Oh and for Goose, its Geese. But the plural for Moose is not meese, in fact, its just moose, not even mooses.
Mooses may not be valid, but mousses is fine.
Things get even more fun when you want to describe a group of them. Those moose are a herd and those Geese are a gaggle, flock and possibly even a skein or wedge depending on what they're doing at the moment. Owls are a parliament and baboons are a congress, not to be confused with the (large-C) Congress of buffoons. And just wait until you get to bears (sleuth), apes (shrewdness), jellyfish (smack) and crows (murder.) And just to throw a totally obnoxious one in there, you've got a singular of boar...WTF kind of plural is that???
Or you could require road crews to install non-proprietary conduit when they're already planning to dig up the road so that broadband providers aren't forced to share conduit with Comcast or dig up the streets to install their own.
Funny you should say that because fingerprints were the exact reason I chose a glossy screen. My previous work laptop had a matte screen. It was a work hand-me-down from a previous engineer who had carelessly left a greasy fingerprint on it. I tried everything I could to get rid of it. Every laptop screen cleaner I could get my hands on was ineffective. Household cleaners were likewise ineffective. It was so bad that I had to learn how to avoid using that corner of the screen.
So when it came time to get myself a new laptop, I went with the glossy. And I've never regretted that decision. Glare is a non-issue...I use my laptop outdoors frequently and I just can't see what people are complaining about. And I've yet to have a fingerprint that won't wipe away with a wet cloth. And with the display being more vibrant both indoors and out, I have zero desire to ever use a matte screen again.
Asking which current activities people would need faster connections for is somewhat wrong-headed. It's like asking why we would have need paved roads for our horses and buggies. Cars capable of reaching speeds allowed by modern roads didn't become commonplace until after we'd invested in those roads. We've seen it time and again that when you give people new tools, they figure out new and inventive ways to use those tools.
My personal belief is that if we start to see fast upload speeds, we'll start to see products that make our home computing life available wherever we go. Things like remote desktop are really constrained by limited upload speeds. Others have mentioned video conferencing as a possible use. I can also see people wanting to monitor video sources within their house remotely, whether that means checking in on the babysitter or checking in on the home while on vacation. My parents recently had to spend about $2000 in landscaping when the timer on the sprinkler system failed and plants went unwatered for 2 and a half weeks. If they'd been able to check a video feed from abroad, they could have had a neighbor water manually and saved a bunch of money.
But back to the original point...the above ideas are from a mind that's rooted in the present. I have no way to predict what creative people will come up with if put in that position. The only prediction I can make, with almost 100% certainty, is that someone will come up with something creative that will prove popular to the masses. "Field of Dreams" really did have it right...if you build it, they will come.
If people want to have a religious-type non-evidence-based belief about GM foods, then as an American, I support the freedom of their religion, and I'm willing to suffer the clutter of food labels for their peace of mind.
Another comment mentioned all this, but I think it bears repeating, because I agree wholeheartedly. I don't give a rats ass about the health impacts of GM food...I'm willing to accept that it's just as healthy as non-GM food. But I want a way to determine products that use GM crops because I think Monsanto is a despicable company that's perpetrated unconscionable acts around the world and made the lives of legitimate farmers hell and I would like to ensure that not one cent of the money I spend on food makes it into their pockets.
It's not just uninformed or religious people that would want to boycott GM food, there's those of us that would want to do it for ethical reasons too.
Furthermore, we need to eliminate the debt load for student doctors. You can't expect doctors to work for lower salaries (as I propose above) when they are graduating with hundred of thousands in debt.
As much as this is necessary, I think we also need to severely limit the scope of malpractice claims to the point where doctors do not need insurance coverage. We need to realize that by accepting little to no recourse when things go wrong, we'll get lower costs in every situation. This doesn't mean that doctors shouldn't be accountable for their quality of care, it just means that we shouldn't be using the legal system and monetary compensation to do it. Review boards composed of other experts in the field can censure and suspend doctors who provide inadequate care.
Cuba is a perfect example of this. They have better or equivalent health outcomes to the United States, yet they spend a fraction (read: less than 1/20th) as much per person on healthcare.
Cuba's health care is impressive, but there are a few aspects of it that would be hard to replicate here. For one, they completely ignore all medical patents, so they save a lot on things like prescription drugs that make up a huge part of our costs. Also, the government pays to educate most of their doctors in exchange for their service for a number of years. My parents went on a bike trip in Cuba a few years ago and found that their guide made on the order of 20 times as much as a guide than his wife did as a doctor. One of the reasons Cuba exports so many doctors is that they can make more money abroad. I'm not making any judgment on whether their system is better than ours where we saddle doctors with a ton of debt and pay them better, it's just different and a system that would be hard to replicate in a country as devoutly capitalist as ours is. However I agree that we can and should learn what we can from Cuba and it would be arrogant to think that there aren't lessons to be learned from them just because they're poor, socialist country.
True, but email is simplistic in some ways that can become confusing.
Because each email becomes its own entity rather than being integrated into a server-managed entity. And each user and email client can have it's own way of tacking on a response.
The main problem with the argument against the geologists is that they say that they should have recommended an evacuation. But they don't list what they believe are acceptable parameters for the evacuation. This seems entirely unreasonable because geology doesn't operate on a timescale that's compatible with human lifestyles.
