Prefab means they can be deployed relatively quickly. You can prefab on land, but you still need to lay foundations... and these wouldn't be permanent; when you wanted them gone, they'd pack it up and remove it, leaving no trace.
The design idea is to keep them close to renewable (hydroelectric, maybe wave generated) power sources.
Right... and they should pay a programmer to do it. I'm not an accountant, but one of my first paid gigs was writing a customized amortization program for an accountant. That's how it works. If these companies want to waste "untold millions of days of productivity" because they won't pay a few people who can do it, then it's on them.
I disagree... knowing a little bit of the basics of how to use a computer is great, but "understanding how computers work" is not that great. Most people drive just fine without knowing how their cars work as long as they know to take it in for routine maintenance. Could they get along better if they were more knowledgeable? Sure, but you can say that about everything.
Something that should be obvious is that slashdot is going to be slanted towards the notion that people should be more knowledgeable about computers. Accountants think people should spend more time on their budgeting and investing and financial planning. Mechanics think people ought to know more about how to fix their cars. Fitness gurus think people should spend several hours a day working out. There's simply not enough time for everybody to be proficient at everything, at some point we need to leave it up to other people to do those things so that we can do what we do.
It's often cheaper to by pre-processed crap; not only that, but it's faster and more convenient.
Even things that aren't necessarily all that bad (but still healthier if you made them yourself)... Consumer Reports noted that supermarket rotisserie chickens are often loss-leaders to get people into the store. A whole, prepared chicken with spices and already cooked can cost the same, or even less, than a frozen chicken.
But by using low quality cuts of meats and chickens, and amortizing the costs of other ingredients (spices and so forth), it's cheaper to buy a frozen microwave burrito than it is to make your own - especially if you already don't often cook and have the basics in your kitchen.
Note that I'm not arguing that it makes a good reason to buy the pre-processed crap. Note that I did include the word "crap." But for a lot of people, especially lower income people, it's far too enticing.
Agreed... with this, and your responses to the snarky anonymous cowards. Most kids are already familiar with using computers, as it seems to be a part of most schools curriculum, and we don't need to spend more tax dollars on that given that the likes of MS, Apple, and Dell happily give away or heavily discount stuff to schools (expecting it will benefit them in the long run).
Better cooking classes would do a lot more for the health of the U.S. than CS classes will do for the competitiveness of the U.S.. People that want to program learn to program, they don't need incentive. If they need incentive, they'll never be good programmers anyway. That doesn't mean I don't think CS is a great career choice, it just think that it's not for everyone, and it won't benefit most people in the way that other core classes do.
Same here - took home ec. (although, ironically, we didn't do any actual economics, no financing or budgeting); cooking and sewing. The year before we did wood working, plastics (yes, we designed and molded some simple stuff) and photography. I live in the south now, my kids haven't taken any of those things.
While I support the general idea of getting everybody familiar with computers, it's again one of those programs that should be an elective, and not forced on anybody. I might agree that a general computer knowledge class is important - but the kids all do that anyway through their normal coursework these days; they all seem to use computers and word processors and so forth. Programming is not for everyone. Basic math is, in ways kids don't understand until they grow up and see how a cashier can't make change when the computerized cash register is down. Basic science is, history, social studies... there's a reason these are all core subjects, even if you learn stuff you never need - you tend to realize how useful a lot of the stuff you learned actually is.
The kids interested in technical fields will naturally gravitate to CS as elective courses, in the same way that artists took art electives in school, and people doing more blue collar type work gravitated towards shop and auto repair classes. Why force it?
She writes a vague blog post that doesn't give a single actual example of a tweet that someone should be banned for, and it makes a slashdot headline... should we thank the new owners? How about this: most of that kind of content is subjective, which means twitter can do whatever it wants. For the record, I like neither twitter nor Trump, but this kind of whining, no matter which side it comes from, is very unbecoming.
Agreed... I guess I'll go read TFA to see what these egregious offenses were, because I doubt he's being overtly racist or inciting anyone to violence, no matter how much I dislike him.
