Comment Parenting Answers (Score 1) 191
And how many reliable answers you will find on that subject...
And how many reliable answers you will find on that subject...
I think auctioning things off would be a huge mistake. Better to use prizes to encourage competition:
NASA would have a certain amount of dollars to put up as prizes, and would be in charge of the objectives, just not how they were accomplished.
The prizes could be substantial and would still be less than the $90 billion NASA will squander attempting to build the Ares V Rocket. The current scheme simply pays out money without requiring results. It also stifles competition by awarding the contract to a single player, the company with the best connections or spin gets the contract. The prize method would reward the fittest competitor that could actually deliver. That would encourage many more to attempt to the actual feat. At the end of the prize-winning phrase one company has a huge amount of technology that was paid for by the prize leaving lots to profit from.
The prizes also encourage frugality; people are a lot less likely waste their money than they are the governments'. And since there is a fixed dollar value at the end, there is no incentive to simply run on with contract overruns because we didn't get the job done. Those that play that game go bankrupt in the prize scenario.
Yes, this would require speculation and investment by private industry. But SpaceX has already proven that the job can be done and done efficiently, and it's probably a lot safer than investing in home mortgages for overpriced property was under capable purchasers. Even if you lost this bet, you'd have something to show for it at the end in the form of patents, equipment, and/or capability. Coming in second place would only mean you lost prize, not the farm (mortgages?).
Have you ever considered the fact that Microsoft has a vested interest in not allowing the browser to become the central focus of the OS. Originally Microsoft brought you active desktop which made the desktop act like a web page and discovered that Google and others could deliver a compelling experience simply within the browser. Then active desktop faded away and IE 6 went through several years without being updated, possibly to hinder this ability. This meant that the web platform could not compete with the desktop applications, which during that same time underwent a massive revision in the form of ribbons and new interaction methods. And are of course the largest money maker for Microsoft.
The Google plug-in essentially takes this path away from Microsoft because even if they stopped updating the browser, failed to enhance it to keep pace with all the others, the plug-in can be updated and the war for the desktop continues and enters a slightly more active phase.
At this point in the game, it's too late for Microsoft to undo this new avenue. Google docs exist and are viable method for doing a fair number of tasks. The Fidelity swap of using a browser-based app instead of the thick client app in many cases is no longer so significant as to discount the web app.
Because of this we see IE7 and IE8 trying to recapture what was once a monumental market share that threatened the core moneymaking product of the desktop OS and applications. Kind of funny when you think about the fact that Microsoft used free software to bankrupt Netscape and is now under threat from other free software. And the other free software that's available doesn't require installation, just decent web browser. My guess is that they did see this one coming and managed to stall it using IE 6 without enhancements, until they had a more mature web platform to deliver their own Web applications.
Yes, teachers are out of date. We know for a fact now, with 50 years of in the field research that acceleration of students by subject or even by whole grades will likely be GOOD for the student, yet most teachers and admins continue to refuse to use the practice. The Iowa Acceleration Scale is in its 3rd edition and yet almost none of the teachers in my kids' school have even heard of it.
We know more about how the brain works, but have we applied it to the classroom, no, because "Those who can, DO, those who can't, TEACH, and those that can't teach, WRITE (textbooks)"
It is time to fix the system, computers aren't required, but fixing the teachers is.
The Electoral College is a firewall between states. You can have MASSIVE FRAUD in Chicago where an additional 10 million votes are added to a candidates total, but those 10 million votes won't sway the whole election because Illinois only has N Electoral College votes.
The EC has a reason, and electronic voting minus the EC will allow an even easier route to steal not just the presidential election, but all of congress as well.
Getting rid of the EC isn't as important (in fact is probably a very bad idea) as being able to validate the vote after the fact.
OMG!
He makes a valid point. I'm glad their gone, yet I too wonder about the method of taking them out.
If the hardware component of NASA were to go away completely we would get way more bang for the buck. The analysis guys decided what they want to see/know, publish the specs, and let private enterprise create the cool toys.
The idea works like so:
We want X,Y,Z and we will pay $4B to the first company to complete the checklist for us and deliver the data to the public domain.
We'd get much more efficient use of the money and much faster progress. If you don't succeed you don't make any money, winnowing out the nut jobs that currently decide how NASA will spend money on rockets that don't/can't work. And yet we still get the data.
Maybe some small core group of scientists would remain NASA to do this pure research, but all the hardware and software to go get the data would move into the private sector funded by venture capital and rewarded by prizes.
Yea, the law is on your side, but that does not make the law just. A 10 year old book on data compression is almost as useful as a 2 year old phone book.
Maybe it is time you changed it to a Creative Commons License and gave back to the public that made your copyright worthwhile in the first place.
Without a "Public" to sell to your copyright would be pointless, no one to buy means no $ incentive to write it down in the first place.
Since you have milked it for 10 years, why not give it to the public so that others can easily build on what you have.
It probably is inconsequential to society at this point being 10 years old, but some less fortunate person might be able to pull a nugget out of it and make a leap forward for the rest of us to enjoy.
If you didn't have a public to sell to, then there would be no point in Copyright at all. For Copyright to extend to the limitless horizon gives nothing to the public.
The law says that copyrights/patents are there to encourage creativity so that the public ("the people") can benefit. When we fail to let the public benefit from this, we bite the very hand that feeds those creative endeavors.
Maybe it is time for a no creative purchases for a day, or a week. What if no one went to a movie, bought a CD or DVD, for just one week. So that those that are suing their customers could see what it is like to have not Public to sell to?
You aren't the only one. We just aren't standing up on a ladder beating our chests like the other apes are.
Stay out of the coffee pot. How stupid are you anyway?
If alcohol and nicotine are legal, what makes you think they are going to outlaw coffee because it is too hot for your little mouth.
You would have to read the whole book and understand more than just one factoid that may or may not make sense in all cases. Yes, searching is great when you need a detail, but education needs to cover all the material, not just the definitions in the homework assignment or that one test question.
When have you known a lawyer to be honorable? They now get paid by the Government AND big media.
This kind of Tokenization allows you to token frequency analysis of all the documents, you essentially destroy the value of the encryption by using the same key for all documents.
Standard PGP uses a different key for each document so the tokens never appear in the same format. When you give this up, you give up a large portion of the security of your documents.
The only way I see to do this is build the index on your machine and point to the offline storage.
Part of the reason that IP Laws are so screwed up is that Lawyers are involved. They are hired shills looking to find some way to benefit their client regardless of what bullshit logic they have to use to make it appear OK.
Witness the Bush admin and all of its "Legal opinions" that completely violate the constitution.
Today is a good day for information-gathering. Read someone else's mail file.