Sure, the geologists could have told people that there was a 60% chance of a major earthquake within the next 5-10 years and people should evacuate, but no one would have done it because no one will abandon their home for 10 years waiting for an earthquake to happen. Especially if when it does, geologists issue another warning that there may be an earthquake...seismically active areas don't just stop being seismically active after a quake.
And from what I've seen, that's a much higher percentage and a much smaller time-frame than is typical when it comes to earthquake prediction. I live in an area that had a 7+ quake in 1989 (SF) and everything we've heard since predicts the probability of a quake in the next 20-50 years. That's a major metropolitan area that's had as much scrutiny from seismologists as anywhere on earth and the predictions are that imprecise...somehow a handful of geologists in a remote part of Italy are supposed to do better?
There seems to be this bizarre notion that the geologists could have told everyone that there's likely to be an earthquake this week and people should leave. It would be great if we could get that level of accuracy, but that's just not possible. Given the margin of error of even an exceedingly good guess as to when the next earthquake would occur, a much more reasonable charge would be that geologists should have recommended that the city create new building codes that would make buildings stand up to the predicted earthquake whenever it did occur. That's the only thing that would have realistically been accepted by those affected. Anything else would have been shrugged off as being too imprecise to for people to uproot their lives to heed the warning. And that recommendation would have made no difference since there's almost nothing that could have been done to seismically retrofit buildings in a one month time frame.
There's been just one elite team that played up to its potential thus far and it's not Brazil. The Germans somehow managed to tune out the vuvuzelas and played and outstanding game. Everyone else has played more conservatively to compensate.
Brazil, apart from Robinho who had an outstanding game, looked completely out of sorts. Part of that could be due to the cold temperatures, but I'd bet it's mostly due to them not being able to hear each other on the pitch. The traditional Brazilian flair usually means lots of intricate passing, back heels, run-throughs and other skills that require the situational awareness to know where defenders and teammates are without looking at them. Yesterday's game had very little of that type of play and was somewhat disappointing to watch.
Personally, I don't find the sound of the annoying. As a fan watching TV, I can still hear the announcers without any trouble and the constant background noise gives me the same feeling as other sporting events where the crowd is consistently loud.
But the part that does annoy me is that I think they're having an impact on the games. Though they're not much different from a noisy crowd on TV, the decibel level is significantly higher in the stadium. And it seems to me that the low scores and hesitant play we're seeing so far is the result of teams not being able to communicate verbally. It seems to me that there's a lot more incidences of players making runs into space that are completely missed by a player on the ball with his back turned. And other things that rely on verbal communication (letting balls run through, back heels, etc) aren't happening quite as much as they normally do.
Hopefully the players will adjust as the tournament progresses, but that's been the most annoying part of the vuvuzelas to me...it's made the soccer less entertaining to watch.
For what it's worth, we already do basically use those units in some circumstances, just not in a consumer-facing fashion. The EPA's CAFE standards, for example, compute the harmonic mean fuel efficiency which is essentially equivalent to converting mpg to the units you mentioned prior to averaging and then computing back to mpg.
My mom saw me playing Super Mario Brothers when I was 8 and asked if I'd like to learn to make my own games.
This is the key point. You don't start with asking Slashdot how to get the kid into programming. You ask the kid whether he'd be interested in programming. If he says no, then you drop it. If he says yes, then you come to Slashdot asking for the best way for a young child to learn game programming.
The key point being...ask. Don't project the things you like to do or always wanted to do onto children. Expose them to as many possible interests as you can and encourage/support them in anything they choose to pursue. Just don't choose for them or pressure them into choosing something because they feel you want them to do it.
Intel's Extreme line, for one. The X25-E goes up to 64GB. It's a 2.5" form factor, but it's a SATA drive and you can use a 3.5" bay with mounting rails to put it in a desktop.
GP is right about being expensive...expect to pay over $600 for the 64GB model.
But someone who claims to have gone to Google I/O? I don't buy it.
I can give you a synopsis of many of the GWT sessions, which was the primary reason I was there. The best one was the one on testing GWT given by one of the Wave developers. Another favorite that I attended was the one on Go programming where they gave away free T-Shirts and stickers...does the whole world know about that too? The only Android talk I went to was on the new JIT they introduced in FroYo (trace, not method), and that was only because I couldn't get into the "How to lose friends and alienate people" talk, as the room was full.
For lunch I opted for the Thai on day one and the taco bar on day 2, but my favorite food item was the veggie empenadas they served at the after-hours party, though the cupcake bar there was pretty damn good too. I've still got a bit of a bruise on my back from the contraption where two people used pedal power to move in a vertical circle (not sure how else to describe that thing.)
Yes...the whole world knows about the 2 free phones. Somewhat less known is the early registration gift...a cheap, plastic Android toy. After promising us a mystery free gift for registering early, we were quite disappointed by it. But I've got it sitting on my desk right now and can describe any part of it you'd like. I was there...if you want more details, I'll be happy to provide them. I've never been to a WWDC, so I can't comment on anything Phil Schiller may or may not have said.
As far as Android goes, you're right that I don't know much about it since I was sent to I/O by my company to learn about other things. All I know is what I've learned from using it. And I've learned that I get increased battery life when I shut down background apps, so I do. If it weren't an issue, perhaps there wouldn't be 20 or so different task management applications in the Marketplace. And even if I'm completely wrong about that, the Droid still ran out of juice long before my iPhone did, and my quitting background applications can't have had any effect on that. It's possible that the phones I got were duds, but it seems unlikely that I'd get two problematic phones this year and one last year.
