It would certainly be useful but currently a lot of things don't have Bluetooth LE and are controlled via zigbee, z-wave, wifi, etc.. So knowing what room you are in is very useful in itself because it can help identify what target devices you may want to control.
Because standalone iBeacons to trigger geofences is not what I believe Apple intends to use them for. This is what Estimote is selling.
Sure the geofence triggering is kinda cool, but I've yet to see a practical use of it. Seems like "interactive museum tour" is the thing everyone keeps coming back to. If this is what Apple wanted to do with iBeacons, they would be selling them for a couple bucks in Apple Stores. But iBeacons aren't a consumer device. I think much more likely to see "iBeacon ready" hardware sold by Apple and other 3rd parties.
I think iBeacon protocol will become part of other devices, as a way to add proximity detection for the iPhone/apps that could interact with that device.
How about a DSLR camera that I can pair with by touching my iPhone to it? Creating ad-hoc multi-peer networks between devices by being near them. Play a game on your phone on a nearby TV without connecting to same WiFi. Or wearables knowing which other wearables are nearby. This kind of natural, "magical" interaction is very Apple.
If you're sweating the cost of buying a Mac and the annual $100 developer fee, are you really planning to run a profitable business? Those costs should be the least of your concerns.
The market rate for investment bankers is more attractive than my job. Doesn't mean I can just be an investment banker tomorrow. Or a nurse.
If I live comfortably on my basic income doing whatever, how do I become qualified to work? Remember we have college grads who aren't qualified to work, and they've spent their entire lives being educated.
> The market rate for investment bankers is more attractive than my job. Doesn't mean I can just be an investment banker tomorrow. Or a nurse.
If the supply-demand imbalance is sufficient and durable, people looking for nurses / investment bankers / etc. will pay currently-unqualified people with the relevant basic aptitudes to train for those jobs (with a post-training commitment to accept employment if offered, or in the form of loans with guaranteed forgiveness and job placement with satisfactory completion of training, or in some other form.)
> If I live comfortably on my basic income doing whatever, how do I become qualified to work?
Living comfortably on basic income isn't going to be possible as long as the economy has substantial labor needs. BI is essentially the public holding equal, dividend bearing shares in the commons, for which taxes are use rents. The limit on the value of BI is basically that of the existing capital (including land) contribution to productivity; the potential comfort and value from BI grows with capital (e.g., via automaticn) displacing labor in production.
What BI can be is a means of managing the transitions in the economy as automation progresses.
That's right, it's still Bush's fault. We're in Obama's 2nd term, this is getting old.
This article doesn't make any claims about anything being Bush's fault.
As far as I can tell, this article is reporting new information about Bush's actions during his presidency. It's being reported now because this information wasn't previously available. And it's only available now because Snowden leaked it.
While you're right in pointing out that the current blame can be primarily directed at Obama, it is also Bush's fault. Its a slippery slope of diminishing fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution, and whoever follows Obama as president is likely to just follow it even further..
It's Bush's fault, and it's the fault of everyone who sat idly and ignored those of us yelling about it under Bush, and it's Obama's fault, and it's the fault of those supporting him now.
I would be happy to comment on a newspaper article about the legal opinions expressed in the Obama white house about the legality of the programs Obama has continued or created. Perhaps in another 10 years I will be able to do so.
The big assumption that everyone tends to make when talking about public education is that the politicians, school boards, principals, and teachers are advocates for students.
Sure, some of them are, but the vast majority of them are looking out for themselves. (I don't blame then, the system pushes them to this) They're making decisions on what will be best for their situation, and they are not really held directly accountable to those they serve, the students.
If anyone has tried to fight the system (like the author), they quickly realize this. And the only effective way I've seen to balance the power is school choice vouchers. Otherwise you're condemned by your zipcode unless you're wealthy enough to afford private school tuition.
Having done this stuff for about 15 years now, it is amazing how much of your work is scrapped in 5 years or less.
If you're writing some deep enterprise level back-end stuff that is going to be integrated in a large, expensive system, obviously it really is worthwhile to do it right.
If you're cranking out another piece of shit marketing website, or even better, anything app or mobile related, no matter how much planning and testing and pride you put in to it, it is almost always completely worthless in a couple years.
Everything is changing so fast right now, the platform, device, language, database, etc, may not even exist in 5 years. 5 years! That's a hell of a depreciation schedule for a $200k project.
This resonates so much with me... i really dislike the way how much my work is depreciated after just months...
I really learned not to invest much time and finesse into those kinds of projects. When i was younger i was thinking "oh, someone may look at the code, keep it clean...".
