Yes. http://247wallst.com/special-r...

States with teachers unions have, on average, better schools. So unions don't seem to be killing schools. So what's wrong with them?

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

The problem isn't that we find ways to do things without people it's that we're starting to run out of ideas about what people should do instead.

That's the interesting point -- will we ever reach a threshold where we say, "great! another boring job has been replaced! that's one less person that needs to work." Or will that sense never change so long as profit is based off the ownership of the company?

I'm not sure he used the term "outlier" purposefully, but it is telling in our era of data-driven everything. We will always have middle-of-the-curve people if we live only by data-driven metrics. It will allow us to make safe decisions, but it sure seems to be a waste of human resources.

I'll have to look up some of those phrases so that I can see how well they apply. I do try to make as many associations as I can. And I try to imagine how else I might use the information so that I can also think about how it might be referenced. But a lot of my life is working through configurations of associations until one triggers a memory (or I simply conclude that it is the most reasonable conclusion even if it didn't trigger a memory.)

I lost my memory in 2003. I couldn't escape the references to Momento for years. But I had to look up who Christopher Nolan was to confirm my suspicion. :)

I like to follow these types of stories. I lost all of my memory one morning when I was 19. The cause isn't clear. I was in an underdeveloped country at the time, so the medical facilities didn't exist to determine what had happened. (It might have been a delayed effect of a car accident I was in two years earlier.) It's also probably important to note that my ability to form new memories was also severely impeded.

I wonder a little bit about what "moving" a memory means. At least in my amateur study, memories aren't complete entities (like a file, database, etc). They are mixes of memories, the awareness of what has occurred, and associations, our integration of what we already know with what we are remembering. That's part of the reason people can have such differing memories of a shared experience. Some of that is about how memories are retrieved. In my study and experience, they are retrieved by these associations we make. That's why memory tricks involve making varied associations -- to song, to a mental or physical image, etc. For people who haven't learned those tricks, an association can be as simple as "I remember we met in a bar..." then the rest of the picture is pieced together.

I wonder sometimes if my having to learn different ways of "remembering" things will allow me to maintain a higher level of memory functioning into my elder years. I have to be very aware and purposeful about what I remember. I was in college when I lost my memory, so I had to learn very quickly how to perform in school without being able to learn in the conventional sense (I could not remember the beginning of a semester by the time it ended). So I focused much more on the integration of memories into my existing awareness (aka forming associations between new experiences and prior knowledge.) I still have a very poor memory retrieval in the classic sense, but I can still learn lessons well. It has just required a much higher level of sentience with regards to how memories are stored and what I hope to gain from a memory in the long term.

I am not sure if your 11-year old is ready for the K&R text, but if he wants a full stack education, the K&R book will give him in-depth knowledge of how low level languages work. It's clearly written, succinct, and arguably one of the best technical manuals ever written. I will caution that It will require more maturity and self motivation to finish, but he'll go through the book understanding how almost all software works. If he is truly motivated, I would even go lower level to leading him to computer organization and have him play around with assembly using a MIPS emulator. Things like caller or callee saved conventions will make more sense to him, as well as pointers and such. Knowing C opens the doors to all programming languages, and if he's more pragmatic he'll probably pick an interpreted language to learn next, or if he's more math-minded, a language like Haskell will follow.

If you looked at the recent Apple store front displays, or even their recent TV advertisements, they're horrible. They're nowhere as good as the Steve Jobs era TV ads (the Siri ad was very robotic, and the iPad ad didn't put the human using the iPad in the limelight, but the iPad itself and how wonderful its screen is: the narration made me think it was a bank commercial when I didn't look towards the TV). Instead, the Apple storefront displays feature some preprinted image of their latest product, instead of the crazy floating balloons.

When it rains, it pours. I've noticed there's a lot of aversion to cloud based software, due to not having control over the platform and pricing at the pleasure of the vendors.

To build on a point that you are making, though, Oracle would like to be Apple for the business world. Steve Job is known to be a close friend of Larry Ellison. Larry Ellison also takes business very personally--to him, if he has a grudge against you, it's not enough to just crush you. He wants to see you suffer.

I'm not surprised Oracle wants to provide an entire database stack like Apple systems and Apple's software, in the manner of how they are sold. I don't think it will be too long before we will see Oracle taking many of Apple's steps, such as supporting their software on only their equipment, as that is part of their "systems" strategy. Rather, they're not in it for the hardware business, but in order for you to have an Oracle database, you might just be forced to buy Oracle hardware to run it. Fortunately, Oracle cannot afford to do it just yet. If they can convince a significant number to do it, you may just be required to be running Oracle DB on an Oracle server with Oracle OS.

It's not much different with Apple's software such as Logic Studio or Final Cut. If you want to run either of those packages, you'd have to buy a Mac system. I can see why such a business model seems so attractive to Larry.

How I wish I had mod points for you! Steve Jobs also jokes that he's God:

Q: Why have you veered away from widgets on the iPad? A: We just shipped it on Saturday. And then we rested on Sunday. Q: So widgets are possible? A: Everything is possible.

Although some aren't so sure he's joking...

Exactly! There is also the "moral" question on whether or not doctors should treat diabetes or any genetic condition, because essentially what "survival of the fittest" would normally take care of is being artificially perpetuated by human beings. I personally think that's a load of BS, but the argument is valid. But that's what differentiates humans from animals is that the "survival of the fittest" also includes using your head.

Taiwan is a part of the Republic of China. Theoretically, there are two Chinas (PRC and ROC). KMT and DPP have been wrangling on renaming ROC to just Taiwan, but the threat of missiles being deployed to Taiwan upon renaming has all but stopped the debate.