Domain: ncsu.edu
Stories and comments across the archive that link to ncsu.edu.
Comments · 1,326
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Re:Platform shift
WinXP can be cracked if you REALLY want to use it, and Win2K is MUCH more stable than Win98 (50 times, according to this). NTFS is also more reliable. You might want to try it...
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my experiments with indoor plants
For several years now, my friends have watched as I geek out over some house plants. I have had a great deal of fun watching several of my plants grow.
Amaryllis
About 7 years ago, I was given an Amaryllis. A flowering plant that has a bulb. When I received the bulb, it was already on the way to flowering. When it flowered, I took a q-tip and cross polinated the flowers against one another (not sure what the correct term is). I left the flowers on the plant until they dried out and fell off. After a few weeks, the stem on which the flowers grew turned into a small bulb that obviously contained seeds. I have since re-planted the seeds and given away about 10 small amaryllis plants to friends. Unfortunately, I have not been able to watch any of the small plants grow large enough to flower again, but hope to do so with my most recent bunch. I have also had the original large bulbs split into separate bulbs several times. I now have four large bulbs from the original (plus the many small plants that have grown from seed).Ficus
When I finished school, I purchased a small ficus tree. It grew quite well sitting in the window. When it out-grew its pot, I trasferred it into an overly large Rubbermaid container. Once it was in the too-large container, the extra soil space allowed it to grow out of control. As I was living in a small, urban apartment, I decided to plant my own "lawn" in the pot. I was able to sustain a small patch of green grass along with the tree for an entire summer (all indoors). I learned a great deal about small ecosystems (clippings must be VERY small to not matt down new growth) and potting soil from bags (these bags contain bugs- if the plant is indoors, the bugs will be indoors too).Worms
One of the things that I learned from the Ficus-lawn experiment (see above) was that a small potted-plant system does not break down organic matter very quickly. I spoke to several friends, gardeners and academics. They all said that the possibility of getting the lawn clippings to compost properly in the large container was fairly slim. However, they said that if I was interested, I should look into getting some worms to help out. They also said that the worms would help with small bugs. On several occasions, I gathered earthworms that appeared on the sidewalks after rains, but I am not sure that any of them survived for long in the soil system (I believe that worms require fairly loose soil and potted plants generally end up with fairly dense soil).I have also played with various other herbs and flowering plants. I have 4 calla lillies that I have grown from the same cross polination "technique" that I used with the amaryllis described above. The callas live happily in my office windowsill with a cyclomen, hyacinth, and several pots of amaryllis (at various stages of maturity). They all seem happy enough living in a windowsill.
All that said, there is a wealth of information out there on how to grow plants of all varieties. As useful as the information is, I have always found it more interesting to experiment on my own and see how much I recall from high-school biology and geolgraphy courses. A bit of common sense can keep almost any plant alive; a bit of experimentation and work can grow a single plant into many or
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Re:Lawless Teacher
It will stop you when Disney sues your school district and they fire you.
It sounds to me like your uses fall within Fair Use, which for multimedia is generally interpreted as 10 minutes or 15%, whichever is less. (multimedia copyright info) TEACH allows you to use materials in the same way online that you always used them in a live classroom, but the materials must be password protected and protected from further copying (generally interpreted as streamed).
If you are interested in copyright, check out the University of Texas and Purdue which both have wonderful information about Copyright.
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Re:News at 11
this is the last response i am going to bother firing back to you. cause i am sick and tired of YOUR backassward logic.
This is really funny. You don't have any clue about economics, yet you try to find fault in my logic.
and actually its not hb-1 or h1-b its H-1B, so if you are going to try and correct me PLEASE do some friggin research first. its funny you think i dont know about something cause i mis-typed a name.
Uhm, mis-type is once. Not 5 times, dipshit. You are right, it's H-1B. Or H1B, as it is often cited in INS works. I know more about F and M visas though.
GNP = The total market value of all the goods and services produced by a nation during a specified period.
GDP = GDP The total market value of all the goods and services produced within the borders of a nation during a specified period.
