1. Make the whole thing a toll road. 2. People who carpool still save money by taking turns covering the tolls. 3. Congestion can be adjusted arbitrarily by raising or lowering tolls. Maybe you could even have different tolls at rush hour than you do, say, in the middle of the night.
Now toll collection systems are pretty expensive, I think, but it sounds like they're moving in that direction anyway.
It isn't that students and other don't understand "proper" grammar, it is that "proper" grammar only exists in books and actually isn't correct at all (though it might have been at one point).
Amen. Writing is not speaking. Writing is not a natural activity -- it's an man-made invention, and like most engineered products, it is slow to change once it has reached a certain level of maturity. Spoken/signed languages, on the other hand, spring into existance, change, etc. wherever humans need to communicate.
That's why the grammar rules of written english are so prescriptive and often so at odds with how people talk (depending on the mode/etc.).
As you said, depending on your major. In some fields in the humanities, for example, you can at best hope for partial support -- maybe a stipend or a partial tuition waiver, but not both (as I enjoyed in physics). People do find a way because it is absolutely what they want to do. Time to degree might be longer, though, since they have to raise some of their own money.
In the hard sciences, you're absolutely right. If a school didn't offer you money, you really didn't get in. Now, the ideal case would be to win a grant from the government or something like that. Then you can go wherever you want, since you incur little additional cost to the school you choose.
Couldn't one argue that almost the entirety of the DC/NYC/etc. areas were upper class, simply by virtue of the fact they can afford to live there? In other words, why do we need define socioeconomic class as a function of location? People who truly can't afford to live in NY move to NJ, or to another city entirely.
[blockquote]I don't know if the "don't be evil" thing is practiced as rigorously by the individual employees there as the company would like you to believe. Creating nifty things seems to win out over most moral considerations; at least, this was the impression I got while I was there....[/blockquote] True of most engineering types. Talk to some people in the defense industry -- the way they talk about things, they don't make warplanes or missiles, they make things which go (imitates sound effects for sci-fi lasers, rocket engines, and explosions).
One obvious set of applicationa for large-capacity/high-speed flash storage are those which require not just greater speed but greater durability than moving media: planes, satelites, boats, military vehicles, etc. And these markets are possibly more able to pay for these benefits.
That's a good point. There wouldn't be much cross linking. It just seems like there must be something better than most of the intranet/site-local search engines I've seen. Even if 'pagerank' won't work in the usual sense, one could still do some of the word clustering google does, and reduce the need to 'guess the right search terms and spell them perfectly.' Our current system feels like one of those early computer-based library catalogs (you know, back when they were slower and less efficient than physical card catalogs): If you don't pick exactly the right word, and sometimes even if you do, you get nothing.
I thought most Breeder reactor designs used liquid sodium as a coolant. As far as corrosive materials go, I imagine superheated liquid sodium falls in the " freakin' insane " category. Perhaps this drives the already high initial investment associated with nuclear reactor construction into the stratosphere.
I think the impediment to this technology is probably a mix of the problems mentioned here: part public/government ignorance, part economics, part proliferation concerns.
What is wrong with a company being interested in profits? If, as you say, they are ignoring 'user rights' -- an illusory concept if ever there was one -- then the market will correct the problem and some other company will make those profits. It sounds like your frustration is more with the economic system than the products and services...
I'll second the comment that this shouldn't suprise anyone. Where I work there are laws which require proper security, but in most other places I've been gmail was used widely.
This is because
1. Gmail was more reliable than the 'official' email system
2. The search feature in gmail was way faster and smarter than the 'official' email system (e.g. outlook; squirrelmail)
3. The 'keep everything/multiple tags' model of gmail was less onerous than the maintenance the company expected (e.g.: keep your mailbox under a certain size; manually roate things to local storage; sort things by some directory system you'll probably be confused by when you look at it a year later...)
