This is where not understanding science makes everything wonky. The major problems with Newtonian physics is domain and history. In the later, we observe nature and sometimes see energy moving through a medium and call that a wave. We see object that we can hold an call that mass. Our experience then tells us that some things are waves and some things are mass. It is like an ancient person seeing a piece of wood catch on fire and saying that the fire was in the wood. Current experiments do support such a view, and in as much as Newton assumed that these were separate domains, the theory is wrong even if try to retcon it.

The second issue is domain. At the time of newton nothing moved very fast, so no one apparently thought to 'for slow moving objects' to the theory. Therefore there was no limit to how fast things could go. Einstien added the limit to how fast things could go, making Newtonian mechanics a good approximation for slow moving objects, but still incorrect overall. As Newton had no concept of the speed of light as a limiting factor, and separated the concept of waves and matter, there again is no reasonable basis to retcon classical mechanics.

It is interesting that people fixate on relativity. Like any other modern theory it value is in what new phenomena is can predict that can then be verified. I am somewhat part of the class of physics people that rolls my eyes when people start taking about how great Einstein is and feel justified because after all, when they gave him the noble prize for the photoelectric effect, which was a clever experiment but proved nothing, they also included a grave insult by calling what he did epistemology, and after all it only indicated that the Photon might not be just a particle or a wave. I believe it was the Michaelson-Morley experiment did a much better job of leading us to wave-particle duality, along with the work of Max Plank.

In any case, Newton also left us with another problem. The mathematical distinction between gravitational and inertial mass. These two were never well connected even though they appeared to be the same thing. Einstein kind of circumvented the whole thing with his geometry interpretation. Again, Newton is correct in the interpretation.

I think where the teaching of Relativity fails is that it focuses too much on trains, rulers, and clock because those were things that existed in 1900 and we like to think that history will make things more concrete and acceptable to the student. But arguably Relativity is about whether it makes a difference if you are moving past the magnet or if the magnet is moving past you. Is a deeper concept, but maybe we should try to teach the deep concept instead of just focusing on the mathematical manipulations.

I think it will make the game very exciting. Seeing chairs thrown every time the refs makes a controversial call will maximize attendance.

I know this is a joke, but seriously I think our houses are much more efficient that it used to be. I have no idea how much an old tube TV cost to run, but the new 40" tvs are rated at about $10 a year. Likewise, running the mechanical devices for tapes, DVD, CDs had to be costly, they all got realy hot, while a Tivo, if you ran all 8 tuners 24 hours a day, probably cost less than $20 a year. Of course your MP3 player electricity cost is just noise, and most of no longer have amps pulling 100+ watts. Even my computer runs on a power supply that is less than 100 watts. You can get routers that use less than 10 watts. So really as we move to solid state we are going to increasingly see significant reduction in electricity usage, of course offset by more technology. We generate about 10 times as much electricity as we did in the 1950's, but that amount has not really grown for the past 10 years, as we have really moved to more efficient devices. The one thing that probably eats all the electricity is you cable box, especially if you have cable DVR.

I have a kindle. I am still trying to figure out how to use it efficiently. Except for the sunlight thing, I prefer to read on an iPad with kindle app. It is easier, for me, to navigate and keep track of things. I do not write on my books, but that is because it is easy for me to pick up a book and find the place where I remember what I am looking for. On a Kindle, this is impossible. If I do not highlight, I can find what I am looking for. So marking text serves a function on e-readers beyond a book. And so far the kindle sucks at that. And in navigation to new books and other things the kindle is horrible.

That said, the Kindle would be an excellent device if we would get away from the book motif. The kindle is not a book, and when someone figures out how reading on a tablet is different from reading a book, and puts those features together, that will be the kindle killer.

But honestly, what is going to let e-readers take off is lack of DRM. Right now the DRM mandated by publishers is allowing Amazon to control large parts of the market and reduces the incentive to innovate. I am not going to by a Apple iBook because the only thing I can read it on is an Apple product, while at least Amazon has readers for most products. I did buy songs from iTunes because I could play them anywhere. MS music was a little more restrictive so they failed.If publishers want e-book, and it far from clear that they do, but if they want Amazon to not control e-books, then the DRM has to go. That would provide an incentive for someone to create a kindle-killer.

