find any such clear-cut evidence and for anything less what you find is hearsay evidence at best. It's not illegal, but neither is Tarot reading to screen applicants. But who cares, right?
Hypocrisy, double standards, and CYA ("Cover Your Backside") tactics are as American as apple pie. And the impact on people trying to land a job is simply not the issue for the ones responsible for hiring someone.
Why not?
Well, how would you like to be the manager responsible for hiring someone who subsequently has an industrial accident (while cold sober), and whose web presence shows him/her writing something snarky about getting soused on the job? Or who is subsequently investigated for having one single marijuana plant at home and who has blogged about the virtues of said weed for relaxation? Or someone who creates racial tensions after being hired while his (somewhat racist) blog is there for the world to see? Or (if you work in catering or manufacture baby food) someone who turns out to be sloppy with hygiene when his Facebook page shows him in a messy kitchen?
Would you feel comfortable when the word "due dilligence" is used around you afterwards? Would you like to hear your ambitious rival mouthing hypocritical guff about "putting the company first", "exercising commonsense when hiring people", or "being net-savvy" afterwards?
No?
Then you'd better use *all* online information you can Google your hands on in 5 minutes, right?
I don't think that managers hiring people really believe that an unfortunate scrap of Facebook material makes someone unsuitable. It's just that they've got a choice to make (if they're hiring at all) and they can't waste all morning on it. Any reason to weed someone out that doesn't reflect poorly on them (better yet, which makes them look "savvy") in the eyes the only audience that counts (other executives) is a help.
Fear of being unreasonably second-guessed is a major justification for a whole host of useless security boondoggles, and I firmly believe that it's also why we see employers Googling for people that send in their resume.
This is rather interesting ...
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Designer Babies
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· Score: 1
This is a rather interesting development from the point of view of Human Evolution.
People have been moaning for centuries (entirely prematurely) about civilization and medical advances hindering the Human Evolution in general, and producing enfeebled specimen in particular.
This development can not only ensure that hereditary diseases and frailties (like e.g. Down's syndrome, susceptibility to diabetes, obesity, depression, various forms of cancer, a weak immune system, haemophilia, color blindness, and the need for extensive orthodontical treatment) can be reduced or avoided, but it can also be used to select for intelligence, athletic ability, sexual attractiveness, and long-levity.
Seen in this way, Humanity may be the first species on Earth that will be able to steer its own evolution without resorting to measures like infanticide.
Whether one likes this development or not, it's there and at the very least it's interesting.
Well what was the complaint about?
The student in question had no business fiddling with her phone during class. In ordinary circumstances she would have put it away when told to do so by the teacher. She apparently refused to do so point blank.
With that refusal she immediately and totally exhausted the teacher's bag of tricks.
Why so?
Just imagine that the teacher had laid his hands on *her* ! He would be the one explaining himself to the police, the courts, and the unemployment office afterwards. That's how things work.
That teacher had precisely 2 options left.
(a) accept the fact that henceforth he has no further authority over her (or any other student's) conduct in class
(b) call in the cops
According to US laws and customs that teacher acted both "professionally" and "correctly". It's idiotic, but there it is.
Besides which, the student in question can call herself lucky she wasn't even Tasered down (as seems to be becoming the norm with arrests in the US). Perhaps female suspects are discriminated against in that they don't immediately receive a Tasering... perhaps the venue was too public, or perhaps she was smart enough to "comply" unreservedly with the police once they arrived (by immediately lying flat on the ground and spreading all her appendices).
Oh yes... and that student also tried to brazenly (and stupidly) lie her way out of it by denying she had a cellphone at all (a classic pose). This was a bluff which would have worked fine had not everyone seen her fiddling with a phone and had the police not had the foresight to bring a female officer. Unfortunately for the student in question her bluff was called and she was strip-searched, she was subsequently proven to be lying when said cellphone was retrieved from the general area of her buttocks by a female police officer. I imagine her entering a plea that it was planted there, which was brutally over-ruled by the authorities, leaving her with psychological scars for life. Ah well.
Which just about sums up her general level of honesty, well-meaningness, and determination to make trouble for all involved.
In retrospect that teacher was *very* lucky he called the police instead of trying to cope with the situation himself. Quite apart from running the risk of being knifed on the spot by the girl's boyfriend, does anyone here believe for an instant that said female student would have refrained from making spurious allegations aimed at getting this teacher fired? I don't.
I'm afraid that this is what the world has come to. We've *got* to call in the police when high school students act willfully, or we're in deep legal trouble.
Seriously, this is one of the (not very many) things a Government is good for in a marketplace: to force parties to agree on a common interface, or a common plug.
While the inconvenience isn't all that great, there is no sane reason why all the plugs on cellphone loaders should be different. One single plug (and one single voltage) will do nicely.
