You see them sometimes in yuppie tourist destinations - you can go on a "segway tour." I think there are probably more of them out there than you would expect.
Also - I rode one at Disneyland one time, it really is actually a pretty neat machine, and works just like they say it does. You could have a lot of fun with it.
Still - definitely ridiculously overhyped, as gp noted. I remember the internet being afire with speculation from the initial patent filings, or whatever it was - absolutely ridiculous;)
A couple of things I found amusing - first, I was born in 1986, and yet I still got into PC games in DOS. I started formulating this reply as soon as I read that you thought one had to be born before 1984 for this to be true:)
But then the games you mentioned are not the ones I had in mind at all... I did play those games (I especially liked Wolf3D and Need for Speed, from that list - as an aside, I hate where they went with the Need for Speed series after the original...) but the games I grew up with were earlier ones, including a lot of side-scrollers and simpler games like that.
My fondest memories are of Apogee/3d Realms side-scrollers like Secret Agent and Crystal Caves. Then, of course, the X-Wing series came along - pretty much the greatest thing ever invented to a nerdy kid who liked flying (my dad is a pilot), computer games, and Star Wars (and you can't forget Dark Forces - that was a great game, along with its first sequel).
And I completely agree - I stopped playing games a few years ago not because I don't like to play games, but because the games are just not the same as they were. I don't find myself having anywhere near as much fun as I did, unless I simply play the old games. I stopped seriously playing games sometime after Rainbow Six 2. That was, for me, the last great era, with games like that as well as Battlefield 1942 and several great combat flight simulators. It's all gone downhill since then:)
I admit this is kind of a dumb thing to argue, but I have to agree with the other replier regarding shoes. In my experience, the people who claim more expensive items are no better either 1) have never actually tried the more expensive option, or 2) got burned by what was, in hindsight, an obviously over-priced but "fashionable" item - e.g. Alienware computers...
It *is* true in *most* cases that you get what you pay for. I love finding the best deal, and buying the cheapest thing (heck, I am a grad student, it's what we do). But I can no longer stand the really cheap stuff. If we take shoes for example, I recently used to get the $20-30 Payless shoes and they'd be totally worn out in 4-5 months. I bought *one* pair of New Balance shoes about two years ago - I use them almost every day, and often wear them instead of hiking boots for scrambling up rocks on geology trips, hiking, or whatever, and they're still going strong. Total cost over those two years is less than the several pairs of cheap shoes I would have had to buy, not to mention that these are much nicer and more comfortable (and they *never* squeak, which is what I hate the most about cheap shoes).
Bottom line is, if you do your research and get the *good* expensive stuff, you'll be much, much happier than if you just get whatever's on sale that sort of fits your needs.
Same thing with these easy examples (four Cs and two Fs): Computers - Thinkpads and even Macs *are* better Cameras - My Canon 40D *is* better than point-and-shoot cameras that might even have more megapixels Cars - Up to a certain point, anyway Clothes - If you don't go just for fashion Furniture - Wal-Mart ( Ikea ( Hand-Made Fine Oak (less than symbol wouldn't work) Food - I don't drink but can appreciate the good example of fine wine and more expensive beer
It goes for pretty much everything. Even my $8 mechanical pencil - most would say that's an outrageous price to pay for a pencil, but I've been using the same one for four years or so.
I recently had an argument with someone about this when they tried to claim their cheap item was better than my expensive one, so I already had this formed in my head - sorry:)
Funnily enough, I know a girl whose Macbook keyboard broke, and she carries around with her one of those expensive, metal Mac keyboards to use with it... and she's been doing that for well over a year as far as I know. She doesn't just leave it at home, in which case it wouldn't be a big deal, she actually takes it around with her all the time. Bizarre...
I'm not sure why they choose people like this for cool internships. It sounds like the kind of guy that had good grades in college and all kinds of extracurricular activities, but not the kind of guy you'd actually choose as an intern!
Obviously I don't know anything besides the ridiculous, surely augmented account of TFA, which I did read. But I simply don't understand how people like that get internships, while people like me and others I know have a hard time. We don't have 4.0s and tons of extracurricular activities, but as any science nerd will tell you (and which I hope scientists and researchers at NASA know as well - maybe the blame for selecting people like that lies with HR), that's not what you should look for when you need a science/nerd intern!
I replied to someone else with a similar argument already, but I appreciate your argument more than theirs. You make a good point.
However - the proper action by the school is not to sue students and faculty, or whatever they're doing. The proper response is to figure out why people aren't using their school email addresses (it probably is a crappy system as you suggest), and fix it so that they do!
If they are as proficient as you say they should be, it should never be necessary for IT to check the logs to see if they submitted their assignment on time.
I'm not sure what you're even getting at there - it seems to contradict your statement about the students validating the email address they use. If the professor provides an alternate address, the student should be proficient enough to validate that they entered it correctly when submitting, right?
I assume you're saying that if they put in the wrong address, you could check the log and see that an email was sent through the system but the address was wrong. But this should not be necessary if these students are qualified to be a college level student, by your definition (and by the way, in my experience as a TA at a CSU, many students are *not* qualified!)
And - the professors presumably are using gmail accounts because they are reliable, while the school accounts aren't (for a technical reason, as you described). It seems to me that there would be less issues with emailed assignments not making it through email if they use their gmail accounts instead of their limited school accounts.
Finally - if the student can't figure out how to make something small enough for the outdated school email system to handle, there are two possibilities. First, the student is an idiot and isn't qualified to be a college student. Second, the system is woefully outdated considering modern, common computer use and information exchange, exemplified by gmail's excellent handling of such things.