But this is still the opposite problem with an internet provider throttling bandwidth to content providers that don't pay an extra fee, and as such, it's not really a problem. If I'm paying comcast and I want to watch netflix, netflix shouldn't have to pay because I am comcast's customer and I'm already paying for the bandwidth - that's why it should be illegal to charge content providers. With T-Mobile, I'm the customer and I'm choosing to participate in this program that benefits me, the content provider, and the service provider. As the customer, I'M in control, and if I don't like the reduced bandwidth video, I can opt out entirely.
Yes - it reduces the bandwidth flowing over their networks; t-mobile can get a lot of benefit from that. But being that it's optional AND potentially beneficial to the consumer, then so what?
I don't understand the use of the word "throttle" here. I know what you're trying to say, but no provider's bandwidth is being throttled - you just don't NEED as much bandwidth anymore, which actually helps things flow more freely over the network.
If they'd charge you for the bandwidth from one site, they can't just give you the same bandwidth for free and pretend that's different... they could use that to put competitors out of business and then charge through the nose.
But T-Mobile isn't competing with the content providers. That's the whole problem with Comcast and AT&T and the other cable companies - they were offering their own streaming services and so they were competing with content only providers.
Moreover, what you're missing is they are NOT giving you the same bandwidth for free. For the content providers that sign up, they are actually modifying the streaming video and giving you LESS bandwidth so that A) it doesn't clog up their network, so that B) you're far less likely to have playback issues because you're using a fraction of the bandwidth, and if that affects the quality then C) you can opt out or D) live with it for the sake of not having it counted against your LTE limit.
So here's a program that offers options, it's opt-out-able, there's no conflict of interest since t-mobile is not competing against the content providers, they're giving you (virtually unnoticeable) reduced quality in exchange for not counting it against your bandwidth and, if you're not happy about it, you can opt out. I really don't see what the problem is.
I get what you're saying, but it's still not really comparable. First of all, t-mobile isn't pushing their own content in direct competition with other content providers. Second, they are not charging anybody any extra to get more bandwidth... nobody is paying any extra money to t-mobile, all they are doing is altering bandwidth requirements for video streams coming from content providers who have joined the program. In essence, those companies are actually now using less bandwidth on the data provider's network - and they're happy about it... and the program is open to any content provider that wants to join.
magine Comcast and Time Warner metering Netflix to 1 GB/month while letting you use their own video services without metering.
That is almost exactly opposite what's going on - T-Mobile is actually allowing companies like Netflix to be used without metering, and they're not restricting anybody else, so if you have "X" gigabytes a month of LTE, you can still use it any way you want, and nobody is throttled or restricted to extort some extra payment.... AND you can continue to use 2G after you've used all your LTE - and if you have a decent plan, that becomes unlikely because so many providers are doing this program that the majority of your high use data doesn't count against you at all.
I've had a similar experience... I ran a speed test app, and while at home on my wifi network, I got the maximum speed comcast was giving me, between 25 and 30mbs, with T-Mobile - admittedly near a tower, I was getting 75.
Yes... if I by "fuck up" you mean they streamline it so that it doesn't stutter and pause because you're trying to watch something at 8x the resolution that you could possibly need on your phone, then sure, they fuck it up... and you can disable it if you prefer.
I have T-Mobile, and it sounds like you don't even understand the problem. I get 6GB a month. If I watch anything from list of providers supported with binge on, it counts as ZERO bandwidth that I've paid for. Why exactly do you think I should complain about not having netflix counted against my data?
Thanks. Only the non-anonymous coward understands what I was saying. You can take 30 to 45 minutes - less than a full class period, to give a brief overview of what's happening behind the scenes. If you explain in simplified terms what happens when you program "A=1; B=2, C=A+B," you're off to a better start then handing someone an already implemented class that reads in an image file and resizes it, and then tell the students to modify the code to make a mirror of the image.... by using the built in "mirror" function that's already given in the super high level image library that doesn't come with the language. But hey, kids these days need pictures.