You do realize this is wrong, right? GNP is produced by the nationals of that country, and that is what I intended when I used it. Everybody in the US. The way you are using GNP, you mean GDP. Which is what is produced inside the borders, regardless of what passport they hold.
For more information, read here
AFRICA ? why don't you move your wannabe saint ass to africa and drop me a line in a few years. because quite frankly you seem to know so much maybe you could help with the education program over there.
Spent time in Africa. I don't want to go back. Unlike you, I've actually seen the world. So take your stupid little ignorant views and shove them up your ass. You are crying like a little boy who doesn't want to share his toys. -
Re:Amazing!
Now what the hell is this article about?
I guess this confirms this:
Check this URL for the ultimate truth about yourself. ;-)[Not ment to be flaimbate, he's probably smarter than most people.]
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Re:How could they do this??I would expect people would be able to make a point without resorting to insults and flames.
Regardless, Any release of information (regardless of sale or otherwise) made available to the public is considered in the public domain. This term has been in use long before your posted definition and refers to any published information (i.e. patents, books, software).
"Information that is published and which is generally accessible or available to the public" Definition
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Re:CMU has a linux distribution too
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Re:CMU has a linux distribution too
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Re:Boot?
You can't boot from a USB device, can you?
Not quite, but with a boot floppy, you can get close.I tend to carry a small collection of bootable media with me such as tomsrtbt on a floppy, LNX-BBC, White Glove, PLAC and a few others. (yes, even a DOS boot disk) They can be very helpful in cases such as upgrading a mobo for a Win98 machine, where the mobo can't see the CD-ROM until you install a driver... from a CD-ROM.
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Answering my own questions
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Answering my own questions
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Answering my own questions
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They are using Unreal Tournament!
Cool! UT is just about the only online game I play, but I have been wanting more interaction of some kind rather than just doing the same old thing over and over. Since they have the Mimesis system working on UT Server I am not wondering how I can get hold of the code and fool with this myself.
Note: I am currently working on a UT 2K3 Map, so this is of great interest to me... -
The Details...Here is the main blurb from
*About mimesis and interactive narrative*
Interactive narrative is story-telling for purposes of education, training, or entertainment in which a user interacts with a computer system to experience a story as an active participant.
In systems that implement this type of interaction, the user is typically immersed in a 3D graphical environment in which a narrative - a structured sequence of events, often referred to as a story - unfolds. Unlike conventional narrative media such as the film or novel, the user takes on the role of a character in the unfolding story and is allowed (or encouraged) to perform actions that substantively change the world in which the story is being played out.
There are two important aspects of any interactive narrative system. The first is the ability to create descriptions of compelling and novel action sequences that will be used to drive the plot experienced by the system's user. In contrast to convention game titles, interactive narrative systems should create their storylines at run time, allowing customization that takes into account a user's ability, interests, previous experience and other contextual factors. Second, an interactive narrative system must be able to effectively manage the run-time dynamics of the user's interaction, balancing the user's control over the environment with the need to preserve the coherence of the unfolding storyline.
The Mimesis system defines an architecture for building intelligent interactive narrative worlds. The goal in developing Mimesis is to build a system capable of creating structured interaction within virtual worlds that achieve the same kind of cognitive and affective responses to interactive stories as that seen in the participants of conventional narrative media. The approach taken in the design of the Mimesis architecture is to exploit a well-founded, declarative model of action and intention, in combination with new computational models of narrative structure. The links below will take you to pages that discuss Mimesis system, its architecture, its applications, and how it can be used to generate and intelligently control the narrative process.
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For the geeks...
... The Mimesis Project might be interesting as well. Apparently, they are using Unreal Tournament as a test-bed for the AI discussed in the article.
But I'm still at a loss why they chose UT, of all games, as a "story-telling" AI test-bed. :-) -
For the geeks...
... The Mimesis Project might be interesting as well. Apparently, they are using Unreal Tournament as a test-bed for the AI discussed in the article.