The idea that young people are tech-savvy is fairly un-true. Sure, they can text like crazy, but in general they don't understand how to use computers enough to even be qualified for a low-end computer job such as a secretary, and most won't be able to figure out how to compress their large project files (though this is a contrived example as most large projects aren't going to be submitted through email...)
I'm from Buffalo, one of a few US border towns (as far as I know) with a deluge of Tim Horton's, and I've spent a lot of time in Canada (I've even been to the Tim Horton museum in Cochrane....)
While their stuff is preferable to any fast food place, surely, I don't think it's really all that great. And as the other replier noted, there are often large lines, quality is not always great depending on the location and the people working, and they chase out locally owned competition.
Anyway, my point is - I'm from the US but still know all about Tim Horton's, and while I appreciate many of the things they offer, I don't think the US is missing out *that* much.
Then again, I don't really drink coffee and don't frequent the US chains, either, but I have been to most of them. I *would* say that Tim Horton's has the best donuts, though:)
You really have to get lucky, though. I bike only four miles each way, but there are no bike paths, only one short stretch of wide street (with a bike lane actually), and no low traffic streets (SoCal...)
I have been gaining weight since I stopped biking every day, but it's really difficult if all the powers don't combine in the right way. It's not that much faster to drive, but it's much more comfortable and less dangerous if there aren't good places to bike.
I get your point about being in a better mood - but don't you get worked up at all when cycling? When I commute by bike - only about four miles - I end up in a far higher state of aggravation and uncomfortable-ness due to the immense danger of cycling on the street. I guess it depends on where you ride, but in southern California the drivers are crazy and the roads are mostly insufficient for cycling. The entire ride I feel in imminent danger of getting plowed over. Not to mention that it's extremely hot (to someone originally from NY anyway) all the time and my ride is literally uphill both ways...
My point is that while there are many benefits to cycling, comfort and mood are definitely not one of them. I guess it may be different if you ride on the sidewalk, but that's not safe either, or legal for that matter.
Re:Does this affect the availability of old games?
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Duke Nukem For Never
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I didn't have the Nintendos all the other kids my age had, but I honestly think I had more fun with the Apogee/3D Realms games I played so much.
I grew up playing those games, like the Commander Keen series, Crystal Caves, Raptor: Call of the Shadows, Hocus Pocus, and Secret Agent... good times... (and that's not even counting Wolf 3D, Rise of the Triad, Terminal Velocity... a lot of great games). I was happy playing the shareware episodes over and over, so I wasn't a very good customer as a kid:)
I did buy the full version of Secret Agent several years ago from their site, though, and had a lot of fun checking out the other episodes that I never played originally. Quite satisfied for the $10 or so I paid. I bought Crystal Caves a couple years later as well, and my brother got Raptor: Call of the Shadows which was always one of his favorites. My dad had all the Wolfenstein 3D episodes when they were originally out; I'm not sure he actually paid for them though.
It would, indeed, be a shame if the only way to play these old games was by finding a torrent. The site isn't working for me right now either, but they do have all the shareware versions of their catalog titles available for download in addition to the full (paid) versions.
Anyway... it's refreshing to stir up some nostalgia that's relevant to me; as I mentioned, usually people my age just talk about their Super Nintendos:)
I was wary of that problem before I tried a bluetooth mouse too - but as I wrote in my post below, with the Microsoft offering, in my experience (I've used it for over a year) it doesn't show that lag. I don't know about the one you tried, but after it's gone into sleep mode it takes less than a second to wake up again, which I imagine is similar to the mighty mouse.
I have the Microsoft "Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000" and it is pretty good. It definitely looked like the best reasonably priced bluetooth mouse I could find - it really is surprising that the selection is so poor. I think they haven't pushed them into the market as much as they could have, especially now that everyone knows what bluetooth is because of cell phone headsets (even though those make you look stupid;) ). I'm a linux user, but you have to give Microsoft credit where it is due - they may make a terrible OS, but their mouse division is excellent. I prefer their mice over all the other brands.
Anyway - it works great. In use it feels no different than the "Laser Mouse 6000" I use when at home (the bluetooth one also uses laser, which I've found is actually nicer to use than LED optical), other than being smaller, of course. So there is absolutely no loss of precision - I've used it to make minute photo edits without a problem. And I've never run into interference. I mean, you're probably going to use it right next to the computer, so you should have an excellent signal. I have, however, used it from 20-30 feet across the room with my laptop hooked up to a projector, and it still had the same precision and no interference.
As you may have figured out from above, I don't use the bluetooth mouse when I'm at home at my desk. I have a USB hub with a few things plugged into it, including the Laser Mouse 6000, so I just plug that in when I get home with my laptop. That's because a full-size mouse is easier to use, not because the performance is any different, and it's also to save batteries. However, the battery life is actually excellent - with normal usage, the two AAA batteries the mouse uses last several months or more for me.
Apparently some bluetooth mice go inactive after a while, and take a couple seconds to respond again. As you can imagine, this would be annoying. With this one, though, while it does go on standby after several minutes, it starts responding again in under a second. It's never annoyed me because of that.
Pairing it with the computer works flawlessly as well; after the initial pairing all I have to do is switch it on and it starts working after just a second or two, with no intervention required. Of course, bluetooth is partially broken in KDE 4.2 and it takes some fiddling, but that has nothing to do with the mouse and I assume with OSX it works.
Finally - I don't like the idea of having to plug in a little receiver. It wastes a USB port, which are often lacking on laptops, and it would surely be easy to lose. Besides those mice being cheaper, I simply don't understand why you'd want to add another thing when your computer already has bluetooth built in.
As a geology grad student, I know about this stuff, but it is definitely out of my area of expertise so take it with a grain of salt.
The rotational axis of the earth (besides the crust rotation thing the other replier mentions) can't really change without a massive event causing it. The direction the rotational axis is tilting changes cyclically, but that is different from the axis itself changing.
