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.

First, when a kid is in the roll of the student, there is not much expectation of privacy. There is an limitation to those who are allowed to invade the privacy, but it is not like a 15 year old kid who surfs p0rn can complain to his parents of the school that they violated his privacy by spying on him, even if he bought the phone and pays the bill.

This is obviously an exaggeration, but the point is the same. If a student is working on an assignment, she is always observed to make sure for on task behavior, or to make sure the process is correct. The computer is no different. One problem with computer as a educator is that many students don't really know how to use it as tool. They only know how to use it as game. It is the difference between a pencil as a tool to complete a worksheet, or a pencil as toy to throw or use to play sword fighting. Both are legitimate uses of a pencil, in the proper circumstances, and kids need to be taught to use it as the former for typical educational purposes.

So depending on how the data is used the age of the student, it is perfectly reasonable, even beneficial, for software to be monitoring the students behavior. The act of monitoring, just like in the classroom, can positively effect the students behavior. Likewise, constantly monitoring the use and effectiveness of the material is called formative assessment, which is not only beneficial but also required if you are going to give a student the unique educational experience that everyone seems to be clamoring for.

So this is not necessarily like Disney tracking every move of the six year old children. If this is a legitimate educational service, and they violate the privacy of students, even if the students are over 13 years old(and Disney is free to do whatever they want with 13 year old children), they are in violation of federal laws protecting the privacy of students. This does not mean they cannot collect data, it just means they are limited in how they can use it, and who can see it.

Obviously. I have few issues with my machines that are remotely managed, and appreciate the ease that policies can be managed. However, it is not a perfect system and did recently have a machine go down because an error occurred during such an update. Any machine I have that is managed this way either is not used for real work, or is backed up constantly under the assumption that it will be unusable at any minute.

merchants from worries of fraudulent chargebacks,

What keeps merchants from excessive fraudulent chargebacks is providing a clearly defined product or service, with a clearly defined return policy, and good customer service.

Bitpay is a US company and as such is under US laws. You can bet that at some point someone will spoof a payment through bitpay at a clueless retailer, sue Bitpay, and Bitpay will sue the retailer. It could even be a fraudulent suit, but if the security measures are not there to insure that bitcoins are secure, and accounts are not accidentally wiped out, lawsuits will happen. And we have seen with Mt Gox that even though bitcoins are supposed to be decentralized, it is still subject to a single point of failure.

Remember when Paypal promised the same thing. A secure way to pay an untrusted party for goods and services, better than a credit card? Remember how Paypal prevented access to seller accounts if the buyer complained? Did not seem so good of a deal then, did it?

pretty much. Or hire more gay men. Or just accept the misogynistic nature of places like this in the northwest and provide furnished apartments.

I would add an old book, Composite/Structured design. It is an old idea, but I have seen cases where people still have learned to keep data structures out of the code that operates on those data structures. If one is using a heavily OO development tool, this happens automatically. Of course, those who use such tool therefore never learn how to design so that the two are kept apart purposefully.

Also if you are a C++ program, the original K&R C book is a good read of how to keep things simple.

Both of these are short books, with a high ROI.

It is interesting that so many call this 'pseudo science.' Black holes fell out equations, and we really don't know if black holes exist or are at the center of galaxies. All we know is that if we assume black holes exists and are described as the math predicts, many things do fall into place consistent with these predictions.

But black holes have issues and have caused many more questions than answered. Some observations are consistent with the mathematics, but the math leads to some confusing conclusions. Other things come out of the math, and the only reason we dismiss them is that data is not consistent with the predictions. If there is data consistent with predictions, then such things at least deserve the consideration that black holes have received.

Exactly. There are large potions of reasonably high density places in the US that has no internet choice. The current system has resulted in slow expensive internet because of lack of competition.

What would happen is if the lines were developed separately from the service is that there would be greater incentive to lay more fiber because it could then be sold to firms that were able to develop more flexible packages that would attract more customers. The current incumbents are limited in what they can do. For instance if they have a limited plan, everyone complains that they are throttling. But an independent could push a limited plan as their way of creating a competitive plan.

What the incumbents are afraid of is that third parties, not Google becuase they only go to saturated markets, will start laying fiber and selling access.

Mobile wallets have not provided inconvenience for consumers. In most of these case where widespread adoption has not occurred it is because the entrepreneurs are trying to get the consumer to adjust to their business model instead of working a business model that suites consumers needs. We say this a lot in the late 90's when companies would create web sites that just mimicked the corporate org diagram. Unless you were part of the organization, there was no way to figure out where anything was. Bad web developers still do this.

There are specific examples the implementation fails. For instance Starbucks has a good implementation, but many Starbucks does not accept the card. Why am I going to have something that is useless. It also by default wants to annoy you every time you go by a Starbucks. We see the same thing with CVS. It is nontrivial to pull up the card, and easier just to type in a phone number.

Most of the digital wallet is just gather information on consumers without providing value in return. Like a grocery store loyalty card. Sure, some are going to use it. Some are going to shop at the store because of perceived value. But many are going to the store that just provides simple service. Walmart does not have a loyalty card.

It will not be horrible. Even at 12 feet the US will not lose much. Except that in the US for much of NYC, and some parts of New Jersey that provide food and foodstuffs. And Miami and much of Florida. All the shipping and refining on the Gulf Coast including BASF and Dow plants. Not to mention Sacramento and other bits of California. And I would not care but people who live in the luxury homes in the US are so entitled. Look at when we asked them to pay more for flood insurance. They said, no thank you, we will enjoy out governement handout, if we buy insurance at all. Because we know that the government will increase the deficiet so we can rebuild our luxury homes at taxpayer expense. So it is likely to bankrupt the US in the long run because as the flooding becomes more severe, instead of condemning the land and moving people elsewhere, we will just pay them over and over again for the privileged of having them live in a flood zone. Also, our favorite guy living in Palm Beach won't even have a home. I am sure he will file a claim for free money. Might even have to move a place where he has to pay taxes.

Following the pings was a good method. The assumption made, as far as I can tell, was that there was no change in the flight path after the last ping was received. So we do not know that the methodology was wrong. In this the 'correctness' of the methodology would not be reproducibility, but success in locating the plan. So, on this case it appears the method may be 'not correct' but that is not necessarily because the analysis is invalid, but because the assumptions are incorrect. If a new analysis on the data can be done, and that analysis locates the plan, then we will have a test of validity. Otherwise we don't know. One assumption we can make with some small level of confidence is that someone was deliberately diverted the plan. It is likely reasonable to assume that other attempted to take back control of the plane, and it went down underacted long before fuel ran out. This may have happened along the extrapolated flight path, or anywhere in the indian ocean. I think a land crash of the plane would have been reported by now. A control landing would have resulted in whatever action those who commandeered the plan were intending. It is all guess work and assumption, and one starts with simplest model adding complications as needed.