Slashdot Mirror

Epinions has reviews of the Bose headphones here:
http://www.epinions.com/elec_Audio-Headphones_Koss _HB_SPZ-Bose_Noise_Cancelling_Headphones/display_~ reviews

Here's some more headphones from Epinions:
Maxell:http://www.epinions.com/Maxell_H P_NC_1_Nois e_Cancellation_Headphones__Lightweight_Headphones_ HPNC1/display_~reviews
Coby:http://www.epinions.com/Coby_Digital_Noise_ Ca ncelling_Stereo_Headphones_Headphones/display_~rev iews

The Kenwood headphones have no reviews.

This search from Epinons lists a lot of different brands but the only reviews are above. Check it out if you want to see more brands.
http://www.epinions.com/search/?submitted_form=sea rchbar&search_string=noise+cancelling&tax_name=Hea dphones&dyn_nav=0&dyn_nav_id=&search_vertical=t130 375&searchbar_submit=Search

Epinions has reviews of the Bose headphones here:
http://www.epinions.com/elec_Audio-Headphones_Koss _HB_SPZ-Bose_Noise_Cancelling_Headphones/display_~ reviews

Here's some more headphones from Epinions:
Maxell:http://www.epinions.com/Maxell_H P_NC_1_Nois e_Cancellation_Headphones__Lightweight_Headphones_ HPNC1/display_~reviews
Coby:http://www.epinions.com/Coby_Digital_Noise_ Ca ncelling_Stereo_Headphones_Headphones/display_~rev iews

The Kenwood headphones have no reviews.

This search from Epinons lists a lot of different brands but the only reviews are above. Check it out if you want to see more brands.
http://www.epinions.com/search/?submitted_form=sea rchbar&search_string=noise+cancelling&tax_name=Hea dphones&dyn_nav=0&dyn_nav_id=&search_vertical=t130 375&searchbar_submit=Search

Epinions has reviews of the Bose headphones here:
http://www.epinions.com/elec_Audio-Headphones_Koss _HB_SPZ-Bose_Noise_Cancelling_Headphones/display_~ reviews

Here's some more headphones from Epinions:
Maxell:http://www.epinions.com/Maxell_H P_NC_1_Nois e_Cancellation_Headphones__Lightweight_Headphones_ HPNC1/display_~reviews
Coby:http://www.epinions.com/Coby_Digital_Noise_ Ca ncelling_Stereo_Headphones_Headphones/display_~rev iews

The Kenwood headphones have no reviews.

This search from Epinons lists a lot of different brands but the only reviews are above. Check it out if you want to see more brands.
http://www.epinions.com/search/?submitted_form=sea rchbar&search_string=noise+cancelling&tax_name=Hea dphones&dyn_nav=0&dyn_nav_id=&search_vertical=t130 375&searchbar_submit=Search

Epinions has reviews of the Bose headphones here:
http://www.epinions.com/elec_Audio-Headphones_Koss _HB_SPZ-Bose_Noise_Cancelling_Headphones/display_~ reviews

Here's some more headphones from Epinions:
Maxell:http://www.epinions.com/Maxell_H P_NC_1_Nois e_Cancellation_Headphones__Lightweight_Headphones_ HPNC1/display_~reviews
Coby:http://www.epinions.com/Coby_Digital_Noise_ Ca ncelling_Stereo_Headphones_Headphones/display_~rev iews

The Kenwood headphones have no reviews.

This search from Epinons lists a lot of different brands but the only reviews are above. Check it out if you want to see more brands.
http://www.epinions.com/search/?submitted_form=sea rchbar&search_string=noise+cancelling&tax_name=Hea dphones&dyn_nav=0&dyn_nav_id=&search_vertical=t130 375&searchbar_submit=Search

What will they think of next?

Terry Brooks is best known for his "Shannara" series: The Sword of Shannara, The Elfstones of Shannara, The Wishsong of Shannara, etc.