The theory that the moon formed from ejected material resulting from a bolide impact with the early earth includes the idea that that impact tilted the earth's rotation. I don't know too much about planetary physics, but it seems to make sense that we should not have a tilted axis of rotation, without something hitting us to throw it off.
Now, I think what the other replier may be talking about is the reason that the earth's magnetic pole shifts. The magnetic field is of course produced by the spinning metallic core - that's physics 101 - and the reason the poles shift is because of shifts in the rotation direction of the core relative to the rest of the earth. As the other guy said, when the polarity reverses, there may be some problems (that was sort of the premise of the movie The Core - in the movie the core suddenly stopped spinning, removing the magnetic field).
A few points - neither of these things is going to happen catastrophically. It takes a lot of time, at human scales. So these being the cause of the apocalypse in 2012 is ridiculous.
Next, since a shift in any rotational axis will be slow, no "massive geologic events" will occur. No mass extinctions are seriously thought to have been caused by massive geologic events of the type I assume the show was implying.
Now, if there is an impact large enough to cause a shift in rotation of the earth itself or the core, then sure, we will have something to worry about. Except of course that no one will be thinking about that, because the impact will have wiped out half of the earth anyway.
This reminds me of the great geologic debate of the 17-1800's between proponents of catastrophism and uniformitarianism. Catastrophists thought that all geologic processes happen instantly and catastrophically; meaning at the extreme that mountains rise out of the earth in one big event, Land Before Time style. Uniformitarianists on the other hand thought that nothing ever changed - this was kind of distorted by people who didn't quite understand; the original idea might more readily be called gradualism, meaning things did change, just extremely slowly. But the big fight was between people arguing the two extremes.
There are catastrophic geologic events - earthquakes and volcanoes (and things that may result from those, like tsunamis). While these certainly can cause big problems locally, neither are big enough to cause long-lasting, world-wide, apocalypse-type problems.
Every other geologic process takes an extremely long time, especially earth-scale processes like shifting rotation axes. Just think about it - physics would imply that an unimaginably massive outside force would be required to cause catastrophic changes in such things.
It's not necessarily about a practical result, such as mining for resources, though that's certainly something to look towards in the future. The point *should* be to make massive advancements in the science and technology fields involved, just like in the 50's and 60's.
I put eeebuntu on a 901 I bought for my girlfriend. Of course there were some issues, and audio seems to be partly broken right now, but overall it worked very well and wifi, bluetooth, webcam, and everything worked out of the box (audio broke later).
I'm not a big fan of Ubuntu myself, especially because of Gnome, but it is good for my girlfriend and eeebuntu was far easier to get running on the 901 than OpenSUSE was on my Lenovo S10e. That said, I'm running the regular version of OpenSUSE 11.1 with full-on KDE 4.2 on the S10e and it's fine - took a bit of fiddling but besides wifi that mostly worked out of the box as well.
I really hope that Comic Sans is not used in actual books, as you suggest - that, to me, would be a sign of extreme laziness or an incompetent designer. Even if it's not that bad of a font, Comic Sans today has a certain business connotation which I think is just not right for children's books (or anything for that matter). And there are so many better choices; even a cursory look at a list of fonts besides the 20 Word gives you should enable even someone ignorant about fonts to choose something better for their children's book. And presumably the layout is being done in something like Illustrator, which comes standard with extra fonts from Adobe, and which presumably is being operated by a designer who knows at least a little bit about fonts.
As someone who came from a place without real public transportation, Chicago's system was a revelation (or would have been had I not been to New York first). I'm sure you're correct that there are massive problems with it. But, every time I've been to Chicago I've been able to get anywhere I wanted to go - not just downtown, even into some of the suburbs - using the El and the buses.
It's not as good as in New York, sure, and while I haven't been to San Francisco yet, it's supposed to be pretty good there too. Along with those, though, Chicago has one of the best transportation networks in the country.
My point - yes, it really is as bad as you imagine everywhere else. In most parts of the country, including Western New York which is where I'm from, the only time most people have ever used public transportation is when they traveled to New York or Chicago. And despite what the parent said, public transit in LA/SoCal certainly does not work, so perhaps he was right in grouping Chicago with LA if what you're saying is true:)
I moved to Southern California a few months ago, from Western New York, for grad school. I noticed exactly the same things you did.
However... I haven't changed my behavior much. I don't drive slow (I didn't in New York either) but I don't drive crazily, like most do here. I leave a huge space in front of me so that other people can get in and out of the lane they need, or can pass me if they want.
Sometimes, yes, the driving behavior of others forces me to drive more crazily in order to not cause problems. But in general, I've found that no one minds if you just go your own pace while driving. Again, I don't mean necessarily driving slowly - just not erratically or without paying attention. Also, I use my turn signals properly, and surprisingly a lot of the time people will actually let me in.
It's much more relaxed back home, yes - but if you don't let the behavior of others infect you, you can still be relaxed here, while enjoying the benefits of living in a place like this. And, if I'm driving with people who are from here, they immediately notice my more relaxed driving style and several people have commented on it. Whether that influenced them to drive less crazily I don't know, but it's a start:)
Other people can't just be ignored, obviously - you have to drive defensively. It's even worse if you try to ride a bike - I commute by bike as often as I can, and it's scary, no matter what time of day.
Anyway - the problem is the "survival mechanism" you described. It's a positive feedback cycle that only makes the driving worse. It doesn't have to be like that. Next time you get on the freeway, allow yourself to be a little relaxed (as much as is safe and practical, obviously). You may notice that driving here is not that bad, and that the effect will rub off on most drivers around you (and they will at least greatly appreciate you letting them pass - I'm disgusted often at people who actively prevent others from merging).