However, despite the fact that it's a good idea in and by itself, one wonders that the EU has the time for this sort of thing. This EU commissioner really couldn't find anything that needs more urgent attention? Am I the only one who thinks that he must have licked all the problems in his department then, and that his department can now be safely downsized?
I agree that I don't want a "gated" internet. We had that once with Compuserve. It was safe, clean, reliable, able to support charges for information, and generally useful. It was also commercial, top-down, and expensive.
What I totally disagree with is the notion (which for some reason seems to be widespread amongst technology-oriented people) that a "New Internet" is somehow not an option. It is. The Internet as we know it can be "Compuserved". It's technically feasible. All it takes is a legal basis and the political will to impose enforcement.
This is because the means are already lined up; in principle people are no more anonymous on-line than they can have untraceable land-line telephones, deep-packet inspection has become routine and can be scaled up to encompass every single bit sent over the internet, any sessions that use un-authorised encryption or un-authorised protocols can be cut off by ISPs as soon as they're started, and Internet Cafes can be obligated to examine your ID before they give you access (like in China).
And there is political support for it too. Just look at publishers: from software to books to music to movies and newspapers. They stand to gain a bundle if only they could throttle almost all un-authorised copying over the Internet. Which they will be able to if they can steer the Internet in the direction of a gated community. How dearly would they love to have the Compuserve model introduced for the Internet at large. They also have more than enough money to buy political influence, and they can wave the argument "Look... we're trying to protect jobs here". You will need a more convincing argument than: "Look I want to be able to browse porn, warez, and other copyrighted material as per my First Amendment rights, so the Internet has got to remain free and anonymous"
So please don't confuse political inertia and a sympathy for freedom with impossibility.
What a non-issue. A 100 Gb a month cap for a 15 Mbps is completely reasonable.
There are always people who feel that the world owes them something, like unlimited data traffic so that they can download videos all day (which is about the only way to hit the 100 Gb. a month cap) on a low-price subscription. Such people need to wake up.
To those who hadn't noticed, the Internet is suffering from throughput problems. And adding extra capacity costs money. So either you pay your way (and take a subscription without cap) or you take a cheapo subscription and agree that your monthly download volume will be capped. I really don't see the problem.
I mean: either Microsoft infringes Ancora's patent or it doesn't.
Suppose for a moment that Microsoft *does* infringe Ancora's patent. Unless I'm very much mistaken Microsoft is very willing to make an effort to compensate any party whose "intellectual property" it infringes upon in the course of its business operations, right? And most certainly Microsoft would never take the hypocritical position that it's Ok to infringe other peoples' rights as long as they're not found out. Or use a phony argument about "confidentiality" or "stealing information" to hide the evidence of their infringement. Or pay people (more precisely: pay the BSA to pay people) to denounce their employers for using unlicensed software. I for one would of course never lend credence to those who maintain that Microsoft has the exact same morals as any other Chinese software copycat but better lawyers and a better PR department. So from that point of view: exactly what's the problem with someone taking a job at Microsoft to find evidence of rights infringement? Does being employed at Microsoft somehow suspend people's civic duty to work against theft? I don't get it.
On the other hand, it just might be the case that Microsoft does not infringe on said patent. I will not share the cynical view of those who maintain that one of the pillars od Microsoft's success is successful (i.e. without both being caught in the act and being convicted) theft of other people's ideas, software, and patents. For at Microsoft they are honorable men! So... if they are totally clean, what exactly is the problem with someone becoming an employee to verify that Microsoft religiously observes other people's "intellectual property"? I still don't get it.
Perhaps somebody could help me out and explain matters to me...
Well... whilst the examples of footpaths on Maryland campus was a success, it really doesn't prove anything about urban planning.
Here's why:
The paths there are not for motor vehicles but for pedestrians. Now pedestrians really don't *need* any paths. To them paths are an optional extra so to speak, because they are free to choose their own route through a 2-D piece of grassland that's otherwise empty. So there are no obstacles that must be avoided and no constraints that must be heeded. In addition, pedestrians very seldom need traffic control, and then only at very high densities and usually in confined areas. They also need no rules of precedence, and no safety features whatsoever. Paths also come at zero cost. So what pedestrians will do is to pick routes that minimize their walking distance and perhaps some other things. Just like the boundaries of soap bubbles the resulting paths are anything but straight.
So... this case is absolutely loaded with positive factors in the form of lack of constraints, absence of the need for safety considerations, lack of costs for change etc. And yes, in such a situation you can't do better than just let people pick their own routes and pave the tracks they create.
All those who feel that there might be something in doing away with Urban Planning and letting "freedom" reign might do well to realize that urban sprawl which is so prevalent in US cities (and which is a direct result of a lack of urban planning) is what's causing our traffic congestion in the first place.