The Sword of Shannara was his break-out novel but, I must warn you, it is essentially a retelling of the Lord of the Rings with different character names. The remaining novels in the series (at least as far as Wishsong) follow the descendants of the main character in Sword.

Check out Terry Brooks site for a complete bibliography.

I worked at EB when we "invented" GMR. We signed up hundreds and hundreds of people per store because we were being given a spiff on each membership sale. It wasn't much, but if you sold well - and most of us at the store I worked at did - you could could away with an extra game or two every month (that's how you can tell I worked at a game store, everything is in number of games bought, not meals or gas gallons). Within a year, EB had taken that spiff away. So why resubscribe if you don't have an EB guy breathing down your neck?

My guess is that the numbers dropped significantly after EB removed the spiff. GMR was a good magazine, so it's a shame this happened but even the $5.50 an hour retail worker knew that this would happen. Anyone working for GMR knew the deal going in, I would hope.

As for XBN, which EB had nothing to do with save selling it, it seemed kind of specifically redundant. Good, but the only reason OXM does so well is the demo disc. Without the disc, why buy XBN?

Nix two magazines. Whatevs. I'm still lamenting the fall of Next Gen.

Hang with me for a little while, this may seem disjointed -- but the parent posting actually has far more to teach us about Wikipedia and the nature of internet research than the actual article does. So here are a few observations that might bring my response to this post into context:

A couple days ago I got into a long debate with a PhD candidate/teaching assistant about how to teach an introductory college course on sourcing and reliance on internet materials in an introductory research course. Having taught something similar, I was surprised when she suggested that there is little (perhaps even nothing?) on the internet that can be reliably cited to. Or, to give her more credit (the actual argument was far more nuanced... or at least it seemed so after a couple of beers), her point is that there is always a more authoritative source available than the internet. And since students should be required to cite the most authoritative source they can find, it is extremely rare that the internet copy of a source should be cited to. Citing to the internet, in her opinion, is a crutch for citing to "real" paper publications (or even proprietary internet databases, CD-ROM compilations, etc.)

So while I clicked on the article more out of amusement value then anything else, the parent poster provides an awesome example of the strengths and weaknesses of both arguments. Coming into this thread, I'd heard of the "Children's Crusade" before, but it was just a historical tidbit that I'd picked up somewhere and really knew nothing about.

I was intrigued by the parent post's rather categorical dismissal of two of the three explanations -- and not know what those explanations were -- I clicked through and read the article.

The first paragraph of the article states that "Several conflicting accounts of this event exist, and the facts of the situation continue to be a subject of debate among historians."

Okay. So from the very beginning we know we are dealing with an "event" where the facts are not entirely clear. But scanning the rest of the article, it seems clear that whatever happened happened in the early 13th century.

The first two versions are then laid out. It's a real tear jerker -- young children coming together in a spontaneous uprising to fight the forces of evil -- who then meet a gruesome end. (Sound familiar?.) And it's this version of the story that this painter was thinking about when he put ink-to-canvas or what Kurt Vonnegut was thinking when he subtitled Slaughterhouse-Five "Or, the Children's Crusade, a Duty-Dance with Death", or why the term was incorporated into the title of the classic submarine movie Das Boot or why the incomparable Neil Gainman used it as a title for one of his comics.

History is not just comprised of facts. Myths and legands sometimes have a far greater impact on our physche than do Cold Hard Facts. This is a perfect example. This significance of the Children's Crusade is not whether it actually ever happened. The historical "fact" is an interesting academic question that makes for a fun historical sluething exercise.

So, back to the article. After depicting the historically and culturally significant version of the Children's Crusade, the article goes on to say "Some historians speculate that the entire crusade is fiction, as there is no real evidence that any such event occurred, in the 13th or in any other century. Research done in the early 1980s indicates that the Children's Crusade began as a misinterpretation of a 1212 religious movement among the landless poor...

Whether you're supporting the evil empire of Disney by buying ESPN/Sega sports games, you're also explicitly not supporting the other evil empire: EA.

Or I could just play Tecmo Bowl and buy nice original Sonic the Hedgehog games, which also have been pricecut to $20, when I want to support your friends at Sega.