This is the key issue - availability. If you go to Asus' site they list all sorts of different models, all of which they say have Linux as an option. When you go to actually buy one - no matter where, online or in store - there are only a handful of models available, and as pimpimpim notes, they are generally the less capable models.
I wanted the Lenovo S10e - Lenovo doesn't offer a non-Windows version so I didn't have a choice. I got it and wiped the harddrive and installed OpenSUSE, no problem for me, but I don't like the fact that I paid for Windows in there somewhere.
Interestingly the S10e has two drives - the main disk and an additional 4gb SSD with some sort of instant-on Linux distro - but I didn't even know it was there before wiping both drives:) They obviously didn't push that feature too much if I hadn't even heard of it despite researching the thing before buying it... but I do appreciate that I have a 4gb ssd to do something with apart from the main disk.
Anyway to get back to the topic - I did get an eee 901 for my girlfriend, with Linux - which seems to be more common with the SSD models. I couldn't get it in the color she wanted, though - again, they are picking and choosing specific models to carry, and I just don't see the logic. I did install a different distro for her - eeebuntu, as it is very well put together for the eeepcs and she needed more functionality than the Asus distro offered - and she is painting it herself. But we are clearly not normal purchasers, who would do neither of those things themselves, but who would have liked different options available at purchase.
It's not good for anybody - the manufacturer, the reseller, or the consumer - to limit choices. The manufacturers claim to have all these options - why can't resellers get their acts together to actually offer them?
And, how many people, like me, aren't counting towards these statistics accurately because a Windows netbook was the best deal (or only option)? I mean, realistically, it's probably not that many people, but still. It's something.
Exactly because of the reason you described - manufacturers are trying to make them the cheapest so people will buy them - it really matters which CFLs you buy. You've identified the problem, but also the solution - just be sure to get the good ones.
I got some from GE that are daylight color balanced, and they are great. They come on instantly, are very bright while using very little power, and the color really matches daylight. After concentrating on things for a while, I have looked up and been confused about whether the light was coming from outside or not... in the middle of the night.
I appreciate your post - it is interesting and informative, and has been modded appropriately. I still found it amusing, though; besides having better grammar it is written like a science report you'd make in sixth grade or something:)
No, you are right, I agree with your assessment. My line about arguing the specifics being ridiculous is a little ridiculous in itself, but I did not mean it to go too far beyond the context of science funding. It is not meant to apply to government spending in general, in which case calling it a broken window fallacy (which, yes, I am quite familiar with) is accurate.
As you say, the money should be distributed properly as per what benefits the tax payers. I'm not talking about that at all, though. A certain amount is put towards science - my guess is it is an absolutely minimal amount of the total budget. Once you agree on how much should be spent on science (not that the government and tax payers would ever be able to agree on that), then where the money goes specifically within science becomes less important. To most benefit the tax payer perhaps it should be spent mostly on "practical" and basic science - I don't have any figures but I would assume that is actually the case. So now we're left with a small percentage of a small percentage that goes into science which doesn't directly benefit anyone. This is where I'm saying specifics don't matter.
So my problem is with those who are picking and choosing which not-directly-practical science projects to fund based on un-scientific decisions. Hence, the example of volcano monitoring and studying grizzly bears, which were attacked by Jindal and McCain. Does it make a difference to the economy whether you spend money marked for science on studying volcanoes, bears, lasers/sharks, geology, or theoretical physics? Short-term benefit from these things to the taxpayer is absolutely minimal, yet most science-minded folks would agree these are very worthwhile things to study. And when we look at the direct economic impact of choosing one of these things over the other, there is minimal difference - as I said in my earlier post, the money all goes back into the economy, and probably more quickly than with other investments at that.
So to be clear - I am saying that attacking spending on specific scientific projects is pointless, not that specifying where government money goes in general is pointless. Science is a self-policing peer-reviewed system - bad projects are discontinued because of the opinion of people who know what they're talking about and what the project means, not because politicians who don't understand the science and where the money goes decide a project is stupid.
You're absolutely right - I did hint at such a system by mentioning purpose-built devices. When I first heard of the accelerometer thing I thought it was pretty silly - the idea is great, but it seems like someone got a laptop with an accelerometer and thought hey, what if I used computers with these to monitor earthquakes in real time - without stopping to think that maybe there's a simpler way. It's not hard to see the inadequacy of a system that relies on random laptops.
But silly as it is, it is costing pretty much nothing. If they can get enough volunteers to use the software, and can prove that its results are reliable, then they have built a monitoring network out of nothing. That's pretty impressive, and potentially useful as it is, or at least as a proof of concept.
They do sell a USB monitoring device so that you can join the network without having an accelerometer in your computer - http://qcn.stanford.edu/learning/requests.html. I would imagine they also have or are working on devices that are essentially just one of those monitors networked to the central server, that you could install in traffic signal controller boxes (which in most places here in Southern California are actually much more closely spaced than a couple hundred meters;) ), or wherever - like, say, along the faults!
And you're right - the cost of this would be relatively small, but far from minimal. In any project like this there is more to it than it seems (though I agree with you that they should be heading more in that direction). When you have the choice between an already-there real-time network of laptops spread out all across the region, or setting up a not-un-complicated real-time system all over the place from scratch, for which unforeseen complications will surely crop up, the decision is pretty easy for at least the early stages of the project. I'm sure there are several graduate students working on aspects of this project, including working on dedicated devices and devising ways to quickly and accurately analyze the data and deliver the warning (connection to the warning devices - which would probably most easily be bomb-raid style sirens - would also have to be real-time).
This is purely speculation, but maybe they are actually having trouble getting financial support for the project. I would imagine it's not actually that easy to pitch a merely 10-20s warning based on an unproven system to city officials who could easily provide money to install devices.
