I'd love to read his account of how he interpreted the increasingly digital and electronic items he encountered during his burglaries: flat screen TVs; computers; ever smaller radios, flashlights, calculators; thermostats; microwave ovens; clocks. He had some education in electronics, so it seems he must have spent some time, even a little bit, reflecting on the technological changes he witnesses as an outside observer.
In that case, the statement from the article "We could have a sphere as large as a planet, bore a hole 6" in length through it..." seems inconsistent. Either the cylinder is not 6" long, or it does not go through the sphere.
The problem can be rephrased to avoid the ambiguity. Something like "A hole is bored through a sphere such that the void in the remaining material has the shape of a cylinder 6 inches tall".
I guess the overall idea is anyway to reveal the elegant mathematical result. Wikipedia does a good job of talking clearly about it:
In geometry, the volume of a band of specified height around a sphere—the part that remains after a hole in the shape of a circular cylinder is drilled through the sphere—does not depend on the sphere's radius.
I thought that at first, but the length of the hole is dependent on the width of the hole. The wider the hole, the shorter, because wider holes remove bigger caps.
With a sufficiently wide hole, you could indeed drill a 6" hole through a spherical Earth, it'd just look more like a thin ring the diameter of the Earth than a sphere.
i still get a confused language impression from that. for me it's the combination of "drill" and "through" (probably was forced to take too much 'wood shop')
i think it would be more clear to phrase it starting along the lines of: position a cylinder concentric and inscribed within a sphere ...
He compares Aereo to a photocopy shop that provides users with library cards to access materials. Providing the copier and the card isn't a direct violation of the Copyright Act (via direct, volitional "performance" of a copyrighted work). Aereo may be guilty of a secondary violation (enabling a direct violation by others), but that wasn't the question before the court.
To make it even more interesting, this case was specifically about the "play" function of Aereo, and the Supreme Court wasn't addressing at all its "record" function, which is essentially returned to lower courts for them to decide (and I suppose only if Aereo continues to fight).
Twenty years ago, those major ISPs were using the telephone system (via dial-up), which was designated a common carrier. If ISPs had to convince everyone to buy into a new cable or dish transmission system because the tel-cos could block their traffic over the phone lines or charge inflated fees for it, where would we be now?
Interesting point. But I have too much faith in human ingenuity to believe that without a common carrier telephone system we wouldn't have an internet right now. Maybe the path and details would differ.
I find this whole thing a tempest in a teacup. The original claim that the scanners are flawed doesn't strike me as explosive a revelation as it's being made out to be. My guess is the machines could be modified to change the background color behind the scanned person's silhouette.
The quote from the TSA ("Any guidance provided is to caution reporters not to generalize...") is merely saying "don't jump to conclusions on the basis of some activist's blog post/video," which is quite a reasonable "cautionary" statement. Sure, they're covering their ass some, but if they're truly being sued by this guy, they probably can't even get into things with him in the media anyway.
Granted, I have no love for the TSA, but some of this anti-TSA rhetoric seems like groping of a different kind.
> My guess is the machines could be modified to change the background color behind the scanned person's silhouette.
For a billion dollars, I would have demanded, at minimum, that modifications to make the machines actually work be included. That they weren't just underscores the idiocy at play.
> The quote from the TSA ("Any guidance provided is to caution reporters not to generalize...") is merely saying "don't jump to conclusions on the basis of some activist's blog post/video," which is quite a reasonable "cautionary" statement.
It would be reasonable, if this were a citizen petitioning the media. Except this is the government, funded by the people, telling the media on their behalf what should and should not be discussed. The most charitable analysis is that my hard-earned tax dollars are being flushed on unsolicited media curation. A less charitable (and I believe, more likely) explanation is an attempt to sidestep the first amendment with no repercussions because it's not censorship, just chilling effects which nobody can be held accountable for.
So at best, complete incompetence, and at worst, conspiracy. Either way, I think the outrage is justified.
Once you have spent the billion, you no longer have the resources to see if it works or not. Outrage away, it won't change the basic limitations of human cognition.
I'll make the seemingly-obvious argument that is made every time this issue comes up in Internet forums: "natural" scrolling is fine for a single user of a single computer, but if you use multiple computers -- particularly multiple OSes -- "natural" scrolling is anything but natural.
Further, it may be easy to adapt to for one person on one system, but what is the net benefit? It seems to me the sole benefit for "natural" scrolling (and most other Lion changes) is seen primarily in unifying the UI for users who own a Mac and one or more iOS devices. Otherwise, it's yet one more change forcing users to adapt. And yet, the new scrolling method is the default. Was the old way really hindering anyone?
