Gee, I guess this is why I have a 20 year old computer that still works, a color TV that has freakin' *dials* on it (and was made in the US... so it's very old) and a bunch of other elderly equipment around. All of which still works.
Remember that for electronics, it is far more often the case that the non-mechanical parts of the equipment far outlast their useful lifetime. We have mounds and mounds of still functional, but fairly useless electronics gear.
As for the mechanical world, I highly doubt they are designed to fall apart at a certain time. It's just not a design goal that these things should be indestructable. Maybe they could be designed to last forever. I kinda doubt you could build machines that would be capable of running 5 million miles without massive overhauls. And the price of constructing a car out of nearly wear-proof parts would make them hideously expensive. No matter how clever your engineering, you still have to face the simple fact that there is friction, and friction causes wear. For most cars, you can keep them going nearly indefinitely, if you are willing to spend the cash to keep them going. But why bother? Most people don't bother maintaining their cars properly anyhow, then bitch when the thing breaks down.
You're measuring a space probe that is travelling through a near vaccuum, with few mechanical parts that still need to work, to cars that drive through highly corrosive road salt, over pot-hole filled streets, by fairly neglectful owners. And you're wondering why the probe wins out? Oh, and have you checked the price of a space probe vs. the price of a car recently?
I'm fairly certain that the Pueblo MUD client was out by '96, as well. Pueblo had its own built-in VRML renderer. The MUD client (most from the MUSH, MUCK, etc. line) were hacked to send special messages to the client, giving it the URL of a VRML file to load, the URL of avatar objects, etc. You had to create scripts in the MUD's programming language to send update messages to the client, to let it know where in the VRML space the objects in the MUD's room were.
It never really got off the ground, alas. It was only for Windows, and never quite caught on with either the players or the admins. I had played with it a bit on a MUSH I was an admin on. MUSH programming was ugly. MUSH programming to talk to a graphical client was brain damaging.
The company that made Pueblo (Chaco) still have their web site up (http://www.chaco.com/pueblo/, although they later became LikeMinds, which later was absorbed into MacroMedia. The copyright dates on their site say 1995, and they had a Windows 3.1 version of the cleint(!) so it's a fair bet Pueblo was around before this patent application.
I suspect that this is a moral victory, but unless spammers see huge cash awards in cases like this, they won't stop. I expect that Kozmo (well, assuming they stayed above water) would have just written this off as a small expense in their advertising campaign.
Now, if the author had organized a class-action lawsuit... so that one court win could cost $50 * (# of people in suit) that might get their attention. As it is, if it only cost them $75 plus a lawyer's time, I imagine they figure they'd be making money anyhow, if the e-mail spurred some new business....
Suppose you have written an essay or made an invention. Your intellectual work does not exist in a social vacuum. It would not have been possible without lots of earlier work - both intellectual and nonintellectual - by many other people.
So? everything is a social product. Let's say you manufacture something. You do not do this in a vacuum. You do pay the people who contribute directly, employees, supplies, etc. But, what about the guy that built the building that you work in, the guy who paved the road that you drive your products over, the folks who built the truck that you use to transport goods. Do you have to include them in a cut of your profits? Do they, therefore have the right to take your goods?
The answer is: no. Those people have already been compensated by you in some manner (you rent or bought the building, you paid taxes to get the road paved, you bought or rent the truck). In the case of intellectual property, why would we treat anything differently? The intellectual work performed by someone should be just as valid in the marketplace, and be justly reward, as phsyical labor.
The second point is utterly baffling. Let me get this straight: if you are a dull, plodding worker who punches a time card, by all means, you should benefit from your labor. However, if you're talented, gifted, or busted your ass to be able to creating something new, innovative, and popular... well, jack, you don't get squat for that.
What a load of horse shit. Who the hell is this Hettinger dweeb to decide that if I make a symphony, that I can't benefit from it monitarily? Because "natural talent" is involved? Does that mean that since I'm out of shape, I should get paid more to go dig a ditch than someone who's fit, since it is a lot easier for him? No, the end result is what we judge. In Hettinger's mind, for the greatest reward, I should find the job I'm least suited to do, and go struggle with it. Obvious idiocy.