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You see them sometimes in yuppie tourist destinations - you can go on a "segway tour." I think there are probably more of them out there than you would expect.
Also - I rode one at Disneyland one time, it really is actually a pretty neat machine, and works just like they say it does. You could have a lot of fun with it.
Still - definitely ridiculously overhyped, as gp noted. I remember the internet being afire with speculation from the initial patent filings, or whatever it was - absolutely ridiculous ;)
A couple of things I found amusing - first, I was born in 1986, and yet I still got into PC games in DOS. I started formulating this reply as soon as I read that you thought one had to be born before 1984 for this to be true :)
But then the games you mentioned are not the ones I had in mind at all... I did play those games (I especially liked Wolf3D and Need for Speed, from that list - as an aside, I hate where they went with the Need for Speed series after the original...) but the games I grew up with were earlier ones, including a lot of side-scrollers and simpler games like that.
My fondest memories are of Apogee/3d Realms side-scrollers like Secret Agent and Crystal Caves. Then, of course, the X-Wing series came along - pretty much the greatest thing ever invented to a nerdy kid who liked flying (my dad is a pilot), computer games, and Star Wars (and you can't forget Dark Forces - that was a great game, along with its first sequel).
And I completely agree - I stopped playing games a few years ago not because I don't like to play games, but because the games are just not the same as they were. I don't find myself having anywhere near as much fun as I did, unless I simply play the old games. I stopped seriously playing games sometime after Rainbow Six 2. That was, for me, the last great era, with games like that as well as Battlefield 1942 and several great combat flight simulators. It's all gone downhill since then :)
I admit this is kind of a dumb thing to argue, but I have to agree with the other replier regarding shoes. In my experience, the people who claim more expensive items are no better either 1) have never actually tried the more expensive option, or 2) got burned by what was, in hindsight, an obviously over-priced but "fashionable" item - e.g. Alienware computers...
It *is* true in *most* cases that you get what you pay for. I love finding the best deal, and buying the cheapest thing (heck, I am a grad student, it's what we do). But I can no longer stand the really cheap stuff. If we take shoes for example, I recently used to get the $20-30 Payless shoes and they'd be totally worn out in 4-5 months. I bought *one* pair of New Balance shoes about two years ago - I use them almost every day, and often wear them instead of hiking boots for scrambling up rocks on geology trips, hiking, or whatever, and they're still going strong. Total cost over those two years is less than the several pairs of cheap shoes I would have had to buy, not to mention that these are much nicer and more comfortable (and they *never* squeak, which is what I hate the most about cheap shoes).
Bottom line is, if you do your research and get the *good* expensive stuff, you'll be much, much happier than if you just get whatever's on sale that sort of fits your needs.
Same thing with these easy examples (four Cs and two Fs):
Computers - Thinkpads and even Macs *are* better
Cameras - My Canon 40D *is* better than point-and-shoot cameras that might even have more megapixels
Cars - Up to a certain point, anyway
Clothes - If you don't go just for fashion
Furniture - Wal-Mart ( Ikea ( Hand-Made Fine Oak (less than symbol wouldn't work)
Food - I don't drink but can appreciate the good example of fine wine and more expensive beer
It goes for pretty much everything. Even my $8 mechanical pencil - most would say that's an outrageous price to pay for a pencil, but I've been using the same one for four years or so.
I recently had an argument with someone about this when they tried to claim their cheap item was better than my expensive one, so I already had this formed in my head - sorry :)
Funnily enough, I know a girl whose Macbook keyboard broke, and she carries around with her one of those expensive, metal Mac keyboards to use with it... and she's been doing that for well over a year as far as I know. She doesn't just leave it at home, in which case it wouldn't be a big deal, she actually takes it around with her all the time. Bizarre...
I'm not sure why they choose people like this for cool internships. It sounds like the kind of guy that had good grades in college and all kinds of extracurricular activities, but not the kind of guy you'd actually choose as an intern!
Obviously I don't know anything besides the ridiculous, surely augmented account of TFA, which I did read. But I simply don't understand how people like that get internships, while people like me and others I know have a hard time. We don't have 4.0s and tons of extracurricular activities, but as any science nerd will tell you (and which I hope scientists and researchers at NASA know as well - maybe the blame for selecting people like that lies with HR), that's not what you should look for when you need a science/nerd intern!
I replied to someone else with a similar argument already, but I appreciate your argument more than theirs. You make a good point.
However - the proper action by the school is not to sue students and faculty, or whatever they're doing. The proper response is to figure out why people aren't using their school email addresses (it probably is a crappy system as you suggest), and fix it so that they do!
If they are as proficient as you say they should be, it should never be necessary for IT to check the logs to see if they submitted their assignment on time.
I'm not sure what you're even getting at there - it seems to contradict your statement about the students validating the email address they use. If the professor provides an alternate address, the student should be proficient enough to validate that they entered it correctly when submitting, right?
I assume you're saying that if they put in the wrong address, you could check the log and see that an email was sent through the system but the address was wrong. But this should not be necessary if these students are qualified to be a college level student, by your definition (and by the way, in my experience as a TA at a CSU, many students are *not* qualified!)
And - the professors presumably are using gmail accounts because they are reliable, while the school accounts aren't (for a technical reason, as you described). It seems to me that there would be less issues with emailed assignments not making it through email if they use their gmail accounts instead of their limited school accounts.
Finally - if the student can't figure out how to make something small enough for the outdated school email system to handle, there are two possibilities. First, the student is an idiot and isn't qualified to be a college student. Second, the system is woefully outdated considering modern, common computer use and information exchange, exemplified by gmail's excellent handling of such things.