If you think back 40-50, one of the primary criticism of Soviet Russia was that no one in that country did any real work. In industry you sat around all day playing chess, and the governement most spent it's time surveilling itself and everyone else. While this was an exaggeration, the point should be well taken. The purpose of a governement is to govern, and if too many resources are spent spying, if the stability is so strained that constant monitoring of citizens is required, then that nation-state is not going to survive very long. It is not only the expense, it is the waste of talent, the existence of meaningless jobs. This later is really death to a country. If young people know they need no real education because they can just chill in the military or hang out and drink vodka while spying on other people, why would they bother to gain real skills?

Android is still in it's infancy. I suspect the old version might be used because new version might require more horsepower, Android is not yet at the point where newer versions are irrelevant, especially since there is no way of knowing if the tablet can be upgraded to a more stable more secure version.

I have not used Prezi that much, but I do not that local software can be used to play the files offline. Some people find it good to create links. I generally use LaTex.

There are a couple of things going on here. First, there are plenty of places a K-12 teacher can go to create content for their class. Some of these resources are pay-for sites, some are free in limited use. For instance Prezi and Pollev can be used for most of what happens in a classroom. In addition, there is nothing stopping a K-12 teacher using something like Moodle to organize content using many different tools. This just insures that MS tools get used. There is nothing wrong with that, there are other sites out there that only use google tools.

Second, is the MOOC portion. To be honest, there is simply not a compelling case for this except in certain cases for K-12. We are not going to be setting 8 year old kids alone with a computer and expect them to learn. Maybe one day, but not with MS tools.

This initiative, however, will probably provide some value to MS and k-12 teachers. For the most part K-12 teachers know how use MS products. The presentations are in powerpoint, which is why they are generally useless, and the worksheets are in word, which is why they are ugly, and the one great part of MS Office, Excel, is so misused that even it does not survive the experience.However, these are the tools that teachers have and packaging them so that students can get experience learning on the computer is valuable.

Of selling books, often below their cost, and providing a secure system(Kindle DRM) for authors to sell e books. While there is certainly a downward pressure on the price of books due to Amazon, the reality is that authors probably sell a hell of lot more books because of Amazon. I do not see how a publisher can complain. After all, if Amazon is not providing a service, they are free to sell physical books through Barnes and Noble, for instance, as well as sell unencumbered e-books through any number of online sources. They can digitally mark each e-book for each customer, and litigate those that resell or otherwise pirate.

I happily go to O'Reilly and pay $40 for a physical and unencumbered PDF copy of a book. What publishers aren't doing is moving with market forces. The value of book is not what it used to be. The average American is not making what was the previous expectation. We are in a deflationary period. Amazon is under pressure to show a better return on investment. They do not have to sell products when the supplier wants excessive value. It is like a restaurant not selling Coca Cola products. SOme don't because Pepsi cuts a better deal.

Transportation is one thing, but another is security and integrity. Australia is a rock island, so it would not be hard to find a place to keep the material sealed, but it is basically a big island. That is going to be, to some degree increasingly under water. Not to mention that western Australia appears to have an increase in tropical cyclone activity over the past five years. Even if this is a cyclical thing and not a product of climate change, one might have to protect the material from the occasional few days of heavy rain, something that does not happen in Nevada.

Agreed, but the needed to do more work. For instance, they compared the Surface to a 13" Macbook Air because they could not get the specs down to an 11" Macbook Air. In fact the 12" Surface is about halfway between the Macbook Airs. The fact it leaves the 13" Macbook in the dust, as all the ad talk has said, is not that relevant.

More often than not, the choice of machine is going to depend on workflow. If you are MS products, then this machine is a good choice. If you are on Google Drive, then an Android tablet probably works best. My days often involves Emacs, LaTex, python, openoffice, and ocassionaly the Apple office suite, so a Macbook works well for me as the GUI interfaces to these are very well worked out.

The challenge for MS is to entice people who are not dedicated to the MS products to buy Surface so they become dedicated to the MS products, as Apple did with Macbook Air and Pro.

This is not going to do it. Corporate is not going to pay double for a surface and keyboard than for a laptop. The average person is not going to pay more for a surface than an 11" Macbook Air or an iPad or the knockoffs.