From the practical, market standpoint, if we want to see more of something, like innovation, we reward it. Of course, the market isn't perfect. I think it's pretty obscene that someone playing a child's game ends up making more than several hundred teachers, who are responsible for educating our young. But, unless someone can wave a magic wand and remove the necessity for people to pay for food, shelter, and the other necessities, not to mention luxuries, we need to somehow compensate people for the intellectual work they do. The market is the only functional way we have found to do that. And to enable the market to work, we have to treat intellectual labor as if it were physical labor, within the bounds of copyright law.
Gosh! How *dare* they change a system that they provide to you for no cost, so that they can maybe make some money off of it so they can ay for the bandwidth you are using?! Bastards!
Seriously, this is different than ReplayTV or TiVo, where you have already paid them for the service they are rendering. You've basically entered a contract with them by exchanging money for goods. How much have you paid for ICQ? Nada. Are they contractually obliged to you to provide that service? Nope. For them to change how their software works when it connects to their free service isn't unfair. It's just business.
Really, your only alternatives are to live with it, or to seek free alternatives, such as Jabber. But remember that even if the software is free, someone has to pay for the servers to manage the messaging network. TANSTAAFL.
True... not everyone understands the free software landscape. Then again, not everyone is trying to sell you a friggin' paper on the subject, either. If people are going to pimp data about something, they should *at least* ensure that data is somewhat correct. How can you do that when you've got no clue what it is you're talking about?
This sort of thing is exactly what I would expect from the "research firms" out there. I work in the same building as a Well Known Research Firm. The people who work there strike me as utterly fake Ken and Barbie dolls. These are the type of people who take the elevator *down* two floors to get to the corporate gym. They are always talking about the deals and sales they are making. Not once have I heard them talk about a neat new technology or some research they are doing. Fake, fake, fake.
If I told you, four years ago, that your "average" Mac or Windows user would be copying binary data off of a CD, encoding it into a new format, then then exchanging that data over the net freely, downloading it into personal devices, or burning it onto CD's that could be played in other devices, would you have bought it?
While it's popular to flog the masses as being "iggnerent lusers," the truth is, if you're capable of making a process fairly straightforward, Joe average will actually be able to follow along. Joe Average wasn't supposed to use computers in the first place. Or be able to get on the internet. Or be a threat to the mighty music business. Guess what? It happened.
The argument used that "this will be beyond the ability of average user" is bullshit. Just like "no one will ever find this security hole if they can't see the source code" and "open source software can't be worth anything, becuase it is free." It's what clueless executives murmur over and over, while clinging to their dreams of a new Lexus and a vacation home in the Bahamas.
I mean, setting up a camera on the communal coffee pot rocks; you don't have to drag your butt halfway across the building to just to find an empty coffee pot.
This could mean that coffee would never be made, though... If everyone can see that the coffee pot was empty, then no one would want to be the one to schlep down to the pot, start a new pot brewing and wait around for it to finish. Everyone would wait for everyone else to do it. All productive work would stop. Everyone would just watch the damn coffee pot...
Now, if you could get a more sophisticated cam, one that would snap a picture of the rotten bastard who took the last cup without starting a new pot... now that would be progress...
I occasionally see people on gas-powered skateboards (probably some MIT nerds, since I'm in that vicinity). Let me tell you, it is close to the loudest thing I've heard on the road. It's higher-pitched than a motorcycle or scooter, which may affect my perception some. It makes this annoying "braaaaaaaap" noise as it passes. And since it makes only 15-20 MPH, it stays in earshot for quite a while.
I'd assume this aussie thing, like the gas powered skateboard, keeps weight down by cutting out the bells and whistles... like any sort of muffler. Not exactly what I'd like to hear when I head down to the beach or off into the wilds.
These guys suddenly disappeared? Google says that the website, www.moonlight3d.org, had a "please come back later" message on it. But now, it appears, the site itself is gone. I remember looking at this package for a while, but suddenly the web site shut down, with some nebulous reason cited. Weird.
I haven't had much luck with the free/open alternatives out there. I used to use Ray Dream on Windows to goof around with 3D, but it had a lot of bugs and many limitations. But still I'm not thrilled about having to shell out $500 or more for an OK package, or several thousand for a professional one.
It seems though, that all the bells and whistles that go into making a professional 3D package like Lightwave would be a daunting task for an open/free project. Probably similar in scope to duplicating PhotoShop. Anyone care to comment on what percentage of PhotoShop functionality that the Gimp has implemented?