The idea that young people are tech-savvy is fairly un-true. Sure, they can text like crazy, but in general they don't understand how to use computers enough to even be qualified for a low-end computer job such as a secretary, and most won't be able to figure out how to compress their large project files (though this is a contrived example as most large projects aren't going to be submitted through email...)
I'm from Buffalo, one of a few US border towns (as far as I know) with a deluge of Tim Horton's, and I've spent a lot of time in Canada (I've even been to the Tim Horton museum in Cochrane....)
While their stuff is preferable to any fast food place, surely, I don't think it's really all that great. And as the other replier noted, there are often large lines, quality is not always great depending on the location and the people working, and they chase out locally owned competition.
Anyway, my point is - I'm from the US but still know all about Tim Horton's, and while I appreciate many of the things they offer, I don't think the US is missing out *that* much.
Then again, I don't really drink coffee and don't frequent the US chains, either, but I have been to most of them. I *would* say that Tim Horton's has the best donuts, though :)
You really have to get lucky, though. I bike only four miles each way, but there are no bike paths, only one short stretch of wide street (with a bike lane actually), and no low traffic streets (SoCal...)
I have been gaining weight since I stopped biking every day, but it's really difficult if all the powers don't combine in the right way. It's not that much faster to drive, but it's much more comfortable and less dangerous if there aren't good places to bike.
I get your point about being in a better mood - but don't you get worked up at all when cycling? When I commute by bike - only about four miles - I end up in a far higher state of aggravation and uncomfortable-ness due to the immense danger of cycling on the street. I guess it depends on where you ride, but in southern California the drivers are crazy and the roads are mostly insufficient for cycling. The entire ride I feel in imminent danger of getting plowed over. Not to mention that it's extremely hot (to someone originally from NY anyway) all the time and my ride is literally uphill both ways...
My point is that while there are many benefits to cycling, comfort and mood are definitely not one of them. I guess it may be different if you ride on the sidewalk, but that's not safe either, or legal for that matter.
I didn't have the Nintendos all the other kids my age had, but I honestly think I had more fun with the Apogee/3D Realms games I played so much.
I grew up playing those games, like the Commander Keen series, Crystal Caves, Raptor: Call of the Shadows, Hocus Pocus, and Secret Agent... good times... (and that's not even counting Wolf 3D, Rise of the Triad, Terminal Velocity... a lot of great games). I was happy playing the shareware episodes over and over, so I wasn't a very good customer as a kid :)
I did buy the full version of Secret Agent several years ago from their site, though, and had a lot of fun checking out the other episodes that I never played originally. Quite satisfied for the $10 or so I paid. I bought Crystal Caves a couple years later as well, and my brother got Raptor: Call of the Shadows which was always one of his favorites. My dad had all the Wolfenstein 3D episodes when they were originally out; I'm not sure he actually paid for them though.
It would, indeed, be a shame if the only way to play these old games was by finding a torrent. The site isn't working for me right now either, but they do have all the shareware versions of their catalog titles available for download in addition to the full (paid) versions.
Anyway... it's refreshing to stir up some nostalgia that's relevant to me; as I mentioned, usually people my age just talk about their Super Nintendos :)
True... and some of those users yet still create Windows flac utilities?!? ;)
I was wary of that problem before I tried a bluetooth mouse too - but as I wrote in my post below, with the Microsoft offering, in my experience (I've used it for over a year) it doesn't show that lag. I don't know about the one you tried, but after it's gone into sleep mode it takes less than a second to wake up again, which I imagine is similar to the mighty mouse.
I have the Microsoft "Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000" and it is pretty good. It definitely looked like the best reasonably priced bluetooth mouse I could find - it really is surprising that the selection is so poor. I think they haven't pushed them into the market as much as they could have, especially now that everyone knows what bluetooth is because of cell phone headsets (even though those make you look stupid ;) ). I'm a linux user, but you have to give Microsoft credit where it is due - they may make a terrible OS, but their mouse division is excellent. I prefer their mice over all the other brands.
Anyway - it works great. In use it feels no different than the "Laser Mouse 6000" I use when at home (the bluetooth one also uses laser, which I've found is actually nicer to use than LED optical), other than being smaller, of course. So there is absolutely no loss of precision - I've used it to make minute photo edits without a problem. And I've never run into interference. I mean, you're probably going to use it right next to the computer, so you should have an excellent signal. I have, however, used it from 20-30 feet across the room with my laptop hooked up to a projector, and it still had the same precision and no interference.
As you may have figured out from above, I don't use the bluetooth mouse when I'm at home at my desk. I have a USB hub with a few things plugged into it, including the Laser Mouse 6000, so I just plug that in when I get home with my laptop. That's because a full-size mouse is easier to use, not because the performance is any different, and it's also to save batteries. However, the battery life is actually excellent - with normal usage, the two AAA batteries the mouse uses last several months or more for me.
Apparently some bluetooth mice go inactive after a while, and take a couple seconds to respond again. As you can imagine, this would be annoying. With this one, though, while it does go on standby after several minutes, it starts responding again in under a second. It's never annoyed me because of that.
Pairing it with the computer works flawlessly as well; after the initial pairing all I have to do is switch it on and it starts working after just a second or two, with no intervention required. Of course, bluetooth is partially broken in KDE 4.2 and it takes some fiddling, but that has nothing to do with the mouse and I assume with OSX it works.
Finally - I don't like the idea of having to plug in a little receiver. It wastes a USB port, which are often lacking on laptops, and it would surely be easy to lose. Besides those mice being cheaper, I simply don't understand why you'd want to add another thing when your computer already has bluetooth built in.
As a geology grad student, I know about this stuff, but it is definitely out of my area of expertise so take it with a grain of salt.
The rotational axis of the earth (besides the crust rotation thing the other replier mentions) can't really change without a massive event causing it. The direction the rotational axis is tilting changes cyclically, but that is different from the axis itself changing.
