I don't think either the PC or tablets in their current forms will be the productivity tool of the future. The floor's open to new contenders that can help people deal with data and complexity.
Well, that's how physics works. Physics is stupefyingly strict about its methods. Most sciences don't put quite as much value into models. The problem is that in a desire to strictly follow the method, physicists have become complacent with regards to extraordinary claims. Sure, the universe is full of dark matter, connected by tiny strings, in between folded up dimensions, but gravity is leaking away into parallel universes, since that's what the model predicts (rather than it just being a mathematical anomaly arising from botched assumptions). It's comparable to an economic model that describes inflation as the work of invisible leprechauns who increase prices during the night. Sure, it might make accurate predictions, hell, it might even be true, but you should not put any value into it unless there is evidence that the universe actually works in the extraordinary way the model claims it does.
Biology has followed a much better path over the past century, and biologists are rapidly building up an extremely thorough understanding of how biological systems work without relying heavily on algebraic models. Physics fails to provide explanations for even the most basic physical phenomena like motion. It's effectively just assumed to exist as a law because some authoritative physicist said so and all other models rely on it.
Most of the understanding of biological systems that you're touting ultimately punt their hard questions back to the physicists, so you're really not any better off.
To put it differently, biology can't answer why paraplegics can't walk without first answering how people walk. You can't explain walking if you can't explain motion. Unless the biologists have been holding out on us, they don't have an explanation for motion that would satisfy us any more deeply than you do. Thus, if physicists can't explain something as basic as motion, then biologists can't explain something as simple as why paraplegics can't walk.
Sorry, I don't mean to be insulting, but I find this to be quite laughable. Firstly, neither string theory or "gravity leakage" or more than 4 dimensions of space-time are even remotely accepted theories in physics or cosmology. The theory of dark matter is supported by many hugely disparate lines of evidence. It's the only theory that makes sense given all the evidence.
> Firstly, neither string theory or "gravity leakage" or more than 4 dimensions of space-time are even remotely accepted theories in physics or cosmology.
Are you implying that TV funding is tantamount to scientific authority? Are we to believe dragons and white walkers are accepted scientific fact along with mitochondrial eve being a cylon hybrid?
And how many dragons and white walkers and Cylons are featured by Nova specials, the Discovery Channel, and get pop-sci articles written up in Scientific American?
In all other sciences, if you find a model that predicts something as self-contradictory as a black hole or dark matter, you shrug, figure your assumptions are wrong, and start over. In physics you announce the splendiferous wonders of the universe.
Don't forget dark energy, also (like dark matter) invented to fit the observations. How many hundreds of $millions of taxpayer money will be spent searching for it? These inventions are keeping many scientists employed, it seems. If they went back to correct the mistakes (like any good software developer) there might be a mass layoff.
Just imagine the fame a researcher or a team would get should they explain dark matter by updating current theories (in a way that fits _all_other_explained_ observations). I don't think if anybody had a good idea they would care about mass layoffs.
But the people who'd review the idea would care about that, so they might refuse to review it as "too nutty". Plate tectonics might have fit into that category, although of course it did reach general acceptance when the evidence became overwhelming.
A quick collapse of the price would be best for everyone, except for the "muppets" who bought FB shares in the IPO. Especially for Facebook, who would otherwise see an exodus of employees who can make more in terms of vesting credit at companies whose share price does go up. I do think a market cap of >$50 billion is sustainable based on the size of the warchests at Microsoft and Apple. If they could only ever buy one company, it would be Facebook.
Not wrong. Facebook and the investors that sold stock in the IPO got $38*the number of shares. Whatever happens after the IPO is essentially irrelevant to them, except their remaining shares have gone down in market price. That probably doesn't hurt much if you realize that a day earlier there was no market price, and you got a great deal on the shares you did sell. Morgan Stanley is probably also not being harmed in this transaction (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenshoe ). They do have reason to support the IPO price level. Otherwise, it will be much harder for them to find investors for the next Internet IPO, which means lower prices, which means lower underwriter fees.
The people on the wrong end of the deal are those that bought Facebook shares pre-IPO or in the hours after the IPO. The people on the right end are all early Facebook investors selling shares and the underwriters.
You are basically admitting that Zuck didn't build a valuable company, but instead he conned investors (and Main Street) out of billions (coming days and weeks will tell exactly how much). So, congratulations to him I guess.
There's no con here. Anyone who bought at the open price had all the information they needed to make an educated purchase of the Facebook stock. I'm not an institutional investor and I looked at the P/E of 100 and thought it would be kind of silly to buy at that price and many others here seemed to think the same thing.
Zuck has built a valuable company - its just not $100B valuable. But a $25B company isn't peanuts.
Agreed, but it turns the stomach a bit to read the FB fanboys slapping each other on the back about FB being a "$100B company" (and that the IPO "proves" it).
FB scored a win by getting $100B, but in my opinion it's tainted, and they may have poisoned the well for those who follow.
Actually, I think information theory is the only branch of science that has something genuinely useful to say about computers. Unfortunately, it has few people working on it in the context of computer systems. The world is dying for useful models of (real) CPUs and complex networks based on information theory, but that's not really happening. Computer "scientists" rather spend their time building example systems that no one will ever use, or creating theoretical models that have no connection to reality. No idea what the purpose of either is.