But I'm still at a loss why they chose UT, of all games, as a "story-telling" AI test-bed. :-) -
Re:The guy is forgetting one important thingI'm pretty sure 6 year graduation rate means in less than or equal to 6 years. In fact a friend of mine who attends Yalee said they basically do everything in their power to get you out of the door in 4 years. That is a statistic used in collage rankings, after all.
And their defense of this retention rate is, of course, that their admissions process is so good they only get extremely smart people capable of performing very well. As a potential employer I sure wouldn't buy that... seeing how easy it is to buy your way into Yale, after all.
For reference, Here's a nice chart, with Duke on top (only because they didn't include ivy leagues) http://www2.acs.ncsu.edu/UPA/peers/current/ncsu_p
e ers/retengrad.htm -
UC San Diego
where have you seen libraries using open-source technologies (like Linux) to solve problems?
UC (University of California) San Diego has started moving towards open-source software. We were a Solaris/Sybase/Netscape shop a few years back. But the cost just isn't practical, especially for places with tight budgets like libraries. So we've been moving (albeit slowly) to commodity hardware, Linux, Apache, Tomcat, etc. for our server-side stuff. Some of the developers use Linux and/or MacOSX for their desktops, too. There are links on my homepage, or respond to this if you're interested in more info.
In terms of software written specifically for libraries, Greenstone and OSS4Lib that other posters mentioned are good. Also check out D-Space, NC State's MyLibrary, and if you want to handle MARC data in Java/XML, MARC4J. Of course, all the standard open-source software works for libraries, too.
-Esme
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Re:Okay ... a few things that really bug me here .
Forty percent! The Soviet Union didn't even spend that much! Try eighteen percent. Then, note that over half the federal budget goes to welfare.
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Zephir
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Re:I'm your token skeptic
I'd rtfa but the bugger's slashdotted.
Mat, do you know what a bugger is? Not every child who's seen Disney films where the term is thrown around does.
but be prepared to spend cubic dollars renting a wind tunnel, or hardware/software to perform a lot of number crunching.
Number crunching can be done on a PC and does not cost all that much money anymore. Just read some of this fine man's work.
Corvette lines and wind tunnel tests are done more for marketing than anything else.
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Re:Why is this cool?
Change in PH?
0.
NADA! NONE! ZEEEEERRRRROOOOO.
Do you really believe this, or are you trolling? There is a noticeable effect on the pH. Assuming you're serious, one can calculate it.
Consider a 30m diameter lake 1m deep on average. That's 707m^3 of water, weighing 707e6 grams. Water is 10g/mol, so 707e5 mol of water.
Sodium ionizes into Na+, freeing an electron. So one mole of electrons are freed for each mole of sodium. 3lb=1364g=124mol OH-.
That's a ratio of 1.75e-6 OH-/H2O. Normal water has a concentration of 1e-7 OH-/H20, so add the two to get the total concentration C, and -log C = pOH = 5.73, so pH = 14-pOH = 8.26.
The ideal range for aquatic life tilts toward the basic: 6.5 to 8.5, so he should be OK. Ten pounds would probably have some undesirable effects, however. He is right about the stupidity of no lower limit on reportable releases of sodium - hell, salting the roads in winter is a release of hundreds of tons (though excess salinity has its bad effects as well).
look here for more information. -
ERROR: Life Extension RequiredWhile many of the concepts you list can be considered solved for the general purpose, the work of integrating them and working through the *unsolved* stuff that comes up could take many lifetimes worth of programming.
Incidentally, the products you mention have each taken hundreds of man-years to write by extremely well manned and financed companies. It's good to set goals for yourself, but is one of them living to a thousand?
:-)If you plan on making this a legacy quest for your children and grandchildren, go right ahead. Unfortunately you won't personally be there to see version 1.0 software ship.
The more realistic alternative is to choose your focus more carefully; write a component, a plug-in or a tool for a more specialized task. Research new technologies or implement and synthesize from ones most recently discovered by others. Compared to the giants you are small and flexible, make use of that advantage.
Oh, and whatever you do, do it with others. It's more fun that way.
Jouni
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Copyright is not properity rights and moral rights
Copyright laws are not about phyiscal properity, they are about the control of distribution of their "intellectual" material in a fixed medium such as words on a page or a magnetic cassette recording of a musical performance.