Sega's NFL games have been on par or better (depending on who you ask) than Madden for quite some time.

ESPN is also the major catalyst for cable TV rate hikes. Lose the ESPN name, and I'm back.

ePinions has built a moderated community of many reviewers that is often very helpful. It's mostly open, and zero dollars.

"most items are more expensive to buy over the Internet, primarily due to the cost of shipping"

Most items are, however if you're willing to try smaller stores (reviewed by Reseller Ratings, Epinion or another neutral place) several are offering free shipping so you save on both shipping and sales tax (if applicable in your area). Not to mention several of the smaller stores allow promotional coupons which are usually only for first-time customers but since when do us geeks show loyalty? :)

Then again, some do have spam;del;del;del;del;mailing lists to receive more coupons codes for future purchases.

Do you want someone to be killed by blindly believing this statement?

Even the biggest capacitor doesn't have enough energy stored in it to kill you. It could give you a nasty shock, but it's not particularly life-threatening (unless you have major health problems to begin with).

The important statement is that it takes a lot of time for the capacitors do discharge.

Unless the power supply was designed by monkeys with soldering irons, it should take no more than a minute for all the capacitors to fully discharge.

Also, you don't need any special equipment or tools for working on an unplugged power supply. An isolation transformer is only necessary if you are poking inside a live one using grounded test equipment (such as an oscilloscope).

Why the hell do various people keep propagating the same silly myths over and over? I guess you're one of those idiots that interpret warning labels literally. Either that, or you think you are l33t because you poked inside a power supply and didn't get killed. There are quite a few dangerous electrical things, but UNPLUGGED power supplies do not belong in that category.

The Classic Football handheld. Fun, cheap, nostalgic.

And while Archos has a nice system it can't display RAW files either. So for now I'll stick with my 30 GB ipod, and my 20 GB Wolverine SixPac image tank.

Furthermore I've never seen any evidence that an unregulated market will always serve the interests of consumers.

For evidence of the opposite, see a market for lemons. (I haven't been able to find Akerlof's original paper on the Internet, but many descriptions of the general concept exist.)

He shows that in a market where the consumer does not know the quality of the things he/she buys (information asymmetry), the market will provide a strong disinsentive for sellers to sell high quality products. Food labelling laws allow the market to operate much better, and as a side bonus, occasionally prevent people allergic to certain kinds of food from ending up in the hospital.

I'd like to see a world where I can step into a store, whip out a pda with a bar code reader, scan a product barcode, and see ratings and reviews of that product right there in the store, downloaded from epinions or some similar site via a wireless network. Of course, public opinion of a product isn't everything. In the case of food contents, the public has no way of knowing without being told by the manufacturer if a particular food contains some additive that has negative long term health consequences.

-jim

Hmm. I have a customer whose machine lasts about 43 minutes at a time under MS-Windows XP but runs flawlessly under Mandrake Linux 10.0 (he dual-boots, Mdk-Linux for real work and MS-Windows for MS-centric stuff). Does that count towards your theory? (-:

If they extended that design to the 3" CD-Rs

They already did: Aiwa z3c player. I own one, and I wouldn't trade it for any other. $45 at Fry's electronics (one year ago).

A beauty.

Except that the guys running governments have far more power than corporations. If you don't trust corporate power why would you trust government power?

That depends, in a well functioning democracy, the government has to remain accountable to the populace, and may have checks and balances in place to prevent any one branch of government from having absolute control.

In a similar vein, in a properly functioning free market, the powers of any one corporation are limited by competition, and consumer knowledge. When either of these conditions are not present, the government ought to step in to prevent the rise of a powerful entity that is accountable to neither the public nor their consumers.

People can get screwed by either a misbehaving government or by misbehaving corporate monopolies. Unchecked power is evil in any context, I don't see how one is worse than the other. One of my reservations against voting for Badnarik (but I might anyways) is that I'm not sure that he understands that some industries lack natural competition and need to have government checks on their power. Good examples include industries where redundant competing infrastructure is prohibitively expensive, such as roads, delivery of electricity, and anything that relies on last-mile telecom infrastructure.