The theory that the moon formed from ejected material resulting from a bolide impact with the early earth includes the idea that that impact tilted the earth's rotation. I don't know too much about planetary physics, but it seems to make sense that we should not have a tilted axis of rotation, without something hitting us to throw it off.
Now, I think what the other replier may be talking about is the reason that the earth's magnetic pole shifts. The magnetic field is of course produced by the spinning metallic core - that's physics 101 - and the reason the poles shift is because of shifts in the rotation direction of the core relative to the rest of the earth. As the other guy said, when the polarity reverses, there may be some problems (that was sort of the premise of the movie The Core - in the movie the core suddenly stopped spinning, removing the magnetic field).
A few points - neither of these things is going to happen catastrophically. It takes a lot of time, at human scales. So these being the cause of the apocalypse in 2012 is ridiculous.
Next, since a shift in any rotational axis will be slow, no "massive geologic events" will occur. No mass extinctions are seriously thought to have been caused by massive geologic events of the type I assume the show was implying.
Now, if there is an impact large enough to cause a shift in rotation of the earth itself or the core, then sure, we will have something to worry about. Except of course that no one will be thinking about that, because the impact will have wiped out half of the earth anyway.
This reminds me of the great geologic debate of the 17-1800's between proponents of catastrophism and uniformitarianism. Catastrophists thought that all geologic processes happen instantly and catastrophically; meaning at the extreme that mountains rise out of the earth in one big event, Land Before Time style. Uniformitarianists on the other hand thought that nothing ever changed - this was kind of distorted by people who didn't quite understand; the original idea might more readily be called gradualism, meaning things did change, just extremely slowly. But the big fight was between people arguing the two extremes.
There are catastrophic geologic events - earthquakes and volcanoes (and things that may result from those, like tsunamis). While these certainly can cause big problems locally, neither are big enough to cause long-lasting, world-wide, apocalypse-type problems.
Every other geologic process takes an extremely long time, especially earth-scale processes like shifting rotation axes. Just think about it - physics would imply that an unimaginably massive outside force would be required to cause catastrophic changes in such things.
It's not necessarily about a practical result, such as mining for resources, though that's certainly something to look towards in the future. The point *should* be to make massive advancements in the science and technology fields involved, just like in the 50's and 60's.
I put eeebuntu on a 901 I bought for my girlfriend. Of course there were some issues, and audio seems to be partly broken right now, but overall it worked very well and wifi, bluetooth, webcam, and everything worked out of the box (audio broke later).
I'm not a big fan of Ubuntu myself, especially because of Gnome, but it is good for my girlfriend and eeebuntu was far easier to get running on the 901 than OpenSUSE was on my Lenovo S10e. That said, I'm running the regular version of OpenSUSE 11.1 with full-on KDE 4.2 on the S10e and it's fine - took a bit of fiddling but besides wifi that mostly worked out of the box as well.
I really hope that Comic Sans is not used in actual books, as you suggest - that, to me, would be a sign of extreme laziness or an incompetent designer. Even if it's not that bad of a font, Comic Sans today has a certain business connotation which I think is just not right for children's books (or anything for that matter). And there are so many better choices; even a cursory look at a list of fonts besides the 20 Word gives you should enable even someone ignorant about fonts to choose something better for their children's book. And presumably the layout is being done in something like Illustrator, which comes standard with extra fonts from Adobe, and which presumably is being operated by a designer who knows at least a little bit about fonts.
As someone who came from a place without real public transportation, Chicago's system was a revelation (or would have been had I not been to New York first). I'm sure you're correct that there are massive problems with it. But, every time I've been to Chicago I've been able to get anywhere I wanted to go - not just downtown, even into some of the suburbs - using the El and the buses.
It's not as good as in New York, sure, and while I haven't been to San Francisco yet, it's supposed to be pretty good there too. Along with those, though, Chicago has one of the best transportation networks in the country.
My point - yes, it really is as bad as you imagine everywhere else. In most parts of the country, including Western New York which is where I'm from, the only time most people have ever used public transportation is when they traveled to New York or Chicago. And despite what the parent said, public transit in LA/SoCal certainly does not work, so perhaps he was right in grouping Chicago with LA if what you're saying is true :)
I moved to Southern California a few months ago, from Western New York, for grad school. I noticed exactly the same things you did.
However... I haven't changed my behavior much. I don't drive slow (I didn't in New York either) but I don't drive crazily, like most do here. I leave a huge space in front of me so that other people can get in and out of the lane they need, or can pass me if they want.
Sometimes, yes, the driving behavior of others forces me to drive more crazily in order to not cause problems. But in general, I've found that no one minds if you just go your own pace while driving. Again, I don't mean necessarily driving slowly - just not erratically or without paying attention. Also, I use my turn signals properly, and surprisingly a lot of the time people will actually let me in.
It's much more relaxed back home, yes - but if you don't let the behavior of others infect you, you can still be relaxed here, while enjoying the benefits of living in a place like this. And, if I'm driving with people who are from here, they immediately notice my more relaxed driving style and several people have commented on it. Whether that influenced them to drive less crazily I don't know, but it's a start :)
Other people can't just be ignored, obviously - you have to drive defensively. It's even worse if you try to ride a bike - I commute by bike as often as I can, and it's scary, no matter what time of day.
Anyway - the problem is the "survival mechanism" you described. It's a positive feedback cycle that only makes the driving worse. It doesn't have to be like that. Next time you get on the freeway, allow yourself to be a little relaxed (as much as is safe and practical, obviously). You may notice that driving here is not that bad, and that the effect will rub off on most drivers around you (and they will at least greatly appreciate you letting them pass - I'm disgusted often at people who actively prevent others from merging).
