Slashdot Mirror

I was apparently one of the lucky few to never have to worry about this issue. My university (Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, not too far from St. Louis) rented out texts themselves. I knew we were in the minority but I was actually shocked to not see any other posters state their universities did the same. Each semester the weekend prior to the first week of classes I would stop by the Textbook Services building, print out a list of text books and search the aisles for whatever was on the list. At the end of the semester I'd return the books and be done with them. The most I remember paying for the rental fee was just over $150, for 4 or 5 classes. Great system, and at the end of the semester if you felt the text would be valuable to you in the future you can buy it at a discounted price (it's used after all).

It wasn't until my 400 level classes that I had to buy texts, and even then it was only for 2 of the classes. It really helped cut costs nicely.

It is, perhaps, useful for Westerners unfamiliar with the Soviet background to know that a book which many of them will have read, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, gives what many insiders consider to be a remarkably accurate satirical picture of Stalin's Russia around the time the novel itself was written

I don't know how successful using LogoWriter was, or how many people used it, but it was used in my elementary school. Here's a link as to what it was, but apparently it's so obscure that there isn't even a wiki page that I could find for it.

Well...

(a) I thought nuclear was a great idea 25 years ago, and still do. I've never seen an argument against it that wasn't essentially irrational, ignorant, or both. I don't think it was "rushed to market" in any serious sense. There were far fewer mistakes made in developing nuclear energy than in any other form of energy. Tens of thousands have died in coal mines, or in oil refinery explosions, or as a result of badly-designed power plants, from Pintos to railroad engines or steamships. Zero have died (in this country) as a result of badly-designed nuclear power. Any other energy industry would be green with envy at nuclear's safety record. I don't put the blame for nuclear's twenty-year hiatus on the industry or fate or innocent mistakes. I put it squarely on an ignorant and arrogant boomer subculture which acted before it had the wisdom to do so correctly.

(b) Population is still projected to double or more globally before it falls. I think not. Even the UN 2002 projection only suggests that for their highest fertility options. The middle projection tops out at 9 billion or so in 2050 (up from 6.3 now), and the low at 7.5 or so. One can also easily make alternative, reasonable calculations that suggest the total population of the world may not grow much beyond 7 billion, which is a mere 10% or so more than it is now.

And even so, there's no obvious horrific problems in store for a population of 10 billion, if that's where it goes before it stops (and goes down just as fast). Look around you: unless you are living in Hong Kong or Manhattan, adding 50% more people to where you live is not going to provoke mass starvation or require the construction of mile-high arcologies on a bulldozed sterile plain. If China, with the same area of liveable space as the US, can sustain five times as many people, I think the world, which is nowhere near as densely populated on average as the US, can stand 50% more people.

I'm not saying this poses zero problems, but I am saying it doesn't pose such dire problems that population must be reduced now at all costs, paying no attention to what might come after the peak has passed. Population has momentum both going up and coming down. Just as it is, in a sense, too late to prevent the population from going up in the next decade, there may come a time when it is too late to prevent the population from going down (perhaps by too much) in the next few decades. Why not think ahead? We're supposed to be thinking past the point of peak oil production, right? Why not think past the point of peak people, too?

The US has not accomodated its immigration without difficulty, as the very existence of a sharp immigration debate proves, and as a short time resident in south Texas or Los Angeles would show. I like immigration, myself -- it tends to select out the most energetic and worthwhile people. But let us not fool ourselves that it isn't inherently disruptive, and doesn't need careful thought.

(c) no Social Security argument is complete without noting that productivity gains have made Social Security quite stable over its 60 year lifetime. Don't be silly. SS has been rescued time and again with tax increases, to the point where most people now pay far more in SS and Medicare taxes than they do in Federal taxes. The beast sucks up $670 billion a year, or almost 6% of the entire GDP.

if Social Security is inherently at the mercy of demographic shifts towards older age, why hasn't it fallen victim to them already?