Quoting this wikipedia article (not sure what the original source is)

Badnarik opposes government regulation of the energy industry, instead arguing that the free market is more effective in controlling prices and maintaining stability. "All you need to know about economics is the law of supply and demand. When the supply of something goes down, the price of it will go up. And as the price of gasoline goes up, the consumerist at the pump is going to provide the incentive for finding alternative sources..."

Most consumers don't have much choice about the price of electricity - there's only one wire going to their house. Maybe I'm taking Badnarik out of context. Does anyone have any further insight on what he really thinks about government intervention in cases where the market lacks natural competition, due to high barriers of entry?

-jim

...was the original Logitech MouseMan+, with the rubber on the sides and the buttons that extended to the edge of the mouse. Looked weird (ugly, even), but it's "the" mouse for (right-handed) people with big hands.

Then they completely screwed it up when they made the optical model, by reducing the size of the buttons (original on the right, optical models on the left and centre).

Currently, the best compromise is probably the "MX" series, also from Logitech (a company I don't like much, but they do manage to get it right now and then), especially the MX-500 and above. The main buttons are very well designed, and the side buttons are reasonable. The scroll wheel and the other buttons are too far back on the mouse, though; to reach them you have to either bend your fingers or move your hand back so it actually rests off the mouse.

And, of course, Logitech's mouse drivers are crap (can't even turn acceleration off completely). Stick to the default OS drivers and you'll be fine.

Everybody knows that it's a well known fact that people who use one of those two phrases are pulling their "facts" out of their dark, warm, smelly, and very personal place called personal opinion.

From Fallacious equation of opinion with fact on epinions:

A good way to see an opinion that is fallaciously being represented as a fact is when somebody prefaces a thought with "It is a well known fact that" or " Everybody knows". Well known and incontrovertible facts do not need to be prefaced by "everybody knows". Everybody just knows them, or they are easily verifiable.

some magical herbs ;)

http://www.epinions.com/content_152723689092

It comes with quite a bit stuffed in with the player in the blister pack. I like the remote myself, but the print and the controls are very tiny (need good eyes). It duplicates almost all the controls on the main player. BTW, in addition to all the above, it's also an FM radio. :) Formats supported: MP3, WMA, WAV, ASF, OGG. (Records in only MP3/WAV.)

The joystick is a little tricky to operate, especially with the player inside the carrying case. Once you learn it, it's very easy.

Negatives: no playlists creating capability in the player; you must create a Winamp playlist with either it or their included software if you want to pick a list of tracks to play. If using headphones (including their included ear-buds), they must plug into the remote if you're using it. If you're using third party 'phones from the remote, the plug is probably too big to fit the remote, so you need to hook up the included 6" flimsy extension cable. The battery is a Lithium polymer that while rated at 16 hours appears to be non-replaceable.

http://www.iriveramerica.com/

http://www.epinions.com/pr-iRiver_iHP-140_MP3_Play er

>was sick of all the blatant product placement in the film... it was beyond absurd

You haven't seen "I, Robot" then? So much blatent advertising for Audi, Panasonic, and Converse!

also, the fa didn't mention anything about the minivan swerving. the driver just ran over the student? the fa never mentions anything about the driver of the minivan even braking. a remorseless killer, eh? regardless what the fa says, you don't know what happened - you weren't there. there are many, many different ways to swerve across the road. slow drift, into the side of the minivan, 50 yards ahead of the minivan, perpendicular, the list goes on.
maybe i'm speculating here, but if i saw something with the body of a lightweight dune buggy driving down the other side of the road, i'd pay attention to what it's doing, and be a little more cautions. after all, it's not exactly an armored car. maybe i'm giving owners of minivans too much credit, but aren't they supposed to be safety-minded? that is what minivans are all about, right? why are these vehicles so huge as to obscure the vision of other drivers, when their heightened vantage point is put to no use, other than to destroy the visibility of the road?