Nearly 10 Years later and dozens of projects later: Only 5% of my code ever got even a second glance or had to be changed...
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Technology management has given up on the idea that code can actually be read, so it's write-once. Reading Code is that ghetto where you put untalented people you want to fire, or young/new people you don't know what to do with yet. Otherwise, the idea that people can actually read code has been given up on. That, of course, generates a class of programmers who never improve and write terrible (illegible) code.
If your attitude is that reading code is a lost cause, you'll create a bunch of shitty, illegible code.
People forget that outside of the corporate world, there actually is code that people (a) enjoy reading, and (b) write with the intention of making it comprehensible.
Also, "doing it right" is an illusionary dream when your software interacts with the real world. In my opinion, it is not true that most code complexity comes from being lazy about code structure and simply not caring whether "models know about my views or not". This might happen sometimes but is usually easy to fix. It makes up a small percentage of code complexity.
There is an impedance mismatch between the way computers work and the way the real world works.
Software works in clear conditionals, numbers without any uncertainties, events that flow deterministically based on relatively simple rules.
The real world works in probabilities, half truths, imprecise numbers, special cases, partial information, irrational actors and deliberate rule breakers.
When you start writing a new piece of software, at first you tackle the most common cases of the real world. At this point it is possible to write clean code and well defined abstractions. However, eventually you are going to get users that will find that your software is too simplistic and doesn't take into account common sense exceptions, doesn't give them enough flexibility to deal with partial information and doesn't allow them to act according to unwritten exceptions to the rules. You have two choices. Either refuse to bend your software to the real world to keep code simplicity or start coding in the exceptions that your users desperately want.
Computers don't understand common sense so you have to translate all these exceptions into well defined rules and heuristics even though this does not reflect how things work in reality. Because computers don't think probabilistically, these heuristic tend to be numerous and complexe and difficult to deal with.
The main jobs of programmers in my opinion, is to manage this complexity so that their programs don't become too unpredictable when the thousands of exceptions interact together in unexpected ways. It's quite the balancing act but I think the best developers are those that don't back down and are able to face these types of problems. Sometimes this means refactoring some exceptions out of the system, or moving it somewhere where it doesn't cause unwanted interactions but sometimes it means leaving it in and managing it as best as you can so that your software can deal with the world as ambiguous and fuzzy as it is. A developer that ignores the fuzziness of the world in order to write clean code, is naïve and ineffective in my opinion.
Much like advertising is 90% ineffective, but no one can predict which 90%, it seems very hard to predict which code will live on forever. Deep enterprise back end stuff gets cancelled in 6 months due to reorg / whatever, some crazy CGI written as a shell script lives for decades.
I was lucky enough that the first project I worked on professionally actually shipped. One guy on the team had been a professional developer for 12 years and it was the first product he ever had ship. The web changed that somewhat, I guess, but non-web stuff is probably still like that.
On the other hand, that first product I worked on is still in service, over 15 years later.
Honest question - can't one take pride in the fact that people are using his/her code and it is making their life better - saving money/ time etc, even if the code is not top class? Then the question is - which is more important? Make something good enough (and quickly enough) that people can start using, or keep working on something until it is "perfect"?
Obviously, this doesn't apply to life saving (or threatening) software like medical, defense, embedded systems etc.
No, not everything one does for a job is fulfilling or worth being proud of, just because someone asked for it. Often it is something useless, maybe not even what they really wanted, sometimes even annoying or harmful. Lots of us work on things which are basically useless that will go away soon. At the end of life, perhaps all you really accomplished was to stay alive in a certain sort of lifestyle.
Making it technically good is a way of making it interesting and something to be proud of. You could also make something that is yours. You could also make something that is really actually important. Without any of those outlets people will just hate their jobs and only live for their time off.
An mobile app can be scrapped in 2 years, but you might use it everyday for these 2 years. You'd want to be proud of something that will be integrated in the everyday life of someone for any time.
We haven't figured that out. Because we will be a subscription service, we are not sure if having muli plans are allowed in IAP. Anyone has experience before?
Why wouldn't it be? I didn't find such a thing in the guidelines, and it's quite common in other areas (e.g. 5 gold coins cost you $.99, but 50 gold coins in a game $3.99).
Reality is a sad place right now. People are so scared of it, they're willing to believe anything just to not have to think about what's going to happen when the music stops.
So, you write a vague and make large claims without substantiation. You get called out for not substantiating the points you're making.
And your reply to that is a post that's entirely devoid of any content whatsoever, and is literally 100% scare-mongering without even a single argument or claim (false or otherwise)?
> "Skilled immigration? They don't vote for Dems. Unskilled immigration is all he cares about."