Er...for the same reason that you and I are at the mercy of the diseases of old age, e.g. heart disease and cancer, but they haven't killed us yet? That is, we're still young (or in my case youngish). Well, so are SS and Medicare. You want to show me a society that has had half its population on the dole and has nevertheless survived for centuries? Then I'd say you have a point. But otherwise, I'd

LEGO Compeitions are great. We hold a number of local ones for HS and grade school students (Rules + Pictures) and they always draw media attention and a HUGE turnout.

LEGO Compeitions are great. We hold a number of local ones for HS and grade school students (Rules + Pictures) and they always draw media attention and a HUGE turnout.

LEGO Compeitions are great. We hold a number of local ones for HS and grade school students (Rules + Pictures) and they always draw media attention and a HUGE turnout.

Here are some ideas for other LEGO robotics competitions (these were mostly for HS students).
http://roboti.cs.siue.edu/competitions/

>Do you even know the purpose of felony vs. misdemeanor?

A felony is typically a crime that ends up with the person in prison for a year or longer. A misdemeanor usually ends up with a year or less. More info here.

>such as rape, murder

No. Felonies also include identification theft, burglery, computer crimes, etc. Nice use of the hot-button strawman tactic though.

That said, if the state chooses to try him as a minor, that is their perogative, but the assumption that felonies only involve rape or murder and the like is false and the idea that computer crimes should never reach the level of felony is ridiculous and there are already felony computer crime punishments which is a good idea as society shifts from property based to information based.

>>. What the fuck is wrong with people like you?

Perhaps you should ask yourself that question before you go off with misleading statements.

Not Depp! Five!

Here at my school, our OIT department decided to simply unplug each dorm room from the router in the building. After doing so, they required us to sign up for an inspection. They went room-to-room, testing machines, running McAfee's Stinger, and installing patches and McAfee AntiVirus. They visited my room 3 times, concluding each time that I was running Linux exclusively. Which isn't entirely true--two of my machines are FreeBSD boxen, and the third dual-boots Windows/Linux--but most of the people I talked to aren't quite *nix-savvy. Take this conversation for example...

Me: I run FreeBSD on my laptop.
OIT guy 1: Okay, boot it up and show me.
I show OIT guy 1 the output of 'uname -a'.
OIT guy 1: Show it to the guy over there with the list.
I show my computer to OIT guy 2.
OIT guy 2, to OIT guy 1: Hey, what AV software are we putting on Linux machines?

Or on visit 2...

OIT lady 1: Hi. I'm here to inspect your machine.
Me: I run Linux on one machine, FreeBSD on the other two.
OIT lady 1: Uhh... I have to go get the guy who knows Linux.
OIT lady 1 runs down 2 flights of stairs, and comes back with OIT guy 1.
OIT guy 1: I've already looked at your computer.
Me: No shit.

They finally have turned most of the network back on, and according to Microsoft's KB823980Scan tool, there are 5 unpatched machines in our dorm already. See the output from when I ran it this morning. We lost network access last Friday (8/22), and finally got it turned back on in our room on Thursday (8/28)--even though both my roommate's Windows machine and my machines were clean. If you want to read more on our IT department's odd solution, take a look at the OIT department's blog, or at the school's ACM chapter's discussion of the issue.

Here at my school, our OIT department decided to simply unplug each dorm room from the router in the building. After doing so, they required us to sign up for an inspection. They went room-to-room, testing machines, running McAfee's Stinger, and installing patches and McAfee AntiVirus. They visited my room 3 times, concluding each time that I was running Linux exclusively. Which isn't entirely true--two of my machines are FreeBSD boxen, and the third dual-boots Windows/Linux--but most of the people I talked to aren't quite *nix-savvy. Take this conversation for example...

Me: I run FreeBSD on my laptop.
OIT guy 1: Okay, boot it up and show me.
I show OIT guy 1 the output of 'uname -a'.
OIT guy 1: Show it to the guy over there with the list.
I show my computer to OIT guy 2.
OIT guy 2, to OIT guy 1: Hey, what AV software are we putting on Linux machines?

Or on visit 2...

