Besides handling the uploading of completed exam questions, ExamSoft locks down the computer on which it runs, so Wikipedia is not an option.

Yeah, that'll work, because nobody has internet capable cellphones, secondary machines or even Virtual Machines.

For exam takers, a secondary machine and internet capable cellphone is not an option. The exam doesn't take place in your living room but at a monitored location. In my state, the exam proctors don't even let you bring in your own pencil. Pulling out a cellphone would be a great way to be kicked out and never be allowed to take the exam again.

I am not sure the current state of virtual machines and ExamSoft, but at least a few years ago the ExamSoft software would not run when a virtual environment was present. While I am sure people have found workarounds, the point of the software (and why most law schools and state bars use it) is to avoid that result.

If we can't trust these applicants to take the test honestly, how can we trust them to act as officers of a court?

The business next door proctors these and similar exams. They are expensive and not available in every community, so the test takers have often paid a relatively large amount of money at this stage of their lives, not just several hundred to take the test, but also travel, accommodations, missing day(s) of work, etc. to be where the test is available. The proctoring company does not charge them for the second attempt, but all of the expenses needed to be there get doubled.

Turns out some recent conferences have their presentations recorded in HD video. An example is POPL. OK, so I went and downloaded a few videos on formal methods hoping to see something I cared about. I downloaded some 5 videos in one day. Next day I get an e-mail saying my ACM DL subscription has been frozen due to excessive use and I need to contact membership services to get it reopened.

In addition to this, the ACM DL terms of use still prohibit "systematically downloading" articles which according to them means downloading all articles of an issue of a journal or all the articles of a conference. This is just plain stupid.

Most of these organizations and associations completely fail to understand how they would be able to create added value for their potential members. As an electronic engineer I'm supposed to be a member of IEEE. I can't think of a single reason why I would subscribe, and the people and letters of IEEE didn't make things better. On the contrary.

There is as an academic. Apparently being a member of the ACM has a negative value, because in exchange for the $99/year membership fee I typically get a $100-150 discount on attending ACM conferences. If you go to a couple of conferences a year then that's a good deal. For people outside academia, there's less relevance. ACM Queue, which provides material for 'practitioners' section of Communications of the ACM, generally has some good material, but it's all free whether your an ACM member or not.

I like the ACM as an organisation, but they're hard pressed to justify the cost of membership.

I listed my membership on my résumé, along with the ACM logo.
This was 15 years ago and I was a contractor around Washington, DC, doing many short-term contracts.

Yes, it was effective.
In the course of interviews, the interviewer would often tell me that they had been meaning to join, or had heard of it, but not once that they were themselves a member. Just a little psychological advantage, I guess. This helped,too, because I never went to college.

That said, I got absolutely nothing from their articles or other content.

following a series of surprise visits to Redmond's offices in cities across China on Monday

While I understand that this is metonymy, it's confusing as hell because at first read "Redmond's offices" == "Microsoft's offices in Redmond."

Unsurprisingly, the monopoly claims are only a cover story for other policy issues with China. As TFA even points out:

China confirmed it is investigating whether Microsoft Corp. broke its antimonopoly laws, the latest sign of growing commercial and policy tensions between the U.S. and China that are roiling technology companies in both countries.

The investigation represents a new friction point between the countries following disclosures about U.S. National Security Agency surveillance and revelations of hacking of U.S. networks by China's military.

"There's a digital Cold War going on between the U.S. and China," said Alvin Kwock, an analyst with J.P. Morgan.

"The Chinese government has seized on using the [antimonopoly law] to promote Chinese producer welfare and to advance industrial policies that nurture domestic enterprises," the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents major U.S. corporations,wrote in an April letter to federal officials.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, they likely would have been better off actually breaking the law, because at least that would result in a trial over the truth (and some ill-gotten gains in the process). Instead, because this is a political maneuver by the Chinese, Microsoft is being used as a scapegoat here. Any resulting punishment for Microsoft will be based on the state of Sino-American relations and whether China wants to harm the US by proxy. Which given how things currently stand, MS is looking rather screwed.

