Actually, most people do not care, and if you bring it up, they will shrug it off as if it is something to be expected. For all the high ideals on which our country was founded, most people just do not care, as long as they can get their entertainment and celebrity gossip and whatnot.
I figured this one out shortly after watching Eddie Murphy's stand up when I was a teenager. When I was younger, I saw Murphy in various Disney/kids movies...then I heard the things he said in his "adult" comedy and figured out what "acting" meant.
The 4 year programs aren't any better, and often worse. There aren't any in my area that teach on Microsoft. Lots of theory, little practicality. They, at least generally get some training on source control. They don't, however, teach business processes. Absolutely vital. You can't help the user if you don't speak their language.
You think a typical 4-year CS program is too theoretical? What exactly do you consider to be theoretical CS? My experience, both as a CS undergrad and as a CS grad teaching undergrads (at a different institution) is that most CS majors get one and a half semesters of theory: one course about Turing machines (which covers the absolute basics) and one course about algorithms (which barely touches on the theoretical foundations). Occasionally, a CS major will wind up taking a course on programming languages, which will expose them (in a minimal sort of way) to other theoretical topics (lambda calculus).
People with bachelor's degrees in CS may not receive much training in how to use specific applications that are common in the business world, but that does not mean that they are receiving too much "theory."
That would be a good comparison...if IBM's virtualization technology was primitive compared to VMWare's. The only disadvantage to IBM's technology is that it runs on IBM's mainframes, rather than on commodity PCs. VMWare did not invent virtualization, nor did they advanced virtualization; they just made it available to users of lower end hardware.
What I will grant is that VMWare (and the related virtualization technologies for commodity hardware) provided a nice push for Intel and AMD to fix some of the issues that make virtualization on x86 difficult. However, this is not exactly a breakthrough; it just means that x86 is not as bad as it used to be, for that particular application.
...journalists should learn about Tor, email encryption, steganography, and other privacy protecting technologies. It is unfortunate, but if journalists wish to protect their sources, these are the lengths they will have to go to (if not now, then in the near future).
...of course, virtualization predated VMWare by two decades, and there were plenty of other people doing work on virtualization, at least in the research world. I doubt the world would have been set back 5 seconds if your company had purchased VMWare.
I seem to remember the "computer as an appliance" concept being something Steve Jobs wanted to push all the way back in the 1980s. What do you think "computer as an appliance" means, if not "computer for hopelessly clueless users who should remain clueless?"
Oh yeah, we really needed Apple to get portable music.
Let's get real here. Apple's strength is not in creating new technologies, but in making new technologies look pretty and in marketing those technologies. If Apple had not stepped in with the iPod, we would probably have seen a market with a lot of competing companies, making uglier products.
Innovation is a continuous process, with or without Apple. Where is Apple's research division? How does it compare with universities, or MSR, or IBM research? I do not remember Apple building a computer system that could play Jeopardy (yes, that technology will be relevant to consumers in the future, whether or not Apple decides to exploit it).
How is Apple doing with respecting the intelligence level and freedoms of their customers? Oh, right, Steve Jobs does not care about those things, and his vision of computing is that users should be clueless about everything works (unless they do have a clue; then they should pay him so they can write software).
How about the days when people did not have to worry about breaking the law just to the software they wanted to run on the computers they legally purchased?
Let's see, why might banks not be interested in digital cash...
Banks profit from transaction fees when you use debit and credit cards. Digital cash would, by its nature, remove such fees, and thus close a revenue stream for banks.
Digital cash is anonymous, and so law enforcement agencies would suddenly find themselves unable to look into someone's financial transactions. Spending a large amount of cash gets you reported to the DEA; you are supposed to use the easier-to-trace check or debit/credit card systems.
Digital cash could be sold by anyone; banks would lose much of the power they hold when every gas station and corner store could exchange hard cash for digital cash and visa versa.
Or to put it another way: digital cash would be a good thing for common people, so you can bet that the government and leaders of larger corporations have a problem with it.
I'll start the betting pool now: how long before we start hearing reports of favouritism, reports of ISPs being given lower ratings because they host services the government doesn't like, and other sorts of corruption. /tinfoil
Everyone deserves a legal defense. That is one of the best parts of our legal system: everyone is entitled to a legal defense, and everyone is entitled to have a lawyer defend them. Even people who are accused of treason are entitled to a defense.
The ethical obligation here is for Paypal to not try to thwart people who are trying to exercise their right to a legal defense. Paypal is not doing business with Bradley Manning, they are doing business with his legal defense team.
Or perhaps you would prefer a system in which your right to a legal defense was a sham, because you were unable to pay for a lawyer? Or perhaps you think people accused of treason should not even get the chance to defend themselves?
There are also enough free thinkers left to make the war on drugs controversial, but that has not stopped anyone. There are enough free thinkers who question corporate welfare, but that does not stop the government either. So why would free thinkers have any effect on the government's policies with Assange?
Or they could argue that he continued publishing the material by keeping the cablegate website online. You know, making an end-run around the constitution has never been problematic for the government...
Slashdot Mirror
...of course, Tarkin did wind up ordering a genocide. So, maybe we should be seeking a somewhat different strategy than the one Leah tried...
