Mandatory vote is a good start, and will encourage more people to think about their government. In addition, get rid of electoral college. Add verifiable secure online voting and promote a system wide education of the people on the benefits of political envolvement.
This feature is great. Perhaps once such cars become the majority on the road, traffic flow could be optimized resulting in a faster commute during rush hours.
An interesting article. It certainly seems unfair to have such selection bias. It may be beneficial to have a standardized country-wide test which could quantify and compare the quality of PhD grads arising from universities. If an effective test could be devised, it seems that companies and universities would pay attention to it. As it stands now, no such testing exists, making universities rely on qualitative evaluations, such as reputation, prestige, and price. I think it is true in general that without quantitative ways of evaluating something, looking at price seems to be the best alternative.
The best approach is to go directly to the founders and ask them to help you. Literaly use those words. Such an approach makes them stake their integrity and avoid hostility. Ask them for assistance. Best way to resolve a conflict. Keep calm, talk with the people involved and voice your concerns directly. Be cool, don't act frantic. Ask every possible question, and tell them how it made you feel, do not keep you thoughts hidden, level with them. The most important - be patient and cool. Find out everything you can. It will become clear quickly, either you're being screwed or there's been a mistake. Then you can choose a course of action. Even if you're being screwed, act cool be patient and firm. Deal with it professionally.
On Canada's education: I came from Belarus when I was 10 and was put into 5th grade. Until I got to 9th grade, there was no new math taught to me. I didn't know about the unit circle until 10th grade, however, my friends from home learned about it in 7th grade. This is only one example. Maybe Canada's university education is at par, I don't know, but the years leading up to it are mostly wasted, to say the least. Since grade 1 we sat attentively and quietly at desks listening to the teacher, they commanded our respect and their classrooms were always well organized for learning. Compare that with Ontario, when I was placed in 5th grade. We were never encouraged to read out-loud to the class, come to the front of the class to answer questions, solve math problems on the board or to memorize and tell a poem. We did not read classic authors, or poets and learn their works. Our reading speed was not measured, we were not assigned reading, writing or math homework beyond simple "spelling sheets" and "fill in the blank math sheets". We were not taught to keep an organized student planner, or keep an organized notebook. Our homework was not graded, our grades were not tracked and were never revealed to us. We were never told what we needed to improve. We never had to write short, well formatted and grammatically correct paragraphs and short pieces. We never wrote dictations, we never actually wrote anything beyond single worded "fill-in-the-blank" worksheets. Our penmanship was not judged, proper grammar was not encouraged or judged. All these things were taught to us in Belarus from grade 1 to 5. I was shocked to come to Canada and learn that in fifth grade, students had to sit on the floor for parts of the day as the teacher read to them, like kindergarten. Knowing this I often reflect on how much obvious potential is wasted and opportunity missed by Canadian elementary education systems. I visited Belarus when I was in 9th grade, my friends there were writing essays in English and Spanish as weekly homework. Compare that with French language education in Canada, by 9th grade, after 5 years of elementary school French, I could count to a hundred and read a little. I did not know proper grammar or how to write sentences. Anyway, there are many examples in other subjects as well. Each time I reflect on this, I cannot help but feel how pathetic the education is. It's not serious. It then comes as no surprise that there are teachers at conferences who are not able to comprehend weighted averages, as japhyr mentioned. I wish elementary education in Canada were reformed completely.
Good article. As good as Google's permission system is, it lacks obvious features. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think that Android permission are overly general and not specific enough in a majority of apps.
The concept of maximizing shareholder value being the only true purpose of a company, taken at its literal sense, is an idea that's rotten to the core. This type of thinking is a natural consequence of the selfish individuals that to some degree all of us are. Taking human natural flaws into account, it is simply irresponsible to adopt such a philosophy. It will be exploited. This type of company suffers from an inherent vulnerability. At some point, true motives, such as provision of quality services and goods, could be distorted and even replaced by fallacious motives. As is seen in the world today.
I agree, I think YCombinator is great and they need to find a way to "foster" the growing community of mini start-ups who are perhaps, not yet ready for incubation, or don't need it, but are still capable of realizing their potential. This community should be free for all, in order to meet, network, collaborate, learn and keep passions burning. Focus on investment potential could be secondary to focus on start-up community growth, involvement, and learning.
There are more applicants than YCombinator could accept (or anyone could accept if you look at it in scale). Someone should create a social-media type website for YCombinator applicants (or anyone) to share their stories, meet, interact, network, learn, and collaborate on new and existing ideas. Imagine how many start-ups would be "born" like this. Think of how many great ideas don't get in or simply don't apply, think of how BIG this community could grow to be in a short time - it would grow by itself. Look at what Kickstarter is doing. Think of how many new comers this type of stepping stone would benefit and help achieve their ideas. Starting this community is possible by creating a great website that creatively engages members to collaborate. Let YCombinator (and anyone else) endorse it - first to members of the y-community then others. In fact "y-community" should be the name of it. We all know that out kind already burn with passion, desire and creativity. With minimal guidance from YCombinator it could succeed faster - passionate desires of those not-accepted will continue to burn and be fostered. Eventually, and this is speculating perhaps, if YCombinator becomes somewhat involved, with so many start-up communities popping-up in every city and country, this website, could grow to become the "Facebook" of start-ups. (only it would also be productive :) But seriously.
Awesome tech. I wonder how data will be written and read from such a disk? How long will it take? The transfer of 1000TB will be an interesting problem indeed. At current theoretical blu ray writing speed of 12x or 400Mbps [1] the time to read/write such a disk would be:
Eventually an alternative app market free from apple or Google oversight and copyright infringement nonsense will come out. It's about time someone made a significant effort to establish it. Such a market will be profitable too.
What type of circuits are technically possible to build in Minecraft? Could one build a basic CPU with RAM, HDD, and BUS? What is the limit of what one could build?
Wow great article. I learned about the difference between Ambient Occlusion rendering techniques: Screen Space Ambien Occlusion (SSAO) and Horizon-Based Ambient Occlusion (HBAO).