I bought one of these about a month ago specifically for this purpose, but the key and button feel is still just really really bad- (like the original Nostromo)

Lately I've been thinking that this thing might be useful as well:

http://www.epinions.com/pr-A_D_S_Essential_Reality _P5_3D_Hand_Controller_101

i've only been saying this for around a decade (proof of at least three years :/)

Further investigation shows that John Shepler wrote this as a review of the book "Who Moved My Cheese". The review appears to have been initially published on www.epinions.com, which has a small copyright notice at the bottom of the page, but no specific restrictions beyond that.
http://www.epinions.com/book-review-62DE-4CB052EA- 3A4A91EF-prod6

Also appears on http://www.crabbucketrescue.com/ratboss.htm with a copyright for Shepler himself ("All rights reserved") but pointing to the epinions review as the original.

To be fair, "Gigantic1 (630697)" gave full credit so this isn't plagiarism, and he doesn't seem to have a built a history of karma whoring.

I think the phone is this. It came with a warning that it shouldn't be near a PC. I thought it meant something like not near a WiFi base station. Well, when I used it near one, the static was REALLY bad - even when the computer had no component running anywhere near 2.4GHz (466MHz Celeron, 66MHz FSB (which means 66MHz RAM), 33MHz PCI bus).

In fact, there is one cleaning my pool right now. Depending on the design, it may or may not work very well -- mine uses the suction of the pump system to generate a "jerking motion", which moves the vacuum around the bottom. It, however, tends to go in predictable patterns (moving the hose around helps a bit) and stirs up a lot of the dirt before sucking it up.

Mine is similar to this model.

Right Here!

My Clie NX-70v already has a universal remote, and it's a fully functional PalmOS PDA, with other toys like a still/video camera, an MP3 player, a voice recorder, and a full (but tiny) qwerty keyboard.

And according to Amazon, you can get the things for under $120 now. Don't you just love the radical depreciation on a device you paid four times more for barely 18 months ago? *sigh*

But anyway, yeah, the remote. It's fantastic. Going out to eat with a whole bunch of friends, and the restaraunt puts you all in a private room with not one, not two, but three televisions obnoxiously drowning out conversation with sports & news? No problem! The same thing happened to me last week, and the Clie was able to turn off all the televisions right from the table, even when the TVs were 20 or 30 feet away. This only worked, of course, because I happened to have my Clie with me -- but then, it's a PDA, and I almost always have it with me.

The device described in this article, aside from being several times more expensive, is also several times less likely to have general purpose use outside of your living room (unless you're in the habit of going around town turning off televisions, but that isn't a very common hobby). If you're going to spend that much money, why not get a general purpose device?

The Clie I have isn't the only one that has the remote, either. The PEG-T665C also has one, as did the PEG-T415, and it seems like all the models in the NX/NV series (the folding clamshell ones like the NX-70v) have it, too. Even the fanciest of these should be available for a couple hundred bucks cheaper than the Navitus, and all of them are more capable. Shop around! :-)

Easy fix. Buy your new video card for yourself. At the same time, buy HER a new bowling ball. Not only will she ignore your large expense, you might even get laid.

> How will they survive?

I think generally they live on buttered popcorn, huge fountain cokes, overpriced nachos and old greenish hotdogs. Of course they likely also eat the occasional caviar sandwich, with bottlenose dolphin snout, drenched in a secret saffron sauce. Don't forget the cold potato soup! Complete with a snifter of Pierre Ferrand 1962 Memoire Grande Champagne Single Vineyard Single Vintage Cognac later on.

You could do that, and it would be a Good Thing, but I think a $3,800 screen isn't that likely to appeal to the average householder.

Or maybe not. Here's a 30" flat panel TV that runs for $3,500 and has pretty low resolution. The Apple display makes that unit look like a joke, at least in resolution terms.