...

Unfortunately for Microsoft, they likely would have been better off actually breaking the law, because at least that would result in a trial over the truth (and some ill-gotten gains in the process). Instead, because this is a political maneuver by the Chinese, Microsoft is being used as a scapegoat here. Any resulting punishment for Microsoft will be based on the state of Sino-American relations and whether China wants to harm the US by proxy. Which given how things currently stand, MS is looking rather screwed.

And most of us here feel really bad for MS getting fucked over, after they've fucked over so many others.

I don't believe in karma, but if I did, this is a prime example of karma.

RMS doesn't do guns because only one or two are open-source, and he's seen the code and knows they're shitty.

Frankly, anyone who does business in China should come to expect this. Stories abound about how Chinese companies "compete" with foreign companies in China: you wake up one day and find out half your manufacturing and IT infrastructure is "missing", some of which returns in a few weeks, and then three months later a new, Chinese-owned factory opens up down the street, making products that look exactly like yours minus the brand names and serial numbers, which just happen to have great contacts with the Chinese government so that factory ends up with all the lucrative government and commercial contracts while your company just continues to bleed money on its "China strategy".

This is just the next step, for companies like Microsoft and Apple that rely on their brand to sell product despite having government-owned knockoffs everywhere. A foreign company managing to actually compete with an honest Chinese company? Why, they must be cheating. And we will find cheating, whether or not it exists, and take what's rightfully ours, that is, anything that ever touches Chinese soil.

I think this kind of thinking is pretty detrimental to mobile.

When you put a "better" camera on, will it have new optics? Will it jut out of the case like a sore thumb? What about new SoCs? Will heat and battery become problems?

I'm pretty skeptical. I think mobile has been a huge hit because of the trend away from desktop modes of thinking. Holistic integrated things are more than the sums of their parts than generic gizmos that are just a random slathering of parts.

Take for example the iPhone 5s. The finger print sensor has been amazing, but it wouldn't work with out the A7's secure enclave. To do that in Ara you'd have to ship a replacement button or have a sensor on the module itself.

If this catches on, I hope we'll see bigger-than-Ara but still compatible modules based on the same A-size-paper-style specifications for bigger devices such as tablets and laptops. Buy a new camera, put it on your cellphone, put your old cellphone camera on your laptop and sell your old laptop camera.

Just think different a little bit. Integrate the secure enclave into the button/sensor module.

I like the idea in principle. I do think it's really useful to customize a few specific parts - one person might want a high-performance (and large, and expensive)) camera module both front anb back; another prefers just a minimal camera and gets a larger battery instead; a third has a job where cameras are banned and opts to get none at all. A fingerprint reader, a headphone jack, or an SD card slot are other options people may want to add or skip.

But I do not think upgradeable phones are meaningful. After 2-3 years with a phone, it's pretty beat up. Screen is scratched and dimming, the case is scuffed and creaky, buttons don't quite work, connectors are getting glitchy, the battery is dying and both CPU and memory are getting old. I'd want to upgrade all of it - I want a new phone, not throw money at the old one.

a sequel to a bad movie

No I didn't.

I did notice one part of the summary where they converted 100 km to 62 miles, and another where they noted that different groups define the edge of space differently, with some using 100 km as the boundary and others using 50 miles. However, at no point did I note someone trying to equate 100 km to 50 miles. Can you point it out for me?

Why do I^Hyou have the feeling that ''Showing" what it's like to swap bodies doesn't quite cut it?

Calorie in Calorie out.

That's not how it works. Celery has calories (in the sense that burning it will generate heat), but has negative digestive calories (in the sense that pulling the nutrients from it and pushing the waste out will burn more calories than gained by the process).