Even if you get the artists and designers and whatnot to work for free, you still have a problem: bandwidth and hardware. Massive Multiplayer is going to mean massive infrastructure and fat pipes. We'll probably see things like we did in the early day of MUDs: a mud starts up, gets really cool, and then the hoard of people who tromp in ensure that the resources that could be spared to run the game for free are no longer adequate.
That assumes, of course, a monolithic server, which it sounds like most of the multiplayer games use. I wonder... distributed servers, anyone? That would be a cool, and probably gawdawfully complex project. Sort of like Napster, only with real-time updates.
(I'll host 100 square feet of the game world on my system, if you'll do likewise...)
If you thought having some yuppie ensconced in a SUV barreling around while yakking on his/her cell phone was dangerous, just wait until you get some sysadmin trying to reconfigure his/her server using voice control while driving...
Actually, I got a really cheap infrared keyboard with built-in mouse made by Acer for around $20. Works pretty well. Well enough that I can bounce the signal off a wall and have the IR reciever sittinf behind me pick it up.
A question about the BookPC and chip combo... how noisy is this? I'm dying to find a compact system that is inexpensive and quiet. The Athlon rig I have in my living room now is tons quiter than my desktop, but it's still too noisy.
One teacher (whose name, sadly, I don't even remember now) I think had a major impact on my life, early on.
This was in kindergarden (aka pre-school), so I was 5 or 6. For some reason, I was curious about the temperature of fire. So, I asked one of the teachers (or, more likely, she was a teacher's aide. She was really young, early 20's I guess).
Now, I would expect that most teachers, these days, would say something like "really hot" and send me on my way. Who knows, they might have noted down my interest in fire someplace, lest I turn out to be a pyromaniac. This also wasn't part of some lesson plan. This was just a play period, where presumably the teachers were taking a break, while watching to make sure we didn't destroy the classroom.
But this younger teacher said "I don't know." Now, that acknowledgement that she didn't know something in itself seems pretty rare. But what made this unique was what she said next: "Let's find out!" We went over to a desk, where she pulled out a small thermometer. She then fished through her purse and got some matches (this was the early 70's, remember... everyone seemed to smoke). She had me hold the thermometer while she lit the match, and held it near the thermometer's bulb.
Well, the thermometer was probably something made for measuring room temperature, so it only went up to 120F or so. The mercury shot up to the top of the thermometer pretty quickly, so she pulled the match away. "Well, it looks like the thermometer doesn;t go up that high," she said. "But, at least we know that fire is hotter than 120 degrees."
So, I didn't actually learn how hot fire is, but I did learn a more important lesson: when you have a question, you can try to find the answer yourself. This is, to me, the essence of what learning (and ultimately, science) is all about. To not show kids through actions like this that they can learn for themselves, only causes the death of curiosity, which I think is the biggest risk we face these days. In this info-rich world, are kids given a reason to experiment, and find things out for themselves?
I'd say, a *good* teacher needs to foster the curiosity and explorative nature of his or her students. Instead of handing out facts and figures to memorize, have them find things that interest and excite them.
Unfortunately, this seems rare, judging from my later experiences, especially in "science" classes.
Hey! It's simple! Just type a whole lot of phrases into Babelfish and read the results. What could go wrong? Soon, you'll be speaking like this:
Bonjour, monsieur! Je suis un nerd! Je voudrais savoir ou je pourrais trouver une connexion de reseau et un beaucoup rapides de cafe, s'il vous plait!*
It's that simple. Heck! Get a wireless connection, and you can par-lee-voo anywhere you want!
*Hello, Mister! I am a nerd! I would like to know where I could find a connection of network and much fast of coffee, please!
I can't think of one. The CERT advisory makes it sound like this particular one is there because the design of the system requires it:
It turns out the LOCKSMITH is an entity needed to allow "authorized" interaction with the security accounts database between services. This LOCKSMITH is the user account in question compiled into the code with full-access to the security accounts database by default.
So, at least it doesn't seem to be a Borland/Inprise employee being sneaky. But still, leaving such a gaping hole in the software, even by design, it stupid. Especially considering the password for said account is hard coded! I can't imagine that idea passing the giggle test for any security expert.
But, if you read the article carefully, you'll see it mentions the Stirling engine, *then* talks about a hush-hush project that Kleiner Perkins is investing in. It implies that this is not, in fact, IT.
