Google Positioning System

Will Truman 57 Comments

Ed Zitron has a fantastic idea:

Google 16GB Nexus 7 retails for $200. Cheap Android tablets are rapidly racing toward the $50 range – though one can’t guarantee quality at $64.99 – and I see no reason why Google hasn’t jumped into [the consumer GPS industry] and squashed the competition. Google Maps navigator is twice the GPS that TomTom or Garmin has created (I’ve used around 8 in the last year) and is better than anything I’ve seen inside a car outside of Elon Musk‘s Tesla. Android is cheap to build for, easily customizable (look at the Kindle Fire or any of the different open source ROMs like Cyanogen Mod and Jelly Beans).

Google could create a small tablet – 6 inches, perhaps – put a SIM card in there much like Apple does for their cellular iPads – customize Android to focus on maps, and price the thing at $200. They could run a deal with Verizon like they do for the Chromebook – 100MB a month, for free, for two years.

I know that this idea is fantastic because it’s what I have been thinking for some time now. Indeed, it’s a variation of a goal that I have been working towards. I want an Android GPS system. I’d prefer it inside my dashboard, but I’ll take it outside of it. In fact, I’ve been road testing all sorts of Android map apps (I’ll be posting reviews) in preparation for buying one to have installed in the Forester. The Forester’s stereo interface is dreadful, and when we bought the car we agreed that I would be able to replace it. I hadn’t thought of Android – or even a GPS-capable player – at that point, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I like it.

What are the advantages of an Android GPS system? Namely, that I can use all of the addresses I already have stored in my phone. That’s a pretty big deal to me. The apps tend to be lackluster, either because they’re online-only (like Google Navigator, Waze), they don’t incorporate contact data easily (NavFree, MapFactor), an inability to work offline (Skrobble), or some other issue. But I’m working on it. If I get my Android car stereo system, I’ll have a map program in there.

Right now I am switching between my Garmin standalone device and putting my phone on a mount and using that. Both have their problems. I’d really like a dedicated device. I hope that there’d really be a market for it and I think Zitron has some good ideas.

I think it would be even better, of course, if they were actually talking directly to the car companies. More and more of them are working towards devices with interfaces and apps. But they’re proprietary. I don’t see a whole lot of great reasons that they shouldn’t be using established OSes with an established app-base. But absent that, I’d be more than happy to have a device propped up on the dashboard while being able to keep my phone in its holster.

Gotta Keep Moving

Will Truman 2 Comments

Clancy’s last day at work was Friday. She finished her notes and paperwork on Sunday. She is officially free!

Tomorrow/today (Tuesday) we are heading to Deseret to the airport. It’s going to be a busy day. Wednesday we’re going to be flying. Thursday we’re driving from Colosse to Genesis in Deltona. It’s going to be a busy few days.

We’re leaving Arapaho on the 13th and expect to arrive in Stonebridge, Queenland (not to be confused with Queensland, Australia) on the 19th.

Apropos none of the above, our fridge died, so before we head to Deseret tomorrow, we get to clean out the fridge. Yay. We’ve been reducing volume in preparation for the move. The big thing is the bottled breastmilk. Which we’re just going to have to freeze (the freezer still works).

The Best Video Game Ever: “Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord”

Burt Likko

Note: This post is part of our League Symposium on the Best Video Games Ever.  To see a list of all posts in the Symposium so far, please click here.

I’m an RPG guy. And I’m going old school here. Way old school: 1982. This one I played on an Apple IIe, with the green VGA monitor. Especially thinking about how far RPG’s have come, and the new king of the fantasy-setting games, Skyrim, picking Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord may seem a bit odd of a choice. Look at that playscreen — how primitive! But I’m putting it out there without apology.

After all, there are two possible choices for the best role-playing game from the very early days of personal computers, and I had to pick one. Post continues on the Front Page.

Hippie Week, Cnt’d: Name, Rank, & Serial Number

Will Truman 14 Comments

So, Friday night I went to go see Man of Steel. After the movie let out, it was around midnight. I wanted to smoke a few cigarettes before returning home. Due to the heat and the lack of air conditioning at our house, the windows are open and it bothers Clancy if I am smoking near the building. So I went to the local Motor Court and had, bought some hot chocolate, and went behind the building.