D

Me being a Dutchman 2, I can honoustly say you're giving 'us' too much credit. Pretty much the only thing the dutch have an unique knowledge of is the battle vs. the sea. Most parts of Holland are about 16 metres under sea level, which can cause a mighty flood (like the one in 1953) if the country is not protected well enough.

The 'stormvloedkering' (dutch name of huge project to protect holland from the water) is still considered to be any incredible piece of technology/engineering even tody, even though it was build in the late 50's.

Tunnels & bridges however are more scrares in the Netherlands and I cannot imagine that we have a big advantage over countries like Norway, Canada and maybe the US that have build huge structures of that kind.
One of the most inspiring phrases from the time Holland struggled with the sea is: 'Luctor et Emergo' (Ik worstel en kom boven / I struggle and emerge)

I have an RL800 and it's awesome. Can't imagine you could part together anything nearly as good or as safe. My lawn always looks good and I have to say it's a real joy sitting on the porch watching the neighbors out on their mowers when it's blazing hot outside.

There's a very good review of the 800 on epinions that even has a howto video for the setup.

Acknowledging that undergraduate advising and mentoring programs at the university fall "below the standards" set in other undergraduate education reforms, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education John Bravman announced several new initiatives that should significantly alter the experience for students and their advisers. ...

Bravman cited a number of issues that have contributed to disappointing experiences for many.

-Faculty participation in advising has dropped from as much as 48 percent in the late 1970s to 12 to 15 percent today, partly due to ever-increasing demands on their time.

-Some advisers complained that they were matched with groups of students with nothing in common with each other or their adviser and felt uncomfortable participating in the standard socialization events. He said some faculty also complained about having too much information to digest when they became advisers.

-Many students do not take full advantage of advising opportunities or resources. He said his own experience since 1992 has shown that 23 percent of students who had scheduled appointments with him didn't show up.

-Students are increasingly arriving at the university with complex personal issues, including many who take psychotropic medications, which add another challenge to a sound advising program.

-Too many over-corrective efforts for advising have resulted in too many specialized groups and a general sense of confusion for many students. Bravman said programs have been offered through residential education, the advising center and the office of the Dean of Freshmen and Transfer Students, as an example.

"We have added layer upon layer upon layer and one of the results of that is that there's a total information overload and a total block about where to go to get even the most basic questions answered," Bravman said.

Sounds like they don't know what they are doing.

President John Hennessy looks like he'll get even richer in this Stanford Daily article of May 21, 2004, by Michael Miller (emphasis mine, not in the original article):

In a separate development, University President John Hennessy took a position on the board of Google in late April, as one of three company outsiders that Google added to its corporate board before its IPO. Hennessy was granted 65,000 shares of stock when he joined the board. These shares could potentially be worth millions of dollars, depending on the eventual stock value.

Hennessy took the position--his third corporate board membership--based on his experience with Silicon Valley and technology companies, Stanford spokesperson Gordon Earle said. Hennessy cofounded MIPS Computer Systems in 1984, and he now also serves on the boards of Cisco Systems and Atheros Communications. Earle added that Hennessy would remove himself from any dealings that connect Google and Stanford.

Does anybody seriously believe that there's no conflict of interest? Hennessey's textbook (coauthored with Dave Patterson of the University of California, Berkeley) on computer architecture is taught using MIPS assembly language (MIPS is Hennessey's company). So in addition to earning something like $461,656 a year (http://advancement.sdsu.edu/marcomm/news/clip

SETI is bunk. do something useful with your free CPU cycles instead.

I believe the Logitech io Digital Pen is the only device that satisfies your requirements. I can't give you a recommendation because I haven't tried it myself. Epinions has a couple reviews as does ZDNet

It's about $160, plus the price of a compatible journal.

How many times have you heard the phrase "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach"?

A major problem is that even though geeky kids are attracted into the "elite" undergraduate universities, most of their professors don't think that it is their responsibility to mentor and encourage their students in a systematic and regular way.

For example, check out this complaint of Stanford University at
http://www.epinions.com/content_73675148932 , which reveals that 78% of the professors don't participate in the advising system, professors are giving lackluster lectures, and Stanford is fudging its "successful alumni" lists to give misleading impressions about its quality.