It does that in three ways. First off, it ensures that population density is so low that you can't run fine-meshed public transport services without incurring a huge loss. Traffic flows are just too thin. So you either have poor service or huge expenses (read subsidies).
Secondly it creates travel distances well in excess of what you can walk, so that it's motorized transport or nothing. Cycling is often not an option due to climate factors factors alone (cold winters, hot summers), and quite without considerations such as safety (no cycle lanes and lots of dangerous traffic (cars)) and security (you're easier to mug on a bicycle than in a car or a bus).
Thirdly it makes for road networks where arteries have to take the load from a huge area that's shot through with secondary roads and then carry that load to the central business district and industrial areas where it's concentrated both in space and in time (because everyone needs to come in at work at the same place and during a fairly narrow time window).
If urban planning sometimes has a bad reputation, perhaps that's because it has to work with cities as they are now (and have developed organically (read: without planning)) and perhaps steer their development just a little bit, politics allowing. You are only very rarely able to design something from scratch. And when you do, the design is usually ok, but soon superseded by development activity in all places where no such activity was foreseen (or where it was planned that new development would be prohibited).
I don't mind that Grass "doesn't do Web well". In fact I don't see the Web part as all that important. It's hip and nice to have, but not something I'd invest a huge amount of time in since it's of little use to me.
That Grass "doesn't do Web well" could have been the focus of a project that can call Grass library functions to extract an image from a Grass database, provide windows onto it, display those windows, capture user input and store web-based scribbles in e.g. a new layer in a Grass database. That would have been useful for making data and model results accessible to a large public and capturing feedback.
Only, what we see now is Grass and an application that is not easily compatible with Grass, "does Web well", and little else.
Unfortunately the article provides little to no substance to help people do urban planning, because it does nothing to support transport planning. All it does is hype a server that allows you to overlay your own data on a map. Well... the Open Source package GRASS GIS (see http://grass.itc.it/) already does that, and a host of other useful things besides.
That's because the software developers mentioned don't start by looking at what's needed to support a planning process (which is a GIS system like GRASS GIS that can do calculations and ways of getting location-specific data into it quickly, do calculations on the resulting dataset, and then keep track of various scenarios and display the results), but what they'd like to develop and what they know how to develop. Which just so happens to be some kind of web-based song-and-dance display software. The good old "I've got a hammer" syndrome, with this particular hammer being the Web.
Web display software is useful for when you have something to display on the web, usable when you want to allow private citizens to scribble their views on a map, but utterly useless when you want to know what kind of impact a proposed measure has on say, the traffic situation, accessibility, safety, noise and light, drainage, soil load, micro climate aspects like wind-flow, etc. etc.
Now communications is often useful, but would-be city planners may find that communication serves best when actually you have something useful to say in the first place. And this sort of software doesn't help with that.
If only they had seen their way clear to link a Grass GIS database to a web display in a two-way fashion, that might have been worthwhile because it would have provided synergy. Unfortunately, what they did does not provide synergy. Instead it partly reinvents the wheel (geographic layers) in a halfhearted and incompatible-with-existing-software fashion and it hogs the limelight. As a consequence I don't really see what this web display is good for.
Pretty much what KDE 4.0 should have been
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KDE 4.2 Is Released
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· Score: 0, Redundant
As far as I understand (without installing it myself yet), lots of things actually work the way they are supposed to (as opposed to KDE 4.0). Like in a first release.
So as far as I'm concerned this release is KDE 4.0 as it should have been.
Perhaps some of the more uninformed posters would do well to realise that the EU *only* went for biometric passports to comply with the demands of the US Visa Waiver Programme.
The EU was given a choice between biometric passports and having all of their citizens apply for visa when traveling to the US. For some reason they thought it that staying within the Visa waiver programme was more important than putting their citizen's fingerprints on rfid chips in their passports.
Given the importance of the US in international commerce, science, technology etc. this doesn't seem such a stupid decision.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, there are psychological factors. It's not the company that responds, it's certain individuals that do. Individual who set policy, or individuals who carry out said policy.
People who set policy, i.e. people at the top of the food chain in business usually didn't get there by being kind, timid, passive, open-minded, self-effacing and objective. Instead they tend to have much larger egos than the norm and also tend to be more much agressive towards others than usual (usually in the guise of being "effective" "goal-oriented", "focused", and "exercising management authority"). They obviously must be smart enough to get away with being agressive, or they won't be successful. Oh, and by the way, I'm extremely happy that Business offers such people a constructive outlet for their energy and aggression. Because otherwise it would go into Crime or Politics (or both).
As a result, while they are successful, life shows them on a daily basis that their thinking is correct, their opinions are valuable, and that their approach to life is the right one.
Now consider what happens when you contradict someone like that. Consider first what it means exactly to contradict someone like that. You and he (or she) are in a business setting, and both are vying for a "group position", i.e. who leads the thinking of whatever group is listening at that time on the issue at hand. And the subject under consideration isn't the weather either, it's (as in the case of the blog on Morgan Sachs) about company policy. Policy as set out and supported over a period of time by themselves.