Android is accumulating an impressive list of features, but I still can't help feeling that it's coming at the phone platform in a wrong-headed fashion. I've been an iPhone user since the 3G first came out and have come to appreciate its simplicity. I go to Google I/O every year and each year I've tried to use the free phone(s) they give us as much as possible. And every time I come away feeling like Android would be a great OS on a larger form factor where the increased power it gives makes more sense, but not so great for a phone. Conversely, I have no interest in the iPad, but I'll probably get an Android tablet when it comes out.
Comparing Android and the iPhone OS is somewhat like an apples-to-oranges comparison (no pun intended)...the iPhone OS isn't really an OS, it's an application launcher whereas Android feels much more like a real OS. And I've realized I don't want a full OS on my phone, though I'll continue to give Android a chance to change my mind. I don't want to manage running applications on my phone so that the battery doesn't die after a couple of hours. At a minimum, I need Android to give me the ability to easily quit an application when I leave it rather than just dumping it into the background where I'll need to launch a task manager application to finally get rid of it. At I/O, I used both my iPhone and the Droid they sent us prior to the conference. When I'd get home at night, my ~2 year old iPhone would still have plenty of battery power whereas the Droid never made it through a full day at the conference without needing to be recharged. For me, empowering the user can't come at the cost of sucking the power out of the device.
On a purely feature-per-feature basis, Android does beat the iPhone. But it feels like those features have come at the cost of ignoring the little things that make using the phone pleasant. In addition to the clumsiness of task management, something as simple as the on-screen keyboard is an entirely frustrating experience when compared to the iPhone. Still, after using the EVO 4G they gave us, the hardware bar has been set and the new iPhone has to be pretty impressive to keep up, or I think we'll start to see Android take off based on the strength of the hardware alone.
And I want that to happen as much as anyone. I'm a Slashdotter...I like open rather than closed. And I've developed professionally in both Java and Objective-C and found Java to be significantly more pleasant to develop with. And I hate AT&T with a passion and would love to be able to switch back to T-Mobile or Sprint. Android would give me all of these things and yet I still can't get past the actual experience of using the devices. I want to, but I just can't agree with Gizmodo on this one...Android won't have leapfrogged the iPhone until it's at least as enjoyable to use as a phone.
One way in which virtual security does not mirror physical security is in jurisdiction. Physical security can rely, to some extent, on local law enforcement, be it truly local or on a national level. On the internet, the ability of law enforcement to aid in security is limited because those attempting to break in can do so without ever setting foot in the country containing the target machine.
The whole situation feels similar to the depression era where bank robbers successfully used jurisdictional limitations on local law enforcement to evade the law. They'd rob banks closer to the county line since law enforcement couldn't chase them beyond that point. It took the creation of a federal law enforcement agency to finally provide a mechanism which could catch the criminals. I'm not sure how you'd create the international equivalent of the FBI or if it would even be beneficial overall, but that doesn't change the situation that we're in now. The criminals have discovered the loopholes and have setup shop in countries where it's difficult for law enforcement to help protect victims.
The result is we've started holding virtual security to a higher standard. We consider it a significant defect for virtual systems to have any vulnerabilities. Physical security, on the other hand, has many known vulnerabilities that are accepted because of the legal remedies that can be applied to people who exploit them. The most common physical security mechanism, locks and keys, are trivially easy to exploit...just get a lock pick kit and learn how to use it. If we held physical security to the standard we hold virtual security to, we'd have made Schlage, Kwikset, et al sell locks that couldn't be picked with the current generation of lock pick kits. But we don't, because the real deterrent is the police and the justice system, not the lock.
Not to mention that it also fails to account for the Apple product release cycle. Apple seems to be releasing a new iPhone model once per year in June. When they do that, sales spike as people rush to get their hands on the latest/greatest must-have from Apple. Meanwhile, Android phones are released more often and with less regularity. The introduction of popular models is likely to cause some sales increases, but nothing like when Apple releases an iPhone update.
So Android outsold the iPhone during the lull before the new iPhone is released...who cares. When Android outsells the iPhone over the course of a calendar year, that may be news. When the number of Android phones being actively used exceeds the number of iPhones being actively used, that may be news. But neither of those have happened yet.
Simple? Go to the supermarket and buy some fruit, a bottle of Coke and a pack of cigarettes and try computing the tax. The fruit is likely completely untaxed. The Coke is taxed at the normal sales tax rate but likely adds an additional charge for the recycling redemption value which can vary by state and the cigarettes probably have an additional "sin tax" on top of the sales tax. And good luck if the supermarket is in a different county from the one you live in...the sales tax rate changes depending on county and city you're in.
It's not that the calculations are difficult math to perform, it's that they're tedious math to perform. It's not as simple as adding up all the listed prices and multiplying by a single number, you have to consider each product individually and figure out the tax based on the rules for that specific class of product and then add everything up. It would be pretty simple for retailers to factor these calculations into the listed price, but they don't because they want the price to appear lower so people will buy more.
It's still notable that Microsoft didn't choose to support Windows Media in their HTML5 implementation. They could have easily supported both H.264 and Windows Media. And they could have easily extended HTML5 support to provide a Silverlight-like DRM implementation. If they'd done either/both of those, it would have created the possibility that sites would be created that would only work with Internet Explorer.