The book or DVD disc is almost an accidential artifact that is no ways embodies copyright control.
With a book, the first sale doctrine, allows you to own the physical artifact of the paper and binding, and allows you to resell that single copy of it. It does not give you permission to alter the contents, or produce a reproduction.
Maybe I am wrong here, but I take it CleanFlicks produces a new DVD of the modified content, which in my lay understanding is an unauthorized reproduction of the copyrighted contents. It is not a backup copy because the contents are modified by CleanFlicks, so the exemptions for archival purposes are not relevant.
The reproduced contents are altered which makes it a derived work (reproduce, adapt and publicly present a work by cinematograph, that uses a substantial portion (i.e. the vast majority) of the original creator's content. This should fall under the copyright owner/creator's copyright control.
Lastly it violates the copyright creator's moral right (only creators not owners have moral right, at least in some countries).
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Re:Posix thread...
..actually.
Your answer:
http://www.linux.ncsu.edu/lug/lectures/rpm-pres/mg p00033.html
This is so true to all of us ;) -
Is this similar to the Lotus 1-2-3 thing
It would appear that this case is very similar to the case where Lotus sued Paperback Software claiming that Paperback Software had breached their copyright by copying their UI. I think in that case there may have been more blatant copying but it seems to come down to a similar issue (it is hard to tell excatly how much was copied from reading the article). There is a bit about the case here and here.
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Re:Remeber your physics...
Let's get past Ender's Game for a minute.
This isn't some sci-fi, pseudo-science. This is quantum physics we're talking about here. Unless you are one of the theorists, chances are you're a parrot. I'll readily admit I don't grasp most of it, since I'm not doing it full-time and most of the QP stuff gives me migraines on a bad day.
However, what I mentioned casually in the article (with the thirty-second explantation) is Bell's Theorem. Link provided here, here, here.
Punch up Google, type in "Bell's Theorem", and enjoy stuff that makes your tiny little mind explode. -
Matter and InteractionsMatter and Interactions by Bruce Sherwood and Ruth Chabay is an excellent 2-book series covering college-level (ie. Calculus-based) Physics I and II (Mechanics and Electricity+Magnetism).
The whole idea is to go from fundamental physical principles and derive everything. This is unlike high-school physics books which merely force you to accept various equations, while handwaving over the assumptions required to get their simplified result.
I am a Physics Major. I have used both books in-class, and I keep them around because they're good, comprehensive Classical references.
Hope this helps.
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Matter and InteractionsMatter and Interactions by Bruce Sherwood and Ruth Chabay is an excellent 2-book series covering college-level (ie. Calculus-based) Physics I and II (Mechanics and Electricity+Magnetism).
The whole idea is to go from fundamental physical principles and derive everything. This is unlike high-school physics books which merely force you to accept various equations, while handwaving over the assumptions required to get their simplified result.
I am a Physics Major. I have used both books in-class, and I keep them around because they're good, comprehensive Classical references.
Hope this helps.
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Why not just use Stitch. It sets up rsync for you.
Have you ever wanted to do backups easily and cheaper than tape? Well then Stitch is the answer for you. Use the features of rsync without the hassle of setting it up. This is not meant for data center scale backups, but for small departments or institutions. A mirror of the page can be found here. You don't have a client side, all thats required is ssh on the client. This way there isn't a client side to maintain. It does incremental backups on a monthly rotation and allows you to easily restore systems.
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Learning styles....
The big problem is that different people learn in different ways. Check out this description of the various polarities in preferences and how they affect the way people learn.
Personally, I have found the traditional "skill-based" training to be largely a waste of time - I just don't enjoy working through a bunch of exercises with canned explanations, esp. if the trainer is a professional trainer as opposed to a professional developer/manager/architect or whatever. The IT training business (certainly in the United Kingdom) is pretty much industrialized, and geared towards turning out as many Microsoft-certified whassnames as possible. Attending a course with one of the big training shops is in my experience a case of working through a bunch of thick books with more-or-less real world examples with doctrinaire solutions. There is rarely an opportunity to explore alternative solutions, and the goal seems to be acquiring a bit of paper saying "MS certified whassname" rather than learning anything new.