Damn, I need to track down my college friend who went off to work for Dean doing the US FIRST thing. Maybe he knows...
You can try Tuxtops. The Linux Store also seems to stock some pre-loaded laptops.
Note I have never done business with either of these companies. I just recall them advertising Linux laptops in Linux magazines.
In all cases, though, these seem pretty expensive. It seems to me that you could find a better deal somewhere else, then load your own distribution. I tend to customize and tweak so much, I can't imagine having someone else load my system for me. But YMMV.
Yeah, when I was getting my cable modem, I looked into how much the price was with leasing and with buying it outright. Hands down, leasing is better. Considering my father has gone through three cable modems in the last three years he's had the service, owning your own hardware is just going to end up costing you a lot more, even if you keep the cable service (or DSL, or whatever) long enough to pay off the initial investment and start seeing savings.
I've seen several comments along the lines of "the bastards don't know what an ornithopter is!"
I strongly suspect that they do know what it is, and may have tried to portray them. I happen to think that a flapping machine is just gonna look dumb, no matter how large the special effects budget is. I suspect, for the non-die-hard Dune fan, having an ornithoper is just gonna be too weird, and get in the way of their enjoyment.
I've always thought they were a pretty hokey idea, dating back from the early days of SF. I recall them popping up in some early Clarke, or perhaps Asimov work.
It was ages since I read Dune, but I don't seem to recall that ornithopers being more than just mentioned in passing. Is there a reason why people are so insistant that they be a part of any canonical film version of Dune?
What I think is sad...
on
Nvidia's NV20
·
· Score: 2
Is that it apparently goes without saying that any new polygon pumpin' uberchip is only going to be used to give us Yet Another First Person Shooter.
When will this technology break out of this ghetto? Aren't there more interesting things to do?
Personally, I think 3D technology has been stuck in the "keystone cops" era long enough. In early film, the only thing people could think to show was chase scenes and other stunts. A lot of that had to do with the immaturity of the medium (no sound, poor picture quality). Eventually, I think "3D entertainment" won't by synonymous with "graphic violence."
Slashdot Mirror
Gee, I guess this is why I have a 20 year old computer that still works, a color TV that has freakin' *dials* on it (and was made in the US... so it's very old) and a bunch of other elderly equipment around. All of which still works.
Remember that for electronics, it is far more often the case that the non-mechanical parts of the equipment far outlast their useful lifetime. We have mounds and mounds of still functional, but fairly useless electronics gear.
As for the mechanical world, I highly doubt they are designed to fall apart at a certain time. It's just not a design goal that these things should be indestructable. Maybe they could be designed to last forever. I kinda doubt you could build machines that would be capable of running 5 million miles without massive overhauls. And the price of constructing a car out of nearly wear-proof parts would make them hideously expensive. No matter how clever your engineering, you still have to face the simple fact that there is friction, and friction causes wear. For most cars, you can keep them going nearly indefinitely, if you are willing to spend the cash to keep them going. But why bother? Most people don't bother maintaining their cars properly anyhow, then bitch when the thing breaks down.
You're measuring a space probe that is travelling through a near vaccuum, with few mechanical parts that still need to work, to cars that drive through highly corrosive road salt, over pot-hole filled streets, by fairly neglectful owners. And you're wondering why the probe wins out? Oh, and have you checked the price of a space probe vs. the price of a car recently?
I'm fairly certain that the Pueblo MUD client was out by '96, as well. Pueblo had its own built-in VRML renderer. The MUD client (most from the MUSH, MUCK, etc. line) were hacked to send special messages to the client, giving it the URL of a VRML file to load, the URL of avatar objects, etc. You had to create scripts in the MUD's programming language to send update messages to the client, to let it know where in the VRML space the objects in the MUD's room were.
It never really got off the ground, alas. It was only for Windows, and never quite caught on with either the players or the admins. I had played with it a bit on a MUSH I was an admin on. MUSH programming was ugly. MUSH programming to talk to a graphical client was brain damaging.
The company that made Pueblo (Chaco) still have their web site up (http://www.chaco.com/pueblo/, although they later became LikeMinds, which later was absorbed into MacroMedia. The copyright dates on their site say 1995, and they had a Windows 3.1 version of the cleint(!) so it's a fair bet Pueblo was around before this patent application.