I'm not asking to teach how to program assembly before another language, just a very high level analogy of memory (I've seen it as a mailbox or cubby hole analogy), and how the instruction pointer moves from one to another, and I'm not going to do the whole thing here. It would be less than one 45 minute class to describe what I'm talking about; it's actually fairly simple (the gist of it), and would do worlds of good for students to understand what they're doing and what happens when you say "A=1, B=2, C=A+B."
... except that, in my son's case (high school programming classes that included scratch, as well as Java and Python), they skip over the concepts and don't really understand the bigger picture. The teacher gives them a class and asks them to modify it, but they don't understand why it's a class and not just some functions. I think, in the modern era of "visual" languages and IDEs that do the bulk of the work for you, they don't learn.
With all due respect to Dijkstra, that's a load of crap. I'm from the generation of programmers that learned basic on their Commodores, Tis, and Ataris... The difference may be that I was motivated to learn on my own, but there's a whole generation of older, very well established and learned programmers out there from my age group that started with BASIC. And make fun of BASIC all you want, but I've seen Visual Basic, and while it's not my choice, it's a workable object oriented language that I've seen some pretty complicated and impressive programs written in.
Yes... and I think it's important that they understand why. A beginning programming course might do well to teach the basics of what's going on in the computer itself, how code - no matter which language - is changed to machine instructions, and talk about the instruction pointer, simple memory allocation (like what happens when you declare a variable).
My son takes these crap programming courses in high school, and while it included Java (and scratch, and even python), and while he understood some of what the code he was writing did, he didn't understand that the complicated stuff was being handled by some "magic" libraries the teacher gave them, or what was provided in the IDE they were given. At the end of the day, using the programming environment he was given, he could compile a Java program to byte code and run it... but it didn't generate jar files and, even if it did, he could send it to me and it wouldn't work on my computer because I didn't have all the "magic" libraries that actually did all the work.
I actually wouldn't have a problem with that if the intent was to give them an understanding of programming concepts like structures or classes and why they are useful, but no, even though he gets great grades, he couldn't explain why he was creating classes in Java. He new he could use System.out.println(), but didn't really know what it was - he just knew that was the statement to print something.
Slashdot Mirror
Right... and they should pay a programmer to do it. I'm not an accountant, but one of my first paid gigs was writing a customized amortization program for an accountant. That's how it works. If these companies want to waste "untold millions of days of productivity" because they won't pay a few people who can do it, then it's on them.
I disagree... knowing a little bit of the basics of how to use a computer is great, but "understanding how computers work" is not that great. Most people drive just fine without knowing how their cars work as long as they know to take it in for routine maintenance. Could they get along better if they were more knowledgeable? Sure, but you can say that about everything.
Something that should be obvious is that slashdot is going to be slanted towards the notion that people should be more knowledgeable about computers. Accountants think people should spend more time on their budgeting and investing and financial planning. Mechanics think people ought to know more about how to fix their cars. Fitness gurus think people should spend several hours a day working out. There's simply not enough time for everybody to be proficient at everything, at some point we need to leave it up to other people to do those things so that we can do what we do.
It's often cheaper to by pre-processed crap; not only that, but it's faster and more convenient.
Even things that aren't necessarily all that bad (but still healthier if you made them yourself)... Consumer Reports noted that supermarket rotisserie chickens are often loss-leaders to get people into the store. A whole, prepared chicken with spices and already cooked can cost the same, or even less, than a frozen chicken.
But by using low quality cuts of meats and chickens, and amortizing the costs of other ingredients (spices and so forth), it's cheaper to buy a frozen microwave burrito than it is to make your own - especially if you already don't often cook and have the basics in your kitchen.
Note that I'm not arguing that it makes a good reason to buy the pre-processed crap. Note that I did include the word "crap." But for a lot of people, especially lower income people, it's far too enticing.
Agreed... with this, and your responses to the snarky anonymous cowards. Most kids are already familiar with using computers, as it seems to be a part of most schools curriculum, and we don't need to spend more tax dollars on that given that the likes of MS, Apple, and Dell happily give away or heavily discount stuff to schools (expecting it will benefit them in the long run).