On the other hand, I have attended a bunch of excellent "training" events such as those run by the Atlantic Systems Guild which includes Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister, where there was an agenda of topics to discuss, but little or no "here's a book, read it, and we'll do a bunch of exercises" nonsense. The format was "here's an idea, or a story that happened to us once - let's consider what it means for you", along with a bunch of hands-on sessions exploring some of the topics.
So, all this comes down to - work out what your learning preferences are (there's a questionaire here, and make sure you tailor your training to it if at all possible. -
Learning styles....
The big problem is that different people learn in different ways. Check out this description of the various polarities in preferences and how they affect the way people learn.
Personally, I have found the traditional "skill-based" training to be largely a waste of time - I just don't enjoy working through a bunch of exercises with canned explanations, esp. if the trainer is a professional trainer as opposed to a professional developer/manager/architect or whatever. The IT training business (certainly in the United Kingdom) is pretty much industrialized, and geared towards turning out as many Microsoft-certified whassnames as possible. Attending a course with one of the big training shops is in my experience a case of working through a bunch of thick books with more-or-less real world examples with doctrinaire solutions. There is rarely an opportunity to explore alternative solutions, and the goal seems to be acquiring a bit of paper saying "MS certified whassname" rather than learning anything new.
On the other hand, I have attended a bunch of excellent "training" events such as those run by the Atlantic Systems Guild which includes Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister, where there was an agenda of topics to discuss, but little or no "here's a book, read it, and we'll do a bunch of exercises" nonsense. The format was "here's an idea, or a story that happened to us once - let's consider what it means for you", along with a bunch of hands-on sessions exploring some of the topics.
So, all this comes down to - work out what your learning preferences are (there's a questionaire here, and make sure you tailor your training to it if at all possible. -
Still a required course...
FORTRAN is still a required programming course for an undergrad degree at my university... but not for the CS students. It's still required for all Nuclear Engineering students, because there is nothing better or with a decent enough user base for nuclear modeling applications. No one else takes it any more at my alma mater except for us nukes.
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The wrong reason. A sad thing.
From the article: Dr Jose Morales, the head of the White Udder cloning project at the Havana Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, is confident a breakthrough is imminent. "We're very close," he said. "We have big things coming. This project is very important to Commandante Castro."
I bet some appropriate technology measures would fit the situation better than this. Or even just the old cure-all: training and education. Cuba overcame illiteracy. Surely they could also provide county agent-like services to their farmers to overcome the described decline in cattle health and performance. Here's a description of county agents from 1925. This sounds like exactly the kind of thing that Communists would be good at--government paternalism. Paternalistic or not, extension agents vastly improved the practices and lifestyle of rural Americans for the better during the mid-20th century.
On the question of whether milk is good for you, it's got a lot of protein, calcium, and fat that you need when you're very young. And fortunately children aren't generally lactose-intolerant. That sets in, when it does, after puberty usually.
P.S. Slashdot meetup URL -
the future is here
Well, I guess it was just a matter of time. Now we have artificial hearts (pop-up warning), artificial lungs, and artificial kidneys. (I mean that we as a society have them available to us as a technology, not that we as individuals actually have those things inside us, though some of us no doubt do.)
How long before we also have artificial skin to hold our artificial hair? How long before we decide what to put in our artifcial stomachs with our artificial brains?
The human race is about to step aside to make room for the cybernetically enhanced. May God have mercy on our souls. My one request is that none of my organs run anything made by Microsoft. See you in the future. -
Re:Still limited by speed of light
Are you sure about that? If the numbers reported in the second article are correct, the "teleportation" does in fact happen at faster than light speed -- see this comment.