Some people have low absorption. They eat anything they want, and don't get fat. Others are much more efficient. The efficient can eat according to any diet you pick that is sustainable for an inefficient person, and still gain weight.

You don't make fat from nothing, but some people can get fat on 1/2 the calories of someone else. Blaming the person with the efficient metabolism for eating "only" 75% of the other person (despite having a nearly identical hunger response), makes you a gigantic asshole.

I would still argue one point then: weight stability has nothing to do with internal absorption.

If a person is gaining weight that means their caloric intake is in excess of what they are using. If a stable weight is desired they must either reduce intake or increase calorie usage into a balance. Even if they have a high hunger response and can't reduce caloric intake they could do more activities that burn calories rather continue a more sedentary lifestyle.

The thing that really sucks is that moving around more ( burning calories ) is much much more difficult to start once obesity has set in due to how obesity affects the body. Stresses on joints and support bones are much greater, Oxygen absorption is generally lower, and depending on how obese the person is pressure on the diaphragm may make hard breathing even more difficult.

Between the difficulty in getting started exercising and the difficulty in breaking bad eating habits makes it very hard for many obese people to lose the weight. This does not excuse them from giving up before trying though.

You want to go skiing without leaving your den, you can. But I'm assuming a guy like you, you wanna go skiing you fly to Aspen. That's not what you're interested in here. It's about the stuff you can't have... right? The forbidden fruit... see that guy, with the drop-dead Philipino girlfriend? Wouldn't you like to be that guy for twenty minutes? The right twenty minutes? ... You want to be a girl... see what that feels like? ... It's all doable.

- Lenny, Strange Days

"Fat? No, I'm efficient!"

Though I agree in sentiment, there's still the case that if you don't eat more than X weight of food, you can't put on more than X amount of weight.

The ones who are happy being fat, fine. The ones who are trying to lose weight and can't because of their "hunger"... that's the problem. Because it's hardly ever a celery that they pig out on, but chocolate and other high-fat foods.

It's still down, in the end, to a question of willpower. If you want to slim, you'll allow yourself to feel a little more hungry and - at the same time - find ways to cure the hunger that don't involve fat.

Your gut is just as adaptable as any other part of you - it can learn, given time. And though I don't want to trivialise the effort of losing weight, especially if you have medical conditions or even just suffer from the inherent medical conditions of being overweight (such as it being more difficult on your joints to exercise), there's still a willpower game at play here.

I'm sure there are people who struggle 24 hours a day against hunger and lose. And I'm sure there are a hundred times as many who win for as long as they want to and then give up. And I'm sure there are a hundred times as many again who say they are trying, and don't even bother.

There are weight-loss TV programs where they "stalk" the contestants. They know they could be watched. They know they have cameras in their house. They know they have to cut down. But still they have midnight snacks and go shopping for high-calorie food (if it's not in the house, at least you have to expend more effort than normal to go get it if you have a craving!).

Not everyone is a lard-ass. But equally not every overweight person struggles against an unbeatable desire to eat only high-calorie food.

It might work - IF you could find enough competent assassins willing to become the target of the most intensive and well-funded manhunt ever to be implemented.

I assume you think that you're making a joke, but it is worth pointing out that government by assassination never works.

You think good guys have more money to hire hit men than bad guys? Or, you read so many honorable-mafia-killer novels that you think hired killers won't work for bad guys, only for the good guys? Or, you think that the kind of people who like to assassinate public figures have an unerring ethical sense, and can instinctively tell good from bad?

Or perhaps better yet willing to become public martyrs to the cause. Shouldn't take more than a few dozen "educational killings" to get the message across. A few thousand, tops.

This, basically, is a way to guarantee that the worst possible people end up in power. 'Cause once you get onto that Roman-Emperor assassination train, the ones that are ruthless, power-hungry, and have no morals will be the ones hiring the killers. Either directly, if they're bold, or through "grass roots- it's the people who support me" intermediaries if they're not.

