I don't think you understand how college admissions work. Students are generally accepted based on their overall academic record. Grades, SAT score, extracurriculars, etc.
Students are not accepted to CS programs because they've written a lot of prior code. I'm sure most incoming chemistry students have not spent time inside a lab outside of their high school chemistry class. College is where you specialize in a particular field so students are accepted based on their overall aptitude and not experience in a specific subject.
... of course I understand how college admissions work. Do you assume that I am a total idiot or something? :)
"the Admissions Office began giving more weight to non-academic factors, looking for applicants with leadership
potential and a commitment to “give back to the community.” These broadened criteria also became important in awarding financial aid."
They changed the weighting to emphasize intangibles such as charity and "leadership potential".
"He felt it was important to get the message out that “no prior programming experience is necessary” to enter the CMU computer science program."
They changed the weighting to de-emphasize experience - which is the #1 correlate to ability.
"I'm sure most incoming chemistry students have not spent time inside a lab outside of their high school chemistry class."
But if there was a student who spent time outside the lab, they would give that student special consideration because of proven ability and interest in the field. It just so happens that the majority of CS students are going to have experience outside the computer lab, because in this world everyone has their own computer. Most people don't have their own chemistry lab.
Experience does correlate strongly with current ability, but it correlates much more weakly with potential ability.
There's no college out there that requires "5 years prior job experience", because the relationship between college and student is very different than between employer and employee. Employers look for current ability. Colleges, on the other hand, look for future ability, the indicators of which are significantly more speculative.
According to my mother (a musician) most music programs tend to require prior experience. The rationale is a stronger version of what forensic said: anyone serious about music would have already invested effort into learning how to play. The same could be easily said about CS.
Every college looks at SATs and GPA, which are nothing more than measures of current ability. SATs measure current ability† in math and language. GPA measures current ability in all the subjects. Oftentimes an applicant can get special consideration by proving their interest in the subject and having some experience - for instance at science fairs. Or you can go talk to the professors of your particular subject and if the professors are impressed by your interest in the field they give special consideration. The best predictor of future interest is past interest. And anyone interested in computer science will have experience with it outside of the classroom.
†I know, theoretically they measure potential - but c'mon we all know that's bullshit. It's so easy to either raise or lower your SAT scores through study and experience.
Half the stuff from my old chemistry kit in the 80's would be illegal to sell to mass consumers now. Even legal home chemistry labs can result in getting one's door kicked down by people with guns and being charged with making drug manufacture or terrorism.
I think it'll be a while before Google is able to provide mapping data internationally. That's why Google Maps Navigation is only available in the US, where it's a perfectly suitable replacement for traditional GPS devices, especially with Verizon's ubiquitous coverage.
They could also get a lot of third-party revenue by wiping out all of the native apps and letting other people sell them. At some point you have to worry about the value of your platform and now they have Android to compete with.
I think Apple's recent acquisition of Placebase, a mapping company, might indicate that they're willing to compete with Google on a navigation app.
I think always having a network connection is sort of the point of developing this application for Android. Their address lookups are sent to Google's servers and the guy in that demo video is constantly mentioning "the cloud." I don't imagine this would work without a network connection since their intention is not to develop a standalone GPS device.
If it doesn't work off-line then it is far less useful. The problem is not so much that network connections are hard to come by, but that once you leave your little corner of the world they become stupidly expensive. I dare not think what the the bandwidth bill for using something like this for week abroad would be.
Google Maps Navigation is only available in the US.
I don't think it's really reasonable, at this point, to expect a GPS device to work worldwide. Are they supposed to store the world's mapping data locally? Google is still licensing their maps from Tele Atlas (TomTom) outside the US so I don't think it's even possible for them to provide navigation in those parts.
Storing all the worlds map data locally is unnecessary. All you need is to let the user download the maps for the part of the world he intends to visit before he leaves. If it's a licensing problem I'm sure it can be solved with money. I'll happily pay a reasonable fee for each additional country/region.
I don't think the licensing problem can be solved with money. TomTom owns the mapping data and obviously wouldn't let Google provide a navigation app since it would put them in direct competition with TomTom. That's why Google had to create their own maps for the US.
The map downloading model you're describing already exists and there are already plenty of other companies providing in-car GPS devices for that. I don't think it's appropriate to implement that sort of thing in a smartphone since the entire point is that it should always be connected.
Google didn't previously own the map data (Tele Atlas did and they're owned by GPS device company, TomTom) so it wasn't theirs to license. They only recently started using their own maps earlier this month for the US.
Also, Apple recently acquired PlaceBase so they now have access to their own map data.
It's related to the format of the video rather than browser sniffing. Firefox only supports Ogg Theora for HTML5 video, but the video on the page is MP4/H.264. Dive Into HTML5 has more detail: http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html#what-works
Mozilla is fundamentally opposed to decency on ideological grounds.
They really should just do a generalized version of what Safari does -- call out to Quicktime / DirectShow / GStreamer, but they'll never do that, because it would invalidate their efforts to shove OGG down people's throats.
Barring that, they should do what Chrome does -- link in a normal copy of ffmpeg that's built without most of the codecs by default.
Instead, they link directly with liboggplay. You'd have to significantly fork Gecko in order to support anything but Vorbis and Theora in OGG containers. It reminds me of the way Stallman designed GCC's internal representations to be impossible to interface with externally.
If you're going to wank about respecting patents and copyright licenses, let them be enforced by the legal system -- don't do it by writing obnoxious code.