With that in mind think of how this contradicting opinion (and the one doing the contradicting) will be perceived. There are no credits for answering that the perception will be that of a threat, if not a challenge.
So lets reformulate our original and fairly neutral description of "contradicting" a executive of a firm like that.
I believe the way to formulate it that does justice to the depth of emotion and self-interest would be: "you issue a public challenge to an executive, implying that he is at best incompetent and unethical, and at worst a crook"
Now about the institutional factors. Consider that high-ranking individuals impact their environment in various ways. First of all, they lead, and they can't do that without some authority. Only the very rarest of individuals can lead purely through their influence, and without exercising authority. The norm is that you shape your environment through selection (read hire-and-fire), rewards, promotions to support and protect your general ideas and the "image" of what you do and what you stand for. In its positive form it's called "Esprit de corps". It's what e.g. the Armed Forces insist on instilling in recruits. They do that because it makes the social coherence of the organization stronger. But in its negative form it can also degenerate into group think, bullying, and abuse (e.g. Nazism, Communism, Party doctrine, Scientology, and even religious abuse at the Airforce Acacdemy (see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4091956.stm)).
Now PR officials are a prime example of guards of a firm's public image (i.e. what others think of a firm and its actions). It's their job to be aware of the public image and to steer it in the way the firms wants it to be through propaganda. Lawyers are another example. Apart from their more mundane tasks of drawing up contracts they are specialists in the enforceable obligations in our society operates. Rules on topics like intellectual property, slander, defamation, torts, compensation for damages, etc..
Now do you understand the reaction of such companies? Their first-response mechanism is PR. Their secondary response are legal threats. Their tertiary response is litigation. All motivated by extremely aggressive and self-confident people who direct a lot of money and therefore wield a lot of power and who perceive the dissonant opinion as a threat to their personal position. Of course they get nasty!
As to where the parent post "should" have asked his question, the parent post asked an intelligent question on a forum that harbours a lot of people who can provide a good answer in under a minute. Slashdot.
There are lots and lots of applications like Jabber, Openfire and whatnot about. And yes, if you want you can create a great big (useless) list of them by Googling for a few minutes. And then what? What are the pros and cons of each app? Where can you find comparative tests? Are those tests any good? Has anyone got practical experience with the app? Any show-stoppers that aren't immediately apparent?
The point about most questions like this is that people who already know the answer consider them "easy". People who don't know the answer consider them hard, and will have to expend a lot of time finding out. Time that's wasted if you could simply have eliminated 90% of the options by asking. That's why you ask. At least if you'd rather get some useful work done instead of being the umpteeth person researching the same wheel.
It's a compliment to Slashdot that people ask such questions, and they do that because they even tend to get useful answers. It shows that Slashdot has value apart from serving as a forum for inane bickering.
All too often coders meet criticism along the lines of "the file selection box is awkward" (most programs using X-widgets instead of Qt), "the interface is hard to use (e.g. the Gimp and Blender)" with the retort: "You're free to code it yourself then.". Which is something the average user simply isn't prepared to do, even if he could, which is usually not the case.
Developers are always reluctant to throw away an entire approach (like switching to Qt from X widgets as opposed to ditching a few subroutines) and are never as critical of software usability as a gormless end-user who wants things to "just work" without hassle and especially without him having to so much glance at a manual.
Developers tend to write code that provides adequate functionality for people who are OK with reading documentation (even documentation as horrible as the average man page), and who are willing to lift their arms from the desktop in order to type a command.
In other words: such developers tend to write code that does not cater to the "average" (read: "dumb and lazy") end-user. Commercial software on the other hand tends to be written especially to cater for that category of user, and will therefore usually be more palatable to said end-user. After all, MS Windows doesn't owe its 90% market share *exclusively* to smart bundling and lock-in.
As I see it, Linux stands at a crossroads. Either it's happy to remain "command-line oriented as Linux ought to be" and "a power tool for people willing to read the manual", in which case it will remain a niche product on the desktop forever. Or it aims at achieving 80% market-share on the desktop within 10 years, in which case it needs to shed its attitude and pander to end-users who are as dumb as they are lazy.
I prefer the latter, but I'm not about to work up a sweat trying to bring that about. Except perhaps as a critic and reporter-of-bugs.
From a more pragmatic point of view, it's a victory for religious fanatics for three reasons:
- (1) place
- (2) proportionality.
- (3) initiative
(1) Place
I am very sceptical of the implicit assumption that high-school is the place for a valid and meaningful examination of scientific debate and scientific evidence. Again for three reasons: (1a) level of passive cognitive ability of the attendants, (1b) level of active cognitive ability in attendants and (1.c) time constraints.