And then just hope the message received is "you're public employees - stop being lapdogs to the ultra-powerful" and not "the proles are getting uppity, time to crack down for real"

The message that will be sent is "if you want to survive, be paranoid, trust no one, kill quickly and ruthlessly".

Typically financial disclosures, such as the ones covered by OGE Form 450 (Confidential Financial Disclosure Report), are not public information and are exempted from FOIA requests

The form in question isn't the 450, which is confidential (hence its name). It's form 278, "Public Financial Disclosure", which is public (hence its name.
From http://www.oge.gov/Financial-D...

Public Financial Disclosure

The Ethics in Government Act of 1978, as amended, requires senior officials in the executive, legislative and judicial branches to file public reports of their finances as well as other interests outside the Government. The statute and the U.S. Office of Government Ethics's (OGE) regulations specify which officials in the executive branch file an OGE Form 278. Unlike confidential financial statements filed by some mid-level employees, the OGE 278 is available to the public. Reviewing officials within each agency certify and maintain these reports. Agencies do, however, forward reports of Presidential appointees confirmed by the Senate and certain other reports to OGE for additional review and certification.

The TSA does not need to be revamped; it needs to be destroyed. Anything less than complete elimination is unacceptable. Government thugs should not be in airports; the end. Same with the DHS, which should never have been created in the first place.

Holy crap, if that isn't the next sign of the dystopian future I don't know what is.

Private corporations getting the consulting services of the king spook of the spy agency which has tapped into the entire fucking world.

That scares the bejezzus out of me.

Because all of the secrecy of the NSA combined with the douche-baggery of corporations is straight out of a cyberpunk novel.

The surveillance state meets Wall Street. Oooh, they could privatize the NSA, that would be really profitable.

Time to stock up on Guy Fawkes masks.

Driving is a privilege not a right.

I knew one of you morons would show up. Even if it is true that driving is a 'privilege' *that does not mean your constitutional rights are null and void the second you decide to innocuously exercise that privilege!* The fourth amendment still applies, and the government has absolutely no constitutional authority to disregard people's rights just because they want to exercise something the government deems a 'privilege.' This logic is simply insane, and it's killing our freedoms.

It's the same sort of logic that allows for the TSA. "You implicitly consented to having your fundamental and constitutional rights violated by government thugs by trying to get on an airplane, so it's not a constitutional violation!" You're in good company, AC; government thugs all over the world drool when they see people using this awful logic to justify the erosion of people's fundamental liberties.

As an author, I can tell you that Amazon and their eBook pricing means more money (overall) for Authors. Maybe not for the "best seller"s who don't actually sell many books, but their publishing house prints lots of them and sends them out to stores, so while they end up on the bargain rack or destroyed, they still make the NY Times list based on the lay-down. Yeah, the authors people don't actually want to read will ultimately make less money, but the real authors that people like and want to buy from will make a lot more.

There is currently a battle going on in the industry between the special favorites of the big 6 publishing houses and the midlisters and independents. There are very few authors who can get a reasonable deal out of one of the publishing houses. Everyone else is getting contracts which require them to sign away their works forever, sign away any future works in the same genre, sign away all electronic rights, etc... for a $5K advance on a one or two book contract.

The midlisters and indies are running to ebooks and small publishing houses as fast as they can. It's not a mystery why. Amazon will pay 70% on an ebook. A publisher will typically pay maybe 15% (on poorly documented bookscan sales numbers, even on eBooks, which should be exact!) Where they used to purcahse only limited publication rights, which expired after they took the book out of print, now they want contracts where the author will never get their book back, even if the publishing house isn't actually doing anything with it.

If you are a well-known celebrity, or you sell millions of copies, then a big 6 publisher may work with you on somewhat fair terms. Otherwise, they won't edit you (it's gotten much worse over the last few years), they won't market you and they'll barely make sure your latest book stays on store shelves for a month.