But they didn't. They chose to implement HTML5 in a way that was compatible with the other browsers from large companies. As nice as I think it would be to have a royalty-free codec supported everywhere, having a single codec supported everywhere is the next best thing. And Microsoft could have sabotaged that effort, but didn't. And for that, at least, I think they should be commended.
Now we just have to hope that the MPEG-LA will realize that it's in their best interests to become the de facto HTML5 standard video codec and offer a free (as in beer) license that can be used to when distributing free (as in beer) browsers.
It may be an absurdly high percentage for the internet as a whole, but it's entirely possible if you target or limit yourself to enterprise clients. My company sells a hosted product to large companies and our analytics show about 96% IE with about 70% of that being IE6. The only reason it isn't higher is because we have a number of people use our site from smartphones when they're out of the office. Nearly 100% of the Firefox, Safari and Chrome usage comes from our own office when we test our releases. Safari on the iPhone has higher usage than Firefox, Safari and Chrome combined.
We are far from Windows-specific. Everyone outside of our account managers and support staff uses a non-IE browser as our primary browser. A few of us run Linux and a bunch of the business types get to run OS X. But when corporations standardize on IE6, users don't go to the trouble of using something else. And when your app is focussed almost entirely on people working in those office environments, you get usage metrics that are entirely different from those seen by people running sites targeting the public.
The states are going after the wrong companies in trying to collect data for assessing use taxes. I get that they're going after the big fish like Amazon in an attempt to convince smaller retailers to comply of their own accord, but that still means collecting data from tens if not hundreds of thousands of sources. And given decisions like the one you referenced, they're not likely to get anywhere near 100% reporting from retailers, especially when states have a vested interest in protecting the rights of their own businesses...after all, more online vendors located in their own state means more tax revenues from those businesses.
The much simpler solution would be to deal with the credit card companies. There's relatively few of them and they've got data on nearly every out-of-state transaction. What they don't have is a breakdown of the transaction including items purchased and shipping costs, but it's enough to know whether taxes should have been collected or whether the resident should be declaring use taxes. Using data from the credit card companies, the states can come close enough to decide whether the resident has been truthful in his or her use tax reporting and whether or not the resident should be selected for audit.
And the credit card companies should be easier to deal with since they can likely be enticed or threatened by possible legislation governing how they do business in the state (i.e. personal bankruptcy laws, credit card terms disclosure, limits on excessive fees, etc.)
Re:Electronic Music Production
on
Apple iPad Reviewed
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· Score: 2, Interesting
They could also be great for musicians who play traditional instruments.
As a pianist, I'd love to have sheet music that I can advance to the next page with a simple touch of the screen. Turning physical pages doesn't take long, but it's noticeable when the time spent is time you're not playing. I've grown accustomed to memorizing the beginnings of pages up until a point where one hand is unused, but some pieces don't have those breaks and that only works for pieces I've played a few times. If I could speed the page-turning process, I might not have to worry about any of that. If an app comes out that can handle repeats, codas and such, I'll probably end up buying an iPad for that purpose alone.
Also, the ability to bring my entire collection of sheet music everywhere I go would be awesome.
Rather than legislate people's behavior, which invariably will lead to spotty enforcement and is unlikely to have a significant impact, we should be legislating the features of new vehicles. It's much easier to ensure that every vehicle sold in this country has a built-in hands-free interface, either using voice recognition or buttons on the steering wheel. We'd also want to include provisions that all cell phones are compliant, which would mean next to nothing today (since pretty much every cell phone that's currently sold supports Bluetooth) but would ensure that phones would be backwards compatible with cars.
We've already created safety standards that the auto industry must comply with to sell vehicles, why not amend those standards to deal with the cell phone issue since it will make vehicles safer?
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to accompany a family member who was acting as a faculty chaperon on a business school trip to Japan to meet with various CEOs of companies there. My favorite visit, for numerous reasons, was to meet with the CEO of a 500-year-old, family-run, sake brewer. During the Q&A, the MBA students kept asking variations of the same question about how he was planning to grow the business. They'd ask about international expansion plans or marketing campaigns inside Japan and kept utterly failing to comprehend the response he gave.
What he said basically boiled down to, "I'm happy running my family business the way my ancestors have done for the past 500 years. The company makes enough money that my family and my employees' families can live comfortably. Beyond that, my only concern is making the best sake I can."
It was amazing to see how blinded they were by capitalist propaganda to the point that they couldn't understand why someone would be happy trying to be the best husband, father and craftsman he could be without regard for becoming as wealthy as possible.
The memory comparison tests were flawed enough to keep me from taking any of their results seriously. While there was very little mention of how memory usage was determined, what little there was indicated that he used the task manager and, for Chrome, added up the totals for each Chrome process.
This is a well covered mistake that has been pointed out since the first tests that showed Chrome being a memory hog. And while I won't get into it, the simplistic method the review seemed to use shows a complete and utter lack of understanding of the concept of shared memory. So many people have made this mistake that the Chrome developers even created a page you can load in Chrome that will show you an accurate total of the memory used not only in Chrome but in any other browser you have running. But I would have expected someone working for a technical publication who's about to publish an article partly on the subject to do the limited research necessary to learn why such a simplistic measuring tool such as the task manager is completely unsuitable for tests like the ones they performed.
Suffice it to say if the memory usage comparison was as naive as it appears to be, I've got very little confidence in any other metrics they gathered or any conclusions they reached.