(1.a) Level of passive cognitive ability of the attendants
With passive cognitive ability I mean the ability to accurately and completely absorb new ideas and new information, and then to answer questions about what you have learned.
First of all it is my personal belief that high-schoolers are rarely able to think straight (often having trouble with elementary logic) while applying things they've learned, let alone that they could (under their own steam) critique a line of scientific reasoning. They ought to be able to follow a line of reasoning if it were presented to them, but only if it's a simple line of reasoning. But most tellingly, they should be able to reproduce what they've learned, and most of them cannot even do that. Anyone who doubts that is invited to spend a day or two reading actual high-school exam papers. If that sounds as if I look down on the cognitive abilities of the average high-schooler abilities, that's because I do. I've seen too many dimwits who couldn't even follow an elementary mathematical proof when it was put before them in writing and contained only elements they supposedly had been taught about. And too many stupid pupils who couldn't even reproduce the basic physical concept of what makes a reaction engine work (a rocket), although it was in their physics textbook. Or pupils who were unable to apply basic physics they had supposedly been taught about. There are always exceptions, and those exceptions tend to get a degree in Science or Mathematics. We're talking about a few percent of the population though.
(1.b) Level of active cognitive ability
With active cognitive ability I mean the ability to use what you've learned to solve problems about what you've learned which go one step beyond straightforward reproduction of knowledge. I found that high-shoolers typically aren't any good at this, and that those who are able to do this usually go straight on to College.
(1.b) Time constraints From what I hear (I admit I don't have hands-on experience) an ordinary high-school curriculum contains just about everything teachers think that class attendants of median brightness can absorb. And that means straightforward presentation of existing science, maths, and what not. I don't see how you can fit e.g. a meaningful discussion about testing and verifying standard paradigms like evolution in anything less than 6 months with 4 hours of theory and 4 hours of experimental work (e.g. on fruit flies or bacteria) a week devoted to the subject. And even then it will be awfully sketchy. So a scientific discourse on the merits or demerits of a theory isn't going to happen, no matter what. The only thing that *can* be accommodated is reading of a load of (religiously inspired) propaganda.
(2) Proportionality It's hard to impossible for lay people to have a sense of proportionality about what distinguishes Scientific hypotheses (we think there must have been life on Mars) from tentative scientific theories (we think that Global Warming is man-made because we have these computer models that lead is to believe that) to well-established scientific theories (like Plate tectonics, the role of DNA, the periodic table and Orbital Theory, Epidemiology, Evolution, t
Unfortunately there is always the nagging possibility that tiny black holes will fail to devour us all ... but that's a risk that can probably be insured. So you can't lose, right?
Err ... while on the subject of Aussies ... I have a proposal to ban the sale of matches to all Australians over the age of five. In the interest of preventing conflagrations in the bush you see. How about it?
Scary eh? How accurate is Dilbert really when it comes to managers? Or err ... do we need to break out the tinfoil hats?
Students can use these sensors to e.g. study the thermal characteristics of their own home or the school or perhaps a shop or restaurant and correlate them with outside temperature, sunlight, humidity, etc.. Rapid temperature changes can potentially identify inadequate insulation, and temperature fluctuations per se can point to substandard heating control.
You can also build (or buy) a compact solid-state temperature and accelerometer logger and mail those around the country to see what the ambient conditions of mail and parcels are. Once you show that this works, students (even in the range of 14-18) could conceivably land an internship with a local company to introduce a system that tracks conditions of their shipments. You can get USB-key sized temperature and humidity dataloggers for about 60$ from http://www.signatrol.com/ Too expensive for a classroom project perhaps, but potentially very interesting for commercial use.
There are electronic components (for about 2$ apiece) that act as sensors (for e.g. temperature, humidity, air pressure, light, CO2 concentrationt)(see e.g. http://martybugs.net/electronics/tempsensor/ , http://www.tempsensor.net/) .
Attach those to a low-power radio transmitter, and add a transceiver to the USB port of a netbook and you get an interesting wireless sensor network.
Basic ready-made dataloggers can be had for as little as $25 (see http://www.dataq.com/products/startkit/di194rs.htm) and you can get ready made chart display software for them plus APIs in Visual Basic, C++ etc.. They also give away one of those per month, but I consider that a publicity stunt I wouldn't want to expose kids to. An alternative is a microcontroller board can be found for $40 (see http://al-williams.com/app4kit.htm).
Building and testing the sensors from components could be a 1-semester project. Dataloggers are a more complicated proposition, and require some more electronics knowhow, but even that can be done by 15-18 year olds in one semester. Otherwise writing the data-capture software is an option too, but I'd add a full semester for that.
For giving credit I have no other suggestions than to ask for either a final report upon completion or (for additional credit) bi-weekly reports (for preference in Open Office of course, with photographs of the equipment, the measurement setup, and spreadsheet graphs showing the data) for which you provide a template.