I’d been there about ten minutes when a cop car rolled up. It’s never a good thing when you’re hanging out and a cop car rolls up. I’ve been through the drill before. They get out, shine a bright light in your eye (if it’s night), and start asking you a bunch of questions. What are you doing here? Do you have somewhere else you should be? Are you waiting for someone? What are you waiting for someone for? Do you live in town? Could we see your driver’s license? Is this driver’s license current? How long have you lived at this address? Where did you live before you lived at this address? Did you drive here? Where is your car? Would you mind if we searched it? And about a hundred thousand ways of asking why I am acting so suspicious-like.

When it’s all said and done, no ticket is issued. It’s mostly just a nuisance and a notice that I need to find some other place to go in the future. If I’m not from whatever town this happens in, they suggest that I leave and maybe next time I find some other place to stop. If I do live in town, they suggest that I just go mosey on home.

I had my answers in a row by the time it stopped in front of me. I just got out of a movie and am smoking a couple cigarettes before I go home. I’m smoking here because it bothers my wife and I have an infant at home. I was a tad irritated because, seriously, they were going to quiz me when there are three fellows over there sleeping in that drainage ditch and a family of six that has parked for the night in that van over there? I’m the person of interest here?

They never got out of the car, though. They just parked there for about three minutes. Then they drove, did a Uey, and then parked behind the aforementioned family van and stayed there for about five minutes. Then they pulled out and went back on the street and left.

I guess they’re a little on high alert due to the fact that it’s Hippie Week and they have people spending the night in vans in parking lots and drainage ditches. Having thought about it, this hasn’t happened in Arapaho at all. Either because I am a local and people recognize me, or the community trust quotient is high enough that a guy standing there smoking doesn’t raise alarm bells like it does in other places I’ve lived. The only time I have been hassled in the last three years has been when we took a trip back home to Deltona. In that case, the cop was actually pretty cool about it and made it clear from early on that he was just needing to collect enough information to fill out a “Suspicious Person Contact Form.”

My Affirmative Action Anecdotes

Vikram Bath 303 Comments

As an academic, I worked where affirmative action does most of its work: higher ed.

Each semester, I would get an e-mail from administration asking how one or two students were doing in my class. Peculiarly (I thought), they always happened to ask about the one or two D or F students in a class of perhaps 60 people, all with better grades.

Upon reviewing the exams of these one or two students, I found they were completely clueless about the material. They had missed the basics that I had thought everyone should have already known. (Imagine teaching a geometry class but discovering on the exam that the student can’t add. Your course is not helping them, but there they are anyway.)

It was only in my sixth year of teaching that I found out how the administrators were able to predict which students were doing poorly. The students they asked about were affirmative action admits. These students were (not) coincidentally always lost in class. The administration polled professors about these students because they tended to fail classes, and they needed advance notice to be able to assign tutors to keep these students afloat on a semester-by-semester basis.

Irrespective of the merits of affirmative action, my personal experience left me horrified by its ineffectiveness. The students perhaps would graduate with a degree at the very bottom of their class, which would send them back to their old neighborhood to do something they could have done without the degree. I’ve worked for a few “equal-opportunity” employers, and all that means is that we went to minority-targeted job fairs and posted jobs in minority-targeted publications. Minorities were extended no courtesy in hiring decisions, so the benefits accruing to these students were probably minimal.

I know that affirmative action isn’t supposed to work like this. AA students are supposed to be only a bit off from the students they displace, but that wasn’t my experience at two large state universities.

—

Of course, this is not the whole story. The whole story would include a note about how these students were actually among the top students back in their neighborhoods. Acceptance into a state university was the least that we could do for these students. And when I say “the least we could do”, I mean it literally.

The legal justifications for affirmative action entertained by the Supreme Court and covered by Burt last week were just that: legal justifications. All the talk of redressing past wrongs or diversity are intellectual veneer that hides our true particle board motives.