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Re:I am surprised!Wake County Public Libraries : Perdido Street Station
North Carolina State University Library : Perdido Street Station
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill : Perdido Street Station
Duke University : Perdido Street Station
Of course that's local to me (Raleigh, NC). But any library in my county (Wake) could borrow that book (from a library in-county that stocked it), and I believe most other NC counties can request loans also. The University library system absolutely can loan books around to any of the University of North Carolina schools (UNC-A, ASU, UNC-CH, NCSU, etc.).
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Re:I am surprised!Wake County Public Libraries : Perdido Street Station
North Carolina State University Library : Perdido Street Station
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill : Perdido Street Station
Duke University : Perdido Street Station
Of course that's local to me (Raleigh, NC). But any library in my county (Wake) could borrow that book (from a library in-county that stocked it), and I believe most other NC counties can request loans also. The University library system absolutely can loan books around to any of the University of North Carolina schools (UNC-A, ASU, UNC-CH, NCSU, etc.).
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Re:I am surprised!Wake County Public Libraries : Perdido Street Station
North Carolina State University Library : Perdido Street Station
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill : Perdido Street Station
Duke University : Perdido Street Station
Of course that's local to me (Raleigh, NC). But any library in my county (Wake) could borrow that book (from a library in-county that stocked it), and I believe most other NC counties can request loans also. The University library system absolutely can loan books around to any of the University of North Carolina schools (UNC-A, ASU, UNC-CH, NCSU, etc.).
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NC State University
We use RedHat Linux + openafs and some configuration changes. Our packages are available at kickstart.linux.ncsu.edu . All of our beowolf clusters are running Scyld Linux, which is based off of RedHat Linux.
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Done at NC State, extensively
Here at North Carolina State University, we've been doing this for years. Most of the public labs are either Sun boxes or Windows machines (or a combination, usually). The Sun boxes are just a simple xdm login that brings up a terminal and a mouse activate menu, but you can change to pretty much any windown manager. More recently, we've integrated Linux into our engineering labs.
It all works pretty well. Most people do fine on the Unix boxes, but the Windows machines are there when you need them.
Unfortunately, I don't know of any usability studies off the top of my head, but I'm sure you can find some (isn't Google's university search great?).
-Alex -
Done at NC State, extensively
Here at North Carolina State University, we've been doing this for years. Most of the public labs are either Sun boxes or Windows machines (or a combination, usually). The Sun boxes are just a simple xdm login that brings up a terminal and a mouse activate menu, but you can change to pretty much any windown manager. More recently, we've integrated Linux into our engineering labs.
It all works pretty well. Most people do fine on the Unix boxes, but the Windows machines are there when you need them.
Unfortunately, I don't know of any usability studies off the top of my head, but I'm sure you can find some (isn't Google's university search great?).
-Alex -
df
neat. This is a troll. Mod down. I just wanted to add this link so that it would get indexed by search engines. I have a friend who's family has a hybrid; it's awesome. I feel much less guilty driving around in a hybrid for fun than driving around in a gasoline-only car for fun.
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The Real Deal - University Of Illinois' Don Bitzer
Don Bitzer is the true unsung hero of computer science - his work as head of the University Of Illinois' PLATO project touched virtually everything people love today about computers and the Internet!
Check out his 1965! patent - bitmapped graphics, audio and photographic quality images back in the sixties!
Other (pre-1975!) PLATO innovations included instant messaging, near zero latency multiplayer network gaming, distance learning, groupware, newsgroups, online newspapers, animated email, network delivery of music, client/server computing, touch screen interfaces, flat-panel displays (the basis for the ones you're just now seeing at Circuit City!), and multimedia that were delivered across a worldwide educational network with satellite and cable communications.
In his ACM article on the early days of Smalltalk, Alan Kay states that he had no idea how to implement his Dynabook concept before seeing a demo of Bitzer's patented plasma display.
Search some of the early WWW documents, and you'll be surprised to see PLATO's influence. Here's e-mail inventor Ray Tomlinson and Ethernet papa Robert Metcalfe attending a 1971 conference that included a demo of Bitzer's PLATO system before their breakthrough work. And there's communication from none less than Tim Berners-Lee encouraging early Internet pioneers to try to meet Professor Daniel Sleator's challenge to try to provide the Web with easy-to-use PLATO features from two decades earlier.