The big 6 publishers are not only an issue in terms of IP rights and author payments, but they are also a very bad gatekeeper. Ever wonder why so many old SF authors stopped publishing and much of what is out there now is crap? It's because they're being picked by a publishing house with a NY "editor" who probably doesn't even like SF. They literally drove popular authors (who wrote what people actually wanted to read) out of the business. If an author sold too much (i.e. more than the editor projected), did they reprint and push the book? No, they'd keep the same print run and just stop publishing it when it hit the number projected as the max, usually tiny. Baen was the only real exception of any size in the industry. Jim Baen also did eBooks right from the start (gave old ones away in order to promote newer books in the same series/by the same author). That's all just starting to turn around because of Amazon, on-demand publishing and eBooks. Old famous authors are even starting to put out the books their publishing house stopped selling, or that they couldn't get published in the first place because it wasn't the editor's latest fad.

Also, the big 6 publishing houses have a massively left-leaning bias. They've spent decades now killing the sales numbers of entire genres because the authors were required to toe the line of the latest politically correct movement. You can date books in some genres by the issues and characters the editors required. Many books that adults like have been pushed into YA categories, just because if it it's not "edgy" enough, the NY editors don't want to buy it. Forget about what will sell, they buy what they'll want to tell their NY publishing friends about at the next cocktail party.

Scalzi is the poster-child cheerleader for the big 6 publishing houses. He's on the "inside" of the publishing establishment and does everything he can to defend them. He could care less about SF authors, just about his publishing buddies.

You want the real scoop on Amazon and Authors? Go look at Mad Genius Club, or According to Hoyt.

Elsevier won't have it.

"If you can find what you want, then it's just about price, no?"
Isn't the parent --implicitly, granted-- questioning the persistence, with 3 players, of that very thing, the 'finding what you want'? And here you turn it into a sort of an agreed upon premise.

Cut out the useless publisher, and the author gets 70%.

Why do you need a publisher to sell an ebook?

Idunno. Maybe a publisher does have some use. But does an ebook publisher deserve a whopping 30% ?

FDA does actually require testing of the efficacy (in phase 2) as well as safety (phase 1) so you are wrong there. Testing drugs in the US is nothing but thorough. It takes on average 12 years and $350 million dollars to test a new drug and in some cases even longer and over a billion. After the 12 years of testing, the application for final approval (100,000+ pages) takes the FDA on average another 2.5 years to process.

The reasons for this excruciating process are obvious: approve an unsafe drug and your ass is on the line. Delay a life saving drug by years and you are just ensuring safety. People die in both cases but one is a lot more career threatening to than the other.

I'm not saying that testing drugs is not necessary but you have to look at both side of equation. Excessive requirements for testing and bureaucracy involved mean:

1, more expensive drugs
2. fewer drugs brought to market as many are not worth the expense
3. more people dying while waiting 15 years or more for a life saving drug to be approved
4. drug research is cost prohibitive for smaller companies leading to less competition
etc.

That's how many people (mostly children) have died of malaria since the investigators knew they had a working vaccine in the mid-90's.

That vaccine might actually see the light of day this year, but the regulators are hinting that they might deny approval because it's not tremendously effective in infants.

Because, you know, IN FUCKING THEORY, somebody might get injured from the vaccine.

I'm sorry, the blood of ten million mostly-children on the hands of regulators gets me a bit worked up. And now they're staring at their naval because an investigator might also have a drinking problem? Oh, man, I better hit submit before I say something I might regret.

You do realize that homelessness and drug additions do not go hand-in-hand, right?

You should get to know some actual homeless people. I have worked with quite a few through my mother-in-law's church. I would estimate that more than 90% of them have serious substance abuse problems.

I'd be willing to bet that better than 50% of that 90% are mentally ill and self medicating with street drugs and alcohol. And though they may be addicts they are addicts because of the mental illness not necessarily because they like doing the drugs.