Uh...
Democrats own the minority vote, which constitute a huge portion of the skilled immigration this country sees - the two largest contributors are China and India after all.
Okay, so excluding minority immigrants, lets look at skilled, white immigrants - the bulk of whom are coming from openly socialist countries - UK, France, Germany, etc.
So skilled immigration is pretty guaranteed to increase the base for left-leaning folks and minorities, both of which are traditional strongholds for Democrats. Why wouldn't they do this?
Not to mention Democrats have, in this election at least, demonstrated that they are able to rally a substantial base of educated, working professionals to their side. So even with non-immigrants, "skilled labor" is hardly synonymous with Republicans.
Here is the thing with investments into Green Tech. The economically proper thing to do would be to have Pigovian taxes on pollution, and let the market sort out how to achieve the lowest pollution levels. I think > $1 trillion in new taxes, even if they were offset by reductions in income tax, etc, wouldn't really go over well. But that's the Right Solution (TM).
So we're stuck with things like subsidizing Green Tech.
Why can't we just build new, safer nuclear power like India, China, Japan, and basically everyone else are building right now? Whoops, the left has demonized nuclear power so much in this country that people fear it more than coal!
It always sounds great to be "investing" in infrastructure or energy or whatever. But pols don't invest, they cater to voting blocks. Politics can't solve these problems.
The right has been just as much of an impediment. All the places it makes sense to store nuclear waste are red states who don't want it in their back yard. And their going apoplectic at any country trying to develop nuclear technology doesn't help the public perception.
The reality is that the market left alone won't solve these problems, and politics can't solve them perfectly. What you're left with is the state of human existance: muddling along.
Taxes are dodge-able, additionally, they have a long lead time (accountants have to establish that YUP THIS IS PERMANENT and make recommendations to the business departments) then and only then do prices definitely stay in the place that makes green tech cheaper.
Additionally, if no green tech change occurs, then you're stuck with the job losses by lower consumption of the good you're taking, but don't get the job gains of the good you're hopping will spring up to replace it.
So from a economics perspective, seems like it might be the pure way to go. From a policy perspective, it's iffy.
Subsidizing never, ever created a good solution.
It always makes poor solutions, that cost more than they are worth.
Compare to subsidizing medicaments.
When they are subsidized then they cost more then when government lifts the subsidy.
If you want a good solution then make it fight for life in the current market, eventually it might win - in this case you will really get a good solution.
Ideological handwaving never results in a good argument.
Here is the basic problem with the market for energy. Say I give you the choice of two candy bars: one costs you $1.00, the other costs you $0.75 and also costs some random third party $0.75. Which do you pick? The latter, of course. Everyone always picks the latter, and the end result is economically inefficient.
This is the same choice when it comes to energy. A Harvard study found that the externalized costs of coal range from $350-500 billion: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/16/us-usa-coal-study-.... Fully half the true cost of coal power is externalized to people outside the transaction of power producers/power users. The market doesn't yield efficient results when costs can be externalized like this. That's Econ 101 level knowledge. There are only two ways to fix this market failure: either tax coal power to reflect the externalized costs, or subsidize green tech to compensate. In our political system new taxes are pretty much impossible, hence we adopt the latter solution.
Gasoline prices are already subsidized. We spend megabucks on aid to the middle east, wars, etc there that isn't paid for by the users of the oil pumped from there.
I worked for a DARPA contractor for years. Nerds all wank over how awesome DARPA is, and how great they are for putting money into all these blue-sky projects that may not pan out, etc. Yet the administration puts some money into technology that doesn't have an immediate benefit in killing people, and people flip their shit.
For context: DARPA has a budget of almost $3 billion. The risk-weighted investment into Solyndra was probably on the order of the low tens of millions.
You have to compare apples to apples. DARPA gives out grants. Solyndra was a loan guarantee. The subsidy represented by a loan guarantee is the value of the loan multiplied by the probability of default.
So you're telling me risky investments in possibly revolutionary startups can fail? If we go back to writing by PG, failures like this are proof we are making risky a enough investments to actually make a big difference.
Strategic conduct on the part of businesses isn't the same thing as smart (or ethical, or legal) conduct when it's done by governments. Everything has a context.
I agree. Which is why government making the risky investments that more conservative businesses won't in order to create the empowering innovations that will save our environment and improve our economy is a major positive for me.
And if it just happens to benefit major contributors and bundlers to the party of the President that is in power, well, that is entirely a coincidence!
I understand that. But not everything the government funds fails. I am instead disproving the case presented to me—the failure of Solyndra is not evidence of a failing government effort.
