While I can understand T-mob. in this case, they - and others as well - could just do what my mobile internet provider in Europe (not T-mob.) does: I got a data package with 10GB of monthly limit with all the constraints (e.g., no torrent use) for average use, but from midnight to 8:00am in the same package they give a separate 100GB monthly allowance without any restrictions at all (and at LTE speed). This way they can force the heavy users out of the more crowded intervals, and everyone can be happy. Oh, the best part, the whole thing costs only ~$20/month....

My view of university education (having an MSc, a separate BSc, and a PhD) has always been that up until MSc (or until BSc, that very much depends on the country and on the followed traditions of education) the point is to get a fairly diverse _introduction_ into as many related [to your main subject] topics as possible, from people who are somewhat knowledgeable in the area, with more deeper knowledge in a lower number of specific areas. Not to make you a jack-of-all-trades in CS for example, but to prepare you to know where to do and where to look and where to start if you'll require deeper knowledge in some other area of your field than the one in which you got deeper intro earlier. That, and survival, i.e., get you acquainted with an environment where you don't only have to learn and be good in one specific topic, but be able to quickly pick up superficial and sometimes deeper knowledge in a related field as well, and be able to produce some results in a short time period. Plus, add the networking possibilities, the opportunity to meet people and gather connections for your later professional life (if you get lucky). You don't get these if you get your degree by doing online courses and from libraries.

Given the above, I don't think longish courses are doomed, they have their places, but one has to have the ability to judge which ones do, retain them, and complement them with some others which have shorter periods and get you more diversified knowledge, which don't necessarily require face-to-face presence or on-site experience. They have to find the proper balance.

I wouldn't support to give total control in the hand of the students when preparing their courses and modules, since that might result in a too diverse graduate pool - some which have very narrow and deeper knowledge, and some who only have very shallow knowledge in several areas but none actually usable for anything. They simply don't have the necessary experience to be their own guides.

Hehh :) while I agree, I can't easily place my version in the list, so here it goes: I'd like it to not be bigger than a regular watch, to have looks closer to some jewelry than some nerdy toy thingy (i.e., no plastic, not rectangular), to be waterproof (at least to the extent as regular waterproof watches are), and the battery to last at least 24 hours straight (normally don't need that much, but I'm also thinking about long flights, e.g. LHR-SIN-SYD).

I don't even care if it's just a 'dumb' watch relaying every and each function and command to the phone and displaying notifications, don't need it to be any smarter than that, but until the above properties are met, I couldn't care less.

Yeah, rumors are above $200 [1] so good luck with that.

I've been wearing watches all my life, and no phone could change my habit of checking the time on my wrist. The first thing I'd expect from any watch (smart or not) is to last at least a semi-comfortable 4-6 weeks on a charge. I just want to use it more than I charge it, I don't think that's unfair to ask, and be able to go on extended trips without worrying that I won't be able to tell the freaking time.

Also, I'd never want a smartwatch that's dumb - i.e., it doesn't really do anything, it's just a clunky extension of your phone... thanks, but keep it.


[1] http://www.theverge.com/2014/5...

If it were an add-on, I'd have nothing against it. Do not integrate unnecessary crap into the browser, history has made it clear it's not going to end well.

"human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals," shouldn't be included when computing "science literacy."

Very roughly, IMHO, believing in someting based on available provable facts, data and information stands closer to science, and believing in something even without (or despite of) them stands closer to religion [*]. However, without definitive proof for the quoted statement, if only yes-no can be chosen one might answer 'no' even when not being a religious fanatic. Thus, I'd say not asking the question is a good compromise (vs. starting yet another religion-science debate).

That said, the above question could've been left to be part of the test, if formulated more correctly [i.e. scientifically, yes], e.g. including something like 'based on currently available scientific data and information, human beings, as we know them today, likely developed/originated from earlier species of animals' - or something similar, you hopefully you get my point.

"the modern Web does not incentivize quality"

No, people do. And it shows. Enough said.

