The iPAD and I ... Part 1

Best thing since sliced bread? Well, maybe. So a quick summary of my current opinion.

OK, I like my iPAD very much. Perhaps Apple should have named it the iPED for Personal Entertainment Device, it really is a wonderful gadget. So why do I like it so much? For one it is highly portable, no mouse, no physical keyboard. The UI (user interface) is very nice. I suppose since I never owned an iPOD, the UI is new to me. The use of icons for programs and Web pages is very handy. The browser is very nice, very capable even without FLASH.

I do have a couple of issues mostly minor at this point.

For one, there does seem to be a problem with the browser, if you have a window within your main window, it does not scroll. This is very annoying, there are a variety of sites that use this feature, for example, a menu might be a "subwindow" in the main window, you only get to see the top portion. In fact there are many lists that are used by some WEB sites where you get to see only the top part.

Second, if you browse a book on Amazon, you have the option to look at front cover, back cover, table of contents, first few pages of the book and perhaps a few pages randomly selected. Like the previous issue, the browser does not handle this very well. You can see the top 2/3rds of the page but not the rest. So after viewing the partial table of contents pages, the text pages of the book get squished. Very annoying. I have tried the Amazon app, specifically fitted for the iPxDs but I still prefer the Amazon Web site.

Third, this is probably by design, the keyboard as far as I can tell does not support a "backspace". Yes it does have a backspace that earses but not a cursor backspace. You have to use your fingers to position the cursor. This makes editing annoying as you can't fix a error in the middle of a string without some ackward finger positioning.

In any case, these seem relatively minor issues as compared to the entire package. So, if you don't have an iPOD but enjoy surfing the Web without being tied to an ackward laptop or even a NetPC, I suggest you get one.

Illinois ... An American Joke

In a previous post I wrote about the monetary issues plaguing Illinois. Well it has not gotten any better. By the end of June, the state needs to pay over $7 BILLION which it does not have. According to the following article, "Mr. Quinn presented a budget in March that would still leave the state with a $10.6 billion deficit. ". Mr. Quinn is the current governor of Illinois.

So if you think Illinois bares no resamblance to Greece, think again. Once Illinois has to make deep cuts to its budget, will there be people with bricks in the streets. I guess we will see.

But as in Greece the legislature is unwilling to make appropriate changes to how money is spent. Acting in a cowardly fashion, saving their electoral skins, they will defer making important decisions until it is too late.

"Illinois Comptroller Daniel Hynes said in his April report that the state's cash position for the quarter ending June 30 "looks exceedingly difficult." By June 10, Illinois must repay $1.75 billion, plus interest, in short-term borrowing.

Meanwhile, the state still owes billions of dollars to hospitals, universities, social-service providers and others. Mr. Hynes said the state's backlog of unpaid bills probably will exceed $5.5 billion at the end of June."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703686304575228582377071698.html?mod=WSJ_article_LatestHeadlines

Can the military keep its edge?

As nations scramble for raw materials, the US military is thrown into the fray. As China and India as well as the rest of the world demands more raw materials, the US military must deal
with limited quantities of resources scattered around the world.

More to be said on this topic later. But the following article illustrates the current predicament for the Defense Dept.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704608104575220112898707130.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEForthNews

Republicans are Anarchists

Whatever happened to the party of "Law and Order"?

Growing up during the Vietnam War, the Left was considered anti-government and the Right was pro-government. How times have changed.

Democrats are accused of becoming socialist because they support government rules to manage an orderly process in the governance of the country. At the same time, Republicans have become the party of removing government rules that manage orderly regulatory laws. They seem to prefer a lawless, "wild-west" approach to medical and financial approaches to the US economy.

So in the grand scheme of things, if Democrats are portrayed as the party of Socialism, then Republicans should be portrayed as Anarchists.

Anarchists support an anti-government society. That to me is certainly the mindset of the Republican party. Why have laws?

This push for an anti-government philosophy seems to have been pushed by right-wing extremists. It seems, looking at developments over the past several months, that Republicans accepted an opportunity to join groups opposed to Barack Obama. Whether the opposition is beneficial for the country seems secondary, the focus seems to be to oppose Obama at any cost.

Thus as an alliance of convenience in opposition to Obama, Republicans connected with these right-wings extremists. Is this the best for the country or just people with a grudge seems unclear. Similarly what is the connection with respect to the Republican party with the "Tea Party" movement and the rise of "militias".

So looking into the future, will Republicans become ever more polarized by continuing to promulgate an anti-government philosophy? Or will they distance themselves from the fringe splinter groups such as the "Tea Party".

Taking back government? Less taxes? What does this mean other than empty slogans. Perhaps someone can explain what taking back government means. Less taxes? Under Eisenhower and Kennedy the upper end of the tax rate was 92%, it is now somewhere around 35%. I do believe the US was not socialist under Eisenhower.

"Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy.[1][2] It seeks to diminish or even abolish authority in the conduct of human relations." [from Wikipedia]

A Polish Tragedy

Here is a photo list of the most prominent Poles who lost their lives at Smolensk Airport. The list is from a Polish web site so the language is Polish but it does give a prespective of the lives lost in this tragedy.

http://wiadomosci.onet.pl/150325,21,0,0,1,pokaz.html

ACM Competition -- MIT, a loser!

US Universities Can't Compute

A lot of literature has been dedicated to education in the US. Much of the discussion centers around K-12. But maybe we should be looking beyond K-12 and what is happening at our colleges, especially considering the results of the ACM competition. This is in light of the fact that there is a battle going on in the Internet. Cyber-attacks are pervasive. Many of them originating in China allegedly (more on that later).

The ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) is a professional organization dedicated to all things related to computers and computing. Once a year, it hosts a competition among colleges and universities world-wide. The competition deals with solving computer-related problems.

MIT is a loser! Rather a bold statement, but when MIT finishes in the "peloton" of a competition related to computers, maybe it is not so outrageous. In fact MIT finished behind Stanford, Cornell and CMU as far as American entries were concerned. Which themselves finished 14th, 15th, and 17th respectively, although they all are listed as 14th.

So who were the winners? Of the top ten, 4 were from China and 4 were from Russia; the remaining two, one was from Ukraine (#4) and the other was from Poland (#8).

While winning competitions is not a predictor of the ability of a nation to deal with the issues of Internet security, it does point out the strength of students and potentially the future workforce for all things Internet. This includes cyber-attacks and cyber-protection.

The Competition

From the news release:
"The contest took place in Harbin, China with 103 teams competing in the final round. Earlier rounds of the competition included 22,000 contestants representing 1,931 universities from 82 countries. The top four teams won Gold medals as well as employment or internship offers from IBM." [http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases/2010/icpc-2010]

The Results

http://cm.baylor.edu/ICPCWiki/Wiki.jsp;jsessionid=DDAD0FF7938BF90C73C0D917AF29F681?page=Results%20World%20Finals%202010

The Problems

The problems are listed under the first column in pdf (finals problems). [http://cm.baylor.edu/welcome.icpc]

iPAD Setup

Just a quick link to what I find is a nice description of dealing with your new iPAD. I continue to believe that the iPAD may change the way we interact with the Internet.


http://gizmodo.com/5508769/how-to-set-up-your-ipad?skyline=true&s=i