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Oh and for Goose, its Geese. But the plural for Moose is not meese, in fact, its just moose, not even mooses.
Mooses may not be valid, but mousses is fine.
Things get even more fun when you want to describe a group of them. Those moose are a herd and those Geese are a gaggle, flock and possibly even a skein or wedge depending on what they're doing at the moment. Owls are a parliament and baboons are a congress, not to be confused with the (large-C) Congress of buffoons. And just wait until you get to bears (sleuth), apes (shrewdness), jellyfish (smack) and crows (murder.) And just to throw a totally obnoxious one in there, you've got a singular of boar...WTF kind of plural is that???
Or you could require road crews to install non-proprietary conduit when they're already planning to dig up the road so that broadband providers aren't forced to share conduit with Comcast or dig up the streets to install their own.
Here's the bill.
Funny you should say that because fingerprints were the exact reason I chose a glossy screen. My previous work laptop had a matte screen. It was a work hand-me-down from a previous engineer who had carelessly left a greasy fingerprint on it. I tried everything I could to get rid of it. Every laptop screen cleaner I could get my hands on was ineffective. Household cleaners were likewise ineffective. It was so bad that I had to learn how to avoid using that corner of the screen.
So when it came time to get myself a new laptop, I went with the glossy. And I've never regretted that decision. Glare is a non-issue...I use my laptop outdoors frequently and I just can't see what people are complaining about. And I've yet to have a fingerprint that won't wipe away with a wet cloth. And with the display being more vibrant both indoors and out, I have zero desire to ever use a matte screen again.
Asking which current activities people would need faster connections for is somewhat wrong-headed. It's like asking why we would have need paved roads for our horses and buggies. Cars capable of reaching speeds allowed by modern roads didn't become commonplace until after we'd invested in those roads. We've seen it time and again that when you give people new tools, they figure out new and inventive ways to use those tools.
My personal belief is that if we start to see fast upload speeds, we'll start to see products that make our home computing life available wherever we go. Things like remote desktop are really constrained by limited upload speeds. Others have mentioned video conferencing as a possible use. I can also see people wanting to monitor video sources within their house remotely, whether that means checking in on the babysitter or checking in on the home while on vacation. My parents recently had to spend about $2000 in landscaping when the timer on the sprinkler system failed and plants went unwatered for 2 and a half weeks. If they'd been able to check a video feed from abroad, they could have had a neighbor water manually and saved a bunch of money.
But back to the original point...the above ideas are from a mind that's rooted in the present. I have no way to predict what creative people will come up with if put in that position. The only prediction I can make, with almost 100% certainty, is that someone will come up with something creative that will prove popular to the masses. "Field of Dreams" really did have it right...if you build it, they will come.
If people want to have a religious-type non-evidence-based belief about GM foods, then as an American, I support the freedom of their religion, and I'm willing to suffer the clutter of food labels for their peace of mind.
Another comment mentioned all this, but I think it bears repeating, because I agree wholeheartedly. I don't give a rats ass about the health impacts of GM food...I'm willing to accept that it's just as healthy as non-GM food. But I want a way to determine products that use GM crops because I think Monsanto is a despicable company that's perpetrated unconscionable acts around the world and made the lives of legitimate farmers hell and I would like to ensure that not one cent of the money I spend on food makes it into their pockets.
It's not just uninformed or religious people that would want to boycott GM food, there's those of us that would want to do it for ethical reasons too.
Furthermore, we need to eliminate the debt load for student doctors. You can't expect doctors to work for lower salaries (as I propose above) when they are graduating with hundred of thousands in debt.
As much as this is necessary, I think we also need to severely limit the scope of malpractice claims to the point where doctors do not need insurance coverage. We need to realize that by accepting little to no recourse when things go wrong, we'll get lower costs in every situation. This doesn't mean that doctors shouldn't be accountable for their quality of care, it just means that we shouldn't be using the legal system and monetary compensation to do it. Review boards composed of other experts in the field can censure and suspend doctors who provide inadequate care.
Cuba is a perfect example of this. They have better or equivalent health outcomes to the United States, yet they spend a fraction (read: less than 1/20th) as much per person on healthcare.
Cuba's health care is impressive, but there are a few aspects of it that would be hard to replicate here. For one, they completely ignore all medical patents, so they save a lot on things like prescription drugs that make up a huge part of our costs. Also, the government pays to educate most of their doctors in exchange for their service for a number of years. My parents went on a bike trip in Cuba a few years ago and found that their guide made on the order of 20 times as much as a guide than his wife did as a doctor. One of the reasons Cuba exports so many doctors is that they can make more money abroad. I'm not making any judgment on whether their system is better than ours where we saddle doctors with a ton of debt and pay them better, it's just different and a system that would be hard to replicate in a country as devoutly capitalist as ours is. However I agree that we can and should learn what we can from Cuba and it would be arrogant to think that there aren't lessons to be learned from them just because they're poor, socialist country.
See replies below...
How so?
This post is an example.
True, but email is simplistic in some ways that can become confusing.
Because each email becomes its own entity rather than being integrated into a server-managed entity. And each user and email client can have it's own way of tacking on a response.
Yes, but I can do that with email too, right?
As you can see, it is possible.
You can put anything you want into a Wave!
And this is why you'd want to.
The main problem with the argument against the geologists is that they say that they should have recommended an evacuation. But they don't list what they believe are acceptable parameters for the evacuation. This seems entirely unreasonable because geology doesn't operate on a timescale that's compatible with human lifestyles.