I'm a believer in letting students submit bi-weekly progress reports in memo form (so you can see what they're doing, help them where needed, and prevent them from wasting time on dead ends and blind alleys), and then asking them to use these memos when preparing a final report. That way students learn to what progress reports are, why it's important to be able to state clearly what you've done, and how such memos can be used to spread the burden of reporting across the project. Besides which, this is how it's done in professional practice too.
As to the final report: if you provide, say, three templates with varying levels of complexity (from a 2-page leaflet to a full report with problem definition, background physics (with proper references), measurement setup, data description (data in an appendix of course), summary and conclusions, you can provide a different amount of credit for each type of report.
They all run MS Windows, and therefore practically any software any ordinary customer is likely to use. So they can concentrate on essentials like: "Do I like the screen and the keyboard?".
With commodities it doesn't matter where you buy them; you shop on price and to some extent on features (like "Does it come with speakers? Are there USB and headphone jacks at the front?")and "extras" (like: "Do they throw in a free inkjet printer?").
Only nerds want to know things about processor type (let alone stepping), memory timing, motherboard make, BIOS make, extensibility, make and type of HDD, do I get a Windows install CD, can I downgrade to XP, right?
For all the hoopla about inertial confinement, my money is on magnetic confinement as in ITER (see http://www.iter.org/).
And this isn't about name, address, age, gender information either. It's everything an ISP can figure out about you without actually reading your email.
Who needs this ? (except companies selling off your details and other companies using it to spam you and/or to flood your mailbox with advertising junk). How about introducing some EU-style dataprotection?
It seems that they had a report advocating a relaxation of certain provisions in the Crown copyright act "to allow for more easy access to public interest information, but those changes have yet to be implemented".
So for the time being Railcorp can sue the pants of anyone who publishes any part of their railway timetables. And they will since they're planning to bring out an app that does the same thing that this app does. Probably within the next 5 years or so, so "no worries mate".
How so?
Well, the people posting silly stuff about themselves tend to do so while thinking of a certain context and/or being in a particular state of mind (at home, relaxed, with friends, feeling in the mood for some snarkiness). So ... more often than not, context is half the message (if not more). But all and any context is lost in transmission via the Internet, thus loosing about half the message.
Suppose on the other hand that someone *really* has something to hide. They would take exceptionally good care not to leave tracks that are easily available for a hiring manager with some time on his hands and itchy keyboard fingers. They would even change their name if necessary.
Therefore Internet presence is likely to give false positives while false negatives are all but guaranteed. Whilst there might be some justification for Googling to see if people are "a Nazi child molester on the no-fly list", it's really unlikely that you'll find any such clear-cut evidence and for anything less what you find is hearsay evidence at best. It's not illegal, but neither is Tarot reading to screen applicants. But who cares, right?
Hypocrisy, double standards, and CYA ("Cover Your Backside") tactics are as American as apple pie. And the impact on people trying to land a job is simply not the issue for the ones responsible for hiring someone.
Why not?
Well, how would you like to be the manager responsible for hiring someone who subsequently has an industrial accident (while cold sober), and whose web presence shows him/her writing something snarky about getting soused on the job? Or who is subsequently investigated for having one single marijuana plant at home and who has blogged about the virtues of said weed for relaxation? Or someone who creates racial tensions after being hired while his (somewhat racist) blog is there for the world to see? Or (if you work in catering or manufacture baby food) someone who turns out to be sloppy with hygiene when his Facebook page shows him in a messy kitchen?
Would you feel comfortable when the word "due dilligence" is used around you afterwards? Would you like to hear your ambitious rival mouthing hypocritical guff about "putting the company first", "exercising commonsense when hiring people", or "being net-savvy" afterwards?
No?
Then you'd better use *all* online information you can Google your hands on in 5 minutes, right?
I don't think that managers hiring people really believe that an unfortunate scrap of Facebook material makes someone unsuitable. It's just that they've got a choice to make (if they're hiring at all) and they can't waste all morning on it. Any reason to weed someone out that doesn't reflect poorly on them (better yet, which makes them look "savvy") in the eyes the only audience that counts (other executives) is a help.
Fear of being unreasonably second-guessed is a major justification for a whole host of useless security boondoggles, and I firmly believe that it's also why we see employers Googling for people that send in their resume.
People have been moaning for centuries (entirely prematurely) about civilization and medical advances hindering the Human Evolution in general, and producing enfeebled specimen in particular.
This development can not only ensure that hereditary diseases and frailties (like e.g. Down's syndrome, susceptibility to diabetes, obesity, depression, various forms of cancer, a weak immune system, haemophilia, color blindness, and the need for extensive orthodontical treatment) can be reduced or avoided, but it can also be used to select for intelligence, athletic ability, sexual attractiveness, and long-levity.