I hypothesize* that our main motives are to entrench our current social order. We on top don’t want K-12 education to be equal throughout America. Truly leveling K-12 education would horrify even middle-class parents. Especially middle-class parents.

Acknowledging this, of course, is not an option. It’s too horrific to admit. But the guilt still burns, so we soothe it with the balm of affirmative action. And if that doesn’t work, there’s always the safety net. Head Start, Obamacare, progressive taxation, and all the rest are morsels of compassion engineered to excuse us from the need to fix K-12.

* Everything in the post beyond this point is speculative. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Linky Friday #30

Will Truman 43 Comments

murder1600_pg01

Values:

[V1] How monogamy became normal.

[V1] Americans are becoming less religious, while lamenting the fact that we’re becoming less religious. Here’s a map of the world’s atheists.

[V2] David Freedman thinks we might be able to tackle obesity by embracing junk food. Tom Philpott disagrees. Long, but RECOMMENDED!

[V3] I can’t say I’m sorry that this guy is off the street, but… entrapment? I know, it’s not entrapment if it’s not the police that do it. But it still makes me uncomfortable.

[V4] Honestly, I have no objection that news media has my side’s back on the gay marriage debate. But it should be acknowledged that it has been taking sides for quite some time.

[V5] It’s nice to know that gay weddings can be the backdrop of stupid-arse drama, just as straight weddings can.

Business:

[B1] Hit Coffee favorite Jordan Weissman has a series going on unpaid internships. It turns out they really don’t help you land a regular job, and they are actually the province not of the rich, but of the poor and middle class. RECOMMENDED!

[B2] Derek Thompson says that credit cards are making us dumber, fatter, and poorer.

[B3] The Atlantic also has a good piece on the SkyMall, and The Verge has an article on its darker side. I look at it pretty regularly during take-off and landing, making me wonder if they’re worried about recent happenings with the FAA.

[B4] From a business perspective, McDonalds is pretty awesome.

[B5] Matt Yglesias and others – including myself – have talked about how it’s important to finish college if you go. Well, maybe it’s advantageous to go even if you’re going to drop out. I’m not sure how you disaggregate for the self-selection, though. And there’s the collective action aspect of it.

Entertainment:

[E1] The Harlem Globetrotters are up for sale. I have some fond memories of those guys.

[E2] It seems highly unlikely that eBook prices will actually be able to stay where they are, however much the publishers wish otherwise.

[E3] How science should influence science fiction, when it comes to exoplanets. Planets that shouldn’t exist come with their own plots!

STEM:

[S1] In Colorado, a district is breaking from custom and will pay science teachers more than English teachers.

[S2] As I’ve said before, if you’re a doctor, and you’ve been sued, you’ve already lost.

[S3] According to Dan Munro, healthcare pricing transparency is gaining momentum.

[S4] Facebook can give you a self-esteem boost.

[S5] Carbon dioxide emissions aren’t just attributed to causing global warming, but global greening as well. RECOMMENDED!

America:

[A1] Ilya Shapiro of Cato draws out attention to a weird scandal involving foreign knights.

[A2] Jon Last writes about how family formation delivers political results for the GOP. The problem is that he’s looking at 2000, when I’m not sure how much the results hold up in 2012.

[A3] Stuart Stevens has some very intelligent things to say on the immigration front for the Republican Party, which is pretty much getting bad advice from everyone right now. RECOMMENDED!

[A4] CIA agents explain what they would do if they were Edward Snowden, and on the run. RECOMMENDED!

[A5] John McCain should be honored that the Chinese found hacking his campaign to be worth their time.

[A6] The EIA has declared that we have more oil and gas than we thought we did and
natural gas and renewables are complimenting one another in Texas.

World:

[W1] Mongolia is trying to go green, with mixed results.
Internet:

[W2] All is not well – though all is not lost – in the Australian economy.

[W3] You know, I hadn’t thought about it, but when mentioning someone from the UK that isn’t Anglo, I have almost always favored the term “British” over “English.” Apparently, so do Bangladeshis.

[W4] Photos of famous landmarks… under construction.

[W5] Be careful what we wish for. In Sweden, parental leave may be contributing to the gender gap.