This is the key issue - availability. If you go to Asus' site they list all sorts of different models, all of which they say have Linux as an option. When you go to actually buy one - no matter where, online or in store - there are only a handful of models available, and as pimpimpim notes, they are generally the less capable models.
I wanted the Lenovo S10e - Lenovo doesn't offer a non-Windows version so I didn't have a choice. I got it and wiped the harddrive and installed OpenSUSE, no problem for me, but I don't like the fact that I paid for Windows in there somewhere.
Interestingly the S10e has two drives - the main disk and an additional 4gb SSD with some sort of instant-on Linux distro - but I didn't even know it was there before wiping both drives :) They obviously didn't push that feature too much if I hadn't even heard of it despite researching the thing before buying it... but I do appreciate that I have a 4gb ssd to do something with apart from the main disk.
Anyway to get back to the topic - I did get an eee 901 for my girlfriend, with Linux - which seems to be more common with the SSD models. I couldn't get it in the color she wanted, though - again, they are picking and choosing specific models to carry, and I just don't see the logic. I did install a different distro for her - eeebuntu, as it is very well put together for the eeepcs and she needed more functionality than the Asus distro offered - and she is painting it herself. But we are clearly not normal purchasers, who would do neither of those things themselves, but who would have liked different options available at purchase.
It's not good for anybody - the manufacturer, the reseller, or the consumer - to limit choices. The manufacturers claim to have all these options - why can't resellers get their acts together to actually offer them?
And, how many people, like me, aren't counting towards these statistics accurately because a Windows netbook was the best deal (or only option)? I mean, realistically, it's probably not that many people, but still. It's something.
Exactly because of the reason you described - manufacturers are trying to make them the cheapest so people will buy them - it really matters which CFLs you buy. You've identified the problem, but also the solution - just be sure to get the good ones.
I got some from GE that are daylight color balanced, and they are great. They come on instantly, are very bright while using very little power, and the color really matches daylight. After concentrating on things for a while, I have looked up and been confused about whether the light was coming from outside or not... in the middle of the night.
I appreciate your post - it is interesting and informative, and has been modded appropriately. I still found it amusing, though; besides having better grammar it is written like a science report you'd make in sixth grade or something :)
No, you are right, I agree with your assessment. My line about arguing the specifics being ridiculous is a little ridiculous in itself, but I did not mean it to go too far beyond the context of science funding. It is not meant to apply to government spending in general, in which case calling it a broken window fallacy (which, yes, I am quite familiar with) is accurate.
As you say, the money should be distributed properly as per what benefits the tax payers. I'm not talking about that at all, though. A certain amount is put towards science - my guess is it is an absolutely minimal amount of the total budget. Once you agree on how much should be spent on science (not that the government and tax payers would ever be able to agree on that), then where the money goes specifically within science becomes less important. To most benefit the tax payer perhaps it should be spent mostly on "practical" and basic science - I don't have any figures but I would assume that is actually the case. So now we're left with a small percentage of a small percentage that goes into science which doesn't directly benefit anyone. This is where I'm saying specifics don't matter.
So my problem is with those who are picking and choosing which not-directly-practical science projects to fund based on un-scientific decisions. Hence, the example of volcano monitoring and studying grizzly bears, which were attacked by Jindal and McCain. Does it make a difference to the economy whether you spend money marked for science on studying volcanoes, bears, lasers/sharks, geology, or theoretical physics? Short-term benefit from these things to the taxpayer is absolutely minimal, yet most science-minded folks would agree these are very worthwhile things to study. And when we look at the direct economic impact of choosing one of these things over the other, there is minimal difference - as I said in my earlier post, the money all goes back into the economy, and probably more quickly than with other investments at that.
So to be clear - I am saying that attacking spending on specific scientific projects is pointless, not that specifying where government money goes in general is pointless. Science is a self-policing peer-reviewed system - bad projects are discontinued because of the opinion of people who know what they're talking about and what the project means, not because politicians who don't understand the science and where the money goes decide a project is stupid.
You're absolutely right - I did hint at such a system by mentioning purpose-built devices. When I first heard of the accelerometer thing I thought it was pretty silly - the idea is great, but it seems like someone got a laptop with an accelerometer and thought hey, what if I used computers with these to monitor earthquakes in real time - without stopping to think that maybe there's a simpler way. It's not hard to see the inadequacy of a system that relies on random laptops.
But silly as it is, it is costing pretty much nothing. If they can get enough volunteers to use the software, and can prove that its results are reliable, then they have built a monitoring network out of nothing. That's pretty impressive, and potentially useful as it is, or at least as a proof of concept.
They do sell a USB monitoring device so that you can join the network without having an accelerometer in your computer - http://qcn.stanford.edu/learning/requests.html. I would imagine they also have or are working on devices that are essentially just one of those monitors networked to the central server, that you could install in traffic signal controller boxes (which in most places here in Southern California are actually much more closely spaced than a couple hundred meters ;) ), or wherever - like, say, along the faults!
And you're right - the cost of this would be relatively small, but far from minimal. In any project like this there is more to it than it seems (though I agree with you that they should be heading more in that direction). When you have the choice between an already-there real-time network of laptops spread out all across the region, or setting up a not-un-complicated real-time system all over the place from scratch, for which unforeseen complications will surely crop up, the decision is pretty easy for at least the early stages of the project. I'm sure there are several graduate students working on aspects of this project, including working on dedicated devices and devising ways to quickly and accurately analyze the data and deliver the warning (connection to the warning devices - which would probably most easily be bomb-raid style sirens - would also have to be real-time).
This is purely speculation, but maybe they are actually having trouble getting financial support for the project. I would imagine it's not actually that easy to pitch a merely 10-20s warning based on an unproven system to city officials who could easily provide money to install devices.