This would only make a difference to people who have problems with slow-loading pages to begin with. Furthermore, a company paying to have their page load faster won't make you want to visit it if you didn't want to do so in the first place - it would just remove the frustration factor. I don't see anything in the article that implies that BellSouth might somehow promote access to a particular website.
Just because the Internet is the great worldwide forum, that doesn't mean that companies shouldn't be able to pay for whatever benefits they think they can get. Yes, it will be a service unavailable to small start-ups, but if they have content that isn't available on another website then getting to that content should be worth the wait. Remember the days of 56k dialup?
Also, I would be thrilled if Wikipedia took advantage of something like this. I'm tired of not being able to get through to my account because the page never loads!
I don't really think that evolution is the cornerstone of science - knowing that man evolved from apes does not have any bearing on our ability to observe our environment and to examine it using reason (the real basis of scientific investigation). Having that knowledge changes many things about the way we understand ourselves and the world, but it is not the be all and end all of science.
Also, you don't need to bash faith in order to argue that it has no place in a science classroom. Faith has shaped history as much as any other force in society, and in some ways is just as important. Slamming it as worthless doesn't make your argument any more correct - it makes you just as short-sighted and intolerant as the people you so despise.
The more heated the debates over the teaching of creationism/evolution get, the more I worry that it's actually education itself that's being threatened. The article gave a very snarky summary of the learning process - teachers teach, and hopefully the students learn - and it's that very process that's continually being challenged. If this debate leads to a massive shift in favor of homeschooling among parents who oppose the teaching of scientific theory, there will be serious problems in this country.
Also, their argument is partially based on the fact that the site is government funded. Does this mean that eventually private institutions are going to be the only places allowed to teach without getting hassled? Schools shouldn't operate under fear of suit.
What I find that Pandora is not good at is filtering out what elements make songs different. I started a station based off the group Dead Can Dance (lots of world music influence, glossolalic vocals, interesting instrumentation) and it suggested a track by the Dave Matthews Band. Based on their analyses of the songs I can see how they might be related, but the reasons most people listen to DCD would be unlikely to make them want to listen to DMB. They Genome project says that they're trying to transcend the barriers of genre, but they're ignoring style and aesthetic, which make up a lot of music's appeal.
It's really not that exciting. However, you can also try playing the film against one of Paula Abdul's albums...we got to watch the Lion dancing and swinging his tail to lyrics that went something like "I'm So Pretty".
That, my friends, is a true miracle of coincidence.
Your kids are playing happily, running around in this nice new playground, when suddenly! They are scooped up by Little Billy from next door and all three roll off in search of more children! Small animals! Buckets! Sunflowers!
Not that his design powers can make kids any stickier than they already are, but I'd be worried. Entropy would be high.
There have been other studies, including one that I can't find the link to right now (but that is similar to the above-linked). The point is, as the article mentions, being "color-blind" allows French society to expect that all immigrants will conform to French societal norms, and removes pressure to accept other cultures on their own terms.
I think the poster answered his own question: the growth is in smart-asses with bots! Well, think of it this way: you still need the programmer to write the bot, so for some jobs the hiring rate will remain constant. That's assuming, of course, that people only program within the scope of the job they would have been hired for.
Ah, another advance in pretty, but questionably useful technology. Excuse me, but I'm not a gadget-o-phile, and I'm not sure what the big deal with a color screen is. It looks nice - does the iPod actually work any better?
Seriously, cab emissions are the least of your worries if you're upset about pollution in New York. Pulling the "save our children" card probably won't work in this situation because, while switching the cab fleet to hybrid cars will reduce some of the air pollution, it won't remove it entirely. Did you ask Bloomberg to shut down nearby industries, ban trucking, and to raise the bridge and tunnel tolls while you were at it?
Also - I spent 18 glorious childhood years in New York - my lungs are fine, as is the rest of me. I stayed away from cigarettes and Chinatown in the summer, and it's done me a world of good.
But aside from the coolness value of the project, what's the purpose of a guitar played by a machine? A boring flat robotic "musician" has no role to play in live concert-type music, orchestras are union-controlled a lot of the time, and as someone mentioned above we already have midi keyboards. As far as I can see, the only arena that this particular gadget will be useful in will be creating clean "previews", or samples like the one on the website, until a real guitarist can be found to add some soul.
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Questions of business practices aside, would it be cheaper to upgrade from the server side, or to shell out to the ISP?
Just because the Internet is the great worldwide forum, that doesn't mean that companies shouldn't be able to pay for whatever benefits they think they can get. Yes, it will be a service unavailable to small start-ups, but if they have content that isn't available on another website then getting to that content should be worth the wait. Remember the days of 56k dialup?
Also, I would be thrilled if Wikipedia took advantage of something like this. I'm tired of not being able to get through to my account because the page never loads!
Also, you don't need to bash faith in order to argue that it has no place in a science classroom. Faith has shaped history as much as any other force in society, and in some ways is just as important. Slamming it as worthless doesn't make your argument any more correct - it makes you just as short-sighted and intolerant as the people you so despise.
Also, their argument is partially based on the fact that the site is government funded. Does this mean that eventually private institutions are going to be the only places allowed to teach without getting hassled? Schools shouldn't operate under fear of suit.
What I find that Pandora is not good at is filtering out what elements make songs different. I started a station based off the group Dead Can Dance (lots of world music influence, glossolalic vocals, interesting instrumentation) and it suggested a track by the Dave Matthews Band. Based on their analyses of the songs I can see how they might be related, but the reasons most people listen to DCD would be unlikely to make them want to listen to DMB. They Genome project says that they're trying to transcend the barriers of genre, but they're ignoring style and aesthetic, which make up a lot of music's appeal.
It's really not that exciting. However, you can also try playing the film against one of Paula Abdul's albums...we got to watch the Lion dancing and swinging his tail to lyrics that went something like "I'm So Pretty". That, my friends, is a true miracle of coincidence.
Not that his design powers can make kids any stickier than they already are, but I'd be worried. Entropy would be high.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,11882,163 7188,00.html
There have been other studies, including one that I can't find the link to right now (but that is similar to the above-linked). The point is, as the article mentions, being "color-blind" allows French society to expect that all immigrants will conform to French societal norms, and removes pressure to accept other cultures on their own terms.
I think the poster answered his own question: the growth is in smart-asses with bots! Well, think of it this way: you still need the programmer to write the bot, so for some jobs the hiring rate will remain constant. That's assuming, of course, that people only program within the scope of the job they would have been hired for.
Ah, another advance in pretty, but questionably useful technology. Excuse me, but I'm not a gadget-o-phile, and I'm not sure what the big deal with a color screen is. It looks nice - does the iPod actually work any better?
Seriously, cab emissions are the least of your worries if you're upset about pollution in New York. Pulling the "save our children" card probably won't work in this situation because, while switching the cab fleet to hybrid cars will reduce some of the air pollution, it won't remove it entirely. Did you ask Bloomberg to shut down nearby industries, ban trucking, and to raise the bridge and tunnel tolls while you were at it? Also - I spent 18 glorious childhood years in New York - my lungs are fine, as is the rest of me. I stayed away from cigarettes and Chinatown in the summer, and it's done me a world of good.
But aside from the coolness value of the project, what's the purpose of a guitar played by a machine? A boring flat robotic "musician" has no role to play in live concert-type music, orchestras are union-controlled a lot of the time, and as someone mentioned above we already have midi keyboards. As far as I can see, the only arena that this particular gadget will be useful in will be creating clean "previews", or samples like the one on the website, until a real guitarist can be found to add some soul.