MS should have the cash and supply chain to build a tablet with keyboard for $600. This is something that people would buy and would put MS back in the spotlight. Of course at this price point, all the OEM people who complain vigorously. Which is the fundamental problem. Is MS a company that sells to consumers, or is it a company that sells to OEM. As long as it focuses on the later at the expense to the former, they will never have decent hardware at a good price.

I am not sure why people buy TV such as this. A good regular TV is under $400 and should last for 5-10 years. The streaming technology, however, is going to change every few years. So it you buy a Tivo, it will run about $300 a year, at which point you can buy another Tivo for $300 to get the new stuff, but not have to buy a new TV. A new roku, fire TV, Apple TV, whatever, can be bought every year for $100 to keep up with hardware changes. Granted, a smart TV is only going cost $100 more, but after a few years you either have to jettison the 'smart' part of buy a whole new TV.

When people tell me they have seen Star Wars(no episode number), and they are too young to have seen it originally in theaters, I ask if they have seen it on VHS. If the answer is no, then they have not seen Star Wars. That is because instead of leaving it as a static piece of culture, like Casablanca, Rocky Horror Picture Show, or Go, with all the warts and other defects, Lucas has managed and 'fixed' it to attract new audiences. Instead of letting the sequels get the new audiences, he very proactively retconned the films. And this is why Star Wars can't be saved. I am sure the new films will make a lot of money. I am sure that many will enjoy it. But unlike Star Trek, which may yet bounce back from Abrams sticky fingers, Star Wars does not have anything resembling such a solid base.

Suppose a EULA stated that as part of the website, the firm had the right, whenever they were in town, to stay at your house and borrow your car, and you would have to put in some hours working for them at the trade show, or doing door to door work, or making appoints with them, all for no pay. If you refuse, you will be taken to court for breech of contract, a civil matter.

Even though there is no specific constitutional case against this, it only says that the government cannot commandeer a citizens place unless in time of war, I am sure that if it made it to higher courts there might be a constitutional discussion. Which is to say that the constitution gives us rights, and those rights are sometime reflected in law, sometimes reflected in the absence of law. For instance, unlike the UK we can't be sued for saying bad things about a corporation. That is a right derived from the US Constitution.

Unfortunately many believe as the parent does that we only have very limited rights. This is why corporations feel comfortable about limited the average persons access to the courts. This is why we are afraid to speak our mind online when we get bad service or a bad product, when we have no problem doing the same thing in other public forums.

The private sector does not have special powers to destroy our right as humans and citizens. They cannot make us literal slaves just because we sign a contract. They should not be able to limit my speech or actions into perpetuity just because we make a single transaction. This is the problem with binding long term non compete agreements. As long as I agree to accept payment for my work, then I am subject to the reasonable restrictions of the person paying me. To say that until I die the person who used to pay me have total control over my actions is not reasonable.

A lot of this has to do with following instructions and the availability of expertise. When I was very young i had no problems running basic programs on the teletype. When I learned FORTRAN, yes the error messages were cryptic, but after a semester I could get it running. I could not manually link now to save my life, but back then it was no big deal to hook into the IMSL library. By the time I got to college, i could diagnose almost any common error just by looking at the message. Most of the time, if there were hundred error messages, for instance, it was because of mistype variables in the function call. I find that people mistake the reason we write 'hello world' programs. It is not to test the language, but to test the ability to compile, link, and run code on a platform. I remember well the first time my friends and I got an account on a Cray. It took us a day to figure out what to do. There was no one to call, as very few people have such expertise. Again, it is not just a matter of simple tools, but a critical mass of people who know how to use the tools and can help others. OTOH, one can make the tools as simple as possible, but it won't change the nature of people. That is, most people don't really have a good grasp of cause and effect. It is like people tailgating on the highway. We know that an accident will at some point occur, but people without such a concept of cause and effect do not. This is why I think programming is of such pedagogical value. It teaches students cause and effect. It teaches students that there are rules that if followed will lead to predictable results. Something like python can reduce the pain of compiling and running, but nothing can reduce the pain of trying to solve a problem if one thinks that rules are arbitrary.