Sure, the geologists could have told people that there was a 60% chance of a major earthquake within the next 5-10 years and people should evacuate, but no one would have done it because no one will abandon their home for 10 years waiting for an earthquake to happen. Especially if when it does, geologists issue another warning that there may be an earthquake...seismically active areas don't just stop being seismically active after a quake.
And from what I've seen, that's a much higher percentage and a much smaller time-frame than is typical when it comes to earthquake prediction. I live in an area that had a 7+ quake in 1989 (SF) and everything we've heard since predicts the probability of a quake in the next 20-50 years. That's a major metropolitan area that's had as much scrutiny from seismologists as anywhere on earth and the predictions are that imprecise...somehow a handful of geologists in a remote part of Italy are supposed to do better?
There seems to be this bizarre notion that the geologists could have told everyone that there's likely to be an earthquake this week and people should leave. It would be great if we could get that level of accuracy, but that's just not possible. Given the margin of error of even an exceedingly good guess as to when the next earthquake would occur, a much more reasonable charge would be that geologists should have recommended that the city create new building codes that would make buildings stand up to the predicted earthquake whenever it did occur. That's the only thing that would have realistically been accepted by those affected. Anything else would have been shrugged off as being too imprecise to for people to uproot their lives to heed the warning. And that recommendation would have made no difference since there's almost nothing that could have been done to seismically retrofit buildings in a one month time frame.
There's been just one elite team that played up to its potential thus far and it's not Brazil. The Germans somehow managed to tune out the vuvuzelas and played and outstanding game. Everyone else has played more conservatively to compensate.
Brazil, apart from Robinho who had an outstanding game, looked completely out of sorts. Part of that could be due to the cold temperatures, but I'd bet it's mostly due to them not being able to hear each other on the pitch. The traditional Brazilian flair usually means lots of intricate passing, back heels, run-throughs and other skills that require the situational awareness to know where defenders and teammates are without looking at them. Yesterday's game had very little of that type of play and was somewhat disappointing to watch.
Personally, I don't find the sound of the annoying. As a fan watching TV, I can still hear the announcers without any trouble and the constant background noise gives me the same feeling as other sporting events where the crowd is consistently loud.
But the part that does annoy me is that I think they're having an impact on the games. Though they're not much different from a noisy crowd on TV, the decibel level is significantly higher in the stadium. And it seems to me that the low scores and hesitant play we're seeing so far is the result of teams not being able to communicate verbally. It seems to me that there's a lot more incidences of players making runs into space that are completely missed by a player on the ball with his back turned. And other things that rely on verbal communication (letting balls run through, back heels, etc) aren't happening quite as much as they normally do.
Hopefully the players will adjust as the tournament progresses, but that's been the most annoying part of the vuvuzelas to me...it's made the soccer less entertaining to watch.
For what it's worth, we already do basically use those units in some circumstances, just not in a consumer-facing fashion. The EPA's CAFE standards, for example, compute the harmonic mean fuel efficiency which is essentially equivalent to converting mpg to the units you mentioned prior to averaging and then computing back to mpg.
My mom saw me playing Super Mario Brothers when I was 8 and asked if I'd like to learn to make my own games.
This is the key point. You don't start with asking Slashdot how to get the kid into programming. You ask the kid whether he'd be interested in programming. If he says no, then you drop it. If he says yes, then you come to Slashdot asking for the best way for a young child to learn game programming.
The key point being...ask. Don't project the things you like to do or always wanted to do onto children. Expose them to as many possible interests as you can and encourage/support them in anything they choose to pursue. Just don't choose for them or pressure them into choosing something because they feel you want them to do it.
Intel's Extreme line, for one. The X25-E goes up to 64GB. It's a 2.5" form factor, but it's a SATA drive and you can use a 3.5" bay with mounting rails to put it in a desktop.
GP is right about being expensive...expect to pay over $600 for the 64GB model.
But someone who claims to have gone to Google I/O? I don't buy it.
I can give you a synopsis of many of the GWT sessions, which was the primary reason I was there. The best one was the one on testing GWT given by one of the Wave developers. Another favorite that I attended was the one on Go programming where they gave away free T-Shirts and stickers...does the whole world know about that too? The only Android talk I went to was on the new JIT they introduced in FroYo (trace, not method), and that was only because I couldn't get into the "How to lose friends and alienate people" talk, as the room was full.
For lunch I opted for the Thai on day one and the taco bar on day 2, but my favorite food item was the veggie empenadas they served at the after-hours party, though the cupcake bar there was pretty damn good too. I've still got a bit of a bruise on my back from the contraption where two people used pedal power to move in a vertical circle (not sure how else to describe that thing.)
Yes...the whole world knows about the 2 free phones. Somewhat less known is the early registration gift...a cheap, plastic Android toy. After promising us a mystery free gift for registering early, we were quite disappointed by it. But I've got it sitting on my desk right now and can describe any part of it you'd like. I was there...if you want more details, I'll be happy to provide them. I've never been to a WWDC, so I can't comment on anything Phil Schiller may or may not have said.
As far as Android goes, you're right that I don't know much about it since I was sent to I/O by my company to learn about other things. All I know is what I've learned from using it. And I've learned that I get increased battery life when I shut down background apps, so I do. If it weren't an issue, perhaps there wouldn't be 20 or so different task management applications in the Marketplace. And even if I'm completely wrong about that, the Droid still ran out of juice long before my iPhone did, and my quitting background applications can't have had any effect on that. It's possible that the phones I got were duds, but it seems unlikely that I'd get two problematic phones this year and one last year.