A couple of months ago, I decided to examine the undergraduate alma maters of Stanford's one hundred electrical engineering faculty members, and found only three of them, including a part-time consulting professor, had actually gone to Stanford as an undergraduate. Many of them had gone to public or foreign institutions.

Which seems upside down: Many of the "best and brightest" (despite Stanford's ranking of 5 or 6, or whatever) are attracted to a university where professorial research is emphasized over teaching to the detriment of the students. Professors only have a finite amount of time, so these students who are the most eager to learn, and are paying a premium dollar for tuition, are getting a half-baked education.

Meanwhile, professors devoted to teaching are stuck in the smaller lesser known liberal arts colleges, and scoffed as "those who can't do, teach." These professors end up getting "not-necessarily-the-best-and-brightest", and even quite possibly are stuck with the "dumb and the dumbest".

So what ends up happening is that the best possible high school candidates for research end up getting turned off to the research fields. I know a guy who majored in physics at Stanford and works at a bank, while a Stanford chemical engineering major worked as a chef cooking food for one of the Stanford eating clubs after graduating. I know a chemistry major from Harvard who is working in finance -- and this was a very bright guy who had gone to one of the most prestigious prep schools in the United States.

Meanwhile, the National Science Foundation has shown that Harvey-Mudd College sends more people per student to graduate school that any of the Ivy League universities. Who would want to go to a college called "mudd", and who has even heard of it? Purdue University has produced almost 20 astronauts, but I'd never heard of it. If these colleges can train the next generation of scientists from a pool of "not-necessarily the best-and-brightest", think of what could happen if they did have "the best-and-brightest", ie students with 1600 SAT scores and National Science Talent Search awards under their belts?

Even Jack Welch the former president of General Electric, admits in his autobiography Straight from the Gut that it's a good thing he went to the lesser-respected University of Massachussetts at Amherst, while a brighter and more capabable schoolmate of his went to MIT. The schoolmate was completely devastated by his experience at MIT and ended up dropping out and never going back to any university. Jack Welch ended up doing pretty well, earning a doctorate and then millions (if not billions) of dollars as the president of General Electric for twenty years. (If you don't believe me, READ HIS BOOK. Note that I didn't say "Buy his book"; get it at the library if you don't want to make him richer!)

The college mismatch between students and professors would be a comedy if it were fiction. But since it's true, it ranks as a tragedy.

"That which ye sow, ye reap."

If a research university is going to do research, than it should do so completely and abandon any pretense to "teaching" its undergraduate student body. "Those who can, do; those w

How many times have you heard the phrase "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach"?

A major problem is that even though geeky kids are attracted into the "elite" undergraduate universities, most of their professors don't think that it is their responsibility to mentor and encourage their students in a systematic and regular way.

For example, check out this complaint of Stanford University at http://www.epinions.com/content_73675148932, which reveals that 78% of the professors don't participate in the advising system, professors are giving lackluster lectures, and Stanford is fudging its "successful alumni" lists to give misleading impressions about its quality.

A couple of months ago, I decided to examine the undergraduate alma maters of Stanford's one hundred electrical engineering faculty members, and found only three of them, including a part-time consulting professor, had actually gone to Stanford as an undergraduate. Many of them had gone to public or foreign institutions.

Which seems upside down: Many of the "best and brightest" (despite Stanford's ranking of 5 or 6, or whatever) are attracted to a university where professorial research is emphasized over teaching to the detriment of the students. Professors only have a finite amount of time, so these students who are the most eager to learn, and are paying a premium dollar for tuition, are getting a half-baked education.

Meanwhile, professors devoted to teaching are stuck in the smaller lesser known liberal arts colleges, and scoffed as "those who can't do, teach." These professors end up getting "not-necessarily-the-best-and-brightest", and even quite possibly are stuck with the "dumb and the dumbest".