[W6] Charter cities have had a breakthrough in Honduras.

[W7] McArdle wonders if those leaving the European periphery will indeed return home.

Big Wednesday 2013

Burt Likko 118 Comments

Yesterday, I finally had a spare moment to set up for today’s cases. And I threw in my predictions just to go on the record. No, I don’t know why the Court is taking three days to do what I was expected it to do in one.  So, here’s today’s action from the Supreme Court:

Sekhar v. United States: Recall that this case deals with whether an in-house counsel’s opinion to a public entity can be considered “property” for purposes of an extortion statute. Reversed, unanimously, in an opinion by Scalia: this is not “property” so it cannot be extortion. Concurrence by Alito, joined by Kennedy and Sotomayor.

Hollingsworth v. Perry: This is the constitutional challenge to California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriages by initiative. The first question was whether the proponents of Proposition 8 had standing to defend it in court, given that California’s governors and attorneys general declined to do so. It appears not, which means the Court would have no reason to reach the Equal Protections merits of the Proposition 8 challenge. 5-4 vote, Chief Justice Roberts has the majority opinion, joined by Scalia, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Kagan. Dissent by Kennedy, joined by Thomas, Alito, and Sotomayor. That’s… not the breakdown I predicted. The result is the appeal is vacated and dismissed, leaving… I guess leaving the District Court opinion in place. Gotta think about this.

United States v. Windsor: This is the constitutional challenge to the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, as applied to tax liability on life insurance benefits paid in 2009 to a woman who married her partner of then thirty-eight years in Canada in 2007. Again, there was a serious question of the standing of the only people who wanted to defend the law, the House of Representatives, since the President declined to defend the law. Holding: DOMA is unconstitutional under the equal protections clause of the Fifth Amendment. 5-4 vote, Kennedy in the majority, joined by Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Apparently there’s a finding that DOMA serves no “legitimate” purpose, which means DOMA would not survive even rational basis review. Dissents by Roberts (on jurisdiction and federalism), Scalia (on judicial activism), and Alito (on procreation); Thomas joins Scalia’s dissent and Roberts joins Scalia’s dissent in part, and Thomas also joins Alito’s dissent in part. Probably a lot of good language in there about standards of review which I’ll have to read later today.

So we have no clear statement of a right to same-sex marriage, but apparently laws that prohibit it serve no legitimate purpose, at least at the Federal level. As yet untested, because of the lack-of-standing holding in the Perry case, is whether a legitimate purpose to a same-sex marriage ban can be found within a state’s plenary police power. That fight will have to wait for another day, in another case, perhaps far enough in the future that it would be decided by a court with slightly different makeup than today’s.

And with that I have to get ready for court. I’ll join the discussion later, as I’m able to do so.

Big Tuesday 2013

Burt Likko 65 Comments

Since yesterday we didn’t get everything from the Supreme Court’s docket, here’s today’s action:

Koontz v. St. Johns River Management District. 5-4 in favor of the government actor, upheld existing requirements for regulatory takings. Majority opinion by Alito, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy. Dissent by Kagan, joined by Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor.

Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl. Termination of parental rights under Indian Welfare Act. 5-4 in favor of adoptive couple; the biological father lost parental rights. Majority by Alito, joined by Roberts, Thomas, Kennedy, and Breyer. Dissents by Scalia and Sotomayor, Sotomayor’s dissent joined by Ginsburg and Kagan and in part by Scalia. Separate opinion by Thomas on what looks sort of like abstention grounds.

Shelby County v. Holder. 5-4 vote. Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. (!) Opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, joined by Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy, and Alito. Concurrence by Thomas. Dissent by Ginsburg, joined by Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Opinion seems to be based on an assessment of what the Chief calls “current conditions” rather than conditions that existed in 1966, and “Congress may draft another formula based on current conditions” to enforce ban on racial discrimination in voting.

Same-sex marriage cases and one other still on the docket, no more opinions today. Either tomorrow or Thursday.

And I haven’t time to dig in much further than this, at least not for a while. I have to go to court, so feel free to discuss amongst yourselves in the comments!