Better cooking classes would do a lot more for the health of the U.S. than CS classes will do for the competitiveness of the U.S.. People that want to program learn to program, they don't need incentive. If they need incentive, they'll never be good programmers anyway. That doesn't mean I don't think CS is a great career choice, it just think that it's not for everyone, and it won't benefit most people in the way that other core classes do.
Same here - took home ec. (although, ironically, we didn't do any actual economics, no financing or budgeting); cooking and sewing. The year before we did wood working, plastics (yes, we designed and molded some simple stuff) and photography. I live in the south now, my kids haven't taken any of those things.
While I support the general idea of getting everybody familiar with computers, it's again one of those programs that should be an elective, and not forced on anybody. I might agree that a general computer knowledge class is important - but the kids all do that anyway through their normal coursework these days; they all seem to use computers and word processors and so forth. Programming is not for everyone. Basic math is, in ways kids don't understand until they grow up and see how a cashier can't make change when the computerized cash register is down. Basic science is, history, social studies... there's a reason these are all core subjects, even if you learn stuff you never need - you tend to realize how useful a lot of the stuff you learned actually is.
The kids interested in technical fields will naturally gravitate to CS as elective courses, in the same way that artists took art electives in school, and people doing more blue collar type work gravitated towards shop and auto repair classes. Why force it?
A blog post from a left wing troll?
Without a single, actual example of why Trump's account should be banned.
She writes a vague blog post that doesn't give a single actual example of a tweet that someone should be banned for, and it makes a slashdot headline... should we thank the new owners? How about this: most of that kind of content is subjective, which means twitter can do whatever it wants. For the record, I like neither twitter nor Trump, but this kind of whining, no matter which side it comes from, is very unbecoming.
Agreed... I guess I'll go read TFA to see what these egregious offenses were, because I doubt he's being overtly racist or inciting anyone to violence, no matter how much I dislike him.
But this is still the opposite problem with an internet provider throttling bandwidth to content providers that don't pay an extra fee, and as such, it's not really a problem. If I'm paying comcast and I want to watch netflix, netflix shouldn't have to pay because I am comcast's customer and I'm already paying for the bandwidth - that's why it should be illegal to charge content providers. With T-Mobile, I'm the customer and I'm choosing to participate in this program that benefits me, the content provider, and the service provider. As the customer, I'M in control, and if I don't like the reduced bandwidth video, I can opt out entirely.
I agree.
Yes - it reduces the bandwidth flowing over their networks; t-mobile can get a lot of benefit from that. But being that it's optional AND potentially beneficial to the consumer, then so what?
I don't understand the use of the word "throttle" here. I know what you're trying to say, but no provider's bandwidth is being throttled - you just don't NEED as much bandwidth anymore, which actually helps things flow more freely over the network.
But T-Mobile isn't competing with the content providers. That's the whole problem with Comcast and AT&T and the other cable companies - they were offering their own streaming services and so they were competing with content only providers.
Moreover, what you're missing is they are NOT giving you the same bandwidth for free. For the content providers that sign up, they are actually modifying the streaming video and giving you LESS bandwidth so that A) it doesn't clog up their network, so that B) you're far less likely to have playback issues because you're using a fraction of the bandwidth, and if that affects the quality then C) you can opt out or D) live with it for the sake of not having it counted against your LTE limit.
So here's a program that offers options, it's opt-out-able, there's no conflict of interest since t-mobile is not competing against the content providers, they're giving you (virtually unnoticeable) reduced quality in exchange for not counting it against your bandwidth and, if you're not happy about it, you can opt out. I really don't see what the problem is.
I get what you're saying, but it's still not really comparable. First of all, t-mobile isn't pushing their own content in direct competition with other content providers. Second, they are not charging anybody any extra to get more bandwidth... nobody is paying any extra money to t-mobile, all they are doing is altering bandwidth requirements for video streams coming from content providers who have joined the program. In essence, those companies are actually now using less bandwidth on the data provider's network - and they're happy about it... and the program is open to any content provider that wants to join.
magine Comcast and Time Warner metering Netflix to 1 GB/month while letting you use their own video services without metering.