Prominent users of Bitzer's PLATO system at the University of Illinois included Groove's Ray Ozzie (who credits PLATO with giving him the idea for Lotus Notes) and Brand Fortner, a founder of Spyglass, which produced the original Internet Explorer for Microsoft.
At the risk of overestimating PLATO's profound influence, it certainly is an odd coincidence that "ground zero" of PLATO just happened to be across the street from Netscape founder Mark Andreesen's NSCA gig (where Fortner also worked at one time).
For more info on PLATO, check out David Woolley's excellent PLATO: The Emergence of Online Community.
After reading it, you'll see that Bitzer's PLATO of the early '70s had far more in common with today's popular Internet that Berners-Lee's Web of the early '90s.
Don Bitzer's been the Rodney Dangerfield of the Internet for far too long - it's time to give the guy the proper respect he deserves! -
Once again the mainstream lags behind
Where have we already seen these groundbreaking developments?
- Handheld cameras?
- Straight to video releases?
- Online releases?
- Mock-amateur participant observers (aka gonzo filmaking), as used in the "innovative" Blair Witch?
- Multiple POV scenes on DVD?
Porn, that's where. Where the porn industry (and niche market filmmakers in general) innovates, Hollywood trails along, years afterwards.
Want the know the Next Big Thing? Real time audience generated scripts. I'm thinking ho cams chat sessions, I'm thinking Troma and their script contests, especially the one where each scene was written by a different fan. Throw some budget at it, put a film crew and some Semi Big Names in a shiny van with a satellite uplink, webcast the filming and solicit "what happens next?" in real time from viewers. Zoom around Hollywood (or Toronto, more likely) with a lawyer and a light meter, spending bushels of money to shoot a quick scene in this cafe or that warehouse among real honest Joe Public, then edit it up and release a movie/DVD of the final version, complete with various alternative scenes, "the making of" documentary, and some stuff about the scene submitters. Cinema verite on steroids: "Yeah, my aunt's boyfriend's dog walker wrote this scene! Look, that's him in the credits, telling Harvey Keitel what to say!"
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Solution!
Go to a real school.
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Linux and MBone
If you have never heard the term MBONE check out this page for an introduction. There are also a slew of useful docs here. North Carolina State University has done some really inovative things with distance learning, Linux, and MBone. Here is a link to their Distance Education Teaching Assistant Page, which should be able to get you started. I know that the Linux Journal also ran an article on distance education back in October of 2000 and it may be at their web site.
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Re:Hidden CostsAt the end of the project the administration cut out the tiny piece of the budget for video camera system. Opps.
My college (NCSU) uses cameras in some places, but optical alarm wire in all labs. It's just a fiber optic cable run through a lock bolted on to every computer, and it signals an alarm if any part of the cable is broken. Quite effective at preventing anyone from taking a whole system (although the problem of swapping out CPUs is still there...), and the cost is linear (per lab); it can protect 10 systems or 500 systems (cost of 20' cable vs. 300' cable is relatively small).
Of course I'm guessing at the price, I didn't pay for it. But it seems it would be cheap.
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Re:Explain a lot but...
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Distance Ed.
My school offers a distance ed. program based on technology.
You can check it out here.
Anyway, this is a big deal to me. I'm 28, a parent, and I'm married. It would be very hard on me and my family to go back to school now. With this program I'm able to get a comp sci master's degree without taking away from my income or family time (I do the work after my two year old goes to bed.)
In addition to that, on campus students are able to make up classes or watch critical sections twice. The school makes money on VBEE (video based engineering education) students even though they are charged less because they don't use the same assets. They make even more money when they reuse the lectures. (A lecture is good for about 18 months in comp sci.)
Anyway, on campus students benefit, the school benefits, and VBEE students benefit. It's not cheap. To do it right you need a camera man, you need to mic every student, you need streaming realplayer servers, you need good presentation monitors in the room, etc. Production quality matters. However, it's enabled me to get a masters (I'm almost done) and learn *a lot*. It's improved my career and my life.