That's a veiled ad hominum argument - a logical fallacy. Just like you have asserted that someone should read Coyle and Dawkins, you in turn might consider setting an example by examining the arguments of Dr. Goswami.

FWIW, I haven't read any of these references, but I have read extensively on all sides of the argument including evolutionary biologists, intelligent design proponents and other non-standard models for what we observe. I've read other Dawkins books and found them to be just as weak as many of the ID books. As far as I can tell, it's all still philosophy, and the science that we have, namely molecular biology, breeding and the fossil record do not show evolution as the conclusive final word on how life works.

I have no idea if this would help, but with developments in solar technology, would it make a significant difference if the tops of the wings, fuselage, tail and fan ducts were all solar panels? Seems like a simple thing to do to help with range... maybe not done because it's not reliable.

I've been faced with this kind of decision a number of times. I always remember: if I'm not filthy stinking rich right now, then I'm probably bad at predicting the future. Any attempt to do so should be taken with a huge dose of scepticism.

That said, I think that the practical answer is simple: invest a bit of time doing a bake-off of the likely candidates. Try to choose some real high-priority business features, and then get very small teams of 2 or 3 people each to use each of the frameworks to build production-quality functionality for those business features. Don't take more than a week to do this. To use your example, Flex vs. HTML5, you would get two small teams to try to build the _same_ functionality using the two different frameworks.

Evaluate your results based on how much the teams actually got done. (Remember: production quality, not prototype quality.)

Since you can't predict the future, I also strongly recommend good Agile Engineering Practices to help to build a system that is not just change-tolerant, but is actually easy to change.

That is cool! I'm sure that in the distant future when we get to actually explore these places (probes or human explorers), that we will find all sorts of nifty things... and probably discover all sorts of ways in which we are wrong :-) I wish I could see that future!

I'm curious: what are the likely elements and molecules that would cause the blue reflection?

Here is an article I wrote a few years about about this. Probably helpful: http://www.agileadvice.com/2012/01/08/scrumxplean/seven-options-for-handling-interruptions-in-scrum-and-other-agile-methods/

This is a great way of describing Scrum, but I would be more clear about the fact that Agile != Scrum. Agile is the abstract base class (or maybe even just an interface/protocol) described by the Agile Manifesto: http://www.agilemanifesto.org/ and Scrum is a subclass that implements/extends Agile.

That said, the yardstick analogy is great and I'm going to use that right away in a class I'm teaching about Scrum!

Thanks!

PS. BSP below...

I agree that it is a long process... possibly centuries (although I hope just decades). I'm an optimist at heart! One quote that I have found particularly inspiring is:

"The betterment of the world can be accomplished through pure and goodly deeds, through commendable and seemly conduct."

To me, that means that all the people who are trying to improve the world (the environment, politics, community life, etc.), and even my own modest efforts, are having an effect.

In our culture, we are afraid of abuses.... legitimately! Having this information for sale can easily be used for such obvious purposes as rejecting a job candidate because their past salary is "too high". Stronger privacy protection is generally considered the antidote to such potential abuses. However, more and more regulation leads to greater and greater bureaucracy and therefore the cost of government increases.

Another solution is a longer-term solution and that is to address the underlying cultural assumptions and shift the world to a more positive outlook based on the idea of the inherent nobility of humans. Our bureaucracy has grown as we have moved away from a perspective on the noble human to the animal human with greed motivating our every move. In fact, this is a cultural choice, not a foregone conclusion.

At some point, I hope that we (culturally) will start responding to these sorts of crisis with a long-term view to improving humanity rather than reacting to the down-side.

I was wondering what axioms you hold to be true? Any rational system has a set of axioms that are the unprovable foundation of that rational system. What do you believe on faith?

Google has long been willing to compromise on their "do no evil" mantra and is probably under huge pressure from successful incumbent phone device manufacturers to create barriers to entry in the market. This is common with any market where goods or services start to become commoditized.

http://www.davidbrin.com/transparency.html

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

1) I agree with what you have said. I'm not sure if you followed my point, but you can think of it like DRM: content producers/distributors distrust their customers and that has the unintended consequence that their customers (due to the DRM anti-feature) look to other sources for their content, some illegal sources. The environment of distrust creates bad behavior.

2) I have three hobbies: robotics, coin collecting and making music. There is nothing inherently wrong with money or physical things or pasttimes. I didn't say there was. Materialism is a philosophy or culture of placing material things at the highest rank of importance and possibly even denying any other important things. American society is _not_ purely materialistic. For example, the importance of liberty in American society is non-materialistic. Nevertheless, my experience of the Bay Area/Silicon Valley is of an extreme of Materialism.

3) Toronto is also home to some of the largest refugee communities in the world and is incredibly diverse as a result. I'm not going to claim that Toronto is more or less harmonious/integrated than the area in California. What I _am_ saying is that there is a notable hypocrisy of an outwardly-seeming open, inclusive culture that tolerates some pretty extreme ghettoization. (White) people there seem very proud of their moral relativism, tolerance of diversity, etc. and yet that pride seems to ignore the social responsibility for some deep race-related problems. They may have their immediate causes based in bad government. But the root cause is clear to outsiders (including many of those who are refugees there, that I have spoken with): racism.