See when Reagan gutted the mental health system in this country so he could funnel the money to the defense industry (Gotta fund that Star Wars Defense Initiative) most of the mentally ill ended up homeless as states lost federal funding for mental health. There was a dramatic spike in the number of homeless in the 1980's and most of them were the mentally ill that were discharged from state hospitals for budget reasons. Don't get me wrong, the involuntary commitment thing we were doing to the mentally ill up to that point was all kinds of evil but the loss of funding did as much damage as wrongs it prevented. There are many many mentally ill that would voluntarily submit to treatment if it didn't cost anything because they don't have money and we've got a lot better drugs these days to treat things like schizophrenia than we did in the 80's.

I'd also like to point out that many of the homeless addicts that aren't mentally ill and not addicted to alcohol could be productive citizens if the war on drugs ended. They end up homeless because their addiction inevitably ends up giving them a criminal record that prevents employment. Combine the lack of employment because of a criminal record with the addiction and you end up with a homeless person. Unfortunately an alcohol addiction makes people pretty much unemployable due to the impairment and the massive health problems it causes.

Your sampling is skewed towards the homeless population that is willing to go to a church.
You should get to know some other homeless people.

Question for you, as someone who has developed a mobile app:

How much harder is it to optimize a mobile version of the webpage vs writing an app from scratch and getting it approved for App Store release?

Mobile developer here who has done hybrid apps, Android apps, iOS apps, web apps, etc.

It's hard.

Web apps do not get the native scrolling mechanism, so scrolling feels very funky in web apps. Web app developers write their own inertial scrolling mechanisms to try to deal with it, but web apps always feel wrong as a result.

You also don't get access to a lot of native functions. No barcode scanning. No access to the user's preloaded Facebook account (with authorization, of course.)

There is another problem in that, especially on Android, web technologies are just badly supported. It's getting better in more recent versions of Android where Chrome is actually the engine used end to end by everyone, but earlier versions still on Google's old ass version of WebKit blew chunks.

Loading can be a problem as well. Real apps by definition cache a certain amount of code and resources on the device. A web page has to fetch all resources from start to finish. So while a real app has it's loading UI cached on device, and can display it right away when the user taps a link, a web page has to go fetch a UI over the network to display a loading UI for the operation the web app is about to do over the network. Gross.

The other really messy thing is a real app is pretty easily able to figure out what kind of device it's on and render content accordingly. Web apps can kind of guess what type of display/device they are running on, but again, it can be messy. Especially with new things coming like Adaptive UI/multi windowing coming on iOS where your window or screen size may have no real connection to what kind of device you're running on. Web pages at this point basically assuming they're always rendering full screen on mobile, and do their layout computations based on that, but that looks like it will change on future iOS and Android devices.

You also have a problem with native widgets. If I code a real iOS app, if I run it on iOS 6, it looks like iOS 6. If I run it on iOS 7, it looks like iOS 7. I don't have to create new assets, the app automatically ingests the correct look from the widget set built into the OS. With a web page, I get the "joy" of building my widget set from scratch, and trying to make it at least resemble the system UI widgets the user has been trained to use. And better yet, if I make my web app look like an iOS app, I suddenly have a bunch of Android users unhappy my web app looks like an Android app.

Finally, web apps don't offer any way to be embedded as extensions on iOS, or activities on Android. You can kind of fake it with some really really ugly URL handling handshaking, but this is really problem prone.

TL; DR: Mobile web frameworks/browsers are still immature, and don't offer basically mobile specific functionality that's needed to do apps well. It's not a problem of it being hard to do a web app just as good as a native app, it's a problem of it being impossible because the feature sets just aren't there.

Too many people want to get rich by selling apps and expect Apple to pay for the marketing of their apps for free on the App Store.

I don't think this is quite what people are expecting. Rather, the problem is Apple directly prohibits most ways that an app can be promoted. Want to do a demo? No great way to do it in the app store. A trial? Forbidden. Want to offer a download directly from the developer? Nope.