I suspect that this is a moral victory, but unless spammers see huge cash awards in cases like this, they won't stop. I expect that Kozmo (well, assuming they stayed above water) would have just written this off as a small expense in their advertising campaign.
Now, if the author had organized a class-action lawsuit... so that one court win could cost $50 * (# of people in suit) that might get their attention. As it is, if it only cost them $75 plus a lawyer's time, I imagine they figure they'd be making money anyhow, if the e-mail spurred some new business....
*snort*
So? everything is a social product. Let's say you manufacture something. You do not do this in a vacuum. You do pay the people who contribute directly, employees, supplies, etc. But, what about the guy that built the building that you work in, the guy who paved the road that you drive your products over, the folks who built the truck that you use to transport goods. Do you have to include them in a cut of your profits? Do they, therefore have the right to take your goods?
The answer is: no. Those people have already been compensated by you in some manner (you rent or bought the building, you paid taxes to get the road paved, you bought or rent the truck). In the case of intellectual property, why would we treat anything differently? The intellectual work performed by someone should be just as valid in the marketplace, and be justly reward, as phsyical labor.
The second point is utterly baffling. Let me get this straight: if you are a dull, plodding worker who punches a time card, by all means, you should benefit from your labor. However, if you're talented, gifted, or busted your ass to be able to creating something new, innovative, and popular... well, jack, you don't get squat for that.
What a load of horse shit. Who the hell is this Hettinger dweeb to decide that if I make a symphony, that I can't benefit from it monitarily? Because "natural talent" is involved? Does that mean that since I'm out of shape, I should get paid more to go dig a ditch than someone who's fit, since it is a lot easier for him? No, the end result is what we judge. In Hettinger's mind, for the greatest reward, I should find the job I'm least suited to do, and go struggle with it. Obvious idiocy.
From the practical, market standpoint, if we want to see more of something, like innovation, we reward it. Of course, the market isn't perfect. I think it's pretty obscene that someone playing a child's game ends up making more than several hundred teachers, who are responsible for educating our young. But, unless someone can wave a magic wand and remove the necessity for people to pay for food, shelter, and the other necessities, not to mention luxuries, we need to somehow compensate people for the intellectual work they do. The market is the only functional way we have found to do that. And to enable the market to work, we have to treat intellectual labor as if it were physical labor, within the bounds of copyright law.
Gosh! How *dare* they change a system that they provide to you for no cost, so that they can maybe make some money off of it so they can ay for the bandwidth you are using?! Bastards!
Seriously, this is different than ReplayTV or TiVo, where you have already paid them for the service they are rendering. You've basically entered a contract with them by exchanging money for goods. How much have you paid for ICQ? Nada. Are they contractually obliged to you to provide that service? Nope. For them to change how their software works when it connects to their free service isn't unfair. It's just business.
Really, your only alternatives are to live with it, or to seek free alternatives, such as Jabber. But remember that even if the software is free, someone has to pay for the servers to manage the messaging network. TANSTAAFL.
Teams of Monsanto Lawyers forced to go through a canola field, plant-by-plant, and remove each one that has their damn gene in it. Poetic justice.
True... not everyone understands the free software landscape. Then again, not everyone is trying to sell you a friggin' paper on the subject, either. If people are going to pimp data about something, they should *at least* ensure that data is somewhat correct. How can you do that when you've got no clue what it is you're talking about?
This sort of thing is exactly what I would expect from the "research firms" out there. I work in the same building as a Well Known Research Firm. The people who work there strike me as utterly fake Ken and Barbie dolls. These are the type of people who take the elevator *down* two floors to get to the corporate gym. They are always talking about the deals and sales they are making. Not once have I heard them talk about a neat new technology or some research they are doing. Fake, fake, fake.
If I told you, four years ago, that your "average" Mac or Windows user would be copying binary data off of a CD, encoding it into a new format, then then exchanging that data over the net freely, downloading it into personal devices, or burning it onto CD's that could be played in other devices, would you have bought it?
While it's popular to flog the masses as being "iggnerent lusers," the truth is, if you're capable of making a process fairly straightforward, Joe average will actually be able to follow along. Joe Average wasn't supposed to use computers in the first place. Or be able to get on the internet. Or be a threat to the mighty music business. Guess what? It happened.