OIT lady 1: Hi. I'm here to inspect your machine.
Me: I run Linux on one machine, FreeBSD on the other two.
OIT lady 1: Uhh... I have to go get the guy who knows Linux.
OIT lady 1 runs down 2 flights of stairs, and comes back with OIT guy 1.
OIT guy 1: I've already looked at your computer.
Me: No shit.

They finally have turned most of the network back on, and according to Microsoft's KB823980Scan tool, there are 5 unpatched machines in our dorm already. See the output from when I ran it this morning. We lost network access last Friday (8/22), and finally got it turned back on in our room on Thursday (8/28)--even though both my roommate's Windows machine and my machines were clean. If you want to read more on our IT department's odd solution, take a look at the OIT department's blog, or at the school's ACM chapter's discussion of the issue.

Here at my school, our OIT department decided to simply unplug each dorm room from the router in the building. After doing so, they required us to sign up for an inspection. They went room-to-room, testing machines, running McAfee's Stinger, and installing patches and McAfee AntiVirus. They visited my room 3 times, concluding each time that I was running Linux exclusively. Which isn't entirely true--two of my machines are FreeBSD boxen, and the third dual-boots Windows/Linux--but most of the people I talked to aren't quite *nix-savvy. Take this conversation for example...

Me: I run FreeBSD on my laptop.
OIT guy 1: Okay, boot it up and show me.
I show OIT guy 1 the output of 'uname -a'.
OIT guy 1: Show it to the guy over there with the list.
I show my computer to OIT guy 2.
OIT guy 2, to OIT guy 1: Hey, what AV software are we putting on Linux machines?

Or on visit 2...

OIT lady 1: Hi. I'm here to inspect your machine.
Me: I run Linux on one machine, FreeBSD on the other two.
OIT lady 1: Uhh... I have to go get the guy who knows Linux.
OIT lady 1 runs down 2 flights of stairs, and comes back with OIT guy 1.
OIT guy 1: I've already looked at your computer.
Me: No shit.

They finally have turned most of the network back on, and according to Microsoft's KB823980Scan tool, there are 5 unpatched machines in our dorm already. See the output from when I ran it this morning. We lost network access last Friday (8/22), and finally got it turned back on in our room on Thursday (8/28)--even though both my roommate's Windows machine and my machines were clean. If you want to read more on our IT department's odd solution, take a look at the OIT department's blog, or at the school's ACM chapter's discussion of the issue.

I had heard of this syndrome or trait in the human brain associated with the Indian mathematician Ramanujan. I remember from math history lessons in college that he associated formulas, equations, and even theories into colors and shapes. I think it was a part of his genius for number theory with respect to the mastery of such a way of thinking.

Reading through other posts I found that it is also associated with musical masteries related to perfect pitch and tune. Ramanujan seemed to have the same skill respectively, he just associated with numbers and mathematics instead.

If this skill can be taught or mastered, it seems a host for creative, original thinking for any aspect of science and/or artistic expression and would be wonderful if harnessed.

I've been doing something similar, with a Dell that has a pre-MMX Pentium 120 pushed up to 133. QNX is great, and can make the machine quite usable.

There is a caveat: QNX6 does not have a normal swap implementation, though this is 'coming someday.' The default install uses a very large disk cache, which means 32MB is the minimum to *boot,* but you can't use the system in that state.

A helpful QSSLie tipped me off to the cache size adjustment procedure, which is also a great introduction to the microkernel/embedded philosophy. Interested parties can have a look here.

If you want to do more than run Voyager, I'd suggest something with a bit more horsepower than a P133. (Anything in the ~200MHz+ range should be great; look to the Audrey and iOpener CPUs as hints.) When it comes to browsing, the flash plugin in 6.1 really needs more cycles than a P133 can offer, and there's no quality adjustment to speed things up. The GIMP is a definite exercise in patience on that machine...

Those people at the Childrens Workshop have been trying to keep this a secret but here is proof that they are all complete evil
Here is the proof

While we're at it, why not ban all meat and gasoline, plus institute 7 day waiting periods on all chainsaws and running shoes!