So really what developers are requesting is simple: If Apple wants to directly hand hold the distribution and retail channel of an application, they either need to improve visibility for applications within that retail channel, or give developers more flexibility in how they can market applications. Apple isn't entirely responsible, but because they want developers to be so reliant on their store front, the argument is that Apple needs to actually provide a good store front to make that trade off worth it.

It would be like if you struck a deal with Target where they had full control over how your product was sold and exclusive rights to sell it, and then they stuck it in a dark corner of their store and never sold a single unit.

It's not a marketplace, it's a lottery for developers.

Or at least for our clients. I cottoned on *very* early that the SAFE money isn't in the app store, but in writing apps for others. Usually poor schmucks who believe their "Floppy duck clone will corner the market if only they had a coder". At first I was pretty OK with this, after all no one else in my hometown was doing it, and I could easily clock $4K a week ($12K for 3 weeks development with contracts back to back) and dude these where pretty good apps. But after a while it sort of started to feel like I was taking people for a ride by not explaining the market to these people. In the end I decided to stop doing social networking apps simply because they almost NEVER succeed , and I started insisting that they needed to start on a marketing plan with a professional *before* the contract starts (Since marketing considerations DO in fact drive it). This was all to protect my clients and ultimately my own reputation (Sometimes when an app fails in the market the client will blame the coder and thats BAD for reputation, even if its just total unfair nonsense).

And in the end I was lucky to get $500 a week because the work dried up as people moved to less ethical mass-production offshore developers who wouldnt say unpleasant things like "You need to spend some money on a marketing plan first" or "I dont feel comfortable spending your life savings on yet another facebook clone"

Yeah, I work for the government now. Somehow this feels more ethical.

Nice rant, but like all hyperboles, it left reality far behind in the second sentence.

I've used DOS originally, then some Windows and hated it pretty much from the start, so I switched to Linux as soon as I heard about it, I think it was 1997 or so. Do you know why I've been a Mac users for about 10 years now? Because it simply works. I don't have to spend half of my time on just maintaining the system and searching for obscure failure cases. I love my iMac and my iPhone because they allow me to focus almost all of my time on actually doing the work that I want to do.

To most people in this world, computers are a tool. Just like cars. Most people who own a car use it to get from A to B. Some people own cars so they can tinker with them on the weekend and replace parts just because they can - but they are a tiny minority.

I love that I could get a system running from scratch, compile my own kernel and base tools and so on. I've done it and it was a great experience. At the same time, I'm very happy that I don't actually have to do it. I'm tired of tinkering with the machine, I have actual work I want to get done. I have places A and B that I want to get to.

Oh, and for reference, Microsoft's revenue for the last quarter was about $20b. Which makes $13b spread between 1.2m apps seem very, very small. (I'm assuming that your $13b number is just for developers selling through the Apple App Store. If it also includes Android then it's an even more laughable number).

Your explanation of Heisenberg with the inability to observe is incorrect. That's a RESULT of Heisenberg.

Heisenberg's Principle comes out of the wave/particle duality. To localize a particle, you have to add waves of differing frequency to its wave function (ala Fourier). The more you localize it, the more waves of higher frequency you add. Momentum is derived from the wave frequency. Therefore, when you localize a particle, you are increasing the uncertainty of the momentum (by adding more and more higher frequency waves).

This is the argument that Heisenberg used (yes, I've read his book).

Follow up to my own post.

The fact that you cannot measure the momentum and location of a particle exactly is NOT a limitation imposed by measuring apparatus. The fact is that a quantum particle HAS no exact momentum and location, as a result of its wave function.

Particles can't really be two places at once. But since we're knocking things around with our light beam, we can't say for sure where it is now -- so we instead talk in terms of probabilities of where the electron is, rather than saying matter-of-factly where it is. This is what quantum mechanics does, it calculates probabilities that the electron is in a certain place, probability it was going a certain speed, etc.