If it's J.J. Abrams, then the central theme will be around time travel. Maybe Luke will become evil and travel back in time to kill himself. There you have it :P

"a novel 3:2 aspect ratio"

Yeah, it's so invigorating to see what novelties this new age of innovation in computing produces.

Next they will present the novel larger version of it, that you can put on your desk for viewing stuff.

"'problem' was on the list as well"

Well, as everyone knows, there are no problems, only challenges :))

Or a rather huge rock of salt. If lots of people are interested in a subject, create pages that link to pages dealing with it, tweet about it, post about it, etc, that will - or should, at least - create a change in ranking, regardless of it being about politicians, or snakes (oh, sorry, they just might be the same :P). Calling the changes in rankings that reflect people's interest - or lack of it - about a certain subject 'influencing' sounds to me very largely misinterpreted. Anyway, if some people can really be influenced by the rankings of a search engine, that's more a testament of those people's intellect or ignorance, than anything else. Plus, the numbers in the mentioned study, and how they were obtained, can't convince me of any 'science' behind them, let alone make me even consider their significance - if any. Especially this one: 'Biased search rankings also changed the extent to which participants indicated they trust the candidates' - which, to me at least, simply sounds crazy stupid.

I know sleep loss and/or sleeping for unregular length and time can lead to all kinds of problems, but since I can't even remember when I've slept more than 6 hours at a time, and I have to pull all-nighters from time to time, and I'm still alive and kicking, I have to say I believe that eating habits (type and quantity) and regular exercising can help a lot in balancing the scale. Of course, people having circulatory, blood pressure or heart problems might have a different story to tell.

They can demand all they want. What I demand is, that if a show is supposed to present scientific results about what we know about the universe at this point, then it should not feed religious issues into the topic. Make a different show, name it differently, and talk about religious issues all you want. But demanding all scientific publications (tv or not) also include all kinds of religious and creativist ideas as well is plainly idiotic. If you feel offended by that view, then at least you know how other people feel when you demand them to be fed religious issues everywhere they turn. And that comes from a person (yes, me) who has been regularly going to church since early childhood. Religion has its place, and I don't believe Cosmos is that. Neither is our children's biology class for that matter.

Do I agree? I've been using AStudio since the first preview came out after I/O, and after using it for 5 minutes it became clear to me that I'll never go back to frustrate myself with eclipse, ever. I don't mean to offend to good people who develop eclipse, but the damn thing gave me so many headaches over the time I had to use it, that dropping it felt like recovering from a long illness, honestly. Of course, there are lots of people who like it, obviously I'm not one of them. Regarding AStudio, if you didn't try it up to now, I think it's time, since it really matured from its first preview release, and while there can be some big changes between updates causing some minor trouble, it's already pretty good, and I think it's pretty clear it'll be the best IDE for android development.

It'll take you some time to switch from eclipse though, getting used to doing things a bit differently, so don't plan to do it overnight. First I kept using eclipse for existing projects, and using AS for new ones, then at some point I moved everything to AS and never looked back.

"This is good news for replicating experiments, building on past results, and science in general."

It is, unless the data can't be made "publicly available, without restriction" (very important emph. added), in which case you can't publish there. Yes, there are others, but demanding dropping all restrictions in all cases is simply an approach blind to reality. Also, if they demand so, they must provide free storage, which in some cases could range to multiple gb of data - and you won't want to pay for indefinite storage of large datasets, for certain.

Also, I wish to repeat my hatred towards the kind of open access publication methods most (if not all) major sci outlets use, namely charging the author many thousands of USD/EUR for publication, costs which most grants don't cover (e.g. my institute mandates open access publications, but of course they don't provide the financial resources to do so). This in turn shifts the focus, since now it's in the best interest of a publisher to accept as many as they can (keep the money flowing), instead of accepting the best ones and get the money from interested readers (and yes, if it's good, they come). Of course politician-scientists like the publicity they get from folks for trying to 'set science free'. I just wish they'd do a bit more thinking, they are scientists after all (or so they claim to be).