What I'd like to see is more people using those intranet-sized google search and email servers I hear about. I hate my company's crappy intranet search engine, and the only thing good about outlook is its meeting-scheduling system. Using google technology, but on a company-controlled server, would seem the best of both worlds. But... I'm not an IT person. Maybe this would be horrible.
Something to think about: different people have different capacities for filtering visual noise. I find I can't mentally block out visual clutter all that well. Even if I'm not specifically paying attention to ads, their presence slows down my reading rate and comprehension. I don't think I'm the only one, but even if I am, I dont care -- adblock is a godsend for me.
When people talk about addiction in the popular sense (I'm not a doctor or a psychologist, so I don't speak with special authority) they're refering to at least a couple different things. Obviously
1. Physical addiction -- where stopping the activity causes actual physical withdrawl symptoms; i.e. smoking tobacco, abusing opiates, etc.
2. Psychological addiction -- where the activity causes the person to fail where they otherwise would succeed, particularly in maintenance of human relationships and in fulfillment of work responsibilities. We also usually mean that the behavior is socially unacceptable, and that the person is unhappy about it.
The first is quantitatively, experimentally verifiable. The second is more difficult, and where the controversy lies. Remember those introductory psych courses back in college? They told us that a lot of what determines what a disorder is was tied to the social beliefs and patient attitude. Two examples: 1) self flagelation is a normal religious practice in some cultures, but would look like illness here. 2) Believing God is sending you messages through a statue or icon is not considered an illness. Believing president Bush is sending you messages through a statue or icon probably would be.
Additionally, people will mean "addicted" to mean they engage in a behavior to an extent which they regret later. Under that sort of popular definition, we're all addicted to almost everything.
Yeah! Thank you NineNine. Wishing a thing were so doesn't make it so, especially when it comes to something as dynamic and decentralized as the English language.
Caveat: I did not RTFA.
Implementation speed and efficiency is part of total speed and efficiency too. In my case, I'm a graduate student in physics, not computer science. Though I personal don't use visual [x] products, my problem solving approach is frequently "quickest and easiest path to a working solution." Often there are more efficient ways, but I know that when I factor in the time I would need to spend studying and experimenting, it turns out to be a quicker solution over all to take an easier route.
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I say:
1. Make the whole thing a toll road.
2. People who carpool still save money by taking turns covering the tolls.
3. Congestion can be adjusted arbitrarily by raising or lowering tolls. Maybe you could even have different tolls at rush hour than you do, say, in the middle of the night.
Now toll collection systems are pretty expensive, I think, but it sounds like they're moving in that direction anyway.
Some states (NY as an example) require a master's degree just for teaching high school (well, to secure permanent certification anyway).
As you said, depending on your major. In some fields in the humanities, for example, you can at best hope for partial support -- maybe a stipend or a partial tuition waiver, but not both (as I enjoyed in physics). People do find a way because it is absolutely what they want to do. Time to degree might be longer, though, since they have to raise some of their own money. In the hard sciences, you're absolutely right. If a school didn't offer you money, you really didn't get in. Now, the ideal case would be to win a grant from the government or something like that. Then you can go wherever you want, since you incur little additional cost to the school you choose.
Couldn't one argue that almost the entirety of the DC/NYC/etc. areas were upper class, simply by virtue of the fact they can afford to live there? In other words, why do we need define socioeconomic class as a function of location? People who truly can't afford to live in NY move to NJ, or to another city entirely.
[blockquote]I don't know if the "don't be evil" thing is practiced as rigorously by the individual employees there as the company would like you to believe. Creating nifty things seems to win out over most moral considerations; at least, this was the impression I got while I was there....[/blockquote]
True of most engineering types. Talk to some people in the defense industry -- the way they talk about things, they don't make warplanes or missiles, they make things which go (imitates sound effects for sci-fi lasers, rocket engines, and explosions).
One obvious set of applicationa for large-capacity/high-speed flash storage are those which require not just greater speed but greater durability than moving media: planes, satelites, boats, military vehicles, etc. And these markets are possibly more able to pay for these benefits.