Seen in this way, Humanity may be the first species on Earth that will be able to steer its own evolution without resorting to measures like infanticide.
Whether one likes this development or not, it's there and at the very least it's interesting.
Read: you will refrain from fiddling with your cellphone if told to do so by your teacher.
Why so?
Just imagine that the teacher had laid his hands on *her* ! He would be the one explaining himself to the police, the courts, and the unemployment office afterwards. That's how things work.
That teacher had precisely 2 options left.
(a) accept the fact that henceforth he has no further authority over her (or any other student's) conduct in class
(b) call in the cops
According to US laws and customs that teacher acted both "professionally" and "correctly". It's idiotic, but there it is.
Besides which, the student in question can call herself lucky she wasn't even Tasered down (as seems to be becoming the norm with arrests in the US). Perhaps female suspects are discriminated against in that they don't immediately receive a Tasering ... perhaps the venue was too public, or perhaps she was smart enough to "comply" unreservedly with the police once they arrived (by immediately lying flat on the ground and spreading all her appendices).
Oh yes ... and that student also tried to brazenly (and stupidly) lie her way out of it by denying she had a cellphone at all (a classic pose). This was a bluff which would have worked fine had not everyone seen her fiddling with a phone and had the police not had the foresight to bring a female officer. Unfortunately for the student in question her bluff was called and she was strip-searched, she was subsequently proven to be lying when said cellphone was retrieved from the general area of her buttocks by a female police officer. I imagine her entering a plea that it was planted there, which was brutally over-ruled by the authorities, leaving her with psychological scars for life. Ah well.
Which just about sums up her general level of honesty, well-meaningness, and determination to make trouble for all involved.
In retrospect that teacher was *very* lucky he called the police instead of trying to cope with the situation himself. Quite apart from running the risk of being knifed on the spot by the girl's boyfriend, does anyone here believe for an instant that said female student would have refrained from making spurious allegations aimed at getting this teacher fired? I don't.
I'm afraid that this is what the world has come to. We've *got* to call in the police when high school students act willfully, or we're in deep legal trouble.
While the inconvenience isn't all that great, there is no sane reason why all the plugs on cellphone loaders should be different. One single plug (and one single voltage) will do nicely.
However, despite the fact that it's a good idea in and by itself, one wonders that the EU has the time for this sort of thing. This EU commissioner really couldn't find anything that needs more urgent attention? Am I the only one who thinks that he must have licked all the problems in his department then, and that his department can now be safely downsized?
What I totally disagree with is the notion (which for some reason seems to be widespread amongst technology-oriented people) that a "New Internet" is somehow not an option. It is. The Internet as we know it can be "Compuserved". It's technically feasible. All it takes is a legal basis and the political will to impose enforcement.
This is because the means are already lined up; in principle people are no more anonymous on-line than they can have untraceable land-line telephones, deep-packet inspection has become routine and can be scaled up to encompass every single bit sent over the internet, any sessions that use un-authorised encryption or un-authorised protocols can be cut off by ISPs as soon as they're started, and Internet Cafes can be obligated to examine your ID before they give you access (like in China).
And there is political support for it too. Just look at publishers: from software to books to music to movies and newspapers. They stand to gain a bundle if only they could throttle almost all un-authorised copying over the Internet. Which they will be able to if they can steer the Internet in the direction of a gated community. How dearly would they love to have the Compuserve model introduced for the Internet at large. They also have more than enough money to buy political influence, and they can wave the argument "Look ... we're trying to protect jobs here". You will need a more convincing argument than: "Look I want to be able to browse porn, warez, and other copyrighted material as per my First Amendment rights, so the Internet has got to remain free and anonymous"
So please don't confuse political inertia and a sympathy for freedom with impossibility.
There are always people who feel that the world owes them something, like unlimited data traffic so that they can download videos all day (which is about the only way to hit the 100 Gb. a month cap) on a low-price subscription. Such people need to wake up.
To those who hadn't noticed, the Internet is suffering from throughput problems. And adding extra capacity costs money. So either you pay your way (and take a subscription without cap) or you take a cheapo subscription and agree that your monthly download volume will be capped. I really don't see the problem.
Suppose for a moment that Microsoft *does* infringe Ancora's patent. Unless I'm very much mistaken Microsoft is very willing to make an effort to compensate any party whose "intellectual property" it infringes upon in the course of its business operations, right? And most certainly Microsoft would never take the hypocritical position that it's Ok to infringe other peoples' rights as long as they're not found out. Or use a phony argument about "confidentiality" or "stealing information" to hide the evidence of their infringement. Or pay people (more precisely: pay the BSA to pay people) to denounce their employers for using unlicensed software. I for one would of course never lend credence to those who maintain that Microsoft has the exact same morals as any other Chinese software copycat but better lawyers and a better PR department. So from that point of view: exactly what's the problem with someone taking a job at Microsoft to find evidence of rights infringement? Does being employed at Microsoft somehow suspend people's civic duty to work against theft? I don't get it.