Android is accumulating an impressive list of features, but I still can't help feeling that it's coming at the phone platform in a wrong-headed fashion. I've been an iPhone user since the 3G first came out and have come to appreciate its simplicity. I go to Google I/O every year and each year I've tried to use the free phone(s) they give us as much as possible. And every time I come away feeling like Android would be a great OS on a larger form factor where the increased power it gives makes more sense, but not so great for a phone. Conversely, I have no interest in the iPad, but I'll probably get an Android tablet when it comes out.
Comparing Android and the iPhone OS is somewhat like an apples-to-oranges comparison (no pun intended)...the iPhone OS isn't really an OS, it's an application launcher whereas Android feels much more like a real OS. And I've realized I don't want a full OS on my phone, though I'll continue to give Android a chance to change my mind. I don't want to manage running applications on my phone so that the battery doesn't die after a couple of hours. At a minimum, I need Android to give me the ability to easily quit an application when I leave it rather than just dumping it into the background where I'll need to launch a task manager application to finally get rid of it. At I/O, I used both my iPhone and the Droid they sent us prior to the conference. When I'd get home at night, my ~2 year old iPhone would still have plenty of battery power whereas the Droid never made it through a full day at the conference without needing to be recharged. For me, empowering the user can't come at the cost of sucking the power out of the device.
On a purely feature-per-feature basis, Android does beat the iPhone. But it feels like those features have come at the cost of ignoring the little things that make using the phone pleasant. In addition to the clumsiness of task management, something as simple as the on-screen keyboard is an entirely frustrating experience when compared to the iPhone. Still, after using the EVO 4G they gave us, the hardware bar has been set and the new iPhone has to be pretty impressive to keep up, or I think we'll start to see Android take off based on the strength of the hardware alone.
And I want that to happen as much as anyone. I'm a Slashdotter...I like open rather than closed. And I've developed professionally in both Java and Objective-C and found Java to be significantly more pleasant to develop with. And I hate AT&T with a passion and would love to be able to switch back to T-Mobile or Sprint. Android would give me all of these things and yet I still can't get past the actual experience of using the devices. I want to, but I just can't agree with Gizmodo on this one...Android won't have leapfrogged the iPhone until it's at least as enjoyable to use as a phone.
One way in which virtual security does not mirror physical security is in jurisdiction. Physical security can rely, to some extent, on local law enforcement, be it truly local or on a national level. On the internet, the ability of law enforcement to aid in security is limited because those attempting to break in can do so without ever setting foot in the country containing the target machine.
The whole situation feels similar to the depression era where bank robbers successfully used jurisdictional limitations on local law enforcement to evade the law. They'd rob banks closer to the county line since law enforcement couldn't chase them beyond that point. It took the creation of a federal law enforcement agency to finally provide a mechanism which could catch the criminals. I'm not sure how you'd create the international equivalent of the FBI or if it would even be beneficial overall, but that doesn't change the situation that we're in now. The criminals have discovered the loopholes and have setup shop in countries where it's difficult for law enforcement to help protect victims.
The result is we've started holding virtual security to a higher standard. We consider it a significant defect for virtual systems to have any vulnerabilities. Physical security, on the other hand, has many known vulnerabilities that are accepted because of the legal remedies that can be applied to people who exploit them. The most common physical security mechanism, locks and keys, are trivially easy to exploit...just get a lock pick kit and learn how to use it. If we held physical security to the standard we hold virtual security to, we'd have made Schlage, Kwikset, et al sell locks that couldn't be picked with the current generation of lock pick kits. But we don't, because the real deterrent is the police and the justice system, not the lock.
Not to mention that it also fails to account for the Apple product release cycle. Apple seems to be releasing a new iPhone model once per year in June. When they do that, sales spike as people rush to get their hands on the latest/greatest must-have from Apple. Meanwhile, Android phones are released more often and with less regularity. The introduction of popular models is likely to cause some sales increases, but nothing like when Apple releases an iPhone update.
So Android outsold the iPhone during the lull before the new iPhone is released...who cares. When Android outsells the iPhone over the course of a calendar year, that may be news. When the number of Android phones being actively used exceeds the number of iPhones being actively used, that may be news. But neither of those have happened yet.
Simple? Go to the supermarket and buy some fruit, a bottle of Coke and a pack of cigarettes and try computing the tax. The fruit is likely completely untaxed. The Coke is taxed at the normal sales tax rate but likely adds an additional charge for the recycling redemption value which can vary by state and the cigarettes probably have an additional "sin tax" on top of the sales tax. And good luck if the supermarket is in a different county from the one you live in...the sales tax rate changes depending on county and city you're in.
It's not that the calculations are difficult math to perform, it's that they're tedious math to perform. It's not as simple as adding up all the listed prices and multiplying by a single number, you have to consider each product individually and figure out the tax based on the rules for that specific class of product and then add everything up. It would be pretty simple for retailers to factor these calculations into the listed price, but they don't because they want the price to appear lower so people will buy more.
It's still notable that Microsoft didn't choose to support Windows Media in their HTML5 implementation. They could have easily supported both H.264 and Windows Media. And they could have easily extended HTML5 support to provide a Silverlight-like DRM implementation. If they'd done either/both of those, it would have created the possibility that sites would be created that would only work with Internet Explorer.