That's a good point. There wouldn't be much cross linking. It just seems like there must be something better than most of the intranet/site-local search engines I've seen. Even if 'pagerank' won't work in the usual sense, one could still do some of the word clustering google does, and reduce the need to 'guess the right search terms and spell them perfectly.' Our current system feels like one of those early computer-based library catalogs (you know, back when they were slower and less efficient than physical card catalogs): If you don't pick exactly the right word, and sometimes even if you do, you get nothing.
I thought most Breeder reactor designs used liquid sodium as a coolant. As far as corrosive materials go, I imagine superheated liquid sodium falls in the " freakin' insane " category. Perhaps this drives the already high initial investment associated with nuclear reactor construction into the stratosphere.
I think the impediment to this technology is probably a mix of the problems mentioned here: part public/government ignorance, part economics, part proliferation concerns.
What is wrong with a company being interested in profits? If, as you say, they are ignoring 'user rights' -- an illusory concept if ever there was one -- then the market will correct the problem and some other company will make those profits. It sounds like your frustration is more with the economic system than the products and services...
I'll second the comment that this shouldn't suprise anyone. Where I work there are laws which require proper security, but in most other places I've been gmail was used widely. This is because 1. Gmail was more reliable than the 'official' email system 2. The search feature in gmail was way faster and smarter than the 'official' email system (e.g. outlook; squirrelmail) 3. The 'keep everything/multiple tags' model of gmail was less onerous than the maintenance the company expected (e.g.: keep your mailbox under a certain size; manually roate things to local storage; sort things by some directory system you'll probably be confused by when you look at it a year later...) What I'd like to see is more people using those intranet-sized google search and email servers I hear about. I hate my company's crappy intranet search engine, and the only thing good about outlook is its meeting-scheduling system. Using google technology, but on a company-controlled server, would seem the best of both worlds. But... I'm not an IT person. Maybe this would be horrible.
Something to think about: different people have different capacities for filtering visual noise. I find I can't mentally block out visual clutter all that well. Even if I'm not specifically paying attention to ads, their presence slows down my reading rate and comprehension. I don't think I'm the only one, but even if I am, I dont care -- adblock is a godsend for me.
When people talk about addiction in the popular sense (I'm not a doctor or a psychologist, so I don't speak with special authority) they're refering to at least a couple different things. Obviously
1. Physical addiction -- where stopping the activity causes actual physical withdrawl symptoms; i.e. smoking tobacco, abusing opiates, etc.
2. Psychological addiction -- where the activity causes the person to fail where they otherwise would succeed, particularly in maintenance of human relationships and in fulfillment of work responsibilities. We also usually mean that the behavior is socially unacceptable, and that the person is unhappy about it.
The first is quantitatively, experimentally verifiable. The second is more difficult, and where the controversy lies. Remember those introductory psych courses back in college? They told us that a lot of what determines what a disorder is was tied to the social beliefs and patient attitude. Two examples: 1) self flagelation is a normal religious practice in some cultures, but would look like illness here. 2) Believing God is sending you messages through a statue or icon is not considered an illness. Believing president Bush is sending you messages through a statue or icon probably would be.
Additionally, people will mean "addicted" to mean they engage in a behavior to an extent which they regret later. Under that sort of popular definition, we're all addicted to almost everything.
Yeah! Thank you NineNine. Wishing a thing were so doesn't make it so, especially when it comes to something as dynamic and decentralized as the English language.
Caveat: I did not RTFA. Implementation speed and efficiency is part of total speed and efficiency too. In my case, I'm a graduate student in physics, not computer science. Though I personal don't use visual [x] products, my problem solving approach is frequently "quickest and easiest path to a working solution." Often there are more efficient ways, but I know that when I factor in the time I would need to spend studying and experimenting, it turns out to be a quicker solution over all to take an easier route.