On the other hand, it just might be the case that Microsoft does not infringe on said patent. I will not share the cynical view of those who maintain that one of the pillars od Microsoft's success is successful (i.e. without both being caught in the act and being convicted) theft of other people's ideas, software, and patents. For at Microsoft they are honorable men! So ... if they are totally clean, what exactly is the problem with someone becoming an employee to verify that Microsoft religiously observes other people's "intellectual property"? I still don't get it.
Perhaps somebody could help me out and explain matters to me ...
Here's why: The paths there are not for motor vehicles but for pedestrians. Now pedestrians really don't *need* any paths. To them paths are an optional extra so to speak, because they are free to choose their own route through a 2-D piece of grassland that's otherwise empty. So there are no obstacles that must be avoided and no constraints that must be heeded. In addition, pedestrians very seldom need traffic control, and then only at very high densities and usually in confined areas. They also need no rules of precedence, and no safety features whatsoever. Paths also come at zero cost. So what pedestrians will do is to pick routes that minimize their walking distance and perhaps some other things. Just like the boundaries of soap bubbles the resulting paths are anything but straight.
So ... this case is absolutely loaded with positive factors in the form of lack of constraints, absence of the need for safety considerations, lack of costs for change etc. And yes, in such a situation you can't do better than just let people pick their own routes and pave the tracks they create.
All those who feel that there might be something in doing away with Urban Planning and letting "freedom" reign might do well to realize that urban sprawl which is so prevalent in US cities (and which is a direct result of a lack of urban planning) is what's causing our traffic congestion in the first place.
It does that in three ways. First off, it ensures that population density is so low that you can't run fine-meshed public transport services without incurring a huge loss. Traffic flows are just too thin. So you either have poor service or huge expenses (read subsidies).
Secondly it creates travel distances well in excess of what you can walk, so that it's motorized transport or nothing. Cycling is often not an option due to climate factors factors alone (cold winters, hot summers), and quite without considerations such as safety (no cycle lanes and lots of dangerous traffic (cars)) and security (you're easier to mug on a bicycle than in a car or a bus).
Thirdly it makes for road networks where arteries have to take the load from a huge area that's shot through with secondary roads and then carry that load to the central business district and industrial areas where it's concentrated both in space and in time (because everyone needs to come in at work at the same place and during a fairly narrow time window).
If urban planning sometimes has a bad reputation, perhaps that's because it has to work with cities as they are now (and have developed organically (read: without planning)) and perhaps steer their development just a little bit, politics allowing. You are only very rarely able to design something from scratch. And when you do, the design is usually ok, but soon superseded by development activity in all places where no such activity was foreseen (or where it was planned that new development would be prohibited).
That Grass "doesn't do Web well" could have been the focus of a project that can call Grass library functions to extract an image from a Grass database, provide windows onto it, display those windows, capture user input and store web-based scribbles in e.g. a new layer in a Grass database. That would have been useful for making data and model results accessible to a large public and capturing feedback.
Only, what we see now is Grass and an application that is not easily compatible with Grass, "does Web well", and little else.
That's because the software developers mentioned don't start by looking at what's needed to support a planning process (which is a GIS system like GRASS GIS that can do calculations and ways of getting location-specific data into it quickly, do calculations on the resulting dataset, and then keep track of various scenarios and display the results), but what they'd like to develop and what they know how to develop. Which just so happens to be some kind of web-based song-and-dance display software. The good old "I've got a hammer" syndrome, with this particular hammer being the Web.
Web display software is useful for when you have something to display on the web, usable when you want to allow private citizens to scribble their views on a map, but utterly useless when you want to know what kind of impact a proposed measure has on say, the traffic situation, accessibility, safety, noise and light, drainage, soil load, micro climate aspects like wind-flow, etc. etc.
Now communications is often useful, but would-be city planners may find that communication serves best when actually you have something useful to say in the first place. And this sort of software doesn't help with that.
If only they had seen their way clear to link a Grass GIS database to a web display in a two-way fashion, that might have been worthwhile because it would have provided synergy. Unfortunately, what they did does not provide synergy. Instead it partly reinvents the wheel (geographic layers) in a halfhearted and incompatible-with-existing-software fashion and it hogs the limelight. As a consequence I don't really see what this web display is good for.
So as far as I'm concerned this release is KDE 4.0 as it should have been.
The EU was given a choice between biometric passports and having all of their citizens apply for visa when traveling to the US. For some reason they thought it that staying within the Visa waiver programme was more important than putting their citizen's fingerprints on rfid chips in their passports.
Given the importance of the US in international commerce, science, technology etc. this doesn't seem such a stupid decision.