But they didn't. They chose to implement HTML5 in a way that was compatible with the other browsers from large companies. As nice as I think it would be to have a royalty-free codec supported everywhere, having a single codec supported everywhere is the next best thing. And Microsoft could have sabotaged that effort, but didn't. And for that, at least, I think they should be commended.
Now we just have to hope that the MPEG-LA will realize that it's in their best interests to become the de facto HTML5 standard video codec and offer a free (as in beer) license that can be used to when distributing free (as in beer) browsers.
It may be an absurdly high percentage for the internet as a whole, but it's entirely possible if you target or limit yourself to enterprise clients. My company sells a hosted product to large companies and our analytics show about 96% IE with about 70% of that being IE6. The only reason it isn't higher is because we have a number of people use our site from smartphones when they're out of the office. Nearly 100% of the Firefox, Safari and Chrome usage comes from our own office when we test our releases. Safari on the iPhone has higher usage than Firefox, Safari and Chrome combined.
We are far from Windows-specific. Everyone outside of our account managers and support staff uses a non-IE browser as our primary browser. A few of us run Linux and a bunch of the business types get to run OS X. But when corporations standardize on IE6, users don't go to the trouble of using something else. And when your app is focussed almost entirely on people working in those office environments, you get usage metrics that are entirely different from those seen by people running sites targeting the public.
The states are going after the wrong companies in trying to collect data for assessing use taxes. I get that they're going after the big fish like Amazon in an attempt to convince smaller retailers to comply of their own accord, but that still means collecting data from tens if not hundreds of thousands of sources. And given decisions like the one you referenced, they're not likely to get anywhere near 100% reporting from retailers, especially when states have a vested interest in protecting the rights of their own businesses...after all, more online vendors located in their own state means more tax revenues from those businesses.
The much simpler solution would be to deal with the credit card companies. There's relatively few of them and they've got data on nearly every out-of-state transaction. What they don't have is a breakdown of the transaction including items purchased and shipping costs, but it's enough to know whether taxes should have been collected or whether the resident should be declaring use taxes. Using data from the credit card companies, the states can come close enough to decide whether the resident has been truthful in his or her use tax reporting and whether or not the resident should be selected for audit.
And the credit card companies should be easier to deal with since they can likely be enticed or threatened by possible legislation governing how they do business in the state (i.e. personal bankruptcy laws, credit card terms disclosure, limits on excessive fees, etc.)
They could also be great for musicians who play traditional instruments.
As a pianist, I'd love to have sheet music that I can advance to the next page with a simple touch of the screen. Turning physical pages doesn't take long, but it's noticeable when the time spent is time you're not playing. I've grown accustomed to memorizing the beginnings of pages up until a point where one hand is unused, but some pieces don't have those breaks and that only works for pieces I've played a few times. If I could speed the page-turning process, I might not have to worry about any of that. If an app comes out that can handle repeats, codas and such, I'll probably end up buying an iPad for that purpose alone.
Also, the ability to bring my entire collection of sheet music everywhere I go would be awesome.
Rather than legislate people's behavior, which invariably will lead to spotty enforcement and is unlikely to have a significant impact, we should be legislating the features of new vehicles. It's much easier to ensure that every vehicle sold in this country has a built-in hands-free interface, either using voice recognition or buttons on the steering wheel. We'd also want to include provisions that all cell phones are compliant, which would mean next to nothing today (since pretty much every cell phone that's currently sold supports Bluetooth) but would ensure that phones would be backwards compatible with cars.
We've already created safety standards that the auto industry must comply with to sell vehicles, why not amend those standards to deal with the cell phone issue since it will make vehicles safer?
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to accompany a family member who was acting as a faculty chaperon on a business school trip to Japan to meet with various CEOs of companies there. My favorite visit, for numerous reasons, was to meet with the CEO of a 500-year-old, family-run, sake brewer. During the Q&A, the MBA students kept asking variations of the same question about how he was planning to grow the business. They'd ask about international expansion plans or marketing campaigns inside Japan and kept utterly failing to comprehend the response he gave.
What he said basically boiled down to, "I'm happy running my family business the way my ancestors have done for the past 500 years. The company makes enough money that my family and my employees' families can live comfortably. Beyond that, my only concern is making the best sake I can."
It was amazing to see how blinded they were by capitalist propaganda to the point that they couldn't understand why someone would be happy trying to be the best husband, father and craftsman he could be without regard for becoming as wealthy as possible.
The memory comparison tests were flawed enough to keep me from taking any of their results seriously. While there was very little mention of how memory usage was determined, what little there was indicated that he used the task manager and, for Chrome, added up the totals for each Chrome process.
This is a well covered mistake that has been pointed out since the first tests that showed Chrome being a memory hog. And while I won't get into it, the simplistic method the review seemed to use shows a complete and utter lack of understanding of the concept of shared memory. So many people have made this mistake that the Chrome developers even created a page you can load in Chrome that will show you an accurate total of the memory used not only in Chrome but in any other browser you have running. But I would have expected someone working for a technical publication who's about to publish an article partly on the subject to do the limited research necessary to learn why such a simplistic measuring tool such as the task manager is completely unsuitable for tests like the ones they performed.
Suffice it to say if the memory usage comparison was as naive as it appears to be, I've got very little confidence in any other metrics they gathered or any conclusions they reached.