So what ends up happening is that the best possible high school candidates for research end up getting turned off to the research fields. I know a guy who majored in physics at Stanford and works at a bank, while a Stanford chemical engineering major worked as a chef cooking food for one of the Stanford eating clubs after graduating. I know a chemistry major from Harvard who is working in finance -- and this was a very bright guy who had gone to one of the most prestigious prep schools in the United States.

Meanwhile, the National Science Foundation has shown that Harvey-Mudd College sends more people per student to graduate school that any of the Ivy League universities. Who would want to go to a college called "mudd", and who has even heard of it? Purdue University has produced almost 20 astronauts, but I've never heard of it. If these colleges can train the next generation of scientists from a pool of "not-necessarily the best-and-brightest", think of what could happen if they did have "the best-and-brightest", ie students with 1600 SAT scores and National Science Talent Search awards under their belts?

Even Jack Welch, the former president of General Electric, admits in his autobiography Straight from the Gut that it's a good thing he went to the lesser-respected University of Massachussetts at Amherst, while a brighter and more capabable schoolmate of his went to MIT. The schoolmate was completely devastated by his experience at MIT and ended up dropping out and never going back to any university. Jack Welch ended up doing pretty well, earning a doctorate and then millions (if not billions) of dollars as the president of General Electric for twenty years. (If you don't believe me, READ HIS BOOK. Note that I didn't say "Buy his book"; get it at the library if you don't want to make him richer!)

The college mismatch between students and professors would be a comedy if it were fiction. But since it's true, it ranks as a tragedy.

"That which ye sow, ye reap."

If a research university is going to do research, than it should do so completely and abandon any pretense to "teaching" its undergraduate stude

I had the same problem as you -- I must have gone through 6 different mice before I gave up. I finally made the connection that the only place that I didn't have wrist pain was on my laptop, where I had a trackpoint instead of a mouse. I did a search and found an external keyboard with a built-in trackpoint and haven't used anything else since. You can pick them up for ~$50 on Google.

Not only has my wrist pain gone away, but my coworkers find my lack of a mouse so frustrating that they stay the hell away from my computer. Added bonus!

My mouse is symmetrical, and yet ergonomic. Theere is considerable wear on the mouse buttons, where the colored part has worn away to the bare plastic. Google Image Search provides a graphic.

Mouses that are designed with lefties in mind have been around for a while, like mine, and there's nothing really new about the hardware.

However, the concept of using two mice at once to better manipulate graphics is an interesting and useful one. I'll have to look into jury rigging something like this on my computer.

Michael Dell hasn't left completely. He's still planning on sticking around as chairman of the board

I thought Sinatra was the The Chairman of the Board.. Jeez just cause the guys dead doesn't mean you can let a dullard like Dell into the Rat Pack..

I'm sure Dell can't sing, drink, carouse, or even wisecrack his way anywhere into Sinatra's league.
And I'm doubly sure, Frankie Blue never wore flat front dockers with the balloon seat

The percentage may be about to get a lot higher, with the Color LaserJet 3500N (link is to my review), which for some reason is unavailable at retail in the non-networked version.

I bought the network version with JetDirect and am extremely happy with it. Of course part of the reason is that my home network is MacOS X-based, so setup is dead easy.

D

You could blame Samsung. I bought one of their printers (I think it was the ML-6060) because of its MacOS X and Linux support, but the MacOS X driver was a horrid beta thing I couldn't get to work despite spending hours trying to get it to work.

A few months later I was able to find and download a working driver, but it was still a royal pain, and the output was still not quite right.

So I'm back to HP and happy as a clam.

D

Interesting. Are you talking about something along the lines of your basic clear spray paint enamel or maybe something like "reflect a-lite" clear spray kryon?

Interesting. Are you talking about something along the lines of your basic clear spray paint enamel or maybe something like "reflect a-lite" clear spray kryon?

Then: To put it crudely, Polese was one hot chick in a room full of nerds. ...

Really? Judge for yourself...

I wrote a tablet PC review which might be interesting in this context.

Summary: for anything other than truly unique situations, it's not worth it.

D