The argument used that "this will be beyond the ability of average user" is bullshit. Just like "no one will ever find this security hole if they can't see the source code" and "open source software can't be worth anything, becuase it is free." It's what clueless executives murmur over and over, while clinging to their dreams of a new Lexus and a vacation home in the Bahamas.
I mean, setting up a camera on the communal coffee pot rocks; you don't have to drag your butt halfway across the building to just to find an empty coffee pot.
This could mean that coffee would never be made, though... If everyone can see that the coffee pot was empty, then no one would want to be the one to schlep down to the pot, start a new pot brewing and wait around for it to finish. Everyone would wait for everyone else to do it. All productive work would stop. Everyone would just watch the damn coffee pot...
Now, if you could get a more sophisticated cam, one that would snap a picture of the rotten bastard who took the last cup without starting a new pot... now that would be progress...
1) Police *searched* homes for evidence. THey did not arrest.
2) Those searched were users of a website. The authorities were *contemplating* Napster cases.
I occasionally see people on gas-powered skateboards (probably some MIT nerds, since I'm in that vicinity). Let me tell you, it is close to the loudest thing I've heard on the road. It's higher-pitched than a motorcycle or scooter, which may affect my perception some. It makes this annoying "braaaaaaaap" noise as it passes. And since it makes only 15-20 MPH, it stays in earshot for quite a while.
I'd assume this aussie thing, like the gas powered skateboard, keeps weight down by cutting out the bells and whistles... like any sort of muffler. Not exactly what I'd like to hear when I head down to the beach or off into the wilds.
These guys suddenly disappeared? Google says that the website, www.moonlight3d.org, had a "please come back later" message on it. But now, it appears, the site itself is gone. I remember looking at this package for a while, but suddenly the web site shut down, with some nebulous reason cited. Weird.
I haven't had much luck with the free/open alternatives out there. I used to use Ray Dream on Windows to goof around with 3D, but it had a lot of bugs and many limitations. But still I'm not thrilled about having to shell out $500 or more for an OK package, or several thousand for a professional one.
It seems though, that all the bells and whistles that go into making a professional 3D package like Lightwave would be a daunting task for an open/free project. Probably similar in scope to duplicating PhotoShop. Anyone care to comment on what percentage of PhotoShop functionality that the Gimp has implemented?
Even if you get the artists and designers and whatnot to work for free, you still have a problem: bandwidth and hardware. Massive Multiplayer is going to mean massive infrastructure and fat pipes. We'll probably see things like we did in the early day of MUDs: a mud starts up, gets really cool, and then the hoard of people who tromp in ensure that the resources that could be spared to run the game for free are no longer adequate.
That assumes, of course, a monolithic server, which it sounds like most of the multiplayer games use. I wonder... distributed servers, anyone? That would be a cool, and probably gawdawfully complex project. Sort of like Napster, only with real-time updates.
(I'll host 100 square feet of the game world on my system, if you'll do likewise...)
If you thought having some yuppie ensconced in a SUV barreling around while yakking on his/her cell phone was dangerous, just wait until you get some sysadmin trying to reconfigure his/her server using voice control while driving...
Actually, I got a really cheap infrared keyboard with built-in mouse made by Acer for around $20. Works pretty well. Well enough that I can bounce the signal off a wall and have the IR reciever sittinf behind me pick it up.
A question about the BookPC and chip combo... how noisy is this? I'm dying to find a compact system that is inexpensive and quiet. The Athlon rig I have in my living room now is tons quiter than my desktop, but it's still too noisy.
One teacher (whose name, sadly, I don't even remember now) I think had a major impact on my life, early on.
This was in kindergarden (aka pre-school), so I was 5 or 6. For some reason, I was curious about the temperature of fire. So, I asked one of the teachers (or, more likely, she was a teacher's aide. She was really young, early 20's I guess).
Now, I would expect that most teachers, these days, would say something like "really hot" and send me on my way. Who knows, they might have noted down my interest in fire someplace, lest I turn out to be a pyromaniac. This also wasn't part of some lesson plan. This was just a play period, where presumably the teachers were taking a break, while watching to make sure we didn't destroy the classroom.
But this younger teacher said "I don't know." Now, that acknowledgement that she didn't know something in itself seems pretty rare. But what made this unique was what she said next: "Let's find out!" We went over to a desk, where she pulled out a small thermometer. She then fished through her purse and got some matches (this was the early 70's, remember... everyone seemed to smoke). She had me hold the thermometer while she lit the match, and held it near the thermometer's bulb.