That is almost exactly opposite what's going on - T-Mobile is actually allowing companies like Netflix to be used without metering, and they're not restricting anybody else, so if you have "X" gigabytes a month of LTE, you can still use it any way you want, and nobody is throttled or restricted to extort some extra payment.... AND you can continue to use 2G after you've used all your LTE - and if you have a decent plan, that becomes unlikely because so many providers are doing this program that the majority of your high use data doesn't count against you at all.
I was assuming he used that expression to mean it counts for zero bytes against your LTE limit.
I've had a similar experience... I ran a speed test app, and while at home on my wifi network, I got the maximum speed comcast was giving me, between 25 and 30mbs, with T-Mobile - admittedly near a tower, I was getting 75.
Yes... if I by "fuck up" you mean they streamline it so that it doesn't stutter and pause because you're trying to watch something at 8x the resolution that you could possibly need on your phone, then sure, they fuck it up... and you can disable it if you prefer.
I have T-Mobile, and it sounds like you don't even understand the problem. I get 6GB a month. If I watch anything from list of providers supported with binge on, it counts as ZERO bandwidth that I've paid for. Why exactly do you think I should complain about not having netflix counted against my data?
Thanks. Only the non-anonymous coward understands what I was saying. You can take 30 to 45 minutes - less than a full class period, to give a brief overview of what's happening behind the scenes. If you explain in simplified terms what happens when you program "A=1; B=2, C=A+B," you're off to a better start then handing someone an already implemented class that reads in an image file and resizes it, and then tell the students to modify the code to make a mirror of the image.... by using the built in "mirror" function that's already given in the super high level image library that doesn't come with the language. But hey, kids these days need pictures.
I'm not asking to teach how to program assembly before another language, just a very high level analogy of memory (I've seen it as a mailbox or cubby hole analogy), and how the instruction pointer moves from one to another, and I'm not going to do the whole thing here. It would be less than one 45 minute class to describe what I'm talking about; it's actually fairly simple (the gist of it), and would do worlds of good for students to understand what they're doing and what happens when you say "A=1, B=2, C=A+B."
... except that, in my son's case (high school programming classes that included scratch, as well as Java and Python), they skip over the concepts and don't really understand the bigger picture. The teacher gives them a class and asks them to modify it, but they don't understand why it's a class and not just some functions. I think, in the modern era of "visual" languages and IDEs that do the bulk of the work for you, they don't learn.
With all due respect to Dijkstra, that's a load of crap. I'm from the generation of programmers that learned basic on their Commodores, Tis, and Ataris... The difference may be that I was motivated to learn on my own, but there's a whole generation of older, very well established and learned programmers out there from my age group that started with BASIC. And make fun of BASIC all you want, but I've seen Visual Basic, and while it's not my choice, it's a workable object oriented language that I've seen some pretty complicated and impressive programs written in.
Yes... and I think it's important that they understand why. A beginning programming course might do well to teach the basics of what's going on in the computer itself, how code - no matter which language - is changed to machine instructions, and talk about the instruction pointer, simple memory allocation (like what happens when you declare a variable).
My son takes these crap programming courses in high school, and while it included Java (and scratch, and even python), and while he understood some of what the code he was writing did, he didn't understand that the complicated stuff was being handled by some "magic" libraries the teacher gave them, or what was provided in the IDE they were given. At the end of the day, using the programming environment he was given, he could compile a Java program to byte code and run it... but it didn't generate jar files and, even if it did, he could send it to me and it wouldn't work on my computer because I didn't have all the "magic" libraries that actually did all the work.
I actually wouldn't have a problem with that if the intent was to give them an understanding of programming concepts like structures or classes and why they are useful, but no, even though he gets great grades, he couldn't explain why he was creating classes in Java. He new he could use System.out.println(), but didn't really know what it was - he just knew that was the statement to print something.
Of course that's what I meant - you opt out, you cannot make any claims on it. Of course.