4) Moral bankruptcy? An environment of distrust, extreme materialism, and hypocrisy. But again, that wasn't my point. My point was that when you live there, the culture is so powerful that, for me at least, it became my culture even though I was fighting it. I only really realized how much it had effected me when I moved away. Moving back again, I was there for mercifully short periods of time and did not feel as deeply effected. I have discussed this effect with other outsiders and they have experienced similar things. Not only is the area morally bankrupt (which is different than saying any individual is so), but it is pervasive and persuasive.

I am financially successful. I have a very nice house, I have a successful business and I am not bitter about other people's success. I'm not (quite) a millionaire, but I'm in the top five percent of income earners in Canada, and probably top 1% in my city. However, my success is not solely based on pursuing material aspirations. I also try very hard to "do good" for it's own sake. I have been very poor (to the point of living on state assistance) and I have also been close to financial bankruptcy twice in my life. I _don't_ believe that my current success is solely due to my own hard work. There is a very good portion of luck and other good people thrown into the mix. I can clearly identify several points in the development of my career when the only reason I succeeded is because I made what seemed an arbitrary choice that happened to be "correct".

Doesn't suck to be me :-)

I agree that there are some people whose behavior is almost exclusively anti-social, or even could be called sociopaths. I believe that there is still the possibility of reform/redemption for these people, but I'm not an expert and so I would not claim to have a "solution". I have met one person that I think may legitimately be called a sociopath, but it was a long time ago. The experience was incredibly damaging to me in many ways and I am no longer in contact with that person.

I haven't reversed cause and effect. I have only observed that there is a negative feedback loop in the US that does not exist everywhere else (although I would guess it isn't exclusive to the US). Not only that, but I am not trying to say every individual behaves the same way or can be painted with the same brush. Certainly there are muggings, but I would hesitate to say that there are "muggers".

Actually, what I am saying is not so foreign to the "Slashdot mind". I mentioned this in another part of this thread: Slashdotters commonly bring up the idea of DRM as an anti-feature on [software|music|movies] that perpetuates "pirating". In other words, the environment of distrust on the part of producers and distributors of digital content creates a higher likelihood of bad/illegal behavior on the part of potential users of that content. This is not so difficult an example for people in the US to understand because it is very specific and falls within the American cultural norms of rebellion against authority. The example that we started with, a street attack, is not so obvious because that environment of distrust is not as specific nor as directly connected to the behavior. Nevertheless, my observation is that _any_ environment of distrust breeds bad behavior, and any environment of trust encourages good behavior. The boundary conditions are what is interesting: in an environment of trust, if someone breaks that trust, how do people in the environment respond to that breech? Do they then start to distrust (and put in place policies, procedures, institutions, etc. that formalize that distrust)? Or do they continue to work within a culture of trust (and put in place all the things that can help to recover from the breech)?

I didn't defend myself because, fundamentally, it was not a developed habitual reaction. I can't claim that in the moment of attack I did a deep rational analysis of the situation. Instead, I simply lacked a defensive response habit and so I didn't defend myself. As it turns out, the situation defused itself and I lost nothing in the exchange. I believe that it was simply time passing that allowed the situation to become defused: the attacker lost energy. (I'm guessing there. I don't really know what was going on inside the person chemically, emotionally, etc.) I also want to point out that I am not naive enough to believe this would always "work". Certainly some attacks conclude with death, rape etc. even with passive response on the part of the attacked person.

And to repeat, I don't scorn others who do defend themselves. What I am concerned about is perhaps over-reaction or escalation. Honestly, I haven't thought it through to make _any_ generalizations and I suspect that I could only respond on a case-by-case basis to such things.

Actually, I feel that in America the individual is almost completely debased. Consumerism, culture of fear and distrust, breakdown of the extended family and the neighbourhood all lead to individuals behaving more like animals and less like noble, social beings. Individuals can certainly become excellent through their own hard work and choices, but there seems to be a real lack of recognition that "the individual is organic with their environment": there isn't simple first cause (individual merit) and then lots of effects (success in life). Instead, there are complex feedback systems where the environment limits, changes or empowers an individual and individuals make choices that in turn limit, change or expand their environment. Since the environment includes other people who are also making choices, we need to recognize both our liberty and our responsibility: through our choices, no matter how personal, we limit, change or empower other people.

Hmm. Not tolerating violence against innocents... this is certainly an important foundation of society. No argument there. But one individual self-defending is not the only way (nor in my opinion the best way) of a society not tolerating violence against innocents. I don't consider self-defense reprehensible! I am actually often impressed by people who are able to defend themselves... and even more impressed by people who are able to defend themselves and at the same time transform a violent environment/encounter to a non-violent environment/encounter... and _even_ more impressed when that transformation goes from violence to forgiveness, love and the mending of hearts. (I'm not good at this, fwiw.)

I would like to use an analogy with healthcare. There are preventative techniques and healing techniques. Both are important. American society seems to prefer institutionalizing healing techniques and leaving preventative techniques mostly up to the individual. This is partly because of the question of freedom (I guess). But it has the consequence that it is much easier for people to become unhealthy due to lack of institutional support for preventative techniques.

The same could be said about violence. There are certainly both preventative and reactive techniques. Again, American society seems to prefer reactive techniques (the justice system, self defence) rather than preventative techniques. I've already mentioned some reasons I believe this to be the case, but most of it is rooted in a history of British colonialism and subsequent rebellion. In Canada we never had that. In fact, Canada is one of very few countries that gained independence without any bloodshed. That deeply effects our respective cultures.