Well, the thermometer was probably something made for measuring room temperature, so it only went up to 120F or so. The mercury shot up to the top of the thermometer pretty quickly, so she pulled the match away. "Well, it looks like the thermometer doesn;t go up that high," she said. "But, at least we know that fire is hotter than 120 degrees."
So, I didn't actually learn how hot fire is, but I did learn a more important lesson: when you have a question, you can try to find the answer yourself. This is, to me, the essence of what learning (and ultimately, science) is all about. To not show kids through actions like this that they can learn for themselves, only causes the death of curiosity, which I think is the biggest risk we face these days. In this info-rich world, are kids given a reason to experiment, and find things out for themselves?
I'd say, a *good* teacher needs to foster the curiosity and explorative nature of his or her students. Instead of handing out facts and figures to memorize, have them find things that interest and excite them.
Unfortunately, this seems rare, judging from my later experiences, especially in "science" classes.
You *have* to wonder what sort of resume you need to present in order to get a job as a porn scanner...
"Have personally sampled over 10,000 porn websites in my 'research'"
"I can instantly tell by a domain name if it will have porn on it or not."
"I don't puke when I see that goatse.cx link that keeps turning up on Slashdot..."
Hey! It's simple! Just type a whole lot of phrases into Babelfish and read the results. What could go wrong? Soon, you'll be speaking like this:
Bonjour, monsieur! Je suis un nerd! Je voudrais savoir ou je pourrais trouver une connexion de reseau et un beaucoup rapides de cafe, s'il vous plait!*
It's that simple. Heck! Get a wireless connection, and you can par-lee-voo anywhere you want!
Is there a good use for back doors?
I can't think of one. The CERT advisory makes it sound like this particular one is there because the design of the system requires it:
So, at least it doesn't seem to be a Borland/Inprise employee being sneaky. But still, leaving such a gaping hole in the software, even by design, it stupid. Especially considering the password for said account is hard coded! I can't imagine that idea passing the giggle test for any security expert.
Hmm... smartsand?
But, if you read the article carefully, you'll see it mentions the Stirling engine, *then* talks about a hush-hush project that Kleiner Perkins is investing in. It implies that this is not, in fact, IT.
Damn, I need to track down my college friend who went off to work for Dean doing the US FIRST thing. Maybe he knows...
You can try Tuxtops. The Linux Store also seems to stock some pre-loaded laptops.
Note I have never done business with either of these companies. I just recall them advertising Linux laptops in Linux magazines.
In all cases, though, these seem pretty expensive. It seems to me that you could find a better deal somewhere else, then load your own distribution. I tend to customize and tweak so much, I can't imagine having someone else load my system for me. But YMMV.
Yeah, when I was getting my cable modem, I looked into how much the price was with leasing and with buying it outright. Hands down, leasing is better. Considering my father has gone through three cable modems in the last three years he's had the service, owning your own hardware is just going to end up costing you a lot more, even if you keep the cable service (or DSL, or whatever) long enough to pay off the initial investment and start seeing savings.
I've seen several comments along the lines of "the bastards don't know what an ornithopter is!"
I strongly suspect that they do know what it is, and may have tried to portray them. I happen to think that a flapping machine is just gonna look dumb, no matter how large the special effects budget is. I suspect, for the non-die-hard Dune fan, having an ornithoper is just gonna be too weird, and get in the way of their enjoyment.
I've always thought they were a pretty hokey idea, dating back from the early days of SF. I recall them popping up in some early Clarke, or perhaps Asimov work.
It was ages since I read Dune, but I don't seem to recall that ornithopers being more than just mentioned in passing. Is there a reason why people are so insistant that they be a part of any canonical film version of Dune?
Is that it apparently goes without saying that any new polygon pumpin' uberchip is only going to be used to give us Yet Another First Person Shooter.
When will this technology break out of this ghetto? Aren't there more interesting things to do?
Personally, I think 3D technology has been stuck in the "keystone cops" era long enough. In early film, the only thing people could think to show was chase scenes and other stunts. A lot of that had to do with the immaturity of the medium (no sound, poor picture quality). Eventually, I think "3D entertainment" won't by synonymous with "graphic violence."