Actually, most people do not care, and if you bring it up, they will shrug it off as if it is something to be expected. For all the high ideals on which our country was founded, most people just do not care, as long as they can get their entertainment and celebrity gossip and whatnot.
Actually, Hollywood is just an Emacs mode, which uses Eliza as a back-end to generate scripts.
I figured this one out shortly after watching Eddie Murphy's stand up when I was a teenager. When I was younger, I saw Murphy in various Disney/kids movies...then I heard the things he said in his "adult" comedy and figured out what "acting" meant.
The 4 year programs aren't any better, and often worse. There aren't any in my area that teach on Microsoft. Lots of theory, little practicality. They, at least generally get some training on source control. They don't, however, teach business processes. Absolutely vital. You can't help the user if you don't speak their language.
You think a typical 4-year CS program is too theoretical? What exactly do you consider to be theoretical CS? My experience, both as a CS undergrad and as a CS grad teaching undergrads (at a different institution) is that most CS majors get one and a half semesters of theory: one course about Turing machines (which covers the absolute basics) and one course about algorithms (which barely touches on the theoretical foundations). Occasionally, a CS major will wind up taking a course on programming languages, which will expose them (in a minimal sort of way) to other theoretical topics (lambda calculus).
People with bachelor's degrees in CS may not receive much training in how to use specific applications that are common in the business world, but that does not mean that they are receiving too much "theory."
That would be a good comparison...if IBM's virtualization technology was primitive compared to VMWare's. The only disadvantage to IBM's technology is that it runs on IBM's mainframes, rather than on commodity PCs. VMWare did not invent virtualization, nor did they advanced virtualization; they just made it available to users of lower end hardware.
What I will grant is that VMWare (and the related virtualization technologies for commodity hardware) provided a nice push for Intel and AMD to fix some of the issues that make virtualization on x86 difficult. However, this is not exactly a breakthrough; it just means that x86 is not as bad as it used to be, for that particular application.
...journalists should learn about Tor, email encryption, steganography, and other privacy protecting technologies. It is unfortunate, but if journalists wish to protect their sources, these are the lengths they will have to go to (if not now, then in the near future).
...of course, virtualization predated VMWare by two decades, and there were plenty of other people doing work on virtualization, at least in the research world. I doubt the world would have been set back 5 seconds if your company had purchased VMWare.
There were mass market portable music players before the iPod. Apple did not invent that idea, and it predates the first MP3 players.
http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/gridpad/index.html
That was in 1989, ready to use, years before the Newton was ready for use.
http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/gridpad/index.html
That was ready for use in 1989. Not "still in the development phase" the way the Newton was.
I seem to remember the "computer as an appliance" concept being something Steve Jobs wanted to push all the way back in the 1980s. What do you think "computer as an appliance" means, if not "computer for hopelessly clueless users who should remain clueless?"
Imagine portable digital music players coming out this year? As opposed to when the first MP3 player came out?
http://www.google.com/patents?vid=4667088
Or maybe you meant something more like this:
http://www.techpin.com/the-first-mp3-player/
Oh yeah, we really needed Apple to get portable music.
Let's get real here. Apple's strength is not in creating new technologies, but in making new technologies look pretty and in marketing those technologies. If Apple had not stepped in with the iPod, we would probably have seen a market with a lot of competing companies, making uglier products.
Innovation is a continuous process, with or without Apple. Where is Apple's research division? How does it compare with universities, or MSR, or IBM research? I do not remember Apple building a computer system that could play Jeopardy (yes, that technology will be relevant to consumers in the future, whether or not Apple decides to exploit it).
How is Apple doing with respecting the intelligence level and freedoms of their customers? Oh, right, Steve Jobs does not care about those things, and his vision of computing is that users should be clueless about everything works (unless they do have a clue; then they should pay him so they can write software).
/flame
How about the days when people did not have to worry about breaking the law just to the software they wanted to run on the computers they legally purchased?
Probably not:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GRiDPad
Or Macs would have used Sparc CPUs, and run a preemptive multitasking OS years earlier.
I was thinking more like when pornography was in the top ten results for every search...
Or to put it another way: digital cash would be a good thing for common people, so you can bet that the government and leaders of larger corporations have a problem with it.
I'll start the betting pool now: how long before we start hearing reports of favouritism, reports of ISPs being given lower ratings because they host services the government doesn't like, and other sorts of corruption.
/tinfoil
Everyone deserves a legal defense. That is one of the best parts of our legal system: everyone is entitled to a legal defense, and everyone is entitled to have a lawyer defend them. Even people who are accused of treason are entitled to a defense.
The ethical obligation here is for Paypal to not try to thwart people who are trying to exercise their right to a legal defense. Paypal is not doing business with Bradley Manning, they are doing business with his legal defense team.
Or perhaps you would prefer a system in which your right to a legal defense was a sham, because you were unable to pay for a lawyer? Or perhaps you think people accused of treason should not even get the chance to defend themselves?
There are also enough free thinkers left to make the war on drugs controversial, but that has not stopped anyone. There are enough free thinkers who question corporate welfare, but that does not stop the government either. So why would free thinkers have any effect on the government's policies with Assange?
Or they could argue that he continued publishing the material by keeping the cablegate website online. You know, making an end-run around the constitution has never been problematic for the government...
Why would someone who stands for free press and free access to information want to go to a country like Cuba?
What does any of what you said have to do with TFA?