As others have mentioned, you are missing a couple of fundamental points of the double-slit experiement.

1) The pattern observed has nothing to do with the photons being hard to measure (classically photons are sent through the slits),
The pattern produced is exactly the interference pattern expected if light were actually a wave. The peaks and troughs of the two waves cancel each other out which results in the dark bands. Dual peaks or dual troughs reinforce each other, resulting in bright bands.

2) If this was a result of electric field build up and the "detector knocking particles around a bit", then it should also happen for a single slit (it doesn't). It also should not occur for photons (electrically neutral), but it does.

3) "when single particles are allowed thru, we see only single points on the detector"

This is incorrect, and the weirdest thing about the experiment. If two slits are opened, and particles are sent through one at a time, there is still the same interference pattern created. Individual particles behave as if they do not have a fixed location, but only a probability of existing at a specific location.

Heisenberg's principle is a result of quantum mechanics and wave-particle duality, not the cause.

IAAPhysicist. Parent isn't correct. I advise you to not worry too much about what is "real" and accept that physics looks for simple models which match our experiences. You need to think abstractly, and assume less. For example, everyone grows up with some intuition of what an object is, and then project that notion into realms where they don't apply. The letters on this webpage, for example.... These are black objects which move up and down when you scroll the page. Or, is it really the white spaces between the letters which are the real objects, and the black is just void? Actually both are wrong, and the "reality" is that your monitor is doing certain things, depending on how deep you want to look.

When physicists talk about a particle, they are talking about the smallest step in the amplitude of the fluctuation in some field or combination of fields. A fluctuation doesn't have to be purely one kind of field; for example, a phonon is made out of collective motions of atoms, and polaritons are sort of some mix of photon and phonon. These could be considered particles (but not fundamental particles). This isn't the only way to think about a particle (since it's all just a model anyways), but it is more accurate than billiard balls.

Heisenburg uncertainty principle exists because you are trying to pinpoint a fluctuation in fields which occupy all space.

Parent's description of the double slit experiment is fully wrong. Electrons do not interfere with some build up of electrons. Electrons interfere with themselves, because the fluctuation (which is the electron) exists in the full region between the source and screen. The interference pattern is the same no matter how slowly (in terms of electron rate) you fire the electrons, so build up is not a concern. A similar interference pattern exists in photons and neutrons as well, which aren't charged.

Something about resistance is futile, right? Or is that Borg's law?

There have been questions of my ability to do what is on my resume that are legit.

I do a lot of technical interviewing, and that is the whole point of a technical interview, to verify that you actually do possess the skills that you have claimed to possess.

It's not because you're black. It's because you're interviewing. I could tell so many stories of wild resume claims, you'd laugh.

Here's one from today, for an interviewee who was an "expert in J2EE".

Q: What are some different types of EJBs and how do they differ from one another?
A: [uncomfortable silence].
Q: Sorry, let's back up a bit. Tell me about your role in your last project that used J2EE.
A: Uhh, I think I made a JSP once in college before I left to go work at a startup.

As you might expect, his resume got filed away in the recycling bin.

Oh, and I think that every Society for Black Engineers needs a counterpart Society for White Engineers.

The ODROID-W board uses the same Broadcom 2835 SoC as the Raspberry Pi board, that's why it's 100% software compatible.

There's also a Smart Watch implementation based on it.

BeagleBone Black is that board. Better GPIO, no broken USB stack and other Broadcom SOC BS.

Without Ethernet, I don't see how this is supposed to be competitive against RPi considering that TI has the nice EK-TM4C1294XL Tiva C Series Connected Launchpad for $20.

As much as I hate to say it, have you looked at the Banana Pi? Dual core 1ghz A20 with a gig of ram, sata port, etc, etc, etc.

I did a review of them not long ago at http://www.xganon.com/index.ph...

What makes this thing truly "Raspberry Pi-compatible" is that it uses the same Broadcom SoC